Текст книги "What Judgments Come"

Pennington felt a shiver, and for the first time realized that the fire had died down to the point that it was nothing more than a bed of smoldering embers. The only other means of determining the length of his visit was the whiskey bottle on the nearby table. It was now less than half full, and Pennington noted the warm, comfortable glow enveloping his body from the homemade alcohol’s effects.

“So,” he said after a moment, “you told him, but not me? I don’t know whether to be surprised or insulted.” As he spoke the words, Pennington regretted them in the face of the long, close friendship Reyes had shared with Ezekiel Fisher.

“Be both,” Reyes replied, his expression growing somber, and Pennington figured the other man’s thoughts were lingering on his old friend. “Save yourself the burden of decisions.”

Holding up his glass, Pennington eyed it with suspicion. “Has it occurred to you that a lot of your encounters with friends involve drinking in one form or another?”

“Call it a coping mechanism,” Reyes said, rising from his chair. “How else are my visitors supposed to put up with me?” He reached for the metal poker and knelt before the fireplace, stirring the embers before adding two new logs to the withered remnants still sitting in the firebox’s soot-covered cradle. “It’s too late to call for a ride back to the mainland. I’ve got a spare bedroom. You can collapse in there if you want.”

Lifting his glass to his lips, Pennington frowned upon noting that the vessel was empty. “Trying to run me off, are you? There’s still a lot you haven’t told me, like just what the hell you do to stay busy around here, of all the damned places. I mean, if nowhere really does have a middle, I’m pretty sure this planet sits squarely in its belly button.”

Reyes, appearing satisfied that the fire soon would return to its former blazing glory, replaced the poker in its stand and returned to his seat, where he set about pouring more whiskey into his glass. “You know, it’s amazing what you can buy when you’ve been saving for your retirement for thirty-odd years. One of the benefits of spending most of my adult life living in Starfleet billeting aboard starships and space stations is that I never had to pay rent. So, I just banked those credits for a rainy day.” He gestured toward one wall and, presumably, the forest beyond the confines of his cabin. “Like I said before, we get a lot of rainy days here.”

“So,” Pennington said, reaching for the whiskey bottle, “you had this place already picked out?”

“Hardly,” Reyes replied, his gaze returning once more to the fire. “Caldos II was number four on a list of five planets where Starfleet was willing to authorize my ‘relocation,’ with the proviso that once I picked a place, that’s where I’d agree to stay until I died, the planet blew up, or Starfleet needed me—whichever came first.”

Trying to imagine how that conversation might have played out, Pennington uttered a bemused grunt. “It must’ve been a hard choice.”

“Not really,” Reyes countered, sipping his drink, “not when you remember that the alternative at the bottom of the list was prison.” He paused, glancing around the cabin. “Anyway, they helped smooth things over so far as my actually buying this place. I own the entire island, and my cover story is that I’m a retired civilian engineer who came looking for a nice, quiet corner of the galaxy to live out my golden years. It’s enough to let me move around, interact with the locals, and so on. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves here, so I don’t get anyone nosing around looking for answers to questions that don’t even come up, anyway.” Pennington smiled as Reyes glared at him from the corner of his eye. “Well, most of the time, that is.”

Pennington shook his head. “So this is it, then? A cabin in the woods on a lake, for the rest of your life?”

“There are worse ways to live,” Reyes replied, shrugging. “Like I said, prison’s still there, if this ends up not working out.”

“And Starfleet’s not worried that anyone else might come looking for you?” Pennington asked. Though he had no problem with the notion that he might be the first person to have successfully tracked down Reyes, it stood to reason that he also would not be the last.

Waving his free hand as though to swat away the suggestion, Reyes frowned. “Even if somebody does find me, there’s nothing for me to tell that you probably haven’t already written about, right?”

Pennington regarded him with an expression of bewilderment. “You mean you haven’t read my reports for FNS? Thanks for the loyalty.”

“Haven’t had much use for news since I got here,” Reyes said. “Besides, as I recall, there was a news blackout around the station for a long while after I left. I’ll admit I was curious at first, and considered staying updated on the entire situation, but after a while, there didn’t seem to be much point in keeping up with all of that, along with the goings-on in the rest of a galaxy I’ll never again be a part of. Better to make a clean break from all of it, and get on with life.” Raising his glass to his lips, he stopped in mid-motion as his eyes met Pennington’s. “But I can see from the look on your face that you’ve got a story you’re dying to tell, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to hear it.”

“You would, would you?” Pennington punctuated the question with a small, humorless smile. The events that had brought to an end the astonishing project known as Operation Vanguard were fresh enough that he imagined he still sensed a pain both physical and emotional. Several seconds passed before he realized he was recalling those events all while unconsciously rubbing his right arm at the point where his prosthetic limb joined his shoulder socket. Startled, he removed his hand and guided it back to resting in his lap, took another sip of his drink, and forced himself to enjoy the soothing warmth of the fire for an entire minute before returning his attention to Reyes. “Well, then. What do you want to know?”

Reyes hesitated, as though trying to decide how much of whatever Pennington might tell him he actually wanted to hear. Then, he answered, “How long did you stay on the station after I left?”

It was now Pennington’s turn to consider his answer. He had quit counting after running out of fingers the number of nondisclosure agreements and letters of secrecy he had signed in the aftermath of Operation Vanguard. He knew that by simply being here, he had probably violated most if not all of those agreements. If he was discovered here, he faced the very real possibility of being sent to the very same penal colony Diego Reyes had managed to avoid.

And yet, he did not care. For the first and perhaps only time in whatever might remain of his life, Tim Pennington would get to tell another living person about his final, fateful days aboard Starbase 47.

“I was there until the end, mate,” he said after a moment. “The bitter, bloody end.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS