Reyes could only hope that whatever secrets the Taurus Reach held, they would prove to be worth the costs already incurred in discovering them. Such feelings of guilt and uncertainty had visited upon him no small number of sleepless nights, a situation made worse by the fact that there was no one on the station with whom he felt he could discuss his troubles.

Including my two closest friends,Reyes reminded himself as he looked across the table at Fisher, who sat back in his own chair, sipping his coffee and watching the random procession of Starfleet personnel moving about the officers’ mess.

“You’re awfully quiet this morning,” the doctor said after a moment, returning his attention to Reyes. “Even for you.” It was as much an observation as it was a joke, Reyes realized. The two old friends long ago had left behind the necessity to fill dead air with inane conversations, and the irregular breakfasts they shared were often as not eaten in almost total silence, with Fisher enjoying his customary fruit plate and coffee, while Reyes ate whatever the food slot produced as he pored over the contents of the data slate his yeoman delivered without fail each morning.

Reyes shook his head. “Sorry. Lost in thought.” Shrugging, he added, “Just trying to get geared up for another exciting day of reading supply requisitions, status reports, and whatever complaints have been levied against me by some irritated colony administrator.”

“You’re irritating colony administrators again?” Fisher asked. “What’d you do this time?” No sooner had he spoken the words than he raised a hand as if to wave them away, adopting a knowing smile as he did so. “No, wait. Scratch that. What did Rana sayyou did this time?”

Reyes replied, “Nothing yet, but the day’s just getting started.” He and Captain Rana Desai, the station’s representative from Starfleet’s Judge Advocate General Corps, already had faced off several times on matters involving several of the newly established Federation colonies in the Taurus Reach. Most of those cases had involved Starfleet’s attempts to secure needed resources from planets upon which colonies had been founded. To him, what appeared to be a straightforward situation—Starbase 47’s need to remain self-sufficient by acquiring raw materials from worlds in neighboring star systems—often was made more complicated by a variety of legal and public-relations issues he was both unqualified and unmotivated to understand.

For that, he relied upon Captain Desai, and his attitude often resulted in conversations with her on these and related topics that could be, for lack of a better word, animated.

“We’ve been butting heads a lot lately,” Reyes said after a moment. “A lot of it’s just the usual—not seeing eye-to-eye on this or that.” He shrugged. “She’s got a tough job to do, enforcing or even making law this far out in the middle of nowhere, but sometimes I think she forgets that she’s not the only one carrying a heavy pack.” Indeed, Starbase 47’s assignment to oversee the legitimate and burgeoning Federation presence in the Taurus Reach was becoming more demanding with each passing day, bringing with it an increasing number of situations and issues between Starfleet and civilian entities that required not only his own attention but also that of Captain Desai. That the pair sometimes exuded diametrically opposing viewpoints in some cases was—in Reyes’s opinion, at least—a galactic understatement.

Leaning back in his chair as he stroked his beard, Fisher offered one of his trademark knowing smiles. “I imagine the ethical and philosophical debates alone make for pretty stimulating dinner conversation.”

Despite himself, Reyes winced in reaction to his friend’s comment, quickly looking about the mess hall to see if anyone else might be overhearing their conversation. While he and Desai both took steps to keep their personal relationship as low-key as possible, the commodore was nagged by the constant feeling that everyone on the station—along with anyone sitting aboard one of the dozen or so ships currently making use of Vanguard’s docking facilities—knew exactly what was going on.

Reaching for his orange juice, he sipped from the glass before answering. “They don’t really aid in my digestion, though.”

“I have no doubt,” the doctor said, the words almost consumed by the chuckle that came with them.

Of course, Reyes was hampered in his dealings with Desai by the fact that he was required to keep from her the host of secrets regarding the station’s true mission, a situation made all the more complicated by the fact that the two of them were sleeping together.

One of these days I’ve got to quit half-stepping,he reminded himself, and just find some way to becompletely miserable.

Fueling that misery for sure was his need to monitor the aggressive movements of both the Klingons and the Tholians into the region. So far, their incursions had brought about several very tense encounters, including the destruction of the Bombayand the Starfleet outpost on Ravanar IV.

The incidents had ratcheted up the already strained relations between the Federation and the notoriously xenophobic Tholians, coming much closer to igniting a war between the two governments than was generally known. It had taken a supreme effort on the part of Ambassador Jetanien, the Federation’s diplomatic envoy currently assigned to Vanguard, to head off that conflict by conducting a series of heated negotiations with his Tholian counterparts. In the end, hostilities had been avoided, but how long would the fragile peace last?

One way or another,Reyes mused, we’re going to be ringside when that question gets answered.

Draining the last of his coffee, Fisher placed the cup back on the table before retrieving the cloth napkin from his lap and wiping his mouth. “Time to go to work,” he said as he rose to his feet, taking a moment to wipe a stray crumb from his blue uniform tunic. Reaching up, he ran a finger inside the shirt’s black collar. “Whoever designed this new uniform must have been an executioner in a previous life. At least the old collars didn’t feel like I was sticking my head through a hangman’s noose.”

Reyes smiled at the comment. In actuality, he found that he preferred the recently introduced uniform redesigns. The only thing he had found out of sorts was the proliferation of red tunics, worn by personnel who at one time might have sported gold. The new color scheme was taking a bit of getting used to.

“Maybe it’s just too small for you,” he offered as he gathered the data slate and stood up from his own chair. “Might want to check your own diet card, Doctor.”

Fisher chuckled. “Comments like that won’t get you invited to my retirement party, Commodore.”

“At this rate, I’ll retire before you do,” Reyes said as they crossed the officers’ mess toward the door. “How long are you going to milk that, anyway?”

Shrugging and with perfect deadpan delivery, Fisher replied, “As long as it irritates you, why rush it?”

The station’s CMO had been contemplating retirement for a while now, Reyes knew. After more than five decades, Fisher had seen his share of what life in Starfleet had to offer. To say that he had grown tired of that life would be an egregious understatement, and Reyes had to wonder why he had accepted assignment to Vanguard in the first place.

Whatever the reason, I’m sure as hell glad he’s here.

The door leading from the mess hall opened several paces before Reyes and Fisher should have been in range of its proximity sensors, and through it stepped Captain Rana Desai. As usual, she presented an immaculate appearance in her Starfleet uniform, tailored with utmost precision to her athletic yet still quite feminine physique. Her black hair was cut in a short style that kept it free of her face, and once again Reyes found himself drawn to her high, smooth cheekbones, delicate nose, and narrow chin, made all the more attractive by her choosing not to apply cosmetics.