The young anthropology-and-archaeology expert glared for a moment, then collected himself. “That depends, I guess, on your definition of ‘useful,’ sir.”

Reyes extended his arms outward as if to embrace the possibilities in his imagination. “What does it do? Who created it? Does it have anything to do with the Taurus Key?”

“It’s a bit early to say for sure,” Xiong said. “We’d only just started our tests when you summoned me back here.”

Reyes winced like a man developing a headache. “Mr. Xiong, please don’t tell me I just sent you on a forty-light-year field trip so you could come back here and tell me your results were inconclusive.”

“I wouldn’t call them ‘inconclusive,’ sir.”

“What would you call them, then?”

Xiong shrugged. “Preliminary.”

“I see,” Reyes said. He rapped his knuckles on the desktop. “Let’s recap, shall we? What’s it made of? ‘Unknown.’ Is it indigenous? ‘Unknown.’ Does it pose a risk to our research team or this starbase? ‘Unknown.’ Did I leave anything out?”

Properly chastised, the young lieutenant took a deep breath, then said, “No, sir. That about covers it.”

“There was one other development of note,” T’Prynn said, making her first comment of the meeting. “After your departure, the research team succeeded in restoring power to one of its isolated components. They were still compiling data when their security was breached, forcing them to suspend operations.”

“They activated it?” Xiong was half out of his seat. “When? How? What did it do?”

T’Prynn fixed Xiong with her icy Vulcan stare, which all but bade the high-strung young scientist to be calm. “Only one component was activated, Lieutenant. No effect was immediately apparent.” She looked back at Reyes and added, “The more pressing concern is the security breach.”

Reyes nodded. “And how much intel do we have on that?”

“Very little,” she said. “Sabotage was our initial theory, but witness accounts suggest it was more likely a botched robbery.”

Jetanien interjected, “Are we certain it wasn’t espionage?”

“Spies observe, Mr. Ambassador,” T’Prynn said. “They rarely reveal themselves without good cause. Nothing about this intruder’s actions leads me to think he was a professional. In fact, I consider the opposite to be true.”

The commodore tapped an index finger against his temple. “Suspects?”

“Nothing actionable,” she said. “I will keep you apprised of any new information.”

“See that you do.” Reyes looked up at Jetanien. “Anything to add, Mr. Ambassador?”

“Only that we need to remain mindful of—”

He was interrupted by a sharp buzz from the commodore’s desktop intercom.

Reyes thumbed open the channel. “What?”

The electronically filtered voice of his administrative aide replied, “Yeoman Greenfield, sir. Captain Kirk of the Enterprise is here and wishes to speak with you.”

“Give me a moment to wrap this up, then send him in.”

“Aye, sir,” Greenfield said, and the intercom clicked off.

Reyes stood up, an action that everyone present had already learned was the commodore’s way of signaling that a meeting was over. “My apologies, Mr. Ambassador.” To Xiong and T’Prynn he added, “Dismissed.”

It’s just as well he cut me off, Jetanien decided as he led T’Prynn and Xiong out of the office and down the stairs into the station’s busy operations center. I was ad-libbing, anyway.

Kirk’s brief trip from the Enterprise to the operations center of Starbase 47 had only reinforced his perception of the station’s enormity. The high-ceilinged corridor outside the gangway ramp had been impressive by itself. Glimpses of the terrestrial enclosure that occupied the upper half of the station’s primary hull, above the spacedock, had brought a smile to Kirk’s face. The sense of being in the midst of a buzzing hive of carefully coordinated activity was both overwhelming and exhilarating. Of course, none of those things had been the first detail to catch the captain’s eye; that honor belonged to the miniskirts. Someone at Starfleet Command likes me, he had mused, unable to suppress his appreciative, smirking leer.

He stepped out of the turbolift into the operations center. Its standard duty-shift complement was more than twice as large as his average bridge crew. In the center of it all, standing on a raised platform, watching over the grand circus of quickly changing details, starship traffic, and internal business, was a man not much older than himself. The officer in charge was a pleasant-looking man with a thatch of dark hair; he managed his business with quiet courtesy. Kirk walked past another pair of miniskirted female officers, dodged between two adjacent banks of computers and sensor displays, and approached the platform all but unnoticed. He knocked on the railing post. “Excuse me?”

The officer above him did a small double take, then nodded and smiled. “Hello.”

“I’m Captain James T. Kirk, Starship Enterprise.”

“Executive officer Jon Cooper,” the man on the platform said. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

“I’m looking for Commodore Reyes.”

Cooper pointed to a pair of double doors on the opposite side of the room from the turbolift. “His office is over there, sir.”

“Thank you.” Kirk turned and stepped toward the office.

Cooper called after him. “He’s in a meeting, sir.”

Kirk turned slowly back toward Cooper. “A meeting.”

“Yes, sir. You can check his schedule with his yeoman.”

“His yeoman.”

Before Kirk could point out that he had no idea which one of the junior officers in this room was the commodore’s yeoman, Cooper waved over a chipper young woman with bright, doe-like eyes and an enormous data slate cradled in one arm.

“Toby,” Cooper said, “this is Captain James Kirk, of the Enterprise. Could you check on the status of the commodore’s meeting for him?”

“Of course, sir,” she said. She moved to a nearby console, entered her security code, and opened an internal comm channel. Several seconds later, a distinctly annoyed growl of a voice replied over the speaker, “What?”

“Yeoman Greenfield, sir. Captain Kirk of the Enterprise is here and wishes to speak with you.”

“Give me a moment to wrap this up, then send him in.”

“Aye, sir,” Greenfield said, then clicked off the intercom. She turned to face Kirk. “He—”

“I heard him, Yeoman.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door to Reyes’s office opened. An imposing Chelon in expensive clothing was the first to exit, followed by a young Asian man…and one of the most strikingly beautiful Vulcan women Jim Kirk had ever seen. The tips of her pointed ears barely poked out from beneath her long, straight black hair. She met his stare and returned it, without blinking, as she moved gracefully past him, her stride so fluid that she seemed almost to glide. Her statuesque physique and dark intensity captivated Kirk. She could probably snap me like a twig, he realized. He was turned half around, still watching her while she watched him back, when Greenfield spoke and broke the spell.

“The commodore will see you now, Captain.”

Snapping back into the moment, he reminded himself why he had come here. He nodded to Greenfield, said “Thank you,” and walked quickly into Reyes’s office. The chirps and chatter of the operations center fell away as the door closed behind him.

Kirk had half-expected to find a lavish office, appointed with extravagances and defined by a huge window on the stars. Instead, he found himself in a moderately sized and extremely Spartan workspace that had no windows—most likely because the operations center was shielded by several layers of reinforced duranium armor plating. The commodore’s desk was made of the same blue-gray duranium composite as the walls. There were exactly three chairs (two without armrests in front of the desk, and the commodore’s more ergonomic seat behind it), and the room’s lone couch looked decidedly unwelcoming.