Much like Commodore Reyes himself.

“Captain,” he said, his brow lined with the deep creases of a man who worried for a living. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Kirk said.

“Do tell.” Reyes motioned for Kirk to sit.

The captain settled onto one of the chairs. It was even less comfortable than it looked. He fought the urge to fidget. “When we shipped out last year, I never would have expected to return to a starbase this far from home. It’s a welcome surprise…but still a surprise.”

Reyes shrugged. “If you’d rather skip your repairs, we can just pretend you were never here.”

Kirk waved away the suggestion. “No, no—we’re overdue. It’s a good thing we found you when we did.” Belatedly, he realized that Reyes’s remark had shifted him off his interrogative track. “But that got me to thinking about the old adage: When something seems too good to be true—”

“There was also one about gift horses,” Reyes said. “And an old story about a frozen bird that fell in a warm cow pie. But much as I’d love to sit here and trade proverbs with you, Captain, I really don’t have the time.”

“Permission to speak candidly, sir?”

“Why not? It’s bound to happen eventually.”

“It seems fairly obvious to me that this station was fast-tracked into service.”

“What gave it away? The twenty-four hundred active-duty personnel, or the fact that the spacedock doors open?”

Reining in his simmering temper, Kirk reminded himself that sarcasm was a privilege that belonged only to the highest-ranking officer in any room. “Perhaps a more pertinent question, Commodore, would be, Why was Vanguard fast-tracked?”

Heaving a weary sigh, Reyes leaned forward onto his desk. “The same reason any Starfleet project gets the wind at its back. Because someone on the council decided it was important.” He picked up a remote from his desk, pointed it at a round-cornered viewscreen on the wall, and clicked the power button. The monitor flickered to life, showing a local astropolitical map. “The red chevron indicates our position. Tell me, Captain—what details on this map jump out at you?”

Either it was a trick question, Kirk knew, or he was being goaded into helping the commodore make his argument. “The borders of the Klingon Empire and the Tholian Assembly.”

“So far, so good.” Reyes clicked more details into focus. “I presume the green lines and arrows are familiar to you?”

Setting his poker face to “archly bemused,” Kirk eyed the map again and said, “Colony ship flight plans.”

Click. “And the blue lines and arrows?”

“Trade routes and shipping lanes.” Kirk’s fist began to clench near his belt. I should have brought my phaser.

“And what does all that suggest to you, Captain?”

Have to give him credit, Kirk told himself. Refuse to give him the obvious answer, and I come off as either an idiot or an insubordinate jerk. Parrot the answer he wants, and I indict my entire line of inquiry as pointless…. He’s good.

“A colonization effort,” Kirk said, swallowing his pride.

“Precisely,” Reyes said. “More than twenty colonies and half a dozen mining operations have come to the Taurus Reach in the last sixteen months—half of them since this station opened. Our job? Protect them as best we can with what few resources we’re given. In other words, standard operating procedure.”

“I can’t imagine the Klingons or the Tholians have been happy about our move into this region. And I’m sure a starbase on their shared doorstep pleases them even less.”

“True,” Reyes said. “I’d be lying if I said we didn’t ruffle a lot of feathers by building this station. But the alternative would have been much worse.”

This time, Kirk really didn’t follow. “What alternative?”

“Letting the Klingons expand their reach until they hit the Tholian border. We’d be front row to a war that could last decades; whichever side won, we’d be fenced in, stuck navigating hostile territory in order to explore the galactic rim…. We need to keep our options open, for now and for the future.”

“With all respect, Commodore, space is three-dimensional, and it’s big. Even if the Klingons make a push for the Tholian border, we’d hardly be ‘landlocked’—we’d still have options.”

“You’re talking about taking the long way around,” Reyes said. “Away from the galactic plane.” He lifted the remote and turned off the screen. “No thank you, Captain. I read the report on your mission to the energy barrier. I’ll pass.”

Kirk shook his head. “If you think colonizing this region will stop the Klingons from trying to conquer it, you don’t know the Klingons.”

Reyes’s voice became quiet and intense. “The hell I don’t. I was commanding a starship while you were still at the Academy.” Regaining his composure, he continued, “You’re right about one thing, though. The Klingons will try to take the Taurus Reach. My job is to make sure they don’t succeed.”

“What about the Tholians? If this turns into a battle on two fronts—”

“It won’t,” Reyes said. “The Tholians have never shown any interest in this region. They expanded from Tholia in every direction except this one. As long as we steer clear of their border, I don’t expect any trouble from them.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“We’ll be sitting on a powder keg.”

Kirk frowned. “On that, we agree.”

Reyes leaned slowly back in his chair, eyeing Kirk with darkening suspicion. “You think I’m just some paper-pusher, don’t you, Kirk?”

“No, sir, of course—”

“Yes, you do,” Reyes said, cutting Kirk off. “You think I sit here, safe on a starbase, playing games with people’s lives.” No longer young or foolish enough to be goaded into embarrassing himself, Kirk stayed quiet. The commodore leaned aggressively forward as he continued, “I take my command just as seriously as you take yours, Kirk. I deal in life and death, war and peace, and everything in between, every day. Bottom line: I make it my business to know my business. So, when you walk into my office and presume to give me the third degree with questions I answered to the admiralty months ago, I get the impression you think I’m just some rubber stamp with heavy braid on his cuff.”

Choosing his words and his tone with care, Kirk said, “If I offended you, Commodore, please accept my apology. No slight was intended, I assure you.”

Reyes gave a small nod of acknowledgment. “Enough said.” Turning his chair, he rested one arm on his desktop and glanced sidelong at Kirk. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes, sir,” Kirk said, and smirked wryly. “Keep the matches away from the powder keg.”

7

Lieutenant Commander Kevin Judge had his hands full. With one word from Captain Gannon, the Bombay’s shore leave had been canceled, and repairs that he and his engineering teams had expected to have four days to finish now were being shoehorned into twelve frantic hours.

The gangly chief engineer stalked through main engineering like a hunting tiger, seeking out whatever was going wrong. He found it, in the form of a well-meaning young ensign who was disassembling the controls for the impulse reactor’s primary heat exchanger. “Anderson,” Judge said loudly, then coughed. His voice was hoarse from nonstop barking of orders. The rasp of his overtaxed larynx, when added to his already clipped Liverpool accent, made him sound like he had a horrendous cold. He recovered his breath and continued, “Are you mad? Didn’t I say to leave the impulse systems until after we leave spacedock?” The ensign rolled her eyes and looked glumly at her half-dismantled pile of hardware. “Put it back together,” Judge said.

He dragged himself over to the master engineering console. Planting one hand on its edge, he awkwardly propped himself up while he studied the tall board’s blinking status displays. All bollixed up, as usual, he grumped, shaking his head. He reached across and thumbed the intercom to the phaser control room. “Castellano, why aren’t the phasers back online yet?”