“A pleasure,” Pennington said, then waved down the bartender. “Coffee, please.” Noticing the stink-eye Quinn was aiming at him, Pennington amended his order. “Make it Irish.”

“You’re not quite uptight enough to be Starfleet,” Quinn said, studying him. “But you’re a bit too scrubbed to be one of Ganz’s people.”

“Right on the first count,” Pennington said. “Though I don’t know anyone named Ganz, so you’ve got me there.”

Quinn pounded back what was left of the drink he’d been nursing as the bartender put down the new, free drink from Pennington. Euphoric, soothing warmth spread through his body, starting with every place directly touched by his drink. He sucked in air through numb gums and a dry throat, then mumbled through booze-infused breath, “This guy’s either an idiot or the worst liar alive.”

Pennington leaned closer, looking aggrieved. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, hell—did I just talk out loud again? I gotta stop doing that.” The room’s hard edges were beginning to soften, so Quinn took a healthy sip of his new drink.

“Look, I don’t know who you think I am—” Pennington paused as the bartender set down his Irish coffee. “But I assure you, I’m not looking to rip you off or jam you up.” He picked up the cup and took a sip. The young man’s face obviously wanted to pucker into a knot, but he fought it admirably. Quinn had to respect the effort.

“What’s your game, then? You ain’t buying me drinks for my personality. Sharp-looking guy like you must be able to rent better friends than me.”

“I won’t lie to you,” Pennington said, then he leaned forward to speak in a more confidential tone. “I’m not really looking to be best buds. Truth be told, I think it’s better if most people don’t figure on us knowing each other at all.”

Quinn glanced down and saw the wedding ring on the guy’s left hand, and figured this was all getting a bit too weird. “Hey, pal, I don’t mess with married people, on either side, get me? I mean, I’m flattered, really—”

“No no no,” Pennington cut in, waving his hands in small frantic circles. “I’m not…I mean I don’t—that’s not what I’m talking about.” Collecting himself, he continued, “I’m just looking for information. Confidential information.”

Numerous possibilities immediately suggested themselves to Quinn. Pennington might be a corporate scout, looking to cut in on Ganz’s business. That would give Quinn another buyer, enabling him to negotiate for better prices. Or the young man might be some kind of spy, looking for access or a set of eyes. Either way, he smells like money. “What kind of information?”

“Comings and goings,” Pennington said with a small shrug. “Unusual details. In particular, any solid leads on things like the loss of the Bombay.”

Suddenly, the smell that was coming off Pennington wasn’t money but something far less appealing. “How much can you pay?”

“Not much,” Pennington said. “This is more about sticking up for the truth.”

“Truth can be expensive.”

“Look, I’m only a journalist for FNS, but maybe we can—”

“A reporter?” Quinn plastered a dopey grin on his face and slapped his left hand down on Pennington’s shoulder. “Hell, son, why didn’t you just say so up front? You didn’t need to work this hard.”

Pennington sighed with relief. “I’m glad to hear—”

Quinn’s right uppercut caught the squeaky-clean reporter solidly under his square jaw and lifted his lean, well-toned body a few inches off his barstool. The young man staggered two steps backward, and Quinn lunged forward and finished him with a sloppy but adrenaline-fueled right cross to the side of the head. Pennington collapsed on the floor in a well-dressed and still mostly symmetrical heap.

Weaving like tall grass in a shifting wind, Quinn picked up his drink from the bar, took one step toward the door, and paused above the supine, barely conscious Pennington. “Thanks for the drink…. I still don’t trust you.”

Lurching out the door, Quinn knew he was probably going to feel horribly guilty about this when sobriety returned to him. With that in mind, he set his sights on finding another bar.

Pennington sat on a biobed in the infirmary and massaged his aching jaw, grateful that the damage to his teeth had been limited to a small chip in the enamel of a molar and a corner broken off one of his upper front incisors—both easily fixed. He hadn’t really expected Quinn to buddy up to him, or to tell him much of value. But the man had been stinking drunk, and there had been a slim chance that the motto in vino veritas might once again have proved its wisdom. The fact that it didn’t work doesn’t make it a bad plan, Pennington consoled himself.

He looked up from his reflection in the chair’s swiveling mirror and said to Dr. Thelex, the chief of dentistry, “Still hurts. What can you give me for this?”

“Advice,” the gruff Andorian said, his pale eyes peeking over his narrow, octagonal-frame glasses. “Stay out of bar fights.”

“Anything stronger?”

Dr. Thelex rotated the mirror aside. “You’re a pathetic weakling who should stay out of bar fights.”

Great, a dentist with a sense of humor. Pennington’s headache pounded mercilessly as he pushed himself out of the chair and back on to his feet. “Thanks, Doc.”

“All part of the service.”

Back to it, then. Pennington walked quickly out of the dentist’s office. He was eager to be out of the medical center entirely. Hospitals were too visceral for Pennington. Blood and disease, suffering and tragedy…the only places closer to these gruesome facts of mortality were battlefields, and he made a point of avoiding those, as well. Some FNS reporters spent their entire careers as war correspondents, warping from one strife-riven world to another, seeking to put a rational voice on the most irrational, primal form of waste known in the universe. Covering politics wasn’t much better, in Pennington’s opinion, but he would prefer a war of words over a war of attrition any day. History, however, was replete with evidence that the one almost inevitably led to the other, if you waited long enough.

He slipped out the door into the corridor and hurried toward the turbolift. Just after he pressed the call button, a hand slapped down on his shoulder. More than a flinch, he recoiled with frightened surprise.

Behind him, Xiong quickly pulled back his hand and raised both arms to show he meant no harm. Pennington released a lungful of breath that had been trapped by his panic. “Sorry,” Xiong said. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

“It’s okay, Ming. I got decked an hour ago, and I’m a little jumpy.”

Xiong lowered his hands. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, mate, I’m fine. Doc Thelex patched me up, right as rain.” The turbolift door opened, revealing an empty car. Pennington stepped inside, and Xiong followed him. “What’s got you down here, then?” The doors slid closed. Pennington grabbed the throttle and gave it a twist. “Park level.”

Light flashed sideways through narrow vertical panels as the car shot along horizontally toward a free vertical shaft.

“Came looking for you,” Xiong said. “Confidentially.”

“Always.” Three months earlier, after Pennington had begun reporting about events on Vanguard, Xiong had approached him to talk about some off-the-record information. The headstrong A&A officer apparently felt unfairly muzzled with regard to his work in the Taurus Reach, and was looking for a way to force some things into the open. So far his leads had been small and not particularly juicy, but Xiong was privy to certain high-level operations on the station, and he spent a lot of time away on the starships assigned to Vanguard, so there was no telling what he might know.

“I read your piece about the deaths on the Enterprise,” Xiong said. “I thought you might want to know I’ve been given orders to ship out with her crew.”