Nodding, Kirk offered another smile. “If you don’t hear from me in an hour, notify Commander Spock to execute my last recorded orders.” He heard Haystead struggle to stifle a chuckle as he stepped into the room. The door slid closed behind him, by which time Kirk had gotten his first look at the office’s interior. A desk was the room’s most prominent furnishing, though like everything else in the office, it was standard Starfleet issue. There were no photographs, artwork, or other personal effects anywhere in the room save for an open briefcase next to the computer terminal on the desk. The lack of such items highlighted the fact that this space was for temporary use by persons not typically assigned to the starbase. Kirk noted all of that detail in just the second or two it had taken him to enter the room, by which time his attention had focused on the person seated behind the desk.

“Admiral,” Kirk said.

Reclining in the desk’s high-backed chair, Heihachiro Nogura eyed Kirk with a wan smile. He gestured to the chair positioned in front of the desk. “Hello, Captain. Have a seat.”

As he moved to the proffered chair, Kirk took another glance at the admiral, who seemed to have aged ten years since their last face-to-face meeting. He looked tired, which would be a natural consequence of the stress he had endured in recent months.

“How are you, sir?” Kirk asked before lowering himself into the chair.

With his usual aplomb, Nogura replied, “Considering how close I came to getting an entire space station blown out from under me, I suppose I could be doing a lot worse. As it stands, I’m managing.” He paused, looking down at something behind the desk that Kirk could not see. “Want a drink?”

Startled by the question, Kirk shook his head. “No, thank you, sir.” He frowned. “I’m sorry, Admiral, but I’m afraid I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Nogura countered, resting his hands in his lap as he began to swivel his chair a few degrees from side to side. As always seemed to be the case when he spoke, he delivered his words in a precise, clipped tone, and his dark eyes felt to Kirk like phasers boring through duranium. “Starfleet doesn’t want me here, but I insisted this debriefing was necessary before we all go our separate ways and resume whatever it is they think are our ‘normal duties.’ So this isn’t an official meeting. There won’t be any formal record, though I’ll write a report for a file that you’ll never get to read. When we’re done and so far as the entire universe is concerned, you and I never met today, and we most certainly didn’t do it here, of all places. Nothing we talk about will ever be spoken of again. Do I make myself absolutely crystal clear?”

Now believing he was beginning to understand the nature of this furtive conversation and the reasons for Nogura’s actions and precautions, Kirk nodded. “You do, sir.”

Appearing satisfied with that answer, the admiral seemed to relax as he shifted in his chair. “Good. Now let’s you and I have our last conversation about Operation Vanguard, concentrating on the role you, your crew, and the Enterpriseplayed before the whole thing went to hell.”

On second thought, Kirk decided that drink was not such a bad idea after all.

TWO

Holding the squat octagonal-shaped glass in his left hand, Kirk examined its contents. It was Saurian brandy, which Nogura had poured from a bottle he had produced from a drawer in his desk. For a brief moment, Kirk pondered how the admiral might have learned his preferred label but chalked it up as just another bit of evidence fueling the popular theory that Nogura simply was omniscient. Rather than dwell on the point, Kirk instead wondered what Commodore DeRoché might think of two officers using one of his station’s private offices to engage in such unseemly activities at just before the midpoint of the starbase’s main duty shift.

Let him sit in on this conversation, and he’ll probably want a drink of his own.

“Permission to speak freely, Admiral?” Kirk asked.

Nogura did not hesitate. “Absolutely, at least for the duration of this conversation. I figure you’ve earned that much.”

Emboldened by the admiral’s accommodating response, Kirk took a sip of his brandy before plunging ahead. “As you know, sir, I’m not read into Operation Vanguard. Not really, anyway. I believe it’s you who last told me I have no need to know.” The brandy was smooth; when it came to his choice of spirits, Nogura had impeccable taste.

Nogura’s expression betrayed nothing as he settled back into his chair while holding his own glass. “You still don’t. Yes, I know you’ve had exposure to some aspects of the project, as well as being involved in one or two peripheral incidents, but you’re correct; you’re still not fully read into the program. That’s not going to change.”

Forcing himself to maintain his bearing, as much out of respect for Nogura as the simple fact that the admiral was unlikely to bend on this point before either of them died, Kirk said, “Even though you and Starfleet have done your best to keep the whole thing under wraps, I’ve been able to put some of it together. This all started with that meta-genome the Constellationfound six years ago, and led to incidents at Ravanar IV, Erilon, and Gamma Tauri IV, before you replaced Commodore Reyes as commander of Starbase 47. So far as I can tell, things went completely to hell after that.”

Kirk wondered for a moment if it might not have been better for to him to have exercised some restraint, but Nogura had given him permission to speak without the hamstringing of protocol. Given the circumstances, in particular the dense shroud of secrecy that had enveloped the mysterious project from its inception, Kirk decided that Nogura’s decision even to have this conversation was an act of understanding, if not kindness. It was true that the Enterpriseon occasion had crossed paths with the project, up to and including the climactic battle that had resulted in Starbase 47’s destruction. However, Kirk and his crew had managed degrees of tangential involvement from the earliest days of the station’s presence in the Taurus Reach, a wedge of space at the fringes of Federation territory and sandwiched between the borders of the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly. It was here that the Federation had launched a massive colonization effort, supported by Starfleet security patrols as well as logistical and other aid from the station itself. Only a small, select group of people had known of the secret mission for which all of this activity provided cover: Operation Vanguard, a top secret project with the single mandate to discover the secrets of an ancient race which once had ruled over the Taurus Reach, the Shedai.

From what Kirk had managed to learn about the Shedai—thanks mostly to articles published by Federation News Service reporter Tim Pennington, himself living and working aboard Starbase 47—they once possessed and commanded a level of technological sophistication almost beyond comprehension. The Vanguard project had managed to acquire significant information about the Shedai and the complex, artificially constructed DNA structure they had created, dubbed the “Taurus Meta-Genome.” A number of practical applications for it had been postulated, particularly in the areas of terraforming as well as medical science, based on what had been learned about the Shedai civilization that had existed millennia ago. However, that knowledge had come at tremendous cost, spanning more than six years and costing lives in numbers of which Kirk had little real knowledge. The project had come perilously close to unleashing upon the Federation an enemy against which it had limited means of defense. Only through the ingenuity and courage of a handful of people and no small amount of luck had the Shedai been defeated.