The engineers scurried away to try and repair their mistake before the next one made its entrance. Best-case scenario, Judge reasoned, they might have the computer back up in about two hours…which will leave me less than an hour to test the sensors and about a dozen other things. It took all his willpower and training to stop himself from hyperventilating.

“Mr. Judge,” a woman said from behind him.

Well past the point of civility, he snapped, “What?”

Then he turned to see the placid face of Captain Gannon.

“Something wrong, Mr. Judge?”

He brightened his face with a smile whose sincerity was undermined by the anxiety that pinned his eyebrows up around his hairline. “Wrong? What could be wrong?”

“Everything’s all right, then?”

“Couldn’t be righter.” She’s not buying it.

“Carry on, then.” She smiled and continued on her way aft.

“Thank you, Captain.” He kept the smile plastered on his face until he was sure that she was not coming back. Sagging with exhaustion and despair against his console, he muttered to himself, “We’re so right roundly pooched, it’s not even funny.”

Tim Pennington lurked in the shadows across from the gangway to the Enterprise.

He rechecked his notes while he waited. So far, he’d convinced five lower-decks personnel from the ship to talk with him, either off the record or on the condition of anonymity, about the ship’s recent jaunt to the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy. The mission had failed and resulted in nine deaths. But the true horror, his sources had said, was what transpired later, after the ship began its long journey home.

The first time he heard the story of Gary Mitchell’s transformation into a telepathic, telekinetic, homicidal übermensch, he had dismissed it as the tall tale of a crewman who had spent too many months on duty without R&R. But the next witness confirmed the report, as did the other three. Aside from expected variances on picayune details, their stories lined up with frightening specificity. If even half what they had told him was the truth, this had the makings of an incredible scoop.

He had multiple firsthand sources; he had been to the station’s operations office and received copies of the death certificates for Commander Gary Mitchell and Dr. Elizabeth Dehner; and he had filed a freedom-of-information petition with the station’s chief JAG officer, Captain Rana Desai, for copies of Captain Kirk’s official after-action reports regarding the deaths of Mitchell and Dehner. Rumor had it that Kirk had listed them as casualties of the failed attempt to breach the energy barrier, when in fact they had been killed under mysterious circumstances on Delta Vega.

From somewhere down the corridor, a turbolift door gasped open. Footfalls echoed brightly and grew louder, sharper, closer. Pennington peeked around the corner. At the first sight of a gold-colored sleeve adorned by two-and-a-half rings of braid, he emerged from hiding. Quickly interposing himself between Kirk and the gangway entrance, he held up his Federation News Service credentials. “Captain, a moment of your time?”

“No,” Kirk said. He tried to detour around Pennington, who sidestepped and blocked him again.

“How did Gary Mitchell die, Captain?”

Kirk’s expression hardened, and his posture became ramrod-stiff. Anger burned brightly in his eyes. Through a jaw tight with suppressed fury, he said, “In the line of duty.”

“Where did Mitchell die, Captain?”

“Are you implying something?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“And you want a simple answer,” Kirk said. Pennington nodded. Kirk added, “My answer is in my report. Excuse me.” The captain shouldered past Pennington and stepped onto the gangway.

“I’ve already requested copies of your report,” Pennington said. “I’ll be interested to see if they match up to the eyewitness accounts I’ve already compiled.”

Kirk stopped. For a moment, Pennington expected the young commanding officer to turn back and prolong the conversation. Instead, without turning around, Kirk resumed walking.

Maybe the witness statements were wrong; perhaps they were based on hearsay. It was possible that Kirk’s official report would contain no discrepancies at all. But if it did, his dismissive response was the same as saying “No comment.” In the court of public opinion, that would be seen as suspect at best.

Clicking off his handheld recorder, Pennington decided to head upstairs and ask Captain Desai to expedite his petition for Kirk’s report. If his hunch panned out, tomorrow’s FNS feed would be led by a report with his byline on it.

Montgomery Scott had just finished a very long double shift in engineering. The ship had been in dire need of new power cells for weeks; its warp coils had been overdue for recalibration. Multiple critical systems throughout the ship had required swap-outs, or upgrades, or tune-ups. To Scott’s elated satisfaction, Vanguard’s spacedock maintenance team had met all those needs in quick order; he hadn’t seen a starbase so large and well equipped since leaving the core systems of the Federation. The Enterprise still had more work ahead of it—most notably, a complete refit of its bridge—but those changes would have to wait until the ship returned home to Earth.

Taking advantage of a rare free moment in his schedule, he now was seeking out an item of personal desiderata that wasn’t likely to be available through official channels. A carefully worded question to his old chum Vondas Milonakis, along with a case of the Enterprise’s spare duotronic cables, had led Scott to the station’s lower docking wheel, where an Orion merchantman known as the Omari-Ekon was berthed.

At the end of a very long, conveyor-like gangway, he saw the closed airlock hatch to the Omari-Ekon flanked by a pair of hulking, green-skinned sentinels. Ever the quintessential Scotsman, he walked with unflagging confidence directly toward them.

From either side, each guard grabbed one of his arms, stopping him in midstep and lifting him off the floor. The one with the long, drooping mustache asked in a low hard voice, “Can we help you?”

“Aye, lad. I have a business proposition for your boss.”

The guard seemed unconvinced. “Do you even know who my boss is?” Scott winced at the sour stench of the man’s breath.

“I’m guessing he’s a man who can get things done.”

“My employer doesn’t like unannounced guests.”

“Announce me, then.” Scott’s biceps were starting to hurt from the two guards’ relentless grips.

“Are you carrying any weapons or communications devices?”

“I’m just here as a customer, lad.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

Scott was growing annoyed. “No, I’m not armed, and I don’t have a communicator.”

The guards let him down. Mustache, as Scott had decided to refer to the thug in charge, pointed at the wall. “Lean forward and put your hands there.”

“Is this really necessary?”

Icy stares and folded arms made clear that it was. He did as he was told. Mustache stood back and watched while the other guard frisked Scott. Several seconds later, having explored areas in which Scott was fairly certain no human could possibly have concealed anything larger than an ingrown hair, they allowed him to turn around. “Who shall we say is here?”

With all the patience and good cheer he could muster, he said, “My friends call me Scotty.”

“Rank, full name, and current assignment.”

So much for keeping things cordial, Scott concluded, his chipper grin turning to a frown. “Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, chief engineer, Starship Enterprise.”

“Hang on.” Mustache reached under his jacket and removed a small communicator-type device. He keyed in a sequence that Scott couldn’t see, and spoke quickly in a low whisper. All the while, he and his compatriot kept a close watch on Scott, who rocked on his heels, whistled softly, rolled his eyes from one ceiling pipe fixture to another, and otherwise made a deliberate nuisance of himself, simply because he could.