Reyes took another sip of his coffee, decided it was too hot, and reclined slightly while he puffed gently across the top of his morning beverage. The mug was almost painfully warm in his hands. He considered paging Yeoman Greenfield and asking her to bring him more sugar.

His desktop intercom beeped. The indicator for Jetanien’s private comm channel lit up. Reyes blew another breath over his coffee and set the mug gently on his desk while the intercom beeped again. He leaned forward and pushed the switch to open the channel. “Reyes here.”

“Diego,” Jetanien said, sounding like someone who was pretending to be calm but failing miserably, “I thought you might like to know that she is already on her way up.”

Even though his friend couldn’t see him, Reyes nodded. “I figured as much.”

“We don’t have much time,” Jetanien said. “Once she gets there, you and I will not be permitted to speak further. I need to ask you some very direct questions, and I would appreciate the courtesy of succinct, truthful replies.”

Choosing not to waste time by mocking Jetanien for asking someone else to be succinct, Reyes replied simply, “Fire away.”

“Was this your doing?”

“Yes, it was.”

Agitated clicking noises tapped over the intercom channel. “Were you aware of the story’s contents before you released it for publication?”

Reyes swallowed another half-mouthful of coffee. “Yup.”

This time a low groan underscored the telltale scrape of Jetanien anxiously grinding his beak back and forth. “Was your action in any way coerced?”

“Nope.”

“Diego, this next query is vital,” said Jetanien. “Does the reporter know about the meta-genome, the Jinoteur carrier-wave signal, or the Shedai energy waveform?”

“No,” Reyes said. “All he knows is what he saw with his own eyes—and that’s all he wrote about.”

Another round of groaning and clicks issued from the intercom. “A most regrettable turn of events, Diego.” After a few seconds of heavy silence, the Chelon asked, “Is there anything that I can do for you before she arrives?”

“Yeah,” Reyes said. “Have someone bring me more sugar.”

Pennington relaxed in a comfortable chair at the outdoor café, on the plaza near the edge of Stars Landing. The crescent-shaped neighborhood of elegant civilian buildings gleamed under the pale morning glow of an ersatz sky inside Starbase 47’s terrestrial enclosure.

He was glad to be back at one of his favorite haunts on the station. Only a few other places on Vanguard made eggs Benedict, and none prepared it as well as it was made at Café Romano. Pennington gave the credit to Matt, the café’s chef-proprietor, for his ability to make consistently perfect Hollandaise sauce.

It was five minutes past 0800. Pennington was half finished with his breakfast and triple espresso; his latest story was less than ninety minutes old, and already it had provoked a storm of controversy throughout the interstellar newswire services. In one feature article, he had linked the obliteration of Gamma Tauri IV to inconsistencies in Starfleet’s account of the deaths of its personnel on Erilon, the destruction of the U.S.S. Bombay, and a previously unknown species that had controlled the suddenly missing Jinoteur star system.

Pundits at some news services had called his account of events on Jinoteur IV fiction, but so far none had been able to discredit his video evidence of the beings known as the Shedai, and no one could explain the system’s disappearance. Independent sources had already verified the complete annihilation of Gamma Tauri IV by photon-torpedo bombardment, and Starfleet had reluctantly confirmed its role in that tragedy.

His data device registered a steady flow of incoming text messages from former colleagues at FNS, as well as several from editors and peers at other news services. The missives were all but unanimous in their congratulations; several contained offers of long-term column-writing assignments or invitations to pitch feature stories. Checking the bottom of the alphabetical list, he even found a terse message of congratulation from Arlys Warfield, his former FNS editor, who had fired him after the debacle of the Bombay story.

He savored the taste of victory along with his espresso.

Get over yourself, he thought, popping the suddenly inflated bubble of his ego. You’re just a word monkey who likes to snoop. Don’t go believing your own press.

As he lifted a forkful of eggs Benedict, his data device beeped twice to signal an incoming transmission. He set his fork on the plate, picked up the device, and keyed the transceiver. “This is Tim Pennington.”

“Mr. Pennington,” replied the coarse, familiar voice of Commodore Reyes. “Think you can handle another scoop?”

A quick look around assured Pennington that no one was eavesdropping. “I’m willing to try.”

“Get to my office in the next five minutes. Reyes out.”

Pennington pulled his portable recorder from his pocket and ran for the turbolifts.

Flanked by a pair of serious-faced young male security guards, Captain Rana Desai waited outside Reyes’s office. Business as usual continued around her until his door slid open, with a hiss barely audible over the hubbub of Vanguard’s operations center.

Reyes stepped through the doorway and stood in front of her. All activity on the deck stopped, and the mood grew heavy with grim anticipation. Several meters away, a turbolift opened. Tim Pennington dashed out and stumbled to an awkward halt.

From the first day she had started assembling the chart in the JAG office, Desai had known this moment might come. But she had not expected it to arrive so soon, or for Reyes himself to have forced her hand. In a voice just for him, she asked, “Diego…you know I have no choice?”

His bearing was proud but forgiving. He answered her in a discreet tone. “You have to do your job, Rana.”

Around them, the onlookers slowly had pressed closer. Junior officers, Reyes’s yeoman, and particularly reporter Tim Pennington all were within easy eavesdropping distance.

Her heart swelled with regret. She blinked, cleared her eyes, and steadied her breathing as she forced all vestiges of emotion from her face. “Commodore Diego Reyes,” she declared in her clipped London accent, “by order of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General, you are hereby charged with willfully disobeying the direct order of a superior officer; deliberately releasing classified Starfleet intelligence to the public; and conspiring to disclose classified information.

“You have the right to legal counsel. You have the right to refuse to answer questions. Do you understand these rights?”

Reyes nodded once. “Yes, I do.”

“You are hereby relieved of your command, relieved of duty, and placed under arrest.” Desai looked to the guard on her left. “Take the commodore into custody, and escort him to the brig.”

“Aye, Captain,” said the guard, who stepped forward, looked at Reyes, and gestured with his arm toward a nearby turbolift. “Sir, if you please.” Reyes did as he was asked and walked calmly toward the turbolift, with the two guards following close behind him.

Anger and desperation clashed inside Desai’s thoughts as she watched the man she had come to love being taken away as a prisoner on what had been, until moments ago, his own station. Unable to continue watching his exit from the operations center, she turned and faced Commander Jon Cooper, who stood looking down from the supervisor’s deck. “Commander Cooper,” Desai said. “You’re in charge…. Good luck.”

Guessing she would likely be persona non grata in ops for a while, Desai left the stunned first officer to ponder his sudden promotion and stepped toward a different turbolift from the one into which Reyes was being led. Her only aim was to get back to her office and start preparing her case. Focusing on work felt heartless, but for her own good—and for Diego’s as well—she knew it was the right thing to do. She had a lot of gaps left to fill in, but there was no more time to pin photos on walls and collect anecdotes; it was time to get serious.