“For the moment,” Quinn said. “Reckon I’ll take each day as it comes and see if it sticks this time.” He looked up as the waitress returned with his cafй au lait, mumbled his thanks to her, and took a generous sip. “Damn, this joint really makes a fine cup of java.”

Sensing an ulterior motive lurking behind the small talk, Pennington eyed his cagy friend. “So what brings you out before the crack of dusk?”

The grizzled pilot slapped a hand to his chest. “You wound me, Newsboy!” They both chuckled at that, and it felt to Pennington like he and Quinn were sharing a wavelength of nostalgia. Quinn took a deep breath and another sip of his coffee. “I came because I’m in your debt.”

“Mate, if it’s about the money, forget it. I’m bloody rolling in it.”

A smile of genuine happiness lit up Quinn’s face. “Good for you, man. I mean that. You had a hard run there for a while. You’ve earned a real payday.” Another long sip of coffee, and Quinn’s mood turned somber. “But I still owe you, compaсero. And I’m not talking about money. I owe you a debt of gratitude. For covering up my mistakes. Apologizing to all the people I insulted on my way down to the gutter. For all the times you made sure I got home alive and didn’t end up choking to death on my own puke.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I vaguely recall punching you at some point. Did that happen?”

Pennington still felt that night’s wound to his pride. “Yeah, mate. That happened.”

“Well, then I owe you an apology on top of everything else. All you ever did was help me, and all I did was act like an asshole. And for that I’m sorry, Tim. I really am.” He rubbed his hand across his stubbled chin and upper lip, apparently considering his next words with a heavy conscience. “I reckon if I owe you anything else, it’s a reason why.”

“No,” Pennington said. “You don’t have to explain yourself, mate. Not to me. After all we’ve been through, you don’t think I understand? I know what she meant to you. Losing her had to be the last bloody straw.” He recalled his own lost love, Oriana, who had perished aboard the Bombay years earlier. “I’ve been there, mate. I get it.”

The silence that grew between them then was one not of unease but of understanding. For the first time in a very long while, Pennington appreciated the simple pleasure of a friend’s company, and realized how much he had missed the easy camaraderie he and Quinn had shared while gallivanting around the galaxy in Quinn’s old Mancharan starhopper, the Rocinante. They had never wanted for trouble in those days, but neither had there ever been a shortage of fun.

Quinn cracked a bittersweet smile. “So, now that you’re all famous and shit, I guess you’ll be leaving, right? Headin’ home to some cushy job in Paris?”

Pennington laughed out loud, and didn’t care that he disturbed the couple at an adjacent table. “Are you daft? Leave Vanguard? And miss out on all the fun? Perish the thought.”

“Forget I mentioned it,” Quinn said. He glanced at the chrono on the wall of the cafй, took another long swig of his coffee, and got up.

Wondering if he’d said something wrong, Pennington asked, “Where you going, mate?”

“I got someplace I need to be.” There was an enigmatic quality to the light in Quinn’s eyes as he grinned and added, “See ya ’round, Newsboy.” He left those parting words hanging in the air as he walked away without a backward glance, and Pennington watched his friend’s back as he crossed the meadow and disappeared into a waiting turbolift car.

Only many decades later would a nostalgic Tim Pennington realize that was the last that he, or anyone else, ever saw of Cervantes Quinn.

T’Prynn stood at the Hub on the supervisors’ deck, in the middle of Vanguard’s hectic operations center. Though she did not frequent this duty area, the station’s senior officers knew her by sight because of her daily visits to Admiral Nogura’s office for intelligence briefings. Consequently, she attracted little notice on those rare occasions when she chose to monitor important station activities from this prime vantage point.

A drone of comm chatter and muted responses from Vanguard’s traffic-control team blended into the steady background of computer feedback tones, the hum of the ventilation system, and the hiss of turbolift doors opening and closing at odd intervals. Several sections of the towering viewscreens that wrapped around more than two-thirds of the circular command level’s walls displayed civilian vessels of varying sizes and types arriving and departing.

Only one of them was of interest to T’Prynn: the Zaragoza, a colony ship of Deltan registry. It was bound for a recently catalogued Class M world that had been named Kennovere by the first civilian team to scout its surface. The planet had been reserved for colonization by a group that wanted to establish a low-tech, agrarian lifestyle with only the slightest intrusion of modern technology; they also had pointedly eschewed any formal political connection with the Federation. It had seemed to T’Prynn like an ideal place to send someone who had reason not to want to be found by Starfleet—or by anyone else, for that matter.

She watched the Zaragoza maneuver clear of traffic, taking Quinn away from Vanguard to his new life. Observing the colony ship as it jumped to warp speed, T’Prynn reminded herself that this one act of mercy would not be remotely sufficient to atone for her lifetime of wrongs.

It is likely I will never balance the scales of my own guilt and virtue, she concluded. But that does not absolve me of my responsibility to try. As she turned and descended the steps from the supervisors’ deck, she permitted herself a moment of private sentimentality. Live long and prosper, Cervantes Quinn . . . wherever your journey takes you.

It was possible, she thought as she stepped inside a turbolift, that one day Quinn might forgive her for all the pain she had brought into his life, directly or indirectly. Given enough time, Tim Pennington might forgive all her transgressions, as well. As she recollected all those persons she had harmed over the years who knew that she was to blame for their sufferings, T’Prynn could think of only one who she was certain would never absolve her of her sins.

I will forgive when I can trust myself not to repeat the errors of my past, she vowed, and not until then. She didn’t know how long it would take her to recover that faith in her own ethical compass, but as she thought of Quinn being ferried away to anonymity and freedom, she felt certain that her own life was, belatedly and at long last, heading in the right direction.

For the moment, that would suffice.

28

Clutching the last feeble straws of his patience, Nogura strode into the Vault backed by JAG officer Lieutenant Commander Holly Moyer and a phalanx of twenty armed security officers. They found Xiong and his cadre of Starfleet science experts waiting for them, standing in a tight formation with folded arms and expressions of hard resolve. As Nogura had expected, this meeting was off to a wonderfully confrontational start. He met Xiong’s hard stare. “Lieutenant.”

The lean younger man replied simply, “Admiral.”

“Let’s just cut through it, shall we?” Nogura extended his hand to Moyer, who handed him a data slate. “It’s my understanding that you and your team are refusing to obey orders to run the test series requested by Starfleet Command. Is that correct?”

Xiong appeared unrepentant. “That’s right.”

“On what grounds?”

Nervous looks were volleyed between Xiong and the other members of the Vault contingent, and then Xiong said, “We believe these orders to be unlawful and immoral, sir.”

Nogura felt as if he wanted to simply explode. “Mister Xiong, while I understand and can even sympathize with your reaction to the . . . distasteful nature of these orders, I am compelled to remind you that they are, nonetheless, orders. Your compliance is not optional.”