His coffee was still warm, so he took a large sip and reclined his chair while he studied the sector activity chart on his office wall. The Endeavour had been redeployed to the Klingon border on another preemptive patrol, and the Lovell was en route to Pacifica, a beautiful and recently colonized pelagic world deep in the Taurus Reach, to help set up its basic civil infrastructure. Klingon and Tholian fleet activity had increased slightly, but for the moment the local status quo appeared intact.
Things looked calm, and that worried Reyes.
With a steep tilt of his mug, he drained the last of his coffee and turned back to the orderly stacks of data slates and data cards arranged on his desk. Two of his yeomen, Greenfield and Finneran, had obviously coordinated their efforts over consecutive shifts to keep his administrative paperwork straight for him. He stared at the neatly grouped piles of work and couldn’t find the motivation to do any of it.
Set apart from the rest of the items on his desk was a nondescript, thin gray binder. He picked it up, rested it on his lap, and opened it to admire the old picture tucked inside.
It wasn’t a particularly good photo; its composition was awkward, and because Reyes had taken it by pointing the camera at himself and Jeanne from arm’s length, its up-their-noses perspective was somewhat unflattering. In its favor, the light had been good that day in the New Berlin park, filtered through the static boughs of massive trees growing in low gravity, and the smiles that he and Jeanne showed to the camera had been genuine. It was proof that once, long ago, they had been happy and in love, before the routines of marriage and the burdens of rank had accomplished their slow attrition of all that had been good and joyful and honest between them.
I’d give anything to be back in that moment, he lamented, imagining the life he could have had if only every single thing had happened differently for the past twenty years. All we’d had were dreams about what we might be. Now all I have left is the memories of what we were…. It’s not enough.
He traced the outline of Jeanne’s younger features with his fingertip, a delicate, feather-light brush of skin over the matte print, as if he feared inflicting some new misery upon her ghost with his seemingly inverted Midas touch. I’m sorry, Jeanne.
Rationalizations and excuses deserted him, leaving only unanswerable questions. Why did I put the mission above her life? Because some admiral told me to? How many times did they tell us at the Academy that blindly obeying orders was not the mark of a good Starfleet officer? I listened, and I nodded, and I said I understood—but did I? He closed the binder, unable to bear the reminder of a happy memory that he felt he no longer deserved. What am I doing out here? Who am I really doing it for? Why am I doing it at all?
His dark musings were cut short by the buzzing of his desktop intercom. He sighed and jabbed the switch to open the channel. “Yes?”
Yeoman Greenfield replied, “Ambassador Jetanien and Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn are here, sir.”
Feeling antisocial, Reyes snapped, “What do they want?”
Jetanien answered with deadpan sarcasm, “To bask in the radiant glow of your charisma.”
“I don’t turn on the glow till noon,” Reyes said.
“Commodore,” Jetanien said, his impatience mounting, “twice in two days you have declined to receive us. Are we now to conduct our classified business by means of correspondence?”
Experience had convinced Reyes that publicly debating Jetanien was a quick means to profound embarrassment. His thick, dark eyebrows pressed down in a heavy scowl as he said, “Send them in, Greenfield.”
The door to his office opened, and Jetanien entered first. His raiment, as ever, was as flowing and gauzy as he was scaly and ponderous. Sashes of scarlet and plum were wrapped around his massive torso, and a matching drape hung from the back of his elaborate headpiece, which had been wrought from metal polished to a blinding brilliance. The Chelon rubbed his beaklike mouth back and forth, making a soft grinding sound as he strode toward Reyes’s desk.
T’Prynn walked in behind the ambassador, as ever presenting a portrait of discipline and control. Her crimson minidress was immaculate, her boots were polished to perfection, and her hair was pulled taut across her scalp and secured in a long, loosely bound ponytail. She carried a data slate.
The door closed behind T’Prynn, who joined Jetanien in front of Reyes’s desk. Jetanien made a slight bow of greeting. “First of all, let me express my profound gratitude for your magnanimity in actually deigning to grant us—”
“Stop,” Reyes said, holding up his palm toward Jetanien. “Are you two here for the same reason?”
Taken aback, Jetanien said simply, “Yes.”
“Okay,” Reyes said, pointing at Jetanien. “You talk too much.” He aimed his finger at T’Prynn. “What’s this about?”
“It is my duty to inform you both that a member of Ambassador Jetanien’s diplomatic staff is an agent of Klingon Imperial Intelligence who has been surgically altered to appear as a human female,” T’Prynn said.
Reyes smirked. “I knew there was something fishy about that Karumé woman.”
“Actually, sir, the spy is Anna Sandesjo—Ambassador Jetanien’s senior attaché.”
The commodore gave himself a moment to suck on his teeth and process that nugget of information. “Of course it is,” he said. “When did you figure out she was a spy?”
“Eleven months and twenty-two days ago,” T’Prynn said.
His coffee threatened to make a special return trip up his esophagus just so he could do a spit-take. “Eleven months?”
“And twenty-two days,” T’Prynn clarified.
He covered his eyes with one hand and exhaled. Count to ten, he counseled himself. One…two…
“Miss Sandesjo was coopted almost immediately after her detection,” T’Prynn said. “She has served us well as a double agent, providing valuable intelligence about Klingon priorities in this sector.”
Reyes stopped counting at six and removed his hand from his eyes. “You flipped an undercover enemy agent eleven months ago, and you’re just telling the two of us about it now?”
“Oh, I already knew about Sandesjo,” Jetanien said.
In unison Reyes and T’Prynn replied, “You did?”
“Of course.” Jetanien faced T’Prynn. “My staff intercepted one of her reports to Turag nineteen days before you turned her. I am well aware of the services she has performed for you.”
There was a challenge implicit in Jetanien’s tone, and it made Reyes feel as if he knew nothing about what was really going on aboard his station. “All right, let’s get to the meat on this bone. Why are you telling me now?”
T’Prynn tore her drilling-laser stare from Jetanien, blinked, and turned a neutral gaze back toward Reyes. “Miss Sandesjo’s status as a double agent has been exposed. It was a necessary consequence of disinforming the Klingons about events in the Jinoteur system. She is currently in protective custody aboard the station, but we need to move her to a safer location.”
“Hang on,” Reyes said. “You blew her cover six days ago, and she’s still here?” T’Prynn nodded. “And the Klingons know she’s still here?” Again the Vulcan woman confirmed his supposition. “Are you kidding me?”
Jetanien made some clicking noises and said, “I doubt the Klingons would risk an attack on the station over one agent.”
“They won’t launch a direct attack, no,” Reyes said. “But they aren’t gonna let this go, either—I guarantee it.” Turning to T’Prynn, he said, “I presume you have a plan?”