Covering up thataction, however, required somewhat more ingenuity.

Fortunately, Sandesjo was used to working several steps ahead when planning a task. She already had transmitted a message—ostensibly from Hanagan himself—to his employer on the station, informing her of his intent to end his tenure with her small company and return to Earth, having acquired passage aboard the Bacchus Plateau,which was due to leave later in the evening. As for the freighter itself, another message had been dispatched to its captain, asking her for passage back to Federation space. Playing the role of Hanagan would be another human male who, through a notable lack of skill and judgment, had amassed a sizable gambling debt aboard the Orion vessel currently docked at the station. The human had expressed no small amount of enthusiasm at the idea of adopting Hanagan’s identity and acting in his stead in exchange for Sandesjo’s seeing to his debt with no questions asked. The deception might be detected one day, but only after weeks if not months had passed—more than long enough for Sandesjo to find a way to deal with the issue.

Her next order of business would be relaying a report to her superior, Turag, informing him that Komaleq was out of the picture. Sandesjo was certain her handler would be displeased at this development, regardless of any explanation she might provide for her actions and how she had in fact preserved the integrity of the larger mission. She did not care, for now she had other concerns. Regardless of how Turag might respond to what she soon would tell him, Sandesjo’s immediate priority was ensuring that neither Komaleq nor Ronald Hanagan had done, said, or left behind anything that might endanger her presence on the station. With the potentially dangerous Komaleq now out of the way she was—so far as she knew—the only Klingon operative on the station, at least until Turag arrived. Until then, she was on her own here.

Sandesjo rather liked that.

4

“Let me put this as diplomatically as I know how, Ambassador. Your Klingon friends are really starting to piss me off.”

Positioned to the left of Commodore Reyes, Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn said nothing as the station’s commanding officer stood before the desk of Ambassador Jetanien, the diplomatic envoy assigned to Starbase 47 with the task of overseeing Federation political interests in the Taurus Reach. For his part, the Rigellian Chelon appeared unmoved by Reyes’s comment, opting instead to reach for the oversized bowl of dark brown broth sitting atop a matching saucer on his desk. Grasping the bowl in his oversized manus, Jetanien raised it to his beaklike mouth and proceeded to slurp. T’Prynn forced herself not to react to the rancid odor emanating from the bowl, but rather concentrated on identifying the vessel’s contents.

She failed.

“What have the Klingons done to test your patience this time, Commodore?” the ambassador asked as he returned the bowl to its saucer.

Reyes said nothing at first, his expression neutral as he watched Jetanien eat, and T’Prynn could see that the commodore also smelled the broth’s pungent odor. Unlike her, Reyes had no problem voicing his likes and dislikes. “Are you sure someone didn’t switch your lunch with a tub of lubricant from down in engineering?”

“Quite sure, my friend,” Jetanien replied before uttering a series of clicks and chirps along with a rumbling gurgle that T’Prynn had come to recognize as a Chelon’s equivalent to laughter. “Now, about your mounting irritation with the Klingons, I trust you’re referring to the diplomatic envoy?”

Nodding, Reyes replied, “That’s them.” He held up the data slate he had brought with him. “We received their latest communiqué this afternoon, which includes their updated list of demands. They’re asking for more floor space in their embassy office section, and they want us to dedicate one of the main docking bays for their exclusive use. Failure to deliver on any of these requests is considered a deal breaker for being able to enjoy their company here in Shangri-La.”

“The way I see it,” Jetanien said, clasping his hands before him and tapping the extremities that passed for his thumbs in a rhythmic manner, “at least some of these issues most definitely fall within your purview as this station’s commander.”

Reyes released a low grunt of irritation. “So far as I’m concerned, all of it’s within my purview, but I’m pretty sure the reason the Diplomatic Corps sent you all the way out here was to talk to the Klingons so I wouldn’t have to.”

“A fair point,” the ambassador said, “though I’d like to think my role has more substance than that. After all, my career ambition really isn’t to simply keep you from starting an interstellar war, despite whatever levels of enjoyment such activity might bring me from time to time.”

T’Prynn listened with patience to the verbal joust in which Reyes and Jetanien always indulged before turning to whatever matter required their attention. Despite their disparate backgrounds, the commodore and the diplomat had established an easy rapport, which had facilitated their ability to work together as Operation Vanguard continued to evolve. Jetanien had been given a most demanding assignment, acting as the senior diplomatic adviser not only to Commodore Reyes but also the Federation Council. With Starbase 47’s presence in an area of space bordered by both a known rival and a potential adversary, the Federation had no choice but to tread lightly with respect to its own exploration and colonization efforts. Given the Klingons’ ongoing aggressive territorial expansion efforts in all directions, many of Starfleet’s leading political and tactical minds were predicting an eventual confrontation should the Empire extend its reach to the Tholian border, with the Federation possibly caught in the middle. The Taurus Reach was a delicate buffer preventing that from happening, and Starbase 47 had been inserted into that wedge in order to quell a possible flashpoint situation.

That was the official story, anyway. Whether Vanguard’s legitimate if arguably secondary mission had any tangible effects on its primary objective remained to be seen, and it was T’Prynn’s job to see that such consequences were mitigated if not altogether avoided. It went without saying that the Klingons most likely would be interested in the station’s activities, and expending considerable resources in attempts to ascertain what other goals it might be pursuing. With the levels of operational security surrounding the mission to learn the truth behind the Taurus Meta-Genome and its creators, diligence at every turn would be required. Indeed, T’Prynn was certain that the Empire had already dispatched covert operatives here in hopes of gleaning any kind of useful information. She had been conducting her own clandestine investigations for weeks, some of which were beginning to show results. Though she had no hard proof to corroborate her suspicions, T’Prynn was certain that obtaining such evidence was only a matter of time.

Far above and beyond her own role on Starbase 47, and in the interests of working to maintain whatever fragile peace existed between the three powers, the Federation had seen fit to authorize the establishment of full, formal embassy facilities aboard the station for all three governments. It was hoped that having diplomatic representatives from all involved parties in one location would serve to effect quick, agreeable solutions to any conflicts that might arise. In T’Prynn’s opinion, it was a noble goal, though putting the idea into practice had proven to be a formidable challenge. Whereas the Tholians had yet to even acknowledge the Federation’s offer, the Klingons had tempered whatever enthusiasm they had managed to manufacture with the sorts of conditions and demands Reyes found himself addressing on a near daily basis.