Long past time to seize the day, I suppose.
With a slow, resigned sigh, Reyes finally looked to Desai and nodded.
“Diego,” she said, her face a mask of concern, “are you sure about this?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s best for everyone involved. You and I both know they’ve got me. It’s just a matter of how much they want to beat on me before they finally throw me in a cell somewhere.” He sighed. “Why go through all of that when I can just put it all behind me? Everybody would probably be better off.” The words were sour in his mouth. He despised the idea of compromising, particularly with anyone he considered an enemy. For purposes of the court-martial, Sereb was that opponent, and realizing that the best course of action for all concerned was to agree to the attorney’s proposal made Reyes feel both anger and defeat.
After a moment, Sereb offered a perfunctory nod, his blunt nose moving up and down in rapid fashion as he folded his beefy arms across his broad chest. “Excellent. I thought as much.”
Frowning in confusion, Reyes glanced at Desai, whose eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“Well,” Sereb replied, “as you say, we’ve got you, and it’s just a matter of degrees at this point. I simply wanted some firsthand insight into the defendant I will be prosecuting.” To Reyes, he added, “You are fully culpable for every charge against you, Commodore, and it’s my duty to prosecute you to the fullest extent of Starfleet regulations, which is precisely what I intend to do.”
He was sizing me up.The bitter thought pounded in Reyes’s mind in response to the realization of what he soon would be facing in the courtroom. Cunning bastard.He saw that Desai had drawn herself up to her full height. Her hands had balled into fists, which she kept locked at her sides.
“How dare you come in here and ambush my client under false pretenses,” she said, her already crisp accent taking on a brutal, clipped quality underscoring the anger she clearly was trying to keep at bay. “This meeting is over. We’ll see you in court, Counselor.”
Sereb reached for his briefcase, and Reyes was certain that he caught a hint of smugness crossing the Tellarite’s pudgy features. “Indeed you will. Good day.” With a formal nod, he turned and exited the room. Reyes and Desai watched him until the doors closed behind him.
27
“So,” Nogura said as he took in the expansive area of the Vault and nodded in appreciation, “this is where the fun happens.”
All around him, nearly a dozen Starfleet officers and civilian scientists busied themselves at computer workstations or in several of the laboratories and offices he could see from where he stood inside the office currently occupied by Dr. Marcus. In this part of the station, which on technical schematics appeared as an area devoted to environmental-control and waste-extraction systems, was housed the sum total of knowledge that Starfleet had collected with regard to the Shedai and the Taurus Meta-Genome.
“I suppose that’s one way to put it,” replied Marcus from where she stood behind her desk, looking over one of the numerous reports littering her office. The room itself was not that large, and its limited space was cluttered with boxes, reports, data cards, and other managerial flotsam.
Numerous ongoing efforts ensured the facility’s secrecy. As far as the vast majority of Starbase 47’s Starfleet and civilian contingents were concerned, the Vault did not exist. The people working here appeared on personnel rosters as assigned to other sections throughout the station, though most fell within a rather nondescript group known as Logistical Studies, with Marcus listed as the civilian section head. Plans currently were under way to create a mirror site at another, undisclosed location, but for now, Starfleet’s efforts to understand the mysteries of the Taurus Reach were spearheaded by the people hidden away within this core of the station.
Marcus stepped around her desk and moved for the door. “If you’ll follow me, sir, I think we’ve got something you’ll find very interesting.”
“I’d imagine that term fits pretty much everything in this room,” Nogura said as he fell in step beside her, and the pair proceeded down the Vault’s central corridor. “At least, it seems that way according to what I’ve been reading.”
Marcus nodded. “You don’t know the half of it.” She gestured to the labs they passed. “When I think about what’s out there for us to find, compared with what we actually know at this point, it boggles the mind. You’ve read the reports, Admiral, so you know we’re not exaggerating when we say we may be on the cusp of expanding our knowledge a hundredfold in so many different areas of science and technology. It’s all out there, waiting for us.”
“We have but to understand how the key fits the lock containing all of this information,” Nogura said, repeating a phrase he had come across on several occasions, in reports submitted by Dr. Marcus as well as Lieutenant Ming Xiong.
“Exactly,” Marcus said. “The problem is that the meta-genome is so complex, and when we couple that with the manner in which the Shedai apparently interact with their technology, we’re talking about quantum leaps of scientific advancement.” She paused, sighing and smiling in what Nogura took to be something approaching embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Admiral. I tend to get excited about my work.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Nogura replied wryly. In fact, he was quite aware that there seemed to be an energy permeating the room, something palpable enveloping the effort being expended here. The people around him were driven to understand the mysteries they had been tasked with solving. One of the things that had interested him upon reading the regular Vanguard updates was how young everyone seemed. Carol Marcus was in her early thirties, according to her personnel file, and Lieutenant Xiong was even younger. Nogura had no issues with age as far as the people under his command were concerned; indeed, he welcomed the diversity of experience and attitudes, as well as the vigor and unbridled passion that youth often contributed to undertakings of this type. What interested him was how such people might come to cope with the knowledge that even at their young age, they were involved in one of the greatest scientific endeavors in the history of civilization. With so much of their lives still ahead of them, would they be driven to find something of even grander scale in which to invest their efforts, perhaps as a means of proving—whether to themselves or to anyone else—that their potential had not already peaked and that they still had so much to offer?
In other words, what do you do for an encore?
Near the end of the corridor was a door flanked by a pair of security guards, who came to attention upon seeing Nogura. The admiral acknowledged the men, but Marcus ignored the Starfleet protocol and reached for the security keypad on the bulkhead next to the door. She placed her thumb on a biometric sensor. A red indicator at the top of the keypad turned green, and the door slid aside to reveal another laboratory, one that did not feature any walls of transparent aluminum.
“After you, Admiral,” Marcus offered, standing to one side and allowing Nogura to enter the room. He was greeted by the sight of a young Asian man sitting at a computer workstation, wearing a blue uniform tunic with the rank stripe of lieutenant on the sleeves. His dark, tousled hair was a bit longer than regulation, and his entire appearance made it seem that the lieutenant had not slept the previous night. Also in the room was a Tholian, dressed in what Nogura recognized as one of the environment suits they wore when outside their native atmospheric conditions. The Tholian seemed engrossed in a piece of unfamiliar equipment, but when the lieutenant looked up and saw Nogura, he immediately rose to his feet.