“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you that. Just know that we were able to plug a sizable security breach as a result of your call, so I thank you.”
“That’s fine,” I said, my joy giving way to some confusion. “And that led you to Amity?”
“Not directly,” Ginther said. “We have reason to suspect foul play, but that investigation has been sealed.”
“What? Why?”
“It has become a matter of Starfleet Intelligence.”
“Wait,” I said, trying to sort these new facts. “You’re telling me Amity was in Starfleet Intelligence?”
“No,” he said. “Slow down and listen. The perpetrator of the computer work revealed himself as employed by someone outside the Federation as an intelligence gatherer. In return for leniency in prosecution from the Judge Advocate General’s office, he has agreed to offer information about his employer’s operations and all details on what Federation secrets have been leaked to this point.”
“Leaked to who?” I had asked the question out of reflex, but I knew full well who lurked behind it all without being told. That did not stop Ginther from revealing the information as my disgust at the situation mounted.
“The Orions,” he said.
“Damn it,” I spat. “So now you get to hear who has been whispering what to whom, and who has been secretly moving whatever piece in any number of the political games everyone plays on board this goddamned station. Meanwhile, a young woman is dead—or worse—and the bastards responsible get away clean. That’s bleeding brilliant!”
“Pennington, I’m no less frustrated than you are,” he said, “but I understand how this plays into the greater benefit to operations in the Taurus Reach and, yes, regardless of how farfetched it sounds to you right now, the entire Federation.”
I was livid. “If you quote that ‘needs of the many’ shit to me right now, I’m going to gobsmack you.”
In a flash, Ginther snatched my wrist in his grip and held it firm. “You don’t want to be hitting anyone, and you don’t want to be raising your voice to me. Are we clear?”
I glowered at the security officer. Despite my rage at learning how Amity’s fate would go undetermined and unpunished, I knew that moment was not the one to seize in the name of justice. “We are,” I said as my deep breathing began to slow. “We’re clear.”
“And I offer this information to you with my appreciation for your help,” he said. “It will not be acknowledged officially, and should any hint of it appear in a news report, any further cooperation in your work from Starfleet officials will be greatly discouraged. And I will be greatly disappointed. Is that also understood?”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” I said as he released my wrist.
“Quinn says you’re one of the good guys, Tim,” Ginther said in a calm voice. “Believe it or not, after seeing your response to this, I agree.”
“One of the good guys,” I said, rubbing my wrist a little. “Then tell me how one of the good guys just leaves someone’s story unfinished when I can’t report it and I bloody damn well can’t go vigilante against the Orion Syndicate.”
Ginther looked at me and paused a moment. “When I’m where you are, and I’m there more than you might think,” he said, “I find someone I canhelp. Maybe the opportunity just pops up, or maybe I look up someone who my business isn’t finished with, as you say. When I get someone back on track or settle an account that I’ve left open too long, it goes a lot farther toward filling that hole you’re feeling than a grudge or a bottle ever will.”
I let go a somewhat cynical laugh that part of me immediately regretted. Ginther shrugged his shoulders and extended his hand. I took it. “I appreciate your letting me know. And your advice.”
“Let me know how it turns out, if you like. I’d offer the same, but, well, I can’t.”
“Right.”
As I turned to leave, he spoke my name to get my attention. “Tim, you may do it with your words or your actions, but whatever it might be, I suggest you do it. We all have unfinished business. You’ll know yours when you see it.”
My mind replayed Ginther’s words. I’ll know it when I see it? As I walked back to my apartment, and back into the reporter’s life I once again felt fated to lead, I hoped to hell the guy was right.
THE RUINS OF NOBLE MEN
Marco Palmieri
For Jem and Ben:
Dream big, my sons.
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
This story is set primarily in early January 2368, in the days following the final chapter of Star Trek Vanguard: Precipice.
1
2268
Vanguard groaned as another piece of its hull tore free and fell into the void.
The creak of rending metal vibrated through the bulkheads as if the station were in agony, but Rana Desai took little notice. Even the sight of Starbase 47’s open wound was lost on her. Less than two hundred meters above the viewport at which she stood, EV-suited engineers dotted the curved underside of the station’s immense saucer, surrounding the hideous gash in the enormous doors of Docking Bay 4—damage inflicted just days ago by a being of incomprehensible power.
The new hunk of wreckage tumbled silently through space until a work bee moved in to capture the bent and blackened metal plate. Once secured in the tiny craft’s manipulators, the huge fragment was guided safely downstation to a designated cargo bay where debris from the attack was being gathered for analysis.
None of it registered. Desai’s gaze fell instead on the bloated vessel moored to one of the primary spokes of the station’s external docking wheel. The Orion merchantman Omari-Ekon,den of iniquity and illicit trade, and inviolable domain of the crimelord Ganz, had recently returned from months of exile, now sanctuary to the most unlikely refugee imaginable: Desai’s former lover, Diego Reyes.
He’s alive.
Desai tried to wrap her mind around the thought, to come to grips with how so much had changed. Two years ago, Diego had been a decorated Starfleet flag officer—a commodore and the commander of Starbase 47, overseeing a massive colonization effort that had been initiated in order to mask the real reason for the Federation’s rapid expansion into the Taurus Reach. But the cost of maintaining the secrecy of that mission, both in rising casualties and ever-escalating tensions with the Tholians and the Klingons—to say nothing of the lethal power Starfleet had inadvertently awakened in this region of space—had eroded Diego’s certainty about the Federation’s imperative to decode the transformative potential of the Taurus Meta-Genome.
Shadows moved at the edge of her awareness. Outside, shuttlecraft-sized utility ships shifted position, redirecting high-intensity spotlights toward another compromised section of the bay doors.
Having come to believe he’d been following unjust orders, Diego enabled the public disclosure of classified information related to Vanguard’s mission, an act that brought down the full wrath of Starfleet Command, against which Desai, as his defense counsel, had been unable to protect him. Relieved of his command, court-martialed, and convicted, Diego’s disgrace had been the end of his career, as well as the end of their relationship.
And still there was worse to come. The ship transporting Reyes to his imprisonment on Earth was destroyed en route, and for months Diego was believed to be dead.
How can he be alive?
She was dimly aware of distant thunder shaking the deck, passing through the soles of her boots as the engineers cut away another section of Vanguard’s armor, this one even bigger than the last.