He looked up when he heard a sniffing sound and saw Marcus reaching up to dab a tear from the corner of her left eye. “Doctor, are you all right?”
Marcus drew a deep breath as she straightened her posture and shook her head. “I don’t…it’s just…I keep thinking this is my fault.”
“You were driven to find answers, Doctor,” Nogura said, “which is exactly why Starfleet sent you out here. I knew the risks in sending a team to Erilon, and you didn’t talk me into anything I wasn’t already considering. Not that any of that matters, as I’m the one who authorized the mission. If anyone’s to be blamed, it’ll be me.” Sending subordinates into dangerous situations was a reality of command, Nogura knew, and he had carried the scars of that harsh truth for most of his adult life. That experience never made such decisions any easier, and the admiral feared the day would come when he might look upon such responsibility with cold dispassion.
Never.
Shaking off the troubling thought, Nogura turned to Jetanien. “Ambassador, what are the Klingons saying about any of this?”
“They claim that the action at Erilon was carried out without their permission,” the Chel replied. “As far as they know, or at least are willing to admit, no Klingon vessel is holding any Starfleet officer hostage.”
“What a crock,” Cooper said, making no effort to squelch his bitterness.
“As hard as it may be for us to believe,” Nogura said, “I suppose it’s possible that the Klingons have yet anotherrenegade ship commander running around out there. Ambassador, you have at least one or two contacts willing to talk to you off the record, correct? What about pressing them for information?”
Jetanien nodded. “I have already attempted to make contact with those parties, Admiral. I await a response.”
“Keep at it,” Nogura said, then turned to Cooper. “Get the Lovellback here. Some of those artifacts and other materials that Xiong wanted for study might be able to help us. If the Klingons took him because they’re trying to understand Shedai technology, then maybe they’ll put him to work on some other planet.” Next, he looked to Marcus. “That’s where you come in, Doctor, you and Nezrene. Re-create what they were doing. Maybe if we can understand what they were figuring out on Erilon, it might give us a clue to where to look for him.”
He tapped his right forefinger on the polished surface of his desk, the rhythmic thumping accentuating his words. “People, we don’t rest until I find out what happened to my man. Understood?”
There were no objections, and Nogura watched as his visitors—his advisors, really—filed out of his office, heading to carry out their respective tasks. Nogura was left alone as the door slid shut, with nothing to do but ponder the consequences of what had transpired on Erilon, how the Klingons might benefit from it, and what it might all mean for a young, ambitious Starfleet lieutenant named Ming Xiong.
39
“Reyes, Diego Matias. Serial number SC-886-3762-TM. Service rank: Commodore. Position: Starbase command. Current assignment: Starbase 47.”
Sitting on the witness stand before his court-martial board, Diego Reyes stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a small defect in the paneling just above the computer terminal as the machine relayed his biographical information into the trial’s official record. As the computer recited his awards and commendations, he could not help but reflect on the rather large period of time the list covered, and the realization—which, for some reason, he had never before pondered—made him feel old.
Check the dates again,his mind chided him. They’re ancient history and of absolutely no help to you now.
Finally, this was it. After days upon days of testimony by all manner of witnesses, most from the station’s crew but also a “few experts” called by Captain Sereb, it now was his turn to take the stand. Most of the other witnesses had served only to weaken the notion that Reyes had conspired with anyone to disobey orders from higher authority or that anyone but him had any prior knowledge of what he had done with regard to Tim Pennington’s story. On the other hand, the testimony also had strengthened Sereb’s primary angles of attack: the actual release of what should have remained classified information and his patent disregard of established policies and protocols when taking such action. With the framework for the trial’s true purpose firmly established, only one task remained: Reyes himself. To that end, he and Desai had formalized a blunt, concise strategy for the testimony he would give. No theatrics, embellishments, or obfuscation of the relevant points. The questions she would ask would be direct, coinciding with the brutal honesty of the answers he would provide.
Let’s get this show on the road.
What did he expect to accomplish here today? Desai had asked him that question on several occasions during the time they spent preparing for trial. Did he actually expect to sway the board? He had come to the conclusion some time ago that such a goal was not realistic. As he knew and as had been rammed home by Commander Spires, Sereb, and even Desai, the charges against him were simple and straightforward. He could not deny them, nor would he avoid responsibility for any consequences arising from them. All that remained was for him to make a case for why he had taken the actions that had brought him to this point, in the hopes that some future good might come forth in terms of the safety of innocent lives.
The computer’s readings of his awards were finished, and Reyes straightened his posture ever so slightly as he heard footsteps behind him and Rana Desai walked into his line of sight. “Commodore Reyes,” she said, “how long have you been involved with Operation Vanguard?”
His right hand resting on the biometric interface built into the chair’s arm, Reyes replied, “I was first briefed on the project just under a year ago. I took command of the station two months later.”
Desai asked, “What persuaded you to take this assignment?”
“The orders with my name on them and the date I was to report to the station.” The response earned him a small, quickly suppressed chuckle from Admiral Komack, but that was the extent of the board’s reaction.
Desai kept her focus on Reyes. “Yes, we know that you accepted the orders as issued to you by Starfleet Command, but what about the assignment attracted your interest?”
“I believed in the project’s goals,” Reyes said. “I didn’t understand the science behind it, and I still don’t, to a large extent, but smart people help me with the bigger words. What I did understand was the potential that came with learning as much about the meta-genome as we could. That’s how I felt in the beginning.” Those feelings still were present, of course, at least as far as the honest, forthright pursuit of knowledge was concerned. Such ambition always was a worthy endeavor. It was only the use to which that knowledge was put that could be defined as either right or wrong. Even with what he now knew about the Taurus Reach, he still held on to that simple axiom.
“And how do you feel now?” Desai asked.
For the first time, Reyes shifted his eyes so that he could stare directly at Admiral Moratino. “Scared.”
Desai asked, “Why do you feel scared?”
“Because we’ve disturbed something out here that we should’ve left alone, but we didn’t. Now it’s loose and running around out there, pissed off at us.”
Desai nodded. “So, is that why you allowed that story to be published? Because you were scared?”
“No,” Reyes replied. “I allowed that story to go out because the public had a right to know about the dangers we’d uncovered out here. Secrecy had already cost too many innocent lives.”
“But shouldn’t your superiors at Starfleet Command be the ones to make that decision?”