Текст книги "Open Secrets "

Автор книги: Dayton Ward

Соавторы: Kevin Dilmore
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

10

Tom Walker’s place was all but deserted save for a few die-hard leftovers from the midday lunch rush, which suited Tim Pennington just fine. This was actually his favorite time of day to visit the small, unassuming bar located in Stars Landing, the residential and commercial center of Starbase 47’s massive terrestrial enclosure. It allowed him to hole up in one of the establishment’s semi-private booths without any distractions but the occasional refill of the drinks he nursed while working. Though the bar was his preferred place to unwind with a drink, he had only paid sporadic visits during the past few weeks. He was overdue, he decided.

“Afternoon, Allie,” he offered to the attractive female bartender leaning against a counter behind the bar as he crossed the floor toward her. She was dressed in a black leather vest, under which she wore no shirt, and matching pants. “How’s things?”

Allie shrugged. “The usual. Quiet time, at least until the evening shift change. You?”

Pennington walked up to the bar, leaned forward, and rested his elbows on its smooth, worn surface. “You know me. I’m a feather on the wind; where fate takes me, I know not.”

“Uh-huh,” Allie replied, pushing away from the counter and moving toward the cooling units beneath the bar. “I figured you were keeping a low profile or something.” She retrieved a bottle of beer—his favorite brand—and turned back to the wall behind her to get a glass, giving Pennington an opportunity to admire her shapely posterior for perhaps the thousandth time since arriving on the station.

“I usually kill people for less than that,” Allie said, and Pennington looked up to see her eyeing him with a wicked smile via the reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She stepped back to the bar, tilted the glass, and began pouring into it the contents of the bottle. “I only give you a pass because you’ve never tried to grab it, but don’t push your luck.” She filled the glass to the three-quarters point and handed it to him.

Holding the glass up in salute, Pennington smiled. “I would never dream of doing so, my dear.”

Allie moved to another section of the bar, took a cleaning cloth from a shelf, and began to wipe down the polished wood. “So, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around much lately. Seeing someone behind my back?”

“That explains a bit of it, yes,” Pennington replied, sipping his beer. It was only partially a lie. The relationship he had struck up with Vanessa Theriault, the adorable redheaded ensign from the U.S.S. Sagittarius,had been enjoyable for its first few days, cooling a bit once Pennington’s stories about the truth behind the Taurus Reach and the arrest of Commodore Reyes began to take hold.

“I guess if I were in your shoes,” Allie said as she continued the time-honored tradition of wiping down the bar, “I might keep a low profile, too. I can’t imagine it’s fun with everyone blaming you for everything that’s going on around here.”

No one had actually come to him to express displeasure at what he had written, but Pennington knew the sentiment existed. On a rational level, he did not begrudge the reactions his stories had generated among the station’s crew members, many of whom held Commodore Reyes in high regard. Likewise, he could not in good conscience blame Theriault for keeping her distance. She was Starfleet, and in the eyes of many of her fellow officers, Pennington had attacked them and perhaps everything for which they stood. He did not see it that way, of course, just as he did not see Diego Reyes as a villain and had avoided portraying him as such. If anyone saw the commodore in that light, it was Starfleet—or a handful of people at its highest levels of power, at any rate.

“Can’t say as I blame them,” Pennington said, thinking of the reactions that had come about in the hours and days immediately following the Federation News Service’s publication of the story he had written after the Jinoteur incident. The threat he had revealed about the mysterious aliens and the ramifications it held for this part of the galaxy, if not the entire Federation, were staggering. Was it hyperbole to say that the very nature of humanity’s place—along with those of the inhabitants of many planets who had become allies in the century or more since Earth had fled its cradle and raced faster than light to the stars—was in question? Was all of that simply to be wiped away should this powerful new face emerge from whatever hole they had hidden themselves in, enraged and bent on vengeance?

As for Theriault, she had not said anything to make Pennington believe that their relationship was over and, in fact, had seemed to accept his explanation that Reyes himself had authorized the writing of the FNS stories and even helped in getting them transmitted to the news service, rather than acting in his expected role of censor as a means of facilitating internal security. As far as Pennington was concerned, Diego Reyes was a man of courage and principles, who had sincerely believed he was doing the right things for the right reasons, until it became clear—in the commodore’s eyes, at least—that such was not the case. The actions taken by the seasoned officer after that realization could only be described as heroic. In his heart, Pennington wanted to believe that even those in Starfleet who soon would decide his fate felt the same way, even if the letter of the law forced them to view Reyes as a criminal.

“Oh, by the way,” Allie said, snapping her fingers, “I almost forgot. I’ve got something for you.” Looking between the bar and the counter and back again, she frowned as she searched for something Pennington could not see. “It’s around here somewhere.” After a moment, she grunted in satisfaction, reaching beneath the bar. When her hand reappeared, it held what Pennington recognized as a standard blue computer data card. “Your buddy Quinn left this for you.”

Pennington frowned, puzzled. “Quinn? Is he all right?”

“Seemed okay when I saw him last night,” Allie said. Then her brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, though, he has been a little off the past couple of weeks. I hate to admit it, but I think I liked him better when he was drunk all the time. At least then he was predictable.”

Pennington chuckled at that. His unlikely friend and traveling companion, Cervantes Quinn, had indeed undergone some kind of change in the time since their joint and very memorable venture to the Jinoteur system. They had done good work there, as makeshift rescuers of the besieged crew of the Sagittarius,which had sustained massive damage while reconnoitering the system’s fourth planet. In payment for their good deeds, Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn had dissolved the debts Quinn owed, not only to her but also to the ruthless Orion merchant prince Ganz. While Pennington hesitated to think of Quinn as a “new man” thanks to these developments, he liked to believe that the wayward scoundrel might well have taken the first few steps along the path to some form of a better, more fulfilling life.

It occurred to Pennington that he had not seen Quinn since early the previous day. He had been in the midst of inspecting the Rocinante,the dilapidated hunk of scrap metal and baling wire he proudly called his ship. When Pennington had asked if Quinn was preparing the tramp freighter for some new job he might have taken, the freelance cargo hauler had replied that it was always prudent to be ready, particularly in his line of work.

Reaching across the bar, Pennington took the data card from Allie. “Thanks. Mind if I use one of the comm stations?”

Allie shook her head, gesturing toward the back of the bar with her free hand. “Knock yourself out. But hey, if he died and left you everything in his will, you’re cutting me in for a slice, understand? I figure it’s the least he owes me after all the pawing he’s done since he showed up here.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Pennington replied, pouring the last of his beer from the bottle to his glass. Holding up the now-empty bottle, he asked, “Put this on my tab?”

“Count on it,” Allie replied, without looking up from where she had busied herself with something beneath the bar.

At the back of Tom Walker’s place was a quartet of personal communications vestibules, each ensconced within its own shell of opaque, soundproof glass. None of them was occupied, and Pennington chose the one farthest from the bar’s main room. He closed the compartment’s door behind him and settled onto the backless stool in front of the compact audiovisual communications unit. The unit itself was a simple design, featuring a compact viewing screen, a keyboard, and a data card slot. Pennington took the card Allie had given him and inserted it into the slot, then reached for the pad next to the viewer and touched a control to read the card’s contents.

An instant later, the grizzled image of Cervantes Quinn filled the screen. His black and gray hair had been cut, washed, and groomed into something resembling a presentable style. The beard stubble that habitually darkened his cheeks and jawline was gone, and there was an alertness to the man’s eyes that Pennington had only seen on rare occasions since the pair’s improbable friendship had formed.

“You look almost human, mate,” Pennington said to no one, his voice echoing in the cramped vestibule as, on the screen, Quinn began to speak.

“How’re they hangin’, newsboy?”he said, breaking into one of his trademark leering grins. “I know this probably comes off lookin’ a bit like a Dear John letter, but rest assured, I haven’t dumped you for a younger reporter.”

“As if I had reason to worry,” Pennington quipped.

On the viewer, Quinn’s smile faded a bit. “Listen, you’re smart, so you probably guessed this, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I guess some of those touchy-feely types would call it soul-searching, but my pappy used to just call it takin’ a good long look in the mirror. We both know I’ve had my share of screwups, and for whatever reason, someone or something has seen fit to give me what amounts to a second chance. I may be stupid, but I’m not crazy, so I think it’s high time I did the smart thing whenever somebody gives me a gift like that.”

He smiled again, gesturing toward himself with his right hand. “I clean up pretty good, don’t I? Too bad you’re not here to smell the fancy cologne I bought. It’s curling the paint right off the walls of the ship. But taking a bath more than once every other time I get kicked out of a bar is just the start. I’ve got some places I need to go, some people I need to see, and some things I need to work out. I guess it’s what you call a midlife crisis of conscience or something.”

Realization was beginning to dawn in Pennington’s mind. “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve…”

“By the time you get this message, I’ll be gone,”Quinn said, confirming the journalist’s budding suspicions. “The stuff I need to do I have to do alone. Besides, you probably don’t need me hangin’ around, crampin’ your style, now that you’re back in the news business. I saw the look on your face when you got your street cred back with the FNS, and you’ve been milkin’ that for all it’s worth for weeks now. As much fun as you’re havin’, I know it pisses you off that you weren’t able to report about that First Federation business.”He leaned forward, his expression taking on a conspiratorial air. “Between you and me, newsboy, those guys are amateurs compared with what we found running around in the Taurus Reach. You’re still number one in my book, even if your stories are getting bumped to back pages for the moment. Wait until something crazy happens out here again. Your bosses’ll be on you like—well—like me on a bottle of scotch.

“Anyway, I’m not one to wax philosophic or get all choked up about this kind of thing, but I want you to know, Tim, that you’ve been a good friend…a better friend than I deserved, to be honest, and one of these days, I promise I’ll tell you exactly what that means. Once I get some of this other baggage behind me, I’ll be back, so tell Tom and Allie not to let you drink all the good stuff while I’m gone.”He paused before reaching up and tapping his fingertips to his head in mock salute. “Stay out of trouble, and keep doin’ what you’re doin’. It makes for entertaining readin’ on these long trips.”

The image went dark a second or two later, leaving Pennington alone in the vestibule to contemplate what he had just heard. At first, he was somewhat disappointed and even angered at Quinn’s unilateral decision to leave without even saying goodbye, but that reaction was short-lived. His friend had obviously reached some type of crossroads in his life, and the path he had seen necessary to follow would be different from the road on which Pennington found himself. Would those two courses intersect again in the future, as they had when circumstances had cast them together in the first place?

Their friendship had been an interesting one from the start, coming as it had while Pennington dwelled in the lowest, darkest pit of personal and professional despair. He hesitated to describe as interesting the experiences they had shared in the weeks that followed—traveling to Yerad III to fetch Ganz’s irritating Zakdorn accountant, Sarkud Armnoj, fetching the Klingon sensor drone, and then being hijacked by rivals of Quinn’s, to say nothing of the insanity that was their visit to the Jinoteur system—but they had helped to forge the odd bond the men now shared.

Despite his initial regret at not being able to offer farewells to Quinn in person, Pennington had to admit that he admired his friend’s seeming new resolve. The man had made the difficult decision to exorcise his internal demons through direct action, which was to be admired.

You’ve got a demon or two of your own, mate,Pennington reminded himself. T’Prynn.

The very thought of her name caused his gut to tighten. Though he had not forgiven her for the sabotage she had wrought on his career—damage he was really just beginning to recover from, even with his recent successes at FNS—he could not bring himself to hold on to the hate that had festered within him when he learned what she had done. Watching her collapse on the hangar deck and having learned of her condition, Pennington could muster only pity for the stricken Vulcan. Of course, he now knew that her actions against him likely had prevented a war with the Tholians, a good thing on any occasion but more so given the Federation’s current political climate with the Klingons.

So, maybe—just maybe—you should cut her some slack?

Perhaps, Pennington decided, it was long past time he purged his own demons.

11

Diego Reyes sat at the table in the center of the drab gray meeting room, saying nothing. He was content to stare into his coffee cup, watching the dark brown liquid swirl as he stirred it with a swizzle stick. As far as he was concerned, it was likely to be the most productive task he accomplished all day.

It was as depressing a room as any he had ever seen. Even his cell was warm and welcoming by comparison. One of three such rooms in the station’s security section, it was designed for interviews or interrogations of criminal suspects and private conversations between detainees and their legal counsel. Unlike the food slot in his cell, however, the unit installed in these rooms provided food and drink at any time of day, not just at mealtimes.

The coffee tasted the same.

“Commodore?” a voice asked for the third time, preceded by a soft, polite clearing of the speaker’s throat.

Resigning himself to the fact that he would not be allowed to sit and enjoy his coffee in silence, Reyes looked up from the cup and into the wide, questioning eyes of the room’s only other occupant, Commander Nathan Spires.

“What?”

Taken aback by the gruff response, the young officer shifted position in his chair and made a show of reviewing whatever it was he had displayed on his data slate. Clearing his throat again, he leaned forward until his elbows rested on the metal table’s polished surface. “I thought we might begin to work on your defense, sir.”

“Seems to me we did that already,” Reyes replied, returning his attention to his coffee, which—he was finally forced to admit—looked only slightly more appealing than it tasted.

Spires nodded. “As you may recall, sir, we made no progress during my first visit. Perhaps it slipped your mind, but—”

“That’s twice in two sentences that you’ve questioned my mental faculties, Mr. Spires,” Reyes said, locking eyes with the lawyer. “I hope that’s not a precursor to you suggesting that my defense should be based on my being insane or simply a moron.”

He watched as Spires’s jaw clenched in reaction to the verbal jab, but to his credit, the lawyer did not rise to the bait. Still, Reyes could see this was a man who was used to controlling the situation around him.

Saying nothing for a moment, Spires instead reached for his own coffee and took a sip. “I take it you don’t consider that a viable option, Commodore?” he asked as he returned his cup to the table.

“Hell, no, I don’t,” Reyes snapped, allowing the first hints of genuine irritation to creep into his voice. “Listen to me very carefully on this point, Commander, for the one thing that well and truly pisses me off is having to repeat myself: I am not insane, and I was fully aware of my actions when I undertook them, as well as any potential consequences. Am I making myself clear?”

“Perfectly, sir,” Spires replied, his tone clipped and formal. He placed the stylus for his data slate on the table, clasped his hands before him, and leveled an unflinching stare at Reyes. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Reyes shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”

“Why am I here, sir?”

Finally,Reyes thought. There’s a pulse in there, after all.Keeping his expression neutral, he asked, “Do you have something better to do?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Before Reyes could respond to that, Spires plunged ahead. “Don’t get me wrong, Commodore. I want this case. I specifically askedfor this case. I want to help you, if I can, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever happens to you, my résumé will look a lot better for having accepted the challenge of representing you in the face of overwhelming odds.”

His expression revealed nothing, but Reyes felt a slight rush of satisfaction as he listened to the commander unload a small portion of the frustration he undoubtedly had buried beneath his veneer of outward calm. The commodore had no problem with ambition in a younger officer; it was a trait to be nurtured and harnessed for constructive purposes. Spires’s blunt honesty was also a quality Reyes could appreciate. Too few junior officers, in his opinion, suppressed the instinct to speak their minds when a situation warranted it, even when pressed to do so by a superior.

None of this meant that Reyes actually liked the man, of course. Not yet, anyway.

“You have to know that your fate has largely been decided already,” Spires continued. “The charges against you are rather straightforward. We might be able to argue our way out of the disobedience charge, and we might even be able to get the conspiracy charge dismissed. But releasing classified information? There’s no way around that, sir. The last time we spoke, you seemed to have accepted the inevitability of the situation, and from what I’ve been able to gauge so far, that hasn’t changed.” He picked up his stylus and began to twirl it between the fingers of his right hand. “For me, this begs the question of why you simply haven’t entered a guilty plea and dispensed with the need for a court-martial in the first place.”

Having drained the rest of his coffee before offering a reply, Reyes finally said, “Because I really don’thave anything better to do.” Sensing that Spires might try to stab him with the stylus, he held up his hand. “Not because I want to screw with you, Commander, though I admit I’ve decided it’s a nice bonus. You said it yourself. Pleading guilty does away with the need for a court-martial, which means they can throw me in a hole, and they get to do it without anyone else having to break a sweat. I’m not about to let that happen, at least not without a fight. I want a chance to speak my piece.”

He rose from his chair and moved across the room to the food slot. After punching the sequence for a new cup of coffee, Reyes turned from the unit to face his attorney again. “Now, I’ve told you everything I can relating to the charges against me, and you’ve had two weeks to read every scrap of data you can get your hands on. What I haven’t heard yet is what you plan to do with all of that information. I’m not interested in throwing myself on the mercy of the court, Commander. I want people to know how big this thing is, why we’re here, what we hope to accomplish, and the real price we’ve paid in pursuit of that goal.” He tapped his chest with the fingers of his left hand. “I don’t expect to win, but I aim to make some noise, and I expect you to be right there beside me, doing your best to piss off anyone and everyone they line up against me.”

The time he had spent in isolation had given Diego Reyes plenty of time for long and thoughtful reflection. Did he regret the actions he had undertaken? No. His remorse came from knowing that he could have, shouldhave, acted sooner, beforethe situation could escalate to the point of costing so many innocent lives. He mourned the loss of the U.S.S. Bombayand its crew, destroyed in battle against Tholian vessels. He grieved for those members of the Sagittariuswho had died on Jinoteur IV, crushed beneath what was now known to be only a minuscule demonstration of the awesome power wielded by the Shedai. As he lay awake on the cot in his cell, images of Jeanne Vinueza, his former wife and administrator of the colony on Gamma Tauri IV, haunted him every night before finally allowing him to drift off to fitful sleep.

After several moments spent in silence, Spires finally took up his stylus again and began writing on his data slate. “Well, then, where to begin? As for why you allowed that reporter to write about a classified Starfleet operation, as I said, that will be our toughest battle. I need to do some further research, of course, but from where I sit right now, it seems our best chance is to push for the idea that at least some of the orders you were following weren’t legal.” He paused, his stylus hovering above the data slate as he seemed to review what he had just said aloud. “For that to work, though, we’d have to demonstrate that you had no reason to believe the orders you were following were illegal. I take it you’re still against that strategy?”

“Absolutely,” Reyes replied. While others could be blamed for establishing the parameters by which the Federation had established such a marked presence in the Taurus Reach, the choices he had made at Gamma Tauri IV rested solely on his shoulders. The cost of that decision was his to pay.

He had made some small measure of recompense by allowing Tim Pennington to publish a recounting with as much detail as he could muster of the events the journalist had experienced while on Jinoteur IV. Pennington had acquitted himself with distinction on that occasion as he and his friend, a civilian merchant named Cervantes Quinn, had accomplished nothing less than save the Sagittariusand its remaining crew members from a Klingon vessel and the awesome power and weaponry the Shedai had wielded on that world.

Thanks to Pennington, much of the truth behind that incident was no longer a secret, and countless billions now were aware—at least to a degree—of the immense threat lurking within the Taurus Reach. Steps had to be taken to prevent further loss of innocent life. That meant either finding a way to combat the Shedai or retreating from this area of space altogether and leaving it to its original masters while hoping they would not seek vengeance for any wrongs they perceived as having been inflicted on them.

Before any of that could happen, the truth, all of it, must be revealed.

Weighing Reyes’s answer, Spires nodded after a moment. “You realize that the court-martial is likely to be closed proceedings, sir. Even with what’s already been leaked to the public, Starfleet will still want to restrict as much information as possible about Starbase 47 and Operation Vanguard.”

Reyes knew that Spires was currently working from a disadvantage stemming from that very desire, in that he had not yet been granted access to all of the information he would require in order to mount his defense for the coming court-martial. The commodore wondered what the young lawyer’s reaction would be once he received that opportunity and reviewed all of the files pertaining to Starbase 47 and its mission in the Taurus Reach.

If he’s smart, he’ll hop the first transport home.

“People will still find out, Commander,” he replied. “They might not need to know absolutely everything about what we’re doing, but they need to know when we screw up, particularly when it costs innocent lives. I’m tired of creating lies and stories to cover our asses out here. That’s not the mission I signed up for, and that’s not what Starfleet’s supposed to be about. I don’t think that iswhat it’s about, but I was dumb enough to get caught up in the machine. There are others caught the same way, because they were blinded either by duty or by conscious choice. Either way, the public has a right to know about them, just as they’re going to find out about me.”

Neither man said anything for several moments, the only sound in the room being the low, ubiquitous warble of Vanguard’s massive power generators, far below them in the belly of the station’s secondary hull. When Spires spoke again, he did so while tapping the end of his stylus along the tabletop.

“So,” he said, releasing a small sigh, “you basically just want to be a pain in the ass.”

The commander’s deadpan delivery caught Reyes off guard, but then he laughed, the first time he could remember doing so in weeks. It was a wonderful feeling.

“I’ve always been a pain in the ass, Commander,” he replied, wiping the corner of his right eye. “Now I just want more people to know about it.”

Nodding with what Reyes took to be a new sense of determination, Spires said, “I think we can do something with that, sir. I’m still not saying we have any chance of winning, mind you.” He shrugged. “But at least it’ll be entertaining.”

Okay,Reyes decided, now I’m starting to like you. A little.

Spires glanced down at his data slate. “I’ve got about an hour or so before I’m supposed to meet Captain Desai and discuss—among other things—my clearance for reading classified data. Until then, might I suggest that we refocus our efforts here, Commodore?”

As he turned his attention back to the task at hand, Reyes could not help thinking about Rana Desai. He thought of her often, of course, but he tried only to recall their private times together, rather than the unpleasant reality of what they both now faced.

I wonder how she’s dealing with all of this?