Текст книги "Open Secrets "

Автор книги: Dayton Ward

Соавторы: Kevin Dilmore
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

3

Commander Jon Cooper sat behind the desk that until three weeks ago had belonged to Commodore Diego Reyes, poring through the twenty-sixth of forty or so personnel requests from different members of the station’s crew—transfer applications, recommendations for promotion or personal commendations, requests for extended leave, and other administrative drivel. These had followed status reports, one submitted by each of the station’s fifteen department heads, which, in turn, had followed five intelligence briefing memos.

All of that, and he had been in his office less than an hour. It was not shaping up to be a good day.

Paperwork never had been Cooper’s strong suit, and the administrative duties that came with the role of Starbase 47’s executive officer gave him more in this arena than could be accomplished by two people working full-time. In the weeks that had passed since he had assumed temporary command of the station, the correspondence demanding his attention seemed to be multiplying at an exponential rate. Though he knew that he would be replaced just as soon as Starfleet could assign a flag officer to the station and transport that person out here, Cooper wondered if he would survive that long. It was as though the mass of documents, reports, memos, and position papers he faced each morning was a living thing, threatening to expand until it consumed him, the office, and possibly even the station itself.

How the hell did the commodore do this every day and not blow himself out an airlock?

It had been difficult to take on the duties of which Reyes had been relieved, especially given the circumstances under which that action had occurred. Despite the amount of time that had passed, Cooper knew that the station’s crew still functioned beneath a cloud of shock and uncertainty. The vast majority of people assigned to Starbase 47 had been blissfully unaware of the true purpose for its presence in the Taurus Reach. Naturally, many of them now wondered if they had been placed on the forward edge of a new battleground, soon to fight a war for which they were woefully unprepared, against an enemy they did not understand and who by all accounts outclassed them on every level.

As for Diego Reyes, the commodore remained in confinement since his arrest. Though visitors were permitted, Reyes had made it clear that he wished no contact from any member of the station’s crew, particularly the senior staff. At first, Cooper had thought this was simply a matter of ego or embarrassment, but it was Ambassador Jetanien who told him that the commodore was actually looking out for his crew. Anything they might discuss would be subject to deposition when the court-martial began, and Reyes had taken great pains to ensure that only those persons with absolute need-to-know about Starbase 47’s true mission were so informed.

Including T’Prynn, of course.

Many of the actions taken by the station’s intelligence officer remained cloaked in mystery. Investigators from Starfleet and even Starbase 47’s lead officer from the Judge Advocate General Corps, Captain Rana Desai, had already conducted thorough searches of the Vulcan’s quarters and office, to no avail. Her computer files were sterile, offering no clue to the activities she had been conducting in secret, allegedly in defense of Starfleet and Federation security interests. Such information had to be stored somewhere, or perhaps Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn simply carried it around in her mind, which at this moment was being held captive by the coma into which she had fallen three weeks ago. Frequent updates from the station’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ezekiel Fisher, and the physician assigned to oversee T’Prynn’s care, Dr. Jabilo M’Benga, had offered no change in the commander’s condition.

The second she wakes up, she’ll be held in irons,Cooper mused. Maybe they should just move her bed to the brig and be done with it.

The intercom positioned at the corner of the desk chirped for attention, and he heard the voice of his assistant, Ensign Toby Greenfield. “Commander, Ambassador Jetanien is here to see you, sir.”

Setting aside the data slate containing the latest mind-numbing report, Cooper sat up in his chair and stretched the muscles in his back. The fact that he was already performing such a therapeutic action at this early hour was yet another indicator of how he expected the rest of his day to unfold.

As if you don’t already have enough clues.

“Send him in, Ensign,” Cooper said, rising from his chair as the door slid aside to admit the towering figure of Ambassador Jetanien, dressed as always in the flowing, ornately designed robes of his office.

“I’d say good morning, Ambassador,” Cooper said by way of greeting, “but I think we can agree it’s not good for a lot of people.”

“Commander,” Jetanien replied, “your gift for understatement rivals that of Commodore Reyes. I take it you’ve read the security briefing with respect to the incident on Lerais II?”

Cooper nodded. “First thing this morning.” The report had provided only the sterile, matter-of-fact accounting of the Klingon attack on the colony, with an additional report appended by the station’s colonial liaison, Aole Miller, detailing the impacts of the incident from the perspective of the settlers, who even now were in the process of abandoning the colony they had worked so hard to establish. “I’m still waiting for updated information from Starfleet Intelligence. Do you have any idea what happened? Are the Klingons’ claims legitimate? Did they plant their flag on that planet first?”

“We received no such notification,” the ambassador replied, “though the Klingon Diplomatic Corps is saying it sent official notice to its counterparts on our side months ago.” Jetanien then emitted something that sounded to Cooper’s ear like a dog sneezing. “Surely the colonists would have said something if they’d detected any signs of Klingon occupation. And why would the Klingons wait until the colony was almost up and running before revealing their presence?”

“Maybe they didn’t want anyone to know they were there,” Cooper said. “You think the Klingons have found Shedai technology there?”

“It’s certainly a possibility,” Jetanien said. “The planet was not found to contain traces of the Taurus Meta-Genome; that doesn't rule out Shedai influence. Also, it offers little in the way of strategic value, as far as Federation or Klingon security interests are concerned. Its natural resources are plentiful, though nothing remarkable such as dilithium. Still, it harbors great agricultural potential, and the colony wanting to settle there was a good fit.”

At first, the practice of allowing legitimate colonization efforts to act as unwitting camouflage for Starfleet’s clandestine research into the origins of the Taurus Meta-Genome had seemed innocuous. However, when it became obvious that the Tholians were greatly opposed to Federation expansion into the region, which was followed by Klingon spies obtaining information revealing Starfleet’s intentions in the Taurus Reach, Cooper had begun to wonder when or if such a strategy might backfire. That doubt had been confirmed with horrific force at Gamma Tauri IV. When the truth of the cover-up for Starfleet operations was revealed by Pennington, he and Aole Miller had been besieged by communiqués from colony administrators across the Taurus Reach, demanding to know if their planet was one that might be of interest for Klingon, Tholian, or even Shedai attention. Several colonies founded on worlds known to possess Shedai artifacts were already in the process of relocating or being abandoned altogether as the settlers returned to the relative safety of Federation space.

Lerais II, officially, had not been listed as one such planet.

“I’m betting we were wrong about the Shedai not having a presence there,” Cooper said, sighing as he shook his head. “If we’d known, the colony might have opted to leave before something like this happened.”

“Colonial Liaison Miller has already had extended discussions with his counterparts on Earth,” Jetanien said. “They’re backpedaling with respect to the Klingons’ asserted rights to the planet. According to them, it’s still in dispute, but early indications are that there was to be no contesting the claim.”

“The Klingons didn’t have to blow an unarmed freighter out of the sky to make their stand,” Cooper said, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose. “What a waste.” Coffee, he decided, was the prescription best suited to helping him at the moment. He rose from his chair and moved toward the food slot built into the office’s rear bulkhead.

“It’s worth pointing out that this colony had all but renounced Federation citizenship,” Jetanien said after a moment. “Though they did so with far more aplomb and civility than the settlement on Gamma Tauri IV, the result was the same: they unfortunately removed themselves from the umbrella of Starfleet protection.”

Waiting for the food slot to dispense his coffee, Cooper snorted. “You think that’s what Starfleet should tell the families of the people on that freighter?” The slot’s door slid up, revealing a steaming mug, and he reached for it. “Somehow, I’m thinking that won’t go over so well.” After taking a sip of the coffee and deciding it would do, he asked, “So, UFP Colony Administration’s washing their hands of this one?”

“It would make sense,” Jetanien said. “Given the current political climate between the Federation and the Klingons, particularly over the situation here in the Taurus Reach, Starfleet’s thinking may be that contesting this move by the Klingons now is buying us more trouble than we can handle at the moment.”

“I have to say, Ambassador,” Cooper countered, “that I’m getting pretty tired of hearing that argument. Appeasing and not wanting to make waves—for the Klingons or the Tholians or whomever else we might piss off in the coming days—is not really the job I signed up for.” He returned to his chair, dropped into it, and took a long drink of his coffee, enjoying the taste of the thick, hot liquid as it coursed down his throat. He held the mug under his nose, allowing the brew’s enticing aroma to play at his nostrils. For just this moment, he could almost forget the mounting pressures of the day. Almost.

“It is, however, the job I’ve been given, Commander,” Jetanien said. “Federation and Klingon diplomatic attachés have been meeting for several weeks, with one of the key issues being territorial expansion. The Taurus Reach has factored prominently in those discussions, and there’s been little progress made. Suffice it to say that if—or when—relations with the Klingons deteriorate to the point of war, the Taurus Reach likely will be one of the main fronts in such a conflict.”

Cooper nodded. He already knew much of this, of course, given the daily intelligence briefings he received. There were other issues in play with regard to the tenuous tug-of-war that could laughingly be called the state of political relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, but the Taurus Reach was fuel thrown on a smoldering fire.

“If this keeps up,” he said, “I’ll have to recommend to all of the colony administrators that they evacuate. Some are considering it, and others have already given orders to start packing. There are several holdouts, though. Some have renounced Federation citizenship. Others are just being stubborn.” He shook his head. “And we both know that being stubborn will get you dead.” Cooper contemplated the effects of a mass exodus of Federation colonists from the Taurus Reach. The Klingons likely would consider that open season on the planets left behind, particularly those chosen for their strategic value or the resources they offered.

“There is one other thing,” Jetanien said, shifting his position and stepping closer to the desk, the string of high-pitched twittering he verbalized indicating to Cooper the Chel’s discomfort with what he was about to say. “I have spoken with my Klingon counterpart, Lugok, via back channels. The High Council will soon be demanding the extradition of Commodore Reyes. They want him tried in their courts for what happened at Gamma Tauri IV and Jinoteur and a few other comparatively minor offenses.”

Cooper felt a knot tighten in his gut. The Klingon legal system, to say nothing of their notions of justice, was not something he wanted to experience firsthand. That the Klingons were making this kind of noise about Reyes spoke volumes about how angered they were at the commodore and the actions he had taken.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope for them to accept that he’s standing court-martial and is likely to spend a significant portion of the rest of his life in prison?”

After spewing another string of derisive clicks and snorts, Jetanien replied, “I suggest you refamiliarize yourself with the concept of Klingon honor, Mr. Cooper. In my experience, it is a fluid, ever-evolving notion, though some things remain absolute. The Klingons feel they have been wronged in battle, and in their view, there are precious few avenues available for recompense.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying they want their pound of flesh,” Cooper added, “and they’ll be particular in how they go about getting it.”

Jetanien nodded. “Well put, Commander.”

Listening to the ambassador’s counsel and trying to order it within the teeming mass of information clogging his mind with respect to the current problems he faced, Cooper took a moment from all of that and reminded himself of the location of the nearest airlock.

4

“I have to say, I really love what you’ve done with the place,” said Ezekiel Fisher, making a show of looking about the station’s brig in dramatic fashion. The walls, deck, and ceiling all were painted in the same drab, utilitarian, gray color scheme dominating the bulkheads in nearly all of Starbase 47’s duty areas. Fisher had always hated gray. Fifty years spent serving aboard various Starfleet vessels and space stations had done little to alleviate that opinion.

Sitting atop the cot that was his cell’s dominant piece of furniture and with his back against the far wall, Commodore Diego Reyes regarded Fisher with the now-familiar sour scowl that seemed to have become his default expression. “That one was old when Napoleon was in prison,” he said, making no move to rise from the cot. “If you’re going to keep coming down here to visit me, is it too much to ask that you bring fresh jokes?” Filtered through the speaker grille set into the wall to Fisher’s right, the commodore’s voice was imbued with a hollow, artificial quality enhanced by the omnipresent hum of the force field separating the two men.

“Napoleon?” Fisher asked, allowing a small grin to tug at the corners of his mouth. “You know, that comparison almost works.” He shrugged. “Well, other than you being much too tall.” Eyeing the dull orange jumpsuit Reyes had been given to wear during his confinement, he added, “And he was a snappier dresser.”

Reyes gestured toward the hatch leading from the holding area. “Do me a favor. Knock on that door, tell Lieutenant Beyer to come in here, and have her shoot me with her phaser set to maximum.”

“She’s getting some lunch,” Fisher replied. “Said to hold off on that sort of thing until she gets back.”

Shifting his weight on the cot as though seeking a more comfortable position, Reyes grunted. “Well, I suppose you can stay, then.”

“I’m honored.” Fisher moved to the single chair that was the only piece of furniture on his side of the force field and lowered his lanky frame into it.

“Did you come all the way down here to insult my wardrobe?” Reyes asked.

Fisher shook his head as he made himself comfortable. “Well, that’s one reason. Another is that I thought you might like to know that the Klingons have demanded your extradition.” That news had spread with unbridled haste, adding to the tense atmosphere already permeating the station.

“Well,” Reyes said, “it’s certainly nice to be loved.” He released a tired sigh. “Still, Starfleet might be doing themselves a favor by handing me over to the Klingons. You can bet they’ll execute me when their trial’s over, and they won’t waste a lot of time worrying about classified information or any of that crap. Everybody wins.”

“That would make a twisted sort of sense, I suppose,” Fisher replied. “Can’t have that. It’s not every day they get to keel-haul a commodore. You have to be paraded around in front of God and everybody before they get around to making an example of you, which, at the rate they’re going, should be sometime next century.”

Reyes expelled a forced, humorless chuckle. After a moment, he asked, “How’s T’Prynn?”

“Same as before,” Fisher replied. “M’Benga’s been at it night and day for the past three weeks, trying to get some answers. He thinks somebody on Vulcan must have some idea about her condition or whatever might have brought it about, but so far, nobody’s talking.”

“Another life I might have saved,” Reyes said, “if I’d just opened my mouth.”

Fisher considered several responses but chose instead to say nothing. While it was true that Reyes holding up the release of T’Prynn’s classified medical records had hampered M’Benga and Fisher’s efforts to diagnose the Vulcan officer’s condition, Fisher himself was not entirely convinced that having such information would have mattered. Whatever illness gripped T’Prynn, the doctor suspected it had a great deal less to do with physical maladies than with the largely unexplored regions of the Vulcan mind.

Now you’re starting to sound like M’Benga.

When Reyes said nothing else after several seconds, Fisher decided to try changing the subject. “So, have many visitors?”

“No,” Reyes replied, his gaze shifting so that he stared at the floor between them. In the weeks that had passed since his arrest and confinement to the station’s brig, the commodore had allowed exactly one person other than his lawyer to visit him: Fisher. Members of the senior staff had made several attempts, all of which were rebuffed. Commander Cooper, Reyes’s executive officer and the unfortunate soul currently tasked with running the station until a formal replacement was assigned, had been ordered by Starfleet Command not to communicate with the commodore. In spite of that directive, he had relayed messages through the brig’s security staff, limiting his missives to queries about procedures and protocols. Reyes had allowed that much but had otherwise rejected almost all outside contact.

The silence hanging in the air between the two men was beginning to feel awkward, Fisher decided. “Has Rana been to see you? Even in an official capacity?”

Reyes shook his head. “Neither one of us thought it would be a good idea. She’s the ranking JAG officer aboard the station, and even if she doesn’t play a role in my court-martial, she’ll at least be called to testify. It’ll be hard enough on her without any perceptions that she’s going easy on me.”

Nodding in silent agreement, Fisher folded his arms across his chest as he leaned back in his chair. Captain Rana Desai, Starbase 47’s senior representative from Starfleet’s JAG Corps, had faced the unenviable task of arresting Reyes and filing the charges Starfleet had leveled against him. Disobedience of lawful orders, releasing classified information to unauthorized personnel, and conspiracy were the most serious offenses, any one of which would be sufficient to end Reyes’s career. The most serious allegations surrounding his allowing journalist Tim Pennington to publish a scathing exposé about what had happened to the Jinoteur system as well as on Gamma Tauri IV—thereby presenting restricted information to the public—likely would send the commodore to prison, possibly for the rest of his life.

That Desai and Reyes also had been lovers for months before these unfortunate events—a fact that remained unknown for now to all but a precious few souls aboard the station—only served to complicate matters. While their relationship might be a secret now, Fisher held no illusions of that continuing once whatever legal proceedings that awaited Diego Reyes began in earnest.

So,Fisher mused, I suppose I should cut the man some slack if he feels a bit grumpy.

“How’s your lawyer treating you?” he asked. “He seems like a decent enough fellow.”

“Spires?” Reyes nodded. “He’s a good man, very committed to the cause and so on and so forth. It’s a shame he’s got no chance of winning. Once we get past all of the legal smoke and mirrors, the charges are pretty clear-cut.”

Reaching up to stroke his short, trimmed beard, Fisher said after a moment, “Well, maybe not to some people. Even Jetanien, as by-the-book as he can be, isn’t ready to give up. I can’t believe he hasn’t punched his way through the wall to see you by now, Starfleet order or no.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Reyes replied. Shrugging, he added, “Well, yeah, he would, if it were anyone else but Rana who’d told him not to. They both know what’s coming, and Jetanien’s no good to anyone sitting in here next to me.”

Fisher knew that the Chelon ambassador was one of the few individuals who had known from the very beginning the nature of Vanguard’s true purpose: understanding the ancient civilization and technology of the Shedai. Even as Starfleet’s brightest young scientific and engineering minds worked toward that goal, Jetanien and his legal cadre from the Starfleet Diplomatic Corps labored to preserve the fragile political ties that currently existed between the Federation and the Tholian Assembly, as well as the Klingon Empire. The Taurus Reach was of interest to all three parties. While the Tholians harbored great apprehension about the region and its former rulers, the Klingons were simply intrigued by whatever had attracted the Federation’s attention.

Now that pretty much anyone in the galaxy capable of reading Federation Standard was aware of at least some aspects of what was going on out here, Fisher knew that the problems facing Vanguard’s crew would only get more complicated.

“You’d think they could at least let you out of that box,” he said, indicating Reyes’s cell with a wave of his hand.

Reyes shrugged. “Be it ever so humble.”

“You’re still a flag officer,” Fisher countered, his irritation beginning to mount, “and we’re on a damned space station, for crying out loud. Confining you to quarters should be good enough. Where the hell else are you going to go?”

Pushing away from the wall, Reyes moved to the edge of the cot so that his boots rested on the floor. “Rana said she put in that request about five seconds after I was locked up, but she never got a response from Starfleet. I’m guessing no one back there wants anything to do with me these days, so here I sit.”

Fisher frowned as he surveyed the commodore’s living arrangements. Other than the cot on which Reyes sat, there was also a straight-backed chair, bolted to the deck before a narrow shelf that might charitably be called a desk. A small viewing screen was mounted to the bulkhead above the desk, equipped with a rudimentary interface that Fisher knew would allow the cell occupant to access a very limited section of the station’s library computer banks and permit communications—all overseen by security personnel. The cell’s only other noteworthy feature was the toilet, separated from the rest of the compartment by a waist-high privacy partition.

“So, you just sit in here until they decide what to do with you.” Fisher shook his head, snorting in disgust.

“Until after the trial, anyway,” Reyes replied, reaching up to scratch the side of his face. “After that, well, most Federation penal colonies have pretty decent accommodations these days.” Pausing, he said nothing for a moment before offering a tired shrug. “Of course, they might hold the court-martial in San Francisco, and the brig there is first-rate.”

“And that’s the other news I brought you,” Fisher said, leaning forward in his chair. “The court-martial is going to be held here.”

Reyes seemed to take this revelation in stride. “Makes sense. The lawyers will have to interview damn near everyone on the station. Easier to do that here than shipping everyone back to Earth or another starbase. After all, we’ve still got our oh-so-secret mission to keep up with.” He rose from his cot and began to pace the width of the cell—all six paces of it. “Then there’s convening the trial board. They’ll all have to be flag rank, commodores or better. Getting four of them who can be pulled away from their regular duties will take time. Hell, just getting them out here could take months.”

He halted his pacing and turned to look at Fisher.

“So, what it boils down to is that my fate will be decided by four desk jockeys with nothing better to do for the next six months.” Nodding toward the door, he added, “I’d rather Beyer just finish her lunch and come put me out of my misery.”

It would be easy to interpret Reyes’s remarks as simple fatalism, but Fisher knew better. The commodore had made no effort to deny or diminish his responsibility in the face of the charges against him. He fully expected to face harsh penalties for his actions and seemed ready to welcome whatever fate might be in store for him. Though he looked tired, Fisher could see that in spite of everything his friend had brought down upon himself, Reyes appeared more at ease than he had been in years.

It was his curious calm that worried the doctor.