“I’m not thinking that far ahead,” Reyes said. “Right now I’m worried about the board of inquiry; it’s starting to feel like it’s being run by the Salem judiciary. If the JAG office files enough subpoenas, somebody’ll say something they shouldn’t. And once it’s out—well, that’ll be that.”

Jetanien folded the claws of his hands together in a slow, pensive gesture. “I might be able to open a discreet dialogue with one of Captain Desai’s superiors. Someone who could quash her inquiry.”

“That’ll just make her more suspicious,” Reyes said. He sighed. “If I could just bring her into the loop, explain the mission to her, I know she’d find a way to shut it down, subtle or not.”

In a tone that implied it was painfully obvious, Jetanien asked, “Why not just grant her security clearance, then?”

“I gave clearance to Kirk and his men because I had to,” Reyes said. “It was that or court-martial Xiong and lose our best hope of piecing all this together. I’d have a harder time justifying a breach for a JAG officer.”

“Not necessarily,” Jetanien said. “The risk is the same, only the circumstances are different. The admiralty would understand, I am certain.”

“I’m guessing you’ve never met the admiralty,” Reyes said.

“I sponsored several of their commissions,” Jetanien said.

Reyes grimaced. “Well, that explains quite a bit.”

“Gentlemen,” T’Prynn said with a lilt that sounded suspiciously teasing to Reyes’s ears. “This situation is not as intractable as you seem to think. There are…discreet options.”

The Chelon ambassador turned his body to look at T’Prynn. Reyes reclined his chair and folded his hands on his lap. “I presume,” the commodore said, “that you have a proposition?”

She arched a single, thin eyebrow. “Indeed.”

For several hours, on the far side of a semiopaque security curtain that had been erected in the main spacedock hangar, a team of stevedores had been off-loading from the Enterprise mangled piles of metal, and shipping containers packed tight with small debris. One load at a time, it was all being transferred into Vanguard’s repair and salvage bay.

Isolated on the observation deck, watching the dim outlines of the activity from afar, was Tim Pennington. He leaned against the cold, floor-to-ceiling transparent aluminum barrier. He pressed his forehead against it, and the empty compartment behind him fell away from his thoughts as he watched the final, tragic homecoming of the U.S.S. Bombay.

For the past three months, word of the Bombay’s return to Vanguard had been cause for celebration. This morning there had been no cheerful reveille to herald its approach. Federation banners throughout the station remained at half-mast, and more than a few Starfleet personnel had bucked the regulations and worn black armbands of mourning when on duty in more remote areas of the station, away from the eyes of supervisors. Pennington had mistakenly thought the period of mourning passed after the first few days, but news that Bombay’s remains had come home had reopened this fresh emotional wound.

He had intended to write an exposé. Tell everyone why the ship had been lost in action. Secure justice for Oriana and her shipmates. He had overheard T’Prynn speaking about the listening post on Ravanar, about the sensor screen damaged by an inept thief, but he had no hard evidence, no witnesses he could trust not to recant. He had been reading smuggled transcripts of the Starfleet JAG’s board of inquiry about the loss of the Bombay. The thrust seemed to be toward blaming Reyes and the Vanguard staff for over-working the ship and failing to provide it with proper maintenance. He had considered sharing his leads with the prosecutor, but he changed his mind when he realized that his complete lack of evidence would make his tip even more useless to her in court than it was to him in print.

Desperate to vent his pent-up emotions, he’d written a memorial instead, culled from the personal recollections and anecdotes he’d been inundated with while devoutly pursuing some unnamed and elusive secret. His personal contributions, about Oriana, had been altered enough to protect their privacy—and to prevent her husband from learning of their affair. He’d read his own memoirs and cringed at how maudlin and banal they seemed. Yet those were the ones that his editor, Arlys, confessed had made her weep for the lost men and women of the Bombay. “You put faces on them, Tim,” she’d written in reply to his submission.

His mirage-like, long-faced reflection looked back at him from the transparent aluminum. Over the past few days he’d had time to think, and to recant the convenient lie he had been telling himself. I didn’t scrub every trace of Oriana from my life to protect her husband’s feelings. Telling myself it was for his benefit was just an excuse.

Down in the docking bay, the off-loading was complete. The Enterprise slowly shut its scalloped aft hangar doors, and a team of zero-g workers in lightweight EVA gear retracted the gauzy privacy screen that had been obscuring the view. With the transfer finished, Pennington saw no point in prolonging his vigil. He pressed his right hand against the barrier, and his throat tightened with grief. Welcome home, Oriana.

The first clue that word of his dustup on Kessik IV had reached Vanguard before Quinn did was the cordial nods of greeting he received from Ganz’s two hulking doormen. Normally when Ganz entered the Orion’s ship of sybaritic delights, the two bouncers either watched him suspiciously or, on their more extroverted days, sneered slightly in his direction. Until today, however, a courteous welcome had never been on the menu.

Strolling through the gambling parlor on the lower deck, Quinn sensed people noticing him, heard his name bandied about under the music. For a few seconds, he felt like a celebrity. Being just a little bit famous excited him—until he thought about it for a few moments too long. All these people know who I am, and they know what happened on Kessik IV…. All these strangers. His exhilaration turned to a feeling of violation.

Midway between the roulette wheel and the card tables, Zett intercepted him. On this occasion, the slender Nalori killer was decked out in a light-khaki casual suit. He made a point of invading Quinn’s personal space. “Welcome back,” he said loudly, over the music. “Mr. Ganz has been expecting you.”

“I never pictured you as the earth-tones type,” Quinn said.

“Mr. Quinn, I am in no mood to carry you up those stairs. Please do not force me to break your legs.”

“Can’t keep him waiting, can we?” Quinn made a sweeping arm gesture toward the stairs. “Lead on.”

The march up the stairs seemed, in Quinn’s estimation, to lack the pall of dread that had marred his previous visits. Then he realized that he might have allowed T’Prynn’s interventions on the Kessik IV job to make him overconfident; he had no reason to think he was still enjoying her protection. On the other hand, if I’m worth that much to her, she’d be a fool to let me walk in here without taking some kind of precaution. It was a comforting thought. Ignoring the prudent inner voice that told him not to count on it, he clung to his new cocky attitude and followed Zett up the stairs to the “sweet spot” in front of Ganz’s two disintegrator obelisks. Immediately, Quinn noticed that the usual inward push of gawkers was not in evidence. The coterie of retainers seemed to be keeping their distance today.

Lounging on his scatter of bright pillows, Ganz enjoyed a long, deep pull from his hookah. The air on the quiet upper level was dense with grayish violet pipe haze. Opening his eyes, Ganz smirked at Quinn. “Heard you had some trouble.”

“I don’t have your dilithium,” Quinn said.

Ganz’s voice was quiet, deep, and dangerous. “Why not?”