Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

Two fearsome shapes, dark and symmetrical.

Like the clawed, half-opened hands of a giant, one reached up from the deck, the other was suspended from the overhead. Each was the other’s mirror image. Rising from the deck along the bulkheads were three arches, spaced at 120-degree intervals. They were broad at their bases and narrowed as they curved upward to meet at the top half of the device.

Xiong stared agape at the machine, which pulsed with ruby hues of power. It was a miniaturized replica of the artifacts found on Erilon and Ravanar. “Commander Terrell?”

After a few seconds, he received a stunned reply. “Yes?”

“Please tell me you’re seeing this.”

“Oh, we’re seeing it, all right,” Terrell said. “We’re just not believing it.”

“Believe it,” Xiong said, swelling with the pride of true accomplishment. He was about to say something more, something congratulatory to his comrades aboard the Sagittarius…then a roar of static disrupted the comm channel.

Xiong scrambled to boost the gain on his transceiver to cut through the noise. Seconds later, one sound from the Sagittarius came through—loud, clear, and unmistakable.

Explosions.

POCKET BOOKS

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

CBS and the CBS EYE logo are

trademarks of CBS Broadcasting Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from CBS Studios Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

ISBN: 1-4165-6075-0

ISBN: 978-1-4165-6075-3

Visit us on the World Wide Web:

http://www.SimonSays.com/st

http://www.startrek.com

For all who have ever done the right thing

and paid for it with blood and tears

Historian’s Note

Reap the Whirlwind takes place in 2266 (Old Calendar), beginning roughly six weeks after the end of Summon the Thunder and ending before the Original Series episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.”

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

–Hosea 8:7

Prologue

The Fire

and The Song

The First World

Come to me….

The Shedai Wanderer extended herself across the void, her thoughts like tendrils: filaments of consciousness in the darkness—seeking, probing, questing, longing for the touch of the Conduit Song, the harmony of the Voice that could not help but answer her call.

So many lie sleeping, she lamented. So many linger in the shadows of oblivion, content to be liberated from mere being. Free of the past, reposed beneath scatterings of dust on worlds long abandoned. Ours was to rule, not fade away.

Gulfs of space-time stretched away from the Wanderer, vast expanses of vacuum desolate and forlorn. The Song was feeble, a weak melody amid the cosmic noise and the rasp of background radiation. Even in the deepest recesses of the universe, there was no silence; peace was a luxury reserved for the grave. She knew that unless the Song could be amplified, the Others would remain lost to the formless night, dissipated essences.

Come closer….

A single Voice could awaken a hundred Conduits and raise a hundred sleepers. To bring the Voices back to the center was the only way. And so the Shedai Wanderer reached out through the First Conduit and enlarged her sphere of thought-space, extended its range, sought out the ancient Voice.

The effort of reaching in all directions was taxing for the Wanderer, but the recent profound incursion of Telinaruul into the realm of the Shedai had convinced her that haste was needed. Already two groups of Telinaruul had shown that they were deliberately seeking out the Conduits of the Shedai and that they intended to plunder them for their secrets. The intruders’ technology, though not equal to that of the Shedai, had proved formidable, and the Telinaruul were coming in numbers. No longer could the Wanderer face this threat alone. Though the planned era of the Second Age was still aeons in the future, she resolved to rouse the Others and summon them home.

Answer me….

Then came the reply: We hear you.

It was not the obedient Voice as it once had been. Gone was its deferential, reverent tone—it had been replaced by suspicion and defiance. Its psychic timbre had changed, had grown deeper, sharper, more complex. Unmistakably, it was the Kollotuul—the Voice of the Shedai. The Wanderer abandoned the exhausting projection of her spherical thought-space and focused herself through the First Conduit toward the Kollotuul. Follow my voice, she commanded.

Day-moments elapsed like shallow breaths. The Kollotuul drew closer, bending the fabric of space-time around themselves much as the Telinaruul had done. A low drone of anxiety preceded them, cold and unyielding in its thinly veiled hostility.

The Wanderer abandoned the burden of her physical prison and roamed into the heavens above the atmosphere, cast her thoughts into space above the First World. Dispersed between its three moons, she perceived the approach of the Kollotuul from multiple vantages. Above the lush blue-green orb of the First World, the Voice’s fragile shell slowed and entered a geo-stationary orbit above the planet’s largest ocean. The vessel’s trilateral symmetry gave it a blocky, wedge-like aspect; it looked solid and formidable. Its energy source, like others the Wanderer had recently encountered, was a matter-antimatter reactor. The ship was also heavily armed—with the same kinds of weapons that had destroyed the world on which she had chosen to sleep for the next two revolutions of the galaxy.

I must be cautious not to provoke them, she knew. They must not be allowed to repeat their sin against our kind. As if assessing the texture of a rough stone, she caressed their minds with her thoughts, taking their measure and counting their number. There were hundreds of them, all bold and bright and tempered in fire, bristling at her touch, more aware of her presence than she had remembered the Kollotuul being capable of. These will not be yoked willingly to the First Conduit, she realized. They will resist and force me to break their will…. So be it.

One singer among them burned brighter than the others; his thoughts colored those around him. He is the leader, the Wanderer concluded, and she took him first. Ringing tones of panic chorused inside the Kollotuul’s ship as a wrinkle of space-time enfolded its commander, moving with invisible power at the whim of the Wanderer. Clamorous alarm grew pitched as she snatched up the crew, taking some singly, others in groups. She shifted them instantaneously to the planet’s surface, releasing them into the core of the First Conduit, whose dark energies were already pulsing to life. A flicker of time, and the Kollotuul were her prisoners, as helpless as their ancestors had been hundreds of millennia earlier, when the Maker had plucked them from a volcanic crevasse on a hothouse world with an atmosphere composed of caustic acids and high-pressure gases.

Even secure in her grip they struggled. She marveled at what they had become, at the fury they mustered. Strength would be important for her Voices, she knew. Subjects who were too weak would prove unable to survive the rigors of the First Conduit. But too much strength was potentially even worse; a Voice blessed with too great a capacity to resist could defy the will of the Shedai and use the Conduit’s power for itself, as the Kollotuul had done long ago, during the Age of Grim Awareness. Complicating the matter was the fact that these were not the Kollotuul of old; they had evolved. A better name for them, the Wanderer speculated, might be Kollotaan: “new Voices.” If the Kollotuul had evolved into Kollotaan, they might no longer be compatible with the Conduits.

There was only one way to know for certain.

The Shedai Wanderer selected the strongest of the Voices, their leader. Wrapping him in coils of fire from within the First Conduit’s core, she separated him from the others and bound him to a node, one that would speak to the farthest reaches of the Shedai’s possessions. She focused herself through thought-space and projected the Song toward him with a simple command: Amplify.

He resisted, responding in measures equal to her effort. The harder she tried to force him to be her clarion calling out in her voice to distant stars, the more violently he defied her. The fires of the Conduit blazed hotter and darker, enveloping the Kollotaan leader, who thrashed in its grip and emitted piercing, metallic screeches of agony.

Speak with my voice, the Wanderer demanded.

Twisting and shrieking inside the lightless inferno of the First Conduit’s strongest node, the leader did not surrender to the Wanderer’s will. Whether he was merely unwilling or in fact unable to yield himself was unclear. Then the immensely powerful forces inside the Conduit reduced him to dust and vapor, and the question of whether his substance or his spirit had been the stronger was rendered immaterial.

Finding the right Voices for the Conduit would take time, the Wanderer now understood. Striking the necessary balance between strength and malleability would be a matter of simple trial and error.

She looked to the gathered mass of Kollotaan, selected the next-strongest specimen she could identify, and yoked him to the same node inside the First Conduit.

From the first lick of dark fire, the Voice filled the Conduit with an eerie, high-pitched wail of terrified noise. A jolt of agony brought it under control.

Speak with my voice, the Wanderer commanded. Or die.

Part One

The Brink of

Shadow

1

Dr. Ezekiel Fisher reclined in the chair at the desk inside his quarters aboard Starbase 47. It was late for him to be awake, a few hours into the third duty shift. His coffee had become tepid during the hour he had spent composing his latest letter to his daughter, Jane, the youngest of his three children. The missive was almost finished, and he paused to read it over.

“Dear Jane,” it began, prosaically enough. “I hope this letter finds you well, and that Neil and your boys are on the mend from that bout of Argelian flu you told me about. I’ve been keeping my vaccinations up to date, so here’s hoping I don’t meet any viruses more clever than myself.

“Life and work here on Vanguard remain busy; I know it must seem funny to hear me say that, since there’s rarely any mention of us in the news—nothing, in fact, since the loss of the Bombay. As much as I wish I could tell you everything that I’ve seen out here, it’d be a waste of effort: all our outgoing mail is censored…. Such measures must seem draconian on a world like Mars, but the truth is that it’s for the best. At least, I hope it is.

“What can I tell you? For starters, my retirement plan has been nixed. Jabilo M’Benga, my handpicked replacement, put in for starship duty. His reasons make sense, I suppose. As it turns out, I’ve had a couple of months to get used to the idea, which is pretty much what I’d expected. We’re pretty far from home, and even in the core systems it would take time to get this kind of thing approved. First, he has to tell Starfleet he wants a transfer. Then Starfleet has to see what billets it has open and whether anybody else put in for them first. Then some joker with a lot of braid on his cuff has to give his okay and cut new orders, which might take a few days to reach us.”

Fisher picked up the data slate on which he had composed the letter. He carried the slate in one hand and continued to read while he took his coffee into his kitchenette to dispose of it. “And just to convince you that I’ve started losing my marbles,” the letter continued, “I’m actually reconsidering retirement altogether. I admit, I’d have thought that after more than fifty years in a Starfleet uniform, I’d have had my fill by now. Before I came out here with Diego last year, I was starting to think I’d seen everything, that the galaxy was out of surprises. But, as you never tire of reminding me, I was wrong.”

He dumped his leftover coffee into the sink and ran the water for a moment, then resumed reading as he ambled to his sofa. “It’s hard to say if I’ll ever be allowed to write or talk about the things I’ve seen here. My guess is, probably not. It’s not like I have a shortage of stories at this point, but this assignment would make for some you’d never forget. That’s not why I’m thinking of staying on, though. Truth is, I’m beginning to see that this is one of the most important assignments I’ve ever been given. We’re on to something out here, something big. Even if M’Benga wasn’t planning on warping away to the great unknown, I’d probably want to stay on to see this through. At this point, any lingering regrets I have over his transfer are grounded in simply being sorry to lose such a fine physician from my staff and feeling pity for him—because he’ll probably never know what he’s missed.”

A yawn stretched Fisher’s brown, weathered face. He gently rubbed the fatigue from his eyes and stared back down at the data slate. The letter wasn’t long; it had taken an hour to write, because every time he’d thought of something to say, he’d realized that it would never make it past the Starfleet censors. He couldn’t tell Jane about his role in the analysis of an alien corpse with meta-genome-laced liquid crystal for blood or the bizarre effects that had been inflicted upon a Starfleet officer attacked by the creature. All the tense rumors of a brewing political eruption among the Klingons, the Tholians, and the Federation would be excised as a matter of diplomatic policy, no doubt on Jetanien’s orders. Scratching absentmindedly at the gray tuft of beard on his chin, he pondered how to end the letter. After staring at an empty line along the bottom of the slate for a few minutes, he realized that an obvious and simple valediction would be just fine, so long as it was sincere.

“That’s all for now. Tell Neil and the boys I miss you all, and I hope to visit you again on Mars very soon. Take care, and write back when time allows and the mood strikes. Love, Dad.”

He tapped a few keys on the data slate and transmitted the letter into the station’s queue for outgoing comm traffic. In a few hours it would likely meet with the approval of the censors and be on its way to Mars, one of thousands of messages bundled in a massive burst of unclassified data traffic leaving Vanguard. In a matter of hours, Jane would get the message, maybe at home or in her office between patients. Unlike his sons, Ely and Noah, Jane had followed him into medicine, though she had pointedly declined a career in Starfleet in order to open her own private practice in the rapidly growing Martian city of Cydonia. It was there she had met her husband, Neil, and where they were raising their sons, James and Seth.

As always, thinking of his children and grandchildren made him smile. That’s a good way to end the day, he decided. He got up from the couch and shambled stiffly off to bed. Tomorrow would be busy; he needed all the rest he could get.

The Starship Sagittarius was coming home.

Anna Sandesjo lay in her bed. A tangle of scarlet sheets covered her lap. Her hands were folded on the pillow behind her head, beneath her splayed mane of cinnamon-hued hair. The scratches on her back were deep and fresh.

It was still early, before 0600 station time. At the foot of the bed, Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn was getting dressed. The lithe Vulcan woman donned her red minidress in movements slow and graceful, a stark contrast to the frenzy of attention she’d shown Sandesjo the evening before. T’Prynn’s every motion captivated Sandesjo’s attention.

“Did you sleep well, my love?” Sandesjo asked, even knowing that T’Prynn—who had tossed and turned for the past several hours in the throes of night terrors—would lie to her.

Pulling back her long sable hair and tying it into a ponytail, T’Prynn replied flatly, “My rest was adequate.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and began putting on her boots.

Sandesjo sat up and let the sheets bundle in her lap. Watching T’Prynn prepare to leave was always difficult for her; it was a reminder of loneliness. “Do you have to go so soon?”

With one boot on, T’Prynn reached for the other as she replied over her shoulder, “Yes.”

“Because of the Sagittarius.”

“Yes,” T’Prynn said.

News of the scout vessel’s return to Starbase 47 had been buzzing for a couple of weeks. The ship’s recall from a remote area of the Taurus Reach had been ordered not long after the destruction of Palgrenax. Though ship movements continued to be classified for members of the general public and personnel with no need to know, Sandesjo’s assignment as a senior diplomatic attaché to Vanguard’s ranking diplomat, Ambassador Jetanien, afforded her access to a variety of otherwise off-limits items of interest.

Standing up, T’Prynn smoothed the front of her minidress and turned to face Sandesjo, all dignity and poise: cold, composed, and aloof. At times like this, Sandesjo felt less like the Vulcan woman’s lover and more like a stranger. “Thank you for allowing me to spend the night,” T’Prynn said.

“Perhaps you’d let me spend a night in your quarters sometime,” Sandesjo said, her tone blatantly suggestive. “Unless you’re ashamed to be seen with me.”

Subtly lifting her left eyebrow, T’Prynn said, “Shame is not a factor. The heat and gravity in my quarters are configured for Vulcan comfort. I think you would find them…unpleasant.”

“Don’t be fooled, my love,” Sandesjo said with a flirtatious leer. “Just because I look human doesn’t mean I’m as fragile as one. Qo’noS has its share of heat.”

T’Prynn stepped over to the dresser and collected her communicator, which she tucked onto her belt. “I’m sure your Klingon physiology would bear the temperatures admirably,” she said. “The aridity, however, might prove rather uncomfortable.”

“I think I can handle it,” Sandesjo said. To her dismay, rather than continue their repartee, T’Prynn started to move toward the door. “Don’t go,” Sandesjo blurted out. As soon as she said it, she regretted having done so; it was a grossly unprofessional expression of desire and weakness.

Slowly, T’Prynn turned and regarded Sandesjo with a stare of clinical detachment. “Why do you wish me to remain?”

“I always want you to stay,” Sandesjo said. “You never do.”

Raising her steeply arched eyebrows, T’Prynn replied, “An extremely illogical statement, Miss Sandesjo. You—”

“Anna,” she interrupted. “Why don’t you ever call me Anna? I think we deserve to be on a first-name basis, don’t you?”

In a surprisingly sharp tone, T’Prynn shot back, “If we do, then perhaps you would prefer I called you by your real name, Lurqal.”

Hearing T’Prynn speak her Klingon name left Sandesjo momentarily shocked silent. Though Sandesjo’s true identity had been known to T’Prynn for nearly a year, until now the Vulcan had never uttered it aloud. Suppressed by years of living under her cover identity, that name sounded foreign to Sandesjo. She had submerged so deeply into her cover that she had come to think of herself as Anna Sandesjo rather than as Lurqal.

Finally recovering her voice, she said, “If, when we are…alone together, you wish to call me Lurqal, I would not object.”

After considering that for a moment, T’Prynn said, “Is our relationship the cause of your current distress?”

“Yes, it is,” Sandesjo said, relieved to be able to speak plainly and without the qualifying preambles of diplomatic discourse. “Though I’d really like to know what our relationship is, exactly.”

Cocking her head slightly, T’Prynn asked, “What aspect of its nature eludes you?”

“I don’t know,” Sandesjo said. “All of it? You’ve been sharing my bed for months, but I still don’t know what to call you. My girlfriend? My lover? What am I to you? Just another intelligence asset? Something else? Or am I just your whore?”

The conversation seemed to make T’Prynn uncomfortable. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and lowered her head. “You are not my ‘whore,’” she said, then looked up. “But defining our relationship is complicated. There are…professional issues to consider.”

“Such a nice way of putting it,” Sandesjo said bitterly. “Did you start sleeping with me to turn me into a double agent? Or was that just an added perk?”

Unfazed, T’Prynn answered, “Did you become a double agent out of principle or because I had exposed you as a spy? Were you motivated by love, lust, or self-preservation? I am not the only one whose motives in this matter are suspect.”

Stung, Sandesjo looked away for a moment. Turning back to face T’Prynn, she said, “I just want to know how you feel about me.” As T’Prynn began to answer, Sandesjo recognized the tell-tale signs of a verbal evasion taking shape. She threw aside the sheets, got out of bed, and moved quickly toward the Vulcan woman. “And don’t you dare tell me you don’t have emotions, or that they don’t matter to you.” Standing naked in front of T’Prynn, Sandesjo leaned close to her and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “I see the hunger in your eyes when you come to me at night. I feel the fire in your kisses, the wild part of you that takes me by force…dominates me…possesses me. You burn for me just as I burn for you.”

With a haughty and dismissive mien, T’Prynn said, “If you are so attuned to my inner life, why ask for my declaration?”

Sandesjo turned her head slightly, so that her lips barely brushed T’Prynn’s as she said, “Because I love you.”

She leaned forward to kiss T’Prynn, who pulled back and then stepped away, haltingly at first, then quickly, until she was out of the bedroom, out of the apartment suite, and gone beyond Sandesjo’s reach.

Sandesjo’s reflection gazed back at her from the mirror. She looked pale, timid, defenseless—human. Rage, sorrow, and humiliation swelled inside her. Of all the traits that Klingons despised, none was so reviled as weakness. In a single rash statement, she’d rendered her deepest feelings as bare as her body; it was the most vulnerable she had ever felt and the closest she had ever really come to knowing the taste of fear.

Turning away from herself, she lamented ever having met T’Prynn—and surrendering to love’s bitter sting.

The passageway that circled Vanguard’s hub and looked out on its enclosed docking bay bustled with activity. Two huge Federation colony transports, the Terra Courser and the Centauri Star, had made port in bays one and two only a few hours before the starbase’s newest arrival, the Starship Sagittarius, had docked in bay four. Weaving adroitly and with long strides through the crowd of teeming two-way pedestrian traffic, Commodore Diego Reyes stole a glance out an observation window into the main docking bay.

Attending the Sagittarius was a swarm of small maintenance craft and several personnel in light-duty pressure suits, all of them scrambling into action, making minor repairs and erecting a cocoon of scaffolding and netting around the ship, in preparation for more extensive work. Alongside such massive vessels as the two transports, or its own larger cousins, such as the Constitution-class U.S.S. Endeavour or the refit Daedalus-class U.S.S. Lovell, the Archer-class scout ship looked almost like a toy. Another thing that made it stand out was how new it looked; its hull was pristine, its Zodiac-inspired ship’s insignia still gleaming, every letter and digit in its registry as crisp as they’d been the day it had left space-dock. Its docking hatch, located at the outermost curve of its port primary hull, was attached to an extended gangway that led to a series of narrow passages. Those fed onto the main thoroughfare, where Reyes now moved at a quickstep.

Reyes arrived at the entrance to the bay four gangway just as a chief petty officer unlocked and opened the pressure hatch. As the portal slid aside, he saw the senior members of the Sagittarius’s crew on the other side, moving just as quickly as he had been. They all wore nondescript, olive-hued utility jumpsuits devoid of rank insignia.

In the lead was Captain Adelard Nassir, a Deltan man in his mid-fifties. Slight of build and bald of pate, Nassir projected calm and dignity in his every action, no matter how great or small. Beside him was his first officer, a taller and much brawnier brown-skinned human named Clark Terrell. The man was built like a boxer but talked like a scholar.

Close behind the two men were two women. Trailing the captain was a statuesque blonde, who Reyes remembered was the ship’s chief medical officer, Dr. Lisa Babitz. He had met her only once, months ago, but she had made a lasting impression by taking the opportunity to disinfect the desk in his office.

Walking behind Terrell was a petite young redhead. Her name was Vanessa Theriault; she was the ship’s science officer. As with Babitz, Reyes had met her only once, several months ago, after the ship had first been assigned to Starbase 47 as its outrider scout. Something that Theriault had in common with Babitz was a gift for making a strong first impression: at the end of her first mission briefing, she had presented Reyes with a gift—a knitted scarf that she had made herself, in her “spare time.” He had yet to wear it and suspected he never would, but he still liked it.

Bringing up the back of the small formation was a lissome and pale-complexioned human woman with raven hair and a male Saurian who moved with fluid grace on bare webbed feet. These two Reyes had never met, but he recognized them from a past review of their service records. The woman was the ship’s second officer, Lieutenant Commander Bridget McLellan, and the Saurian was the ship’s newest field scout, a senior chief petty officer named Razka.

Theriault, Nassir, and Terrell were the only members of the ship’s complement who were privy to the real objectives of Operation Vanguard. But because of the new orders Reyes had come to deliver, that was about to change. Soon the entire crew of the Sagittarius, all fourteen of them, would need to be briefed. Knowing this bunch, he speculated, they’ll be too excited to know they ought to be scared out of their minds.

Captain Nassir nodded to Reyes as he crossed the last few meters of the gangway to join him. “Commodore,” he said with a friendly smile. “Sorry we kept you waiting.”

“Actually,” Reyes said, “I just got here myself.”

As he shook Reyes’s hand, Nassir replied, “I was talking about the six weeks it took us to get back from Typerias.”

“Oh, that,” Reyes said, returning Nassir’s grin. “If you ask me, I’d say you made pretty good time.” Looking around, Reyes noticed that the other officers from the Sagittarius were beginning to crowd around himself and Nassir. To the group he said, “Welcome back, everyone. I’ve opened a tab for all of you up at Manón’s. Head up and get something to eat. Your captain and I will be there shortly.” To their credit, Reyes thought, they took his suggestion in stride and moved off toward a nearby bank of turbolifts. Reyes made a sideways nod of his head to Nassir. “Walk with me, Captain.”

Nassir followed Reyes as he started a slow circuit of the deck. The lanky commodore walked more slowly than he normally did to make it easier for the shorter captain to keep pace with him.

In a confidential tone, Nassir said, “I presume you didn’t bring us back from a deep-space recon because you missed us.”

“Actually, I did miss you,” Reyes joked. “But you’re right, that’s not the reason. The Klingons have been listening in on our comm traffic, so I had to play my cards close on this one.” He let a group of enlisted men and women pass by in the opposite direction before he continued. “Did you read Xiong’s report about Jinoteur?”

Concentration creased Nassir’s brow for a moment. “The star system that was generating a subspace signal,” he said, swiftly recalling details. “It made your station go haywire, yes?”

“Crazy as a junkyard dog,” Reyes said. “We looked at Jinoteur to see if we could find the cause, but we didn’t see anything…until six weeks ago.”

A smirk tugged at the corner of Nassir’s thin mouth. “And now you want someone to take a closer look.”

“Much closer,” Reyes confirmed.

Nassir half-chuckled. “I have to say, sir, I’m flattered and a bit surprised you’d assign this to my crew. Typically, a plum like this would go to a big ship like the Endeavour—”

“Busy showing the flag out by Forcas,” Reyes cut in.

The captain continued, “Of course, knowing the role the Lovell and her crew played in fixing your Jinoteur problem—”

“They’re on extended colony support to Gamma Tauri IV.”

Humility replaced pride in Nassir’s expression. “I see,” he said. “We’re going because we’re available.”

“I’m just yanking your chain, Captain. I wouldn’t have pulled you back across two sectors unless I had a damn good reason,” Reyes said. “Truth is, the Endeavour and the Lovell are the wrong ships for this mission. The first one draws too much attention, and the other one, I swear to God, seems to invent disasters. I need you, your crew, and your ship to do what you do best: explore the unknown.”

“Without getting noticed,” Nassir added. “Or turning it into a problem.”

Reyes glanced in the captain’s direction. “Precisely.”

Ahead of them, the observation lounge for bay one was coming into view around the curving bend of the corridor. Nassir asked, “Are we still handling this as need-to-know?”

“Not anymore,” Reyes said. “Your whole crew has to be briefed before you ship out. You’re also getting a sensor-grid upgrade and some new gear for your scouts.”