Stepping away from the table, Kirk thumbed the transmitter switch on a nearby wall panel. “On my way. Kirk out.” He closed the channel and looked back at Piper. “Give my best to Alden.”
Piper’s reply of “Aye, Captain” trailed Kirk as he exited the galley, grateful for something new to think about.
Spock rose from the center seat as Captain Kirk emerged from the turbolift. “Report,” the captain said, making a beeline for his chair. He seemed primed to face a crisis that did not exist.
“Receiving an audio-only hail from a Federation outpost, Captain,” Spock said, moving to the right of the captain’s seat.
Rather than sit, Kirk stood to the left of his chair while he assessed the situation. “Which one?”
“Starbase 47,” Spock said, “a Watchtower-class space station, also known as Vanguard.”
“Vanguard?” Kirk narrowed his eyes while he pondered that information. Spock had yet to determine what benefit the captain accrued to his concentration by reducing his visual acuity. “I thought that base was years away from being operational.”
“Apparently not.” Spock added, “They await our reply.”
The captain glanced at Spock but said nothing. In one fluid motion he pivoted into his chair and swiveled it toward the communications officer. “Lieutenant Uhura, patch them in.”
“Aye, sir,” Uhura said. The young woman deftly routed the signal to the bridge’s main speakers. “Channel open.”
“Starbase 47, this is Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Do you read me?”
“We read you, Enterprise,” a youthful-sounding female voice said. “Go ahead.”
“We require extensive repairs to a number of key systems. Are you in a position to assist us with maintenance?”
“Affirmative, Captain. Should we clear a berth for you?”
The captain frowned before he answered. “Please.”
“Consider it done. What’s your ETA?”
Kirk looked to Spock, who answered in a clear baritone, “Six days, three hours, and twenty-four minutes.”
“Acknowledged,” the female voice said. “Vanguard out.”
The channel clicked off. Kirk leaned on his elbow and stared hard at the slow drift of starlight across the main viewer. Under his breath he said to Spock, “A fully operational starbase, all the way out here. Must be our lucky day.”
Spock sensed the suspicion radiating from his commanding officer. “You seem less than encouraged by the news, Captain.”
“How long does it take to build a Watchtower-class station, Spock?”
From memory, Spock said, “On average, four years, nine months—”
“And how long ago was the Vanguard project initiated?”
That required a few moments of thought. “Two years, seven months, and ten days.”
The first officer watched the slow curling of Kirk’s hand into a fist. “Somebody was in a big hurry to get this station built. With all the saber-rattling the Klingons have been doing, why put a major base this far from the Federation?”
Spock considered the most likely possibilities. “Support for a colonization effort?”
The captain looked unconvinced. “Maybe.”
“In the absence of another rationale, it would be the most logical explanation.”
“Dig up everything in the databanks on Vanguard,” Kirk said. “I want a full briefing before we make port.”
2
The sultry jungle night buzzed with the sawing song of nocturnal insects. With a casual sweep of his hand, Cervantes Quinn pulled a long twist of his tangled, bone-white hair from his eyes and tucked it behind his ear. An insidious humidity amplified the post-sundown radiant heat and left Quinn’s sweat-sodden clothing clinging like a skin graft with pockets to his thick-middled, past-its-prime body.
He straightened from his crouch and reached into his left pants pocket. Nestled deep inside, under the lock-picking kit, past his last snack stick of meat-flavored synthetic something-or-other, was his flask. As quietly as he was able, he pulled it free, unscrewed the cap, and downed a swig of nameless green liquor. It tasted horrible. He kept it in his flask only because his most frequent employer, an Orion merchant-prince named Ganz, had an irregular habit of demanding that other people pour him impromptu drinks—and then shooting anyone who poured something he didn’t like. Ganz liked the green stuff.
Awful as it was, it still constituted a minor improvement over the stale aftertaste of the pseudo-beef snack stick Quinn had devoured an hour ago. He took another swig, then tucked the half-empty flask back into the bottom of his pocket. This stakeout was taking longer than he had expected. He had imagined himself long gone by now, the pilfered device securely hidden behind the false wall panel in the cargo bay of his private freighter, the Rocinante. Instead, he swatted blindly at the high-pitched mosquitoes that he could hear dive-bombing his head but couldn’t see unless they passed between him and the lights of the camp below.
From his vantage point deep in the undergrowth, beyond the tree line that marked the perimeter of the mining camp, he saw the prospectors moving from one semipermanent building to another. Most were winding down for the night, settling into their bunks, making final trips to the latrine. Vexing him were the two who continued to sit inside their Spartan mess hall, playing the most uninspired game of cards Quinn had ever seen.
He was certain he could beat them handily in just about any game, from Texas Hold’em to Denobulan Wild-card. For a moment, he allowed himself to consider scrapping his mission of covert confiscation in favor of card-sharking the mining team. Quinn’s common sense awoke from its slumber and reminded him not only that it would be wrong to cheat honest working folks but that, if he returned to Vanguard without the sensor screen he’d been sent to steal, Ganz would garnish his next buffet with Quinn’s viscera.
Patience was not one of Quinn’s stronger virtues, but his impulses were usually kept in check by his healthy fear of death, injury, and incarceration. Long after he had become convinced that his knees had fused into position and would never allow him to straighten again, the last two miners restacked their cards, snapped an elastic band around them, and left them on the table as they got up. They turned out the mess-hall lamp and stepped out the door into the murky spills of weak orange light from lamps strung on drooping wires between their shacks. Despite the multilayered soundscape of the jungle that surrounded Quinn, he heard their every squishing step as they trudged across the muddy dirt road and passed out of sight on the far side of the barracks. Their shadows, long and blurred, fell across another building. Deep, repetitive clomping sounds echoed around the camp as the miners kicked the wet filth from their boots. Finally they entered their barracks, and the door slam-rattled shut behind them.
Batting away lush fronds and dangling loops of thorny vines, Quinn skulked forward toward the camp. An arthritic aching in his knees threatened to slow him down, but he ignored it, lured forward by the promise of an easy night’s work. He paused at the edge of the tree line. There was no sign of automated security devices—no cameras, motion detectors, or sentry guns. Not that he had expected any, necessarily, but the presence of the sensor screen in a mining camp had aroused his suspicion. It wasn’t the kind of equipment normally found in civilian hands. Ganz hadn’t said how he had come to learn of its presence here on Ravanar IV, and Quinn wasn’t foolish enough to ask.
He unholstered his stun pistol. The street was empty. In the distance, something shrieked three times in quick succession and something else roared in reply. With his hand resting lightly on the grip of his sidearm, he emerged from the trees and moved in a quick, low jog across the street. The mud under his boots made every step an adventure; it slipped like congealed hydraulic lubricant and stank like the open sewers of Korinar. Several quick steps brought him back into the cover of shadow. He leaned sideways and cast a furtive glance around the corner into the dark, narrow stretch between the barracks and the equipment shed. It was empty, and he stole into it, his feet seeking out the driest—and therefore quietest—patches of ground from stride to stride.