12

Commodore Reyes stood next to Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn at the hub. On the other side of the octagonal console were Commander Cooper and Ambassador Jetanien. Reyes had been in his office when Cooper, as the officer of the watch, had received the distress signal from the Sagittarius. Within seconds of hearing Cooper’s summons, Reyes had been at the XO’s side on the supervisor’s deck. Less than two minutes later, both T’Prynn and Jetanien had arrived in the operations center at Reyes’s request.

T’Prynn and Jetanien listened closely as they finished their second replay of the downed ship’s last transmission. “Repeat, we need antimatter! Stand by for final coordinates.”

Reyes asked Cooper, “Did we get the coordinates?”

“Yes, sir,” Cooper said. “In a compressed data burst.”

Jetanien made nervous clicking noises with his beaklike proboscis. “Do we know who or what attacked them?”

“Most likely they were fired on by the weapons emplacements we detected previously,” T’Prynn said. “An earlier report from the Sagittarius indicated the Tholian vessel was derelict, and long-range sensors have detected no other ships in the system.”

“See how long that lasts,” Reyes said with a worried frown. “It’s a good bet the Klingons got this message before we did.”

Cooper shook his head. “Wouldn’t do ’em much good. It was sent on a secure channel.”

“Son,” Reyes said with weary cynicism, “how many Klingon codes have we broken in the last three months?”

Grasping the gist of Reyes’s rhetorical query, Cooper lowered his eyes and lifted his eyebrows. “Point taken.”

Reyes leaned forward and planted both his broad hands on the console. Studying the star chart on the screen in the middle of the hub, he asked the group, “What do the Klingons have in that area right now?”

“One heavy battle cruiser,” T’Prynn said, pointing out a star system very close to Jinoteur. “The Zin’za, currently finishing repairs after its last mission to Jinoteur.” Indicating another star system, one far away in Klingon space, she added, “Three more cruisers have been assigned as its combat escorts, but they shipped out of Ogat less than three days ago. They will not reach the Zin’za for another eleven days.”

The commodore sighed heavily. “The Zin’za’s less than twelve hours from Jinoteur at maximum warp.” He looked across the hub at Jetanien. “If they reach the Sagittarius before we can, this ball might wind up in your court.” He looked at T’Prynn. “How soon do you expect the Zin’za to ship out?”

“In less than five hours,” T’Prynn said.

Cooper called up a Starfleet deployment grid and superimposed it over the star chart. “The Endeavour and the Lovell are at least twelve days from Jinoteur,” he said. “We have plenty of antimatter fuel pods here on Vanguard, but the fastest ship that could haul one would still take almost a week to get out there.”

“Thank you for apprising us of the staggeringly obvious, Commander,” Jetanien said gruffly. He clicked his beak three times in quick succession. “If we require a remedial primer on the difference between hot and cold, we will be sure to enlist your sage counsel once again.”

Reyes eyed Jetanien warily. “Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the rock today.” He knew that he was letting Jetanien off easily. Ever since the collapse of the Chelon’s diplomatic summit with the Klingons and the Tholians seven weeks earlier, the inscrutable diplomat had fluctuated between bursts of grouchiness and long intervals of sullen withdrawal. Reyes was concerned that more had been at stake in those negotiations for Jetanien personally than he had been willing to admit.

“What I was going to say, before I was interrupted,” Cooper continued after the passage of an awkward silence, “is that we might be able to track down a few friendlies in the systems around Jinoteur and have one of them haul out a fuel pod.”

“Civilians,” Reyes mumbled, hoping that another option would suddenly appear but knowing that it probably wouldn’t. “I can’t believe we’d even think of sending civilians in there.”

T’Prynn said, “There might be an alternative, Commodore. However, it might necessitate a few…compromises.”

Her choice of words raised Reyes’s hackles. The last few months had taught him the hard way that T’Prynn’s idea of what constituted a “compromise” often proved to be more ruthless than he found palatable. “What are you suggesting, Commander?”

“Even with the help of local parties, delivering antimatter to the Sagittarius will take at least twenty-two hours. Because that timetable cannot be shortened, our only option is to ensure that the Klingons’ timetable is extended.”

Furtive glances were volleyed among Reyes, Cooper, and Jetanien. Cooper looked askance at T’Prynn. “Are you talking about delaying the Zin’za’s deployment from Borzha II?”

“I am,” T’Prynn said.

Jetanien made a deep rumbling noise before he asked with grave suspicion, “And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?”

She turned and fixed her cold, calculating stare on Reyes. “That,” she said, “is where the compromise comes into play.”

Moments of genuine privacy were rare for Ganz. Surrounded daily by his retinue of henchmen and female companions, he was obliged to appear aloof, unassailable, and in control. Managing the public perception of his image was an ongoing concern. He could not afford to be witnessed in a moment of candor. To lose control of himself in front of others would be to lose control over those he employed and to lose face in front of those with whom he did business. A careless laugh, a display of temper, any sign of hesitation or regret could undermine everything that he had worked for so long to build. Keeping his moods in check was difficult for him. He was a passionate man, prone as often to anger as to levity. Playing the role of a cipher was the hardest skill he had ever mastered—and possibly the most vital.

Spending his days and most of his evenings on display made his daily few hours of solitude aboard the Omari-Ekon precious; he savored them for their simplicity. Crisp, cool, clean sheets. Relief from the driving noise and narcotic odors of the game floor. The passionate embrace of the only woman who ever saw the inside of his bedroom, even though no one ever saw them within five meters of each other outside of it.

Neera sat in front of the vanity on Ganz’s right, pulling a jade-handled brush through her thick sable hair. She worked the brush in long, seductive strokes that had an all but hypnotic effect on Ganz. Her skin was a slightly brighter shade of green than his own, and her eyes were a pale aqua—an unusual color for an Orion woman. Though he knew it was wrong to let himself love her, she was irresistible to him. Outside, managing the male and female companions who worked aboard the ship, she was savvy and subtle and cunning. When distracting the gamblers at the tables or screening new arrivals to see whether they harbored bad intentions, she could instinctively adapt to whatever they desired her to be: coy one moment, brazen the next; meek and innocent for one man, a salacious flirt for another, a warm and caring heart for the ones who needed confidants.

There was no denying the effect she had on him, and it unnerved him. On his upward climb to affluence and power he had learned that there was only one universal principle in business: fear. His goal had always been to instill fear in those below him, while managing his fear of those who sought to undermine him—and there were many individuals and groups that fell into the latter category. Superiors, rivals, competitors, governments. There was always a reason to be afraid when so much stood to be won or lost on every decision he made, but he had become a self-made merchant prince of Orion by obeying one simple rule: Never show fear to anyone. Especially, he thought with a self-deprecating grin, not to the woman you sleep with.