He put away the handheld device and hefted his duffel over his shoulder. A sharp twinge flared in his shoulder socket as he carried the heavy bag to the incinerator chute. Setting it down, he harbored second thoughts. Maybe I could rent my own storage unit. Just keep all this stuff tucked away…. Then he imagined his own worst-case scenario, a greatly exaggerated report of his demise that would lead to his duffel, full of romantic keepsakes of his dead mistress, being delivered to his wife Lora.

Pennington opened the incinerator chute hatch, picked up the duffel, and pushed it into the dark, vertical channel, which swallowed the bag with ease. He counted off the seconds until he heard the distant metallic echo of an impact, and he said a silent farewell to his mementos of Oriana.

Then he closed the hatch and vowed to learn the whole truth about how she died, and who was to blame.

11

“Would either of you care to explain,” Jetanien bellowed, “how I can view this as anything other than an unmitigated disaster?”

Having decided that if he wasn’t sleeping tonight then neither would anyone else, Reyes had summoned Jetanien and T’Prynn to his office after returning from his meeting with Desai. He couldn’t recall ever having seen the ambassador in such supremely high dudgeon. “Disaster’s a strong word,” Reyes said. “This is more of a complication.”

“Excellent,” Jetanien said. “How comforting. Nothing fixes a major security breach like an empty bromide.”

“The commodore is correct,” T’Prynn said. It annoyed Reyes that even in the middle of the night she still looked crisp, fresh, and alert. “Captain Desai’s inquiry, though inconvenient, is hardly an insurmountable difficulty.”

Reyes regarded both T’Prynn and Jetanien with the same creased expression of incomprehension. “Why do you two always talk like you’re paid by the word?” Neither one reacted visibly to his comment. He continued, “Yes, Ambassador, this is a bad situation. But, as the lady said, we can keep a lid on it.”

“It is the nature of legal inquiries to expand,” Jetanien said. “The JAG office is not known for conducting superficial investigations. If its questions about the Bombay’s mission or the Ravanar colony’s true purpose become too pointed—”

“Then we’ll know it’s time for damage control,” Reyes said.

“After they have deposed witnesses and served subpoenas,” T’Prynn said, “it might be too late to contain their findings.”

“So what are we talking about? Running interference?”

“No, sir,” T’Prynn said. “It is too early to resort to counterintelligence tactics. Doing so at this stage might, in fact, create more threads of evidence than it would conceal.”

“Point taken. But Captain Desai—” The door signal buzzed once, halting the conversation. Reyes pressed the door-lock release switch on his desk. His auburn-haired gamma-shift yeoman, Midshipman Cadet Suzie Finneran, entered carrying a tray on which rested three beverages: a large mug of sweet coffee, for Reyes; a steaming cup of tea, for T’Prynn; and a misshapen bowl that contained a cloudy broth, which even from across the room stank like a bucket of clams Reyes had once forgotten in the afternoon sun, as a child vacationing on Earth with his parents for the first time. Finneran set the tray on Reyes’s desk. The commodore suppressed his urge to dry-heave.

As the yeoman left the office, the stink of Jetanien’s soup proved too much for Reyes, who pushed his own coffee aside. He had thought he would need it to stay awake as the wee hours crept inexorably toward the start of alpha shift, but Jetanien’s pungent breakfast brew had more kick than smelling salts.

When the door closed, Reyes picked up where he had left off. “Captain Desai could put us in a bind if she presses too hard. Unfortunately, we can’t ask her to drop it.”

“Agreed,” T’Prynn said. “That, too, would draw suspicion.”

“We also have to send out a ship to investigate, look for survivors, and survey what’s left of the colony,” Reyes said. “Standard procedure is to send the closest one. Right now, with the Endeavour and the Sagittarius still on assignment, that’s the Enterprise, but I’d rather not bring them into this.”

Jetanien lifted his bowl to his beak-shaped jaw, tucked part of it inside his mouth, and savored a loud, guttural slurp. Reyes waited patiently for the diplomat to swallow his gulp. Lowering the bowl from his face, Jetanien looked back at Reyes, then seemed irked to notice T’Prynn watching him, too. “Begging a thousand pardons if I offended your delicate sensibilities.”

“I merely was riveted by my anticipation of your next remark,” T’Prynn said.

Reyes added, “I’m just impressed you didn’t get any on you.”

Depositing his bowl brusquely on Reyes’s desk, Jetanien seemed to scowl, though not a single feature of his leathery dark green hide shifted in the slightest. Great, Reyes grumped to himself. Just where I wanted that bowl full of sewage—closer to me.

The ambassador straightened to his full, imposing height. “If the concern is that Captain Desai might unwittingly expose our operation, why not bring her into our inner circle? Surely if she understood the scope of—”

Reyes cut him off. “Because she doesn’t have the security clearance,” he said. “The only reason Xiong’s cleared for this project is because we need him.”

Jetanien reached up and clutched the edges of his cassock. “How are we to proceed?” Reyes recognized the clutching gesture as one of Jetanien’s more subtle signs of frustration. If and when he learned to recognize a few more of the Chelon’s “tells,” he planned to invite Jetanien to join him, Fisher, and Cannella for poker some night.

“Depends how vulnerable we are,” Reyes said. “What’ll Desai find if she digs?”

“Very little,” T’Prynn said. “The transmissions between here and the outpost were all well-encrypted. The Bombay’s cargo manifests and our bills of lading show no mention of classified technology. And the Bombay’s crew had no knowledge of our true mission, and therefore could not have revealed it.”

“Vulnerability in the legal sense depends on culpability, Commodore,” Jetanien said. “Unless you acted with negligence or malice aforethought, there is no reason to suspect that Captain Desai will have any motive to pursue her inquiry beyond determining the exact cause of the Bombay’s destruction.”

“That might make its own problems,” Reyes said.

“If you are referring to the potential political repercussions,” Jetanien said, “leave that to me and my associates. If need be, I can take steps to seal her inquiry’s findings for national-security reasons, provided she doesn’t uncover anything criminally actionable.”

“In other words, as long as I don’t give her a reason to court-martial me, you think we can keep this quiet.”

“Possibly,” Jetanien said. “For now, we should follow established protocols. Send the Enterprise.”

Reyes turned toward T’Prynn. “You’d concur?”

“It seems the most prudent choice for now, sir.”

“All right, then,” he said. “We’ll have Enterprise ferry Xiong to the colony while we ride this one out. Meeting adjourned.” His two visitors turned to leave. He tried to take a calming breath and was met by a sulfuric odor. “Your Excellency,” he said. Jetanien turned back toward Reyes, who reluctantly picked up the ambassador’s clammy, amoeba-shaped bowl of swampwater stew. “Take this with you…. Please.”

12

Less than an hour after leaving Reyes’s office, Jetanien watched Federation Special Envoy Akeylah Karumé guzzle her fourth cup of coffee in two minutes. She was bolstering her courage and sharpening her focus before meeting with the Klingon delegation. The tall, brightly attired human woman preferred the caffeinated beverage be as rich and dark as her own ebony skin tone, and she had sharply refused a yeoman’s offer of sugar with the ironically bitter retort, “No, thanks, I’m sweet enough.”