Ganz nodded. The rules of the game had just changed in his favor. “How much hurt do you want me to put on the Zin’za? I could arrange an accident that would take them out for good.”

“Don’t go that far,” Reyes said. “Just foul the machinery. I want a delay, not an interstellar incident. To use a cliché, make it look like an accident.”

“All right,” Ganz said. “I presume you don’t want to know the details.” Reyes shook his head, so Ganz continued, “That brings us to the matter of compensation.”

“You’ve heard what I want,” Reyes said. “What do you want?”

The Orion considered the matter carefully. He had many needs of varying degrees of importance, but he was capable of satisfying most of them without Starfleet’s help or knowledge. One pending project had been stymied several times in the past few weeks, however, and this seemed like an opportune time to set it right.

“Two weeks from now,” Ganz said, “I’ll need you to do me a favor. For a period of seventy-two hours, I’ll want all Starfleet sensor sweeps and patrols suspended in Sector Tango-4119. For three days that’ll be a blind spot. Do that, and we have a deal.”

Now it was Reyes’s turn to glare suspiciously across the table. “Two conditions will have to apply.”

“Your proposal didn’t mention conditions,” Ganz said.

“It didn’t rule them out, either,” Reyes said. “Condition one: no piracy. If even one ship, one person, or one piece of cargo gets hassled or goes missing from Tango-4119, I’ll have that big green head of yours on a plate.”

The burly Orion admired Reyes’s boldness. “Your second condition?”

“If I find out you helped an enemy act against Federation interests while we were turning a blind eye, your head won’t be the first body part I put on the plate.”

Ganz smirked at Reyes. “If you ever leave Starfleet, you’d be quite a businessman.” Turning serious, he added, “We won’t be helping your enemies, and there won’t be any piracy. My word is my contract: if Starfleet complies with my request, there won’t be any problems, and there won’t be any complaints.”

The commodore extended his hand across the table. Ganz took it and shook the human’s hand firmly. Reyes said, “Deal.”

“Deal,” echoed Ganz. He released Reyes’s hand and got up from the table. “If you’ll excuse me…” The commodore nodded, and Ganz left the table, moving quickly toward the kitchen to make his clandestine exit out the back of the building. He tried not to betray his profound satisfaction by grinning, but keeping a straight face was difficult.

This was the best deal he’d made in a very long time.

Reyes slumped into the comfort of his padded, high-backed chair, relieved to be once more in the privacy of his own office. His meeting with Ganz had left him edgy and irritable; treating the Orion as an equal had galled him. In terms of power and influence, Ganz was clearly a formidable political actor, but Reyes could not help but feel sullied at having brokered a deal with an unrepentant criminal.

The desk-mounted intercom buzzed. Thumbing the switch, Reyes asked gruffly, “What is it?”

His gamma-shift yeoman, Midshipman Finneran, answered over the comm, “Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn to see you, sir.”

“Fine,” he said wearily. He unlocked the office’s door.

T’Prynn entered from the operations center and stopped on the other side of Reyes’s desk. Matter-of-factly she said, “I trust your meeting with Mr. Ganz produced the desired result.”

The commodore let out a disgruntled sigh. “If by ‘desired result’ you mean a sick feeling in my gut, then yes.” He rubbed his eyes. “Has there been any further contact with the ship?”

“Not yet,” T’Prynn said. “However, I have procured an anti-matter fuel pod for the Sagittarius from a vendor on Nejev III. It’s a civilian component, but one that can easily be adapted to the Sagittarius’s systems.”

He let go of a deep breath. “Well, that’s something, at least. Who’s taking it to the ship?”

“I have left urgent instructions with a trusted asset known to be on the planet,” she said. “I am still awaiting his confirmation that the message has been received.”

The evasiveness of T’Prynn’s reply rankled him. It was not the first time she had given him a vague answer to a simple question, but the fate of one of his ships hinged on every detail. Half-truths and artful omissions would not be enough to satisfy his curiosity. “Commander,” he said, “exactly who is this asset? Whom are we trusting to save our ship?”

After a brief but clearly conflicted hesitation, T’Prynn answered, “Cervantes Quinn, sir.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding.”

She lifted her left eyebrow. “Mr. Quinn is on Nejev III conducting legitimate private business. His ship has a cargo hold large enough to carry the fuel pod and is fast enough to beat the Zin’za to Jinoteur—provided Mr. Ganz lives up to his end of the bargain.” Driving home her point, she added in an arch tone, “He is also our only ally close enough to reach the Sagittarius in time.”

And I thought dealing with the crime lord was the low point of this mess. Reyes massaged the ache from his brow. “Doesn’t Quinn travel with Pennington, the reporter?”

She lowered her eyes in a gesture of concession. “Yes,” she said. Looking up again, she continued, “His involvement is unavoidable. Under the circumstances, I think we should consider it a necessary risk.”

Reyes couldn’t help it; he laughed. It was the mirthless chortle of a condemned man. “After all we’ve done to keep a lid on this mission,” he said, still chuckling with grim amusement, “we’re sending a reporter to Jinoteur.” He laughed harder and barely managed to add, “That’s just great.”

“Hysteria is not a productive response, sir.”

His hilarity tapered off gradually, and the dire nature of the situation pressed in on him once more. “We’re sending a drunk and a reporter to save the Sagittarius,” he said, and shook his head with disappointment. “Why not tell Nassir to set his ship’s autodestruct sequence and save your boys the trip?”

“Despite his outward appearance, Quinn is a resourceful field operative,” T’Prynn said. “As for the risk of allowing Pennington to have access to Jinoteur…managing his perceptions of what he sees on the planet’s surface is a task that can be dealt with after the Sagittarius has been rescued.”

Reyes sighed. “I hope you’re right about them.”

“Sir, I assure you, there is no cause for concern. Quinn may not be Starfleet, but he knows what he’s doing.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Pennington shouted. He hoped Quinn could hear him over the whine of plasma bolts flying overhead and the violent shuddering of the dilapidated hover-craft in which they’d fled Quinn’s latest deal-gone-wrong.

Quinn snapped, “I’m driving, newsboy. Shoot back or shut up!”

A dark cityscape blurred past them. Nejev III was a heavily populated planet, the homeworld of a peculiar animal-vegetable hybrid species known as the Brassicans. Pennington had meant to learn more about them than that superficial detail, but everyone had started shooting before he’d had the chance.

Wind stung his face as Quinn banked the open-topped hovercar through a diving turn. The vehicle’s overtaxed engine screamed almost as loudly as Pennington himself when Quinn wrenched the craft out of its descent. They sped under a series of covered walkways that bridged the gap between two massive skyscrapers. In the distance, over the whine of the engine and the roar of the frigid wind, Pennington heard sirens.

“More company,” he shouted over the din.

“I hear ’em, newsboy,” Quinn growled. The scruffy, white-haired scoundrel threw a nervous look over his shoulder at their pursuers and dodged another fusillade of plasma shots. “If you get the urge to do something useful, feel free to give it a try!”