His hostess turned and said to him, “There are drinks on the table…. I’ll wait for you in the kitchen. Let me know when you’re ready to be shown out.” At that, she returned to the kitchen, leaving the Orion with the man who had summoned him.
Ganz crossed the room in casual strides and joined Reyes at the table. “Commodore,” he said in a neutral tone. “You called?”
With a downward nod of his chin, Reyes said, “Have a seat.” The commodore sat down.
Ganz settled into a chair but kept a cautious watch on the human. On the table were two glasses, both filled with the same bubbly, pale golden liquid. Neither man seemed interested in drinking, however.
Eager to get to business, Ganz asked, “What’s on your mind, Commodore?” He hoped that none of his people had done anything rash to violate the terms of his truce with Reyes.
“A business proposition,” Reyes said. “There’s a ticking clock on this deal, so let me tell you what I want first, and we can work out a price second.”
Masking his intense interest, Ganz said, “I’m listening.”
“There’s a Klingon heavy cruiser in port at Borzha II,” Reyes said. “The Zin’za. She’s making final repairs and getting ready to ship out ASAP. I want your people on Borzha II to keep that ship in port for another twenty-four hours.”
The Orion suppressed a single low chortle. “Tangling with the Klingons is bad for business,” he said. “If you want the ship destroyed, do it yourself.”
“I don’t want it destroyed,” Reyes shot back. “I just want it stuck in port for an extra day.”
Ganz didn’t like the sound of this. “My people aren’t proxy fighters, Commodore, they’re smugglers. Thieves, not soldiers.”
“That’s why they’re perfect for this,” Reyes said. “I don’t want them to fight the Klingons, just mess with them a little. Some light sabotage. Steal a few critical moving parts the Zin’za can’t go to warp without.”
The merchant prince scowled. “Sabotage is risky business. It took a long time to get my people jobs inside a Klingon starport. I don’t want to risk them just so you can beat the Klingons to a few more balls of rock at the ass end of space.”
“This is bigger than that,” Reyes said. “One of my ships is down, in the Jinoteur system.” Ganz relaxed his posture as the commodore continued. “The Klingons picked up the Sagittarius’s mayday, and the Zin’za is being sent to neutralize them. We’re sending help to the Sagittarius, but the Zin’za is closer and faster. I need the Zin’za to have some major malfunctions R.F.N., understand? That ship needs to stay stuck in port for at least another twenty-four hours, or my people are dead.”
Ganz nodded. The rules of the game had just changed in his favor. “How much hurt do you want me to put on the Zin’za? I could arrange an accident that would take them out for good.”
“Don’t go that far,” Reyes said. “Just foul the machinery. I want a delay, not an interstellar incident. To use a cliché, make it look like an accident.”
“All right,” Ganz said. “I presume you don’t want to know the details.” Reyes shook his head, so Ganz continued, “That brings us to the matter of compensation.”
“You’ve heard what I want,” Reyes said. “What do you want?”
The Orion considered the matter carefully. He had many needs of varying degrees of importance, but he was capable of satisfying most of them without Starfleet’s help or knowledge. One pending project had been stymied several times in the past few weeks, however, and this seemed like an opportune time to set it right.
“Two weeks from now,” Ganz said, “I’ll need you to do me a favor. For a period of seventy-two hours, I’ll want all Starfleet sensor sweeps and patrols suspended in Sector Tango-4119. For three days that’ll be a blind spot. Do that, and we have a deal.”
Now it was Reyes’s turn to glare suspiciously across the table. “Two conditions will have to apply.”
“Your proposal didn’t mention conditions,” Ganz said.
“It didn’t rule them out, either,” Reyes said. “Condition one: no piracy. If even one ship, one person, or one piece of cargo gets hassled or goes missing from Tango-4119, I’ll have that big green head of yours on a plate.”
The burly Orion admired Reyes’s boldness. “Your second condition?”
“If I find out you helped an enemy act against Federation interests while we were turning a blind eye, your head won’t be the first body part I put on the plate.”
Ganz smirked at Reyes. “If you ever leave Starfleet, you’d be quite a businessman.” Turning serious, he added, “We won’t be helping your enemies, and there won’t be any piracy. My word is my contract: if Starfleet complies with my request, there won’t be any problems, and there won’t be any complaints.”
The commodore extended his hand across the table. Ganz took it and shook the human’s hand firmly. Reyes said, “Deal.”
“Deal,” echoed Ganz. He released Reyes’s hand and got up from the table. “If you’ll excuse me…” The commodore nodded, and Ganz left the table, moving quickly toward the kitchen to make his clandestine exit out the back of the building. He tried not to betray his profound satisfaction by grinning, but keeping a straight face was difficult.
This was the best deal he’d made in a very long time.
Reyes slumped into the comfort of his padded, high-backed chair, relieved to be once more in the privacy of his own office. His meeting with Ganz had left him edgy and irritable; treating the Orion as an equal had galled him. In terms of power and influence, Ganz was clearly a formidable political actor, but Reyes could not help but feel sullied at having brokered a deal with an unrepentant criminal.
The desk-mounted intercom buzzed. Thumbing the switch, Reyes asked gruffly, “What is it?”
His gamma-shift yeoman, Midshipman Finneran, answered over the comm, “Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn to see you, sir.”
“Fine,” he said wearily. He unlocked the office’s door.
T’Prynn entered from the operations center and stopped on the other side of Reyes’s desk. Matter-of-factly she said, “I trust your meeting with Mr. Ganz produced the desired result.”
The commodore let out a disgruntled sigh. “If by ‘desired result’ you mean a sick feeling in my gut, then yes.” He rubbed his eyes. “Has there been any further contact with the ship?”
“Not yet,” T’Prynn said. “However, I have procured an anti-matter fuel pod for the Sagittarius from a vendor on Nejev III. It’s a civilian component, but one that can easily be adapted to the Sagittarius’s systems.”
He let go of a deep breath. “Well, that’s something, at least. Who’s taking it to the ship?”
“I have left urgent instructions with a trusted asset known to be on the planet,” she said. “I am still awaiting his confirmation that the message has been received.”
The evasiveness of T’Prynn’s reply rankled him. It was not the first time she had given him a vague answer to a simple question, but the fate of one of his ships hinged on every detail. Half-truths and artful omissions would not be enough to satisfy his curiosity. “Commander,” he said, “exactly who is this asset? Whom are we trusting to save our ship?”
After a brief but clearly conflicted hesitation, T’Prynn answered, “Cervantes Quinn, sir.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
She lifted her left eyebrow. “Mr. Quinn is on Nejev III conducting legitimate private business. His ship has a cargo hold large enough to carry the fuel pod and is fast enough to beat the Zin’za to Jinoteur—provided Mr. Ganz lives up to his end of the bargain.” Driving home her point, she added in an arch tone, “He is also our only ally close enough to reach the Sagittarius in time.”
And I thought dealing with the crime lord was the low point of this mess. Reyes massaged the ache from his brow. “Doesn’t Quinn travel with Pennington, the reporter?”