“That’s a very serious allegation you’re making, Ensign,” I said. “It’s certainly not one that would be taken lightly. Do you have any evidence of this happening beyond your tapping into the rumor mill?”
“No,” he said. “I figured getting that was your job.”
“I’m a reporter, not a human-rights investigator.”
“But these aren’t humans I’m talking about!”
I responded to his elevated tone by taking another sip from my cider, hoping that my calm might encourage him to dial back any rising sense of urgency. “What I mean, to be clear, is that I remain on the station at the will and pleasure of Starfleet administrators. I could attempt to investigate the kind of offense you’re describing, but the number of avenues I might take to even begin such an investigation is limited. If you’re this concerned, might I direct you to the station’s consular offices of the Federation Embassy. Ask for Ambassabor Jetanien. He’s the one who, well, who looks like a turtle.”
“There’s that tone again, Mister Pennington,” Saura said. “The one that makes me think you aren’t that interested in my tip after all.”
“It’s not a matter of interest, Ensign. Your story is plenty interesting. It’s a matter of credibility.” As soon as the last word came from my mouth, the young man’s eyes widened and he made a move to scoot away from our table. “The credibility of the information,not of you. If you would indulge me a moment, let me play the role of my editor and tell you how she might respond when I come to her with this tip of yours. First, she might ask what your source might be.”
“Well, I don’t want to name names. Let’s just say that I’ve heard it around and from more than one person.”
“Right. We’ll deem that ‘unsubstantiated’ then. So, at this point she might turn her attention to you. To what division are you assigned?”
“I’m a communications specialist.”
“And how long have you been stationed at Vanguard?”
“Well, I’ve been here for the duration.” Saura’s tone and expression did not seem to mark his service milestone with pleasure.
“The duration being . . . that you have been assigned here since the station opened.”
“And before that,” he clarified. “I was attached to the station to help build its communications array.”
“Excellent. Then you must be very proud of your service record and of your accomplishments here.”
“You could say proud . . .” Saura’s voice trailed off.
So I picked it back up. “Buuut, you’re ready for a different challenge, shall we say.”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you’ve been out here a long time.”
“I’ve made no secret about wanting to rotate off the station,” Saura said. “I put in for transfer over a year ago.”
“More than a year ago?” I unconsciously corrected his grammar, then sipped at my drink again. “And yet, here you remain.”
“Evidently.”
“So, if you’ve got no love left for the station, and you can’t get a move on, no matter who or how you ask for it, there’s always the hope that Vanguard gets put out of business.”
“Pardon?” Saura narrowed his eyes. “Space stations don’t get put out of business.”
“But one might get repurposed should a primary mission change,” I said, leaning forward. “Equipment would get changed out, crew assignments would shuffle. All of that isn’t hard to imagine as a result of a turn of public sentiment against a station’s purported goal. There isn’t a story that would kick up disapproval and distrust of activities at Starbase 47 faster than allegations of inhumanity against sentients sanctioned by Starfleet Command. And on the heels of the Jinoteur incident, too.”
Saura sat up in his seat and spoke crisply. “That’s not at all what got this talk started.”
“Sure would be a clean ticket home, right, Ensign? I mean, if everyonehad to go.”
“You’ve twisted my words completely out of context, Mister Pennington,” Saura said, and stood from the table.
“I twisted no words, sir,” I said. “I merely speculated one path my editor might take to substantiate your information. Or not.”
Saura left, but not before saying over his shoulder, “I should have expected as much from the press.”
“Cheers,” I offered back, hoisting my half-full glass of the nasty brew in his direction but not following it with a quaff. Not that I was totally unappreciative of his time. It was simply that “tips” such as Ensign Saura’s were becoming the norm since the day I broke the news about Jinoteur and Gamma Tauri IV and the Shedai and Reyes—and the whole bloody mess. Whether I was walking through Stars Landing and the other civilian areas of the station or between Starfleet offices within its central command tower, a great many more eyes were turned to me as I passed by these days. Not that I became some sort of instant celebrity aboard Vanguard. I had been on the station long enough that my face was recognizable to those who paid any attention to FNS newsfeeds. But this time, my reports of activities aboard Vanguard broke big, leading news reports of the day practically across the Federation. Now, many of my station mates were sure they carried the one bit of information I would need to reveal even more wrongly kept secrets or uncover the next group of corrupt Federation officials or whatever perceived injustices they might harbor. They wanted to spill, and it was my job to listen to them all. Better that than to risk pushing aside any information that might actually be newsworthy—particularly in my editors’ eyes if not mine. They were as keenly interested in the next big news to come out of Vanguard as its denizens were.
So I was no longer simply a reporter. No, I was a muckraker— a lovely, little centuries-old sobriquet we get saddled with whenever one of our stories brings down someone in power, whether in politics, private enterprise, or, in this case, Starfleet. In the wake of my story, Commodore Reyes was relieved of command and arrested outside his own office—hell, the man called me ahead of time so I could come see it transpire myself. And why not? Had I delivered a phaser blast rather than a news story, I would have watched him fall just as ignobly. I owed it to him to pay witness to the results of my actions.
We might not have fully realized it back when we conversed in my emptied apartment merely a week ago, but for Reyes and me, our worlds changed forever in those moments: mine after choosing to publish and his after choosing to permit me. The question that continued to dog me from the moment he was taken into custody was . . . why? Why did Starfleet respond so quickly and harshly against Reyes? Why did Reyes seem not to care what happened to him as a result? Why would even a single detail of information offered by my reporting be capable of compromising any aspect of Starfleet’s operations from Vanguard? Reyes let me report what I saw, knowing full well what I knew as I was writing it: no matter what I said, or showed, about my experiences on Jinoteur, no one out there would have the first clue what to make of the Shedai, their capabilities, any of it. Even I scarcely understood what the hell happened—and I lived through it.
A pair of beeps from my pocketed data device shook me loose from my thoughts. I checked the soft glow of its readout to find a text notification of a pending subspace communication from my FNS editors, and I had just enough time to rid my system of what cider it had processed and make my way to a public comm station to catch it.
So, why tell everyone, Commodore Reyes? Hell, why not?
2
In the shopping promenade of Stars Landing, the screen on the public subspace viewer kiosk I occupied was filled with printed words on a shaking sheet of paper. The voice coming from behind the paper was unmistakably my editor’s.