Текст книги "Harbinger"

Автор книги: David Mack

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He gave her an obedient nod. “So noted.”

With a huge grin, she said, “Brie.”

“Now you’re just being difficult,” he said. “I know for a fact you don’t even like Brie. You said it was too bland.”

“Good memory,” she said. Feigning hurt feelings, she added, “Does that mean you won’t bring me some if I ask?”

He smiled wanly. “With or without a pastry shell?”

“A man who knows his cheese,” she said approvingly. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I thought I was the lucky one.” He sat up and clicked on the bedside lamp so he could look for his pants. As he reached down to pick up his trousers, the station’s public-address system squawked from an overhead speaker that was expertly camouflaged in the ceiling.

“Attention all personnel,” a female voice said. “The Starship Enterprise is cleared for main spacedock bay three.” Oriana was out of bed and reaching for her uniform while the word Enterprise was still echoing in the corridor outside. The announcement continued, “Support personnel, all shifts, report for priority operations. All previous work assignments are rescinded pending further notice. Command out.”

After hurriedly pulling on his pants, Pennington turned to see Oriana shimmy into her sheer lower undergarment. “What’s going on? What’s the hurry?”

“It’s the Enterprise,” Oriana said, flustered. “Dammit.” She reached for her one-piece uniform and pulled it on over her head. Her hair, which he had found so attractive when it was splayed across his pillows moments ago, now looked like a frightful mass of tangles, in comparison to the neat beehive currently recommended for female Starfleet officers. She spun and critically eyed her reflection in the mirror over his dresser. “God, I’m a mess.”

Pennington plucked his shirt from the desktop where it had been flung in a gesture of wild abandon. He slipped into it with fluid motions that hinted at his many years of training as a long-distance swimmer. “I’m still not getting why—”

“It’s Robert’s ship,” she snapped. “He’ll be in port any minute.”

The name was a dim memory, known but almost deliberately forgotten. Pennington had pushed it from his thoughts weeks ago, for the sake of convenience. Now it returned with a vengeance: Her husband. One leaden moment later, he muttered a heartfelt “Bloody hell.”

Her hands were working more quickly than Pennington could follow, curling and twisting and shaping her hair into something that wouldn’t betray her most recent recreational activities. “I just can’t believe this,” she grumbled. “What the hell is the Enterprise even doing out here?”

“That’s a good question.” Pennington started putting on his shoes. “Might be a story in it.”

“Lucky you.” Oriana turned sideways and peeked at herself out of the corner of her eye, studying her uniform and her hair. “Close enough.” She started gathering the loose items of the personal bath kit she had brought with her.

“Leave them,” Pennington said. “You can come back for them later.”

“Actually, I can’t,” she said. “At least, I probably won’t be able to. The Enterprise has been on patrol a long time, so she’ll probably be in port for a while.”

Pennington understood her point. As long as the Enterprise was here, she would have to keep her distance from him and stay close to her husband. “Right,” he said. “I see. No problem.”

He tried to conceal the wave of bitter disappointment that welled up inside him, but filtering his emotions had never been his strong suit. Oriana stroked his cheek with her palm. His dejection was mirrored in her sorrowful expression. “This is probably all for the best,” she said. “Robert was going to come home sooner or later, and your wife will be here in a couple of weeks…. It’s not like we thought this would last forever.”

I’m such a stupid git, Pennington berated himself. That’s exactly what I thought. “Yes, you’re right.” It was all he could think to say. He began to feel sick. Then he recognized the sensation: It was the yawning chasm of dread that always preceded the news that he was about to lose someone he loved. Loved. The very fact of it was like a cruel joke. It had started out as harmless flirtation, but in swift measure it had turned serious, become tempestuous, and finally had spun out of control. Caught up in the erotic thrill of every illicit moment with Oriana, he had allowed himself to forget about Lora. About his wife.

Oriana finished gathering her things into her overnight bag. Then an idea struck Pennington. “If Robert sees you holding that, won’t he realize you were planning on staying somewhere other than the Bombay? Won’t he ask questions?”

She looked at the bag in her hands. “Damn.” Frowning, she handed it to Pennington. “Okay, hang on to it. My friend Katrina will come by later and take it down to my storage locker.”

“Sure.” He put the bag on the chair beside his dresser, then turned back toward her. “I guess this is goodbye, then.”

“It’s goodbye for now.” She grabbed the waistband of his pants and pulled him to her. Their lips met with practiced ease, and their arms snaked around one another. He lost himself in her hungry, defiant kiss. After several intoxicating seconds she gently nibbled his lower lip. “The Enterprise is just passing through,” she said, her whisper warm and intimate. “Bombay is here to stay.” She punctuated her point with a quick flick of her tongue against his. “And I’ll be back.”

She was out the door before he could bid her farewell.

So much for spending the weekend in bed, he brooded.

“Enterprise, this is Vanguard control. Prepare to release your navigational systems to our control in twenty seconds.”

“Vanguard, this is Enterprise,” Kirk said. “Standing by for handoff.” No matter how many times James Kirk reminded himself that letting the spacedock team guide his ship into the docking bay was the safest possible option, relinquishing control of his ship never came easy. He sat in his chair on the bridge and leaned forward on his left elbow, the thumb of his closed fist pressed thoughtfully against his lower lip. As the Enterprise began its final approach toward the slowly parting docking-bay doors, he took his first good look at the new, pristine gray surface of Starbase 47 on the main viewer.

Vanguard was enormous—no mere G– or K-class station, with a few airlocks, shuttle bays, and spare, utilitarian habitat modules. Nearly a kilometer tall and almost as wide, Watchtower-class space stations were more on the order of small cities. Designed for complete self-sufficiency, they were capable of lending support to colonial operations or serving as home base for missions both exploratory and military, in remote areas where no other Federation support was available. He recalled that, at peak capacity, it would be capable of hosting up to four Constitution-class starships in its main spacedock, as many as twelve other large to midsized ships on the spokes of its massive lower docking wheel, and no doubt dozens of smaller craft in the numerous hangar bays along its broad central core.

Emblazoned on opposite sides of the central core and on the top of the primary spacedock—in Arabic numerals almost as tall as the Enterprise itself—was the facility’s numerical designation, 47, sandwiched between the words STARBASE (above it) and VANGUARD (below). Flanking the name and number were the crimson starburst and banner icons of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.

Ensign Varsha Mahtani keyed in a command sequence at the helm. The soft-voiced Indian woman turned toward Kirk and said, “Navigational control transferred, Captain.”

“Thank you, Ensign.” Kirk glanced over at Spock, who stood at ease next to his science station, watching the image of Vanguard’s expansive spacedock swallowing the Enterprise. “Thoughts, Mr. Spock?”

“Most impressive,” Spock said. “This far from a habitable system and civilized Federation worlds, the acquisition of raw materials for this station’s construction must have posed a formidable challenge.”

From the other side of the bridge, at the auxiliary engineering station, chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott turned and leaned on the low railing that ran the circumference of the bridge’s upper level. “Aye,” he said, joining the conversation. “Movin’ that much matériel this far from home this quickly would be a job and a half. Four dozen ships, at least.”

“Apparently,” Kirk said, “someone thought it was worth it.”

Spock descended the short stairs to stand at Kirk’s side. He lowered his voice, implying a need for discretion. “This far from Federation territory, a small facility would not be uncommon, as a border outpost. But a facility of this size and complexity…implies a mission much larger in scope.”

There was no need for Spock to elaborate. Kirk understood his first officer’s point: Something important was afoot here on the outskirts of explored space, something so crucial that the Federation was willing to commit itself to the Herculean task of establishing a major starbase that would then be left to fend for itself, come what may.

It was a mystery that now had Kirk’s undivided attention.

Reyes strode swiftly through the corridor circling the middle deck of the main spacedock. He was headed to bay two, where the Bombay currently was berthed.

The passage bustled with throngs of officers debarking from the Enterprise and the Bombay. For Reyes, it was easy to tell which crew was which. The Bombay personnel had recently received the new Starfleet duty uniforms, which featured more intense primary colors and, for female officers, a one-piece miniskirt. Both the men and women from the Enterprise wore the previous generation of shirt-and-trouser uniforms, whose colors were more muted, and lacked the new black collar.

It never ceased to amaze Reyes that, in an organization as large as Starfleet, with all its personnel and its fleets of starships spread across the galaxy, whenever two ships managed to make port at the same time, so many members of their crews seemed to know each other. Already clusters of Enterprise crewmen were mingling with Bombay officers. Back-slappings and shouted salutations filled the wide, bulkhead-gray corridor with the sounds of joyous reunions, of friends and colleagues and academy cohorts too long separated by the call of duty.

The swelling tide of happy bonhomie brought a broad smile to Reyes’s weathered face. It had been a few years since he had commanded a starship, but he remembered well the unique joy that coursed through any vessel at the utterance of two simple words: Shore leave.

Reyes recognized the stylishly tousled flaxen hair of the Bombay’s commanding officer as she exited the gangway into the corridor. As he approached, he shouted to her. “Hallie!” The attractive, fortyish captain looked around, apparently unable to determine who had called her name. He waved to her, and once again was thankful that his lunar upbringing had made him taller than average for a human. “Captain Gannon!”

This time she saw him. Stepping quickly and with grace, his former first officer from the Dauntless slalomed through the moving wall of bodies to join him. He fell into step beside her.

“Commodore,” she said brightly. “Good to see you again.”

“Likewise, Captain. Everything went smoothly?”

“By the numbers,” Gannon said.

“Good, good.” He hesitated, telegraphing with silence what he had to say next. “I have some bad news, I’m afraid.”

“I figured as much. What can I do for you?”

“Priority signal from Ravanar.” The two officers detoured around a large knot of personnel who were moving slowly up the center of the corridor. As they reunited in front of the group, he continued, “We need to get some gear out to them, pronto.”

“Not a problem,” Gannon said. “Anything else?”

“A few things. You need to pick up a team of dilithium prospectors stuck on Getheon because their warp drive committed seppuku; Lieutenant Commander Stutzman needs to hitch a ride out to the colony on Talagos Prime, so he can rejoin the Endeavour when she comes off patrol in a few weeks; and you need to confirm some long-range scans in Sector 116 Theta and update the star maps for a set of grid coordinates that astrocartography will send over in about an hour.”

“And make our usual circuit of the homesteader colonies after we do our midsector recon, right?”

“Right, but make the run to Ravanar first.”

She seemed to sense the urgency in Reyes’s tone. “How soon do you need us to ship out?”

“How soon can you be ready?”

Gannon sighed. “We need repairs and supplies. If I cancel shore leave, and your people move us to the front of the line—”

“It’s already done.”

Her shoulders hunched into a resigned shrug. “Twenty-four hours?” Reyes’s incredulous stare conveyed his disapproval. She revised her estimate. “Sixteen if we push it.”

“Do your best,” he said.

“Mind if I have lunch first?”

“Eat quickly.”

“Do you want to join me?” She gestured out the transparent-aluminum wraparound window, toward the Enterprise, which was docked in the next bay, ninety degrees away on Vanguard’s main core. “Maybe Captain Pike would—”

“That’s Kirk’s command now,” Reyes said.

“Who?”

“Jim Kirk.”

“Never heard of him. What’s he like?”

“Don’t know,” Reyes said. “Haven’t met him. Rumor has it he’s some kind of young hotshot.”

“That’s what they used to say about Pike,” Gannon said. She looked over at the Enterprise again and chuckled. “I can’t believe he finally gave her up.”

“I know. The Enterprise without Pike—it seems like the end of an era.” He patted her shoulder then quickened his pace. “Talk to T’Prynn about getting that gear for Ravanar.”

“Will do,” Gannon said.

Reyes veered off toward a nearby turbolift. Gannon continued along and swiftly vanished into the crowd of red, blue, and gold uniforms swarming through the corridor. Looking out the turbolift door, Reyes eyed the Enterprise with quiet admiration. Chris Pike had captained that vessel for two consecutive five-year missions, and he and his crew had distinguished themselves as few others ever had. It was hard for Reyes to imagine someone who could earn greater accolades as a starship commander than Christopher Pike, especially when that officer was as young as Jim Kirk.

Well, someone at Starfleet Command thinks he’s qualified, Reyes mused as the turbolift doors hissed closed. But that’s a mighty big ship for a first command. I hope he’s up to it.

Tim Pennington pressed his back into a narrow niche in the wall, not so much to stay clear of the dense pedestrian traffic in the main spacedock corridor as to stay out of sight. Peeking around the corner, he strained to pierce the shifting wall of bodies coursing past him.

Several meters down the corridor, on the opposite side, Oriana waited near the gangway entrance at bay three, where the Enterprise was docked. The curvaceous Italian woman paced anxiously, but her face was the epitome of calm. You’d never guess she’s a woman with a secret, Pennington thought.

Oriana glanced down the gangway, stopped pacing, and waved. All her attention was directed toward Lieutenant Robert D’Amato, who emerged from the gangway and swept her up in a bear hug that lifted her off the deck. He spun her around, a full turn, before planting her back on her feet. Jealousy burned Pennington from within as he watched them kiss. It didn’t matter to him that, as the “other man,” he had no claim to be jealous of his lover’s husband. Feelings were irrational things, immune to logic and reason, and he had never said otherwise.

Fantasies of revealing the affair tempted him, but he knew no good would come of such impulses. As he watched Oriana with Robert, the truth that he had denied for the past several weeks made itself abundantly, brutally clear: She was not going to leave her husband. Robert was her security, her long-term plan, her ace in the hole. Tim was just a luxury, a convenience, a taboo entertainment to be discarded.

They were still kissing. I should just end it, he knew. Walk away. Hang on to my dignity. As the two lovers pulled apart and began walking down the corridor in his direction, he retreated around the corner and did his best to press himself into the duranium bulkhead. Dignity? What dignity?

The D’Amatos passed by him, too wrapped up in the bliss of their reunion to notice him skulking in the half-shadowed corner. For a brief moment, he was grateful to feel invisible, inconsequential. Then relief gave way to shame and resentment.

Before he could savor the maudlin flavor of the moment, his news-service pager vibrated silently on his wrist. An angry sigh flared his nostrils as he raised the device to his eyes and checked the incoming message. It was from his editor.

Haven’t seen a story from you in eight days. Unless you’re dead, file something by tomorrow or we’re giving your column to the new intern.

–Arlys

P.S.—Stop filing meals on your expense report.

They’re not covered, and you know it.

He turned off the pager and pulled his sleeve back down over it. Time to get back to work, he told himself. Looking around at the frenzy of activity produced by having two starships in port, he knew that there had to be a story waiting to be found.

He would make the usual token gestures of asking the senior officers for comments, and he would pretend to be annoyed when they refused to talk. It was all part of the game. Years of thwarted efforts had taught Pennington that it was very rare for people in positions of authority to talk on the record, unless they had an ulterior motive for doing so. Officers had nothing to gain and everything to lose by speaking to the press. In Pennington’s experience, the only way to get a quote of value from an officer was to already know the truth, then make them either confirm it, deny it, or utter a pathetic “no comment.”

His best chance of finding something newsworthy soon enough to make his deadline was to talk to the people no one normally paid any attention to. He scanned the crowd of Starfleet personnel, paying special attention to their shirt cuffs. He was looking for the ones with no braid at all.

He was looking for enlisted personnel.

Decorum prohibited Ambassador Jetanien from complaining.

While Lieutenant Xiong sat beside Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn in front of Commodore Reyes’s empty desk, Jetanien stood behind them and loomed over the debriefing session. He did it not out of a sense of authority or entitlement, but because he simply could not use the human-friendly chairs, which, even if enlarged for his greater size, were generally unsuited to his less-flexible torso. Forcing himself into a seated position usually resulted in a contortion of his body that was uncomfortable for him and unintentionally amusing for others.

He never complained about the absence of his preferred furniture for waking repose—a forward-sloping seat pad with a counterpoised kneeling pad—because he didn’t want to be perceived as the sort of person who always accentuated the negative. In his opinion it was far less inflammatory to simply hold his peace and say that he preferred to stand.

Xiong was in the middle of explaining in exhaustive detail how soil samples had confirmed an age of nearly one hundred thousand years for the recently excavated find on Ravanar IV when Reyes interrupted, “That’s all well and good, Lieutenant, but do we know anything useful about it?”

The young anthropology-and-archaeology expert glared for a moment, then collected himself. “That depends, I guess, on your definition of ‘useful,’ sir.”

Reyes extended his arms outward as if to embrace the possibilities in his imagination. “What does it do? Who created it? Does it have anything to do with the Taurus Key?”

“It’s a bit early to say for sure,” Xiong said. “We’d only just started our tests when you summoned me back here.”

Reyes winced like a man developing a headache. “Mr. Xiong, please don’t tell me I just sent you on a forty-light-year field trip so you could come back here and tell me your results were inconclusive.”

“I wouldn’t call them ‘inconclusive,’ sir.”

“What would you call them, then?”

Xiong shrugged. “Preliminary.”

“I see,” Reyes said. He rapped his knuckles on the desktop. “Let’s recap, shall we? What’s it made of? ‘Unknown.’ Is it indigenous? ‘Unknown.’ Does it pose a risk to our research team or this starbase? ‘Unknown.’ Did I leave anything out?”

Properly chastised, the young lieutenant took a deep breath, then said, “No, sir. That about covers it.”

“There was one other development of note,” T’Prynn said, making her first comment of the meeting. “After your departure, the research team succeeded in restoring power to one of its isolated components. They were still compiling data when their security was breached, forcing them to suspend operations.”

“They activated it?” Xiong was half out of his seat. “When? How? What did it do?”

T’Prynn fixed Xiong with her icy Vulcan stare, which all but bade the high-strung young scientist to be calm. “Only one component was activated, Lieutenant. No effect was immediately apparent.” She looked back at Reyes and added, “The more pressing concern is the security breach.”

Reyes nodded. “And how much intel do we have on that?”

“Very little,” she said. “Sabotage was our initial theory, but witness accounts suggest it was more likely a botched robbery.”

Jetanien interjected, “Are we certain it wasn’t espionage?”

“Spies observe, Mr. Ambassador,” T’Prynn said. “They rarely reveal themselves without good cause. Nothing about this intruder’s actions leads me to think he was a professional. In fact, I consider the opposite to be true.”

The commodore tapped an index finger against his temple. “Suspects?”

“Nothing actionable,” she said. “I will keep you apprised of any new information.”

“See that you do.” Reyes looked up at Jetanien. “Anything to add, Mr. Ambassador?”

“Only that we need to remain mindful of—”

He was interrupted by a sharp buzz from the commodore’s desktop intercom.

Reyes thumbed open the channel. “What?”

The electronically filtered voice of his administrative aide replied, “Yeoman Greenfield, sir. Captain Kirk of the Enterprise is here and wishes to speak with you.”

“Give me a moment to wrap this up, then send him in.”

“Aye, sir,” Greenfield said, and the intercom clicked off.

Reyes stood up, an action that everyone present had already learned was the commodore’s way of signaling that a meeting was over. “My apologies, Mr. Ambassador.” To Xiong and T’Prynn he added, “Dismissed.”

It’s just as well he cut me off, Jetanien decided as he led T’Prynn and Xiong out of the office and down the stairs into the station’s busy operations center. I was ad-libbing, anyway.

Kirk’s brief trip from the Enterprise to the operations center of Starbase 47 had only reinforced his perception of the station’s enormity. The high-ceilinged corridor outside the gangway ramp had been impressive by itself. Glimpses of the terrestrial enclosure that occupied the upper half of the station’s primary hull, above the spacedock, had brought a smile to Kirk’s face. The sense of being in the midst of a buzzing hive of carefully coordinated activity was both overwhelming and exhilarating. Of course, none of those things had been the first detail to catch the captain’s eye; that honor belonged to the miniskirts. Someone at Starfleet Command likes me, he had mused, unable to suppress his appreciative, smirking leer.

He stepped out of the turbolift into the operations center. Its standard duty-shift complement was more than twice as large as his average bridge crew. In the center of it all, standing on a raised platform, watching over the grand circus of quickly changing details, starship traffic, and internal business, was a man not much older than himself. The officer in charge was a pleasant-looking man with a thatch of dark hair; he managed his business with quiet courtesy. Kirk walked past another pair of miniskirted female officers, dodged between two adjacent banks of computers and sensor displays, and approached the platform all but unnoticed. He knocked on the railing post. “Excuse me?”

The officer above him did a small double take, then nodded and smiled. “Hello.”

“I’m Captain James T. Kirk, Starship Enterprise.”

“Executive officer Jon Cooper,” the man on the platform said. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

“I’m looking for Commodore Reyes.”

Cooper pointed to a pair of double doors on the opposite side of the room from the turbolift. “His office is over there, sir.”

“Thank you.” Kirk turned and stepped toward the office.

Cooper called after him. “He’s in a meeting, sir.”

Kirk turned slowly back toward Cooper. “A meeting.”

“Yes, sir. You can check his schedule with his yeoman.”

“His yeoman.”

Before Kirk could point out that he had no idea which one of the junior officers in this room was the commodore’s yeoman, Cooper waved over a chipper young woman with bright, doe-like eyes and an enormous data slate cradled in one arm.

“Toby,” Cooper said, “this is Captain James Kirk, of the Enterprise. Could you check on the status of the commodore’s meeting for him?”

“Of course, sir,” she said. She moved to a nearby console, entered her security code, and opened an internal comm channel. Several seconds later, a distinctly annoyed growl of a voice replied over the speaker, “What?”

“Yeoman Greenfield, sir. Captain Kirk of the Enterprise is here and wishes to speak with you.”

“Give me a moment to wrap this up, then send him in.”

“Aye, sir,” Greenfield said, then clicked off the intercom. She turned to face Kirk. “He—”

“I heard him, Yeoman.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door to Reyes’s office opened. An imposing Chelon in expensive clothing was the first to exit, followed by a young Asian man…and one of the most strikingly beautiful Vulcan women Jim Kirk had ever seen. The tips of her pointed ears barely poked out from beneath her long, straight black hair. She met his stare and returned it, without blinking, as she moved gracefully past him, her stride so fluid that she seemed almost to glide. Her statuesque physique and dark intensity captivated Kirk. She could probably snap me like a twig, he realized. He was turned half around, still watching her while she watched him back, when Greenfield spoke and broke the spell.

“The commodore will see you now, Captain.”

Snapping back into the moment, he reminded himself why he had come here. He nodded to Greenfield, said “Thank you,” and walked quickly into Reyes’s office. The chirps and chatter of the operations center fell away as the door closed behind him.

Kirk had half-expected to find a lavish office, appointed with extravagances and defined by a huge window on the stars. Instead, he found himself in a moderately sized and extremely Spartan workspace that had no windows—most likely because the operations center was shielded by several layers of reinforced duranium armor plating. The commodore’s desk was made of the same blue-gray duranium composite as the walls. There were exactly three chairs (two without armrests in front of the desk, and the commodore’s more ergonomic seat behind it), and the room’s lone couch looked decidedly unwelcoming.

Much like Commodore Reyes himself.

“Captain,” he said, his brow lined with the deep creases of a man who worried for a living. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Kirk said.

“Do tell.” Reyes motioned for Kirk to sit.

The captain settled onto one of the chairs. It was even less comfortable than it looked. He fought the urge to fidget. “When we shipped out last year, I never would have expected to return to a starbase this far from home. It’s a welcome surprise…but still a surprise.”

Reyes shrugged. “If you’d rather skip your repairs, we can just pretend you were never here.”

Kirk waved away the suggestion. “No, no—we’re overdue. It’s a good thing we found you when we did.” Belatedly, he realized that Reyes’s remark had shifted him off his interrogative track. “But that got me to thinking about the old adage: When something seems too good to be true—”

“There was also one about gift horses,” Reyes said. “And an old story about a frozen bird that fell in a warm cow pie. But much as I’d love to sit here and trade proverbs with you, Captain, I really don’t have the time.”

“Permission to speak candidly, sir?”

“Why not? It’s bound to happen eventually.”

“It seems fairly obvious to me that this station was fast-tracked into service.”

“What gave it away? The twenty-four hundred active-duty personnel, or the fact that the spacedock doors open?”

Reining in his simmering temper, Kirk reminded himself that sarcasm was a privilege that belonged only to the highest-ranking officer in any room. “Perhaps a more pertinent question, Commodore, would be, Why was Vanguard fast-tracked?”

Heaving a weary sigh, Reyes leaned forward onto his desk. “The same reason any Starfleet project gets the wind at its back. Because someone on the council decided it was important.” He picked up a remote from his desk, pointed it at a round-cornered viewscreen on the wall, and clicked the power button. The monitor flickered to life, showing a local astropolitical map. “The red chevron indicates our position. Tell me, Captain—what details on this map jump out at you?”

Either it was a trick question, Kirk knew, or he was being goaded into helping the commodore make his argument. “The borders of the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly.”

“So far, so good.” Reyes clicked more details into focus. “I presume the green lines and arrows are familiar to you?”

Setting his poker face to “archly bemused,” Kirk eyed the map again and said, “Colony ship flight plans.”

Click. “And the blue lines and arrows?”

“Trade routes and shipping lanes.” Kirk’s fist began to clench near his belt. I should have brought my phaser.

“And what does all that suggest to you, Captain?”

Have to give him credit, Kirk told himself. Refuse to give him the obvious answer, and I come off as either an idiot or an insubordinate jerk. Parrot the answer he wants, and I indict my entire line of inquiry as pointless…. He’s good.

“A colonization effort,” Kirk said, swallowing his pride.