It was a reasonable request, but the thought of any setback rankled Nogura, who knew the Starfleet brass and Federation politicos would give him hell over the delay. “How long do you think you’ll need to get the data you need and bring the array on line?”
Apprehensive looks passed between Xiong and Theriault. “It’s impossible to say,” he replied. “In this case, I have to agree with Doctor Marcus that caution is vital. When we were experimenting on just two of these things, we accidentally blew up eleven worlds—”
“None of them inhabited, thankfully,” Theriault interrupted.
Xiong continued, “—all before we realized what we’d done. But now we have thousands of these artifacts, sir. Making them work in unison will take a lot of power—which means the risks of our making a catastrophic mistake are exponentially worse than before. At this stage, I’d recommend operating on the assumption that we have little to no margin for error.”
Nogura could tell the problems at hand weren’t mere issues of personal motivation that he could rectify with a stern look or a forceful command; he was up against hard numbers and cold realities. “How many members of your team have reviewed Lieutenant Theriault’s records of the Eremar mission?”
“All of them,” Xiong said. “We’ve been working the problem from every angle, but because of the interference caused by the pulsar, her tricorder was only able to make basic visual scans. Which means we have no detailed nuclear imaging or spectral analysis.”
The elfin redhead added, “We have enough data to build a frame to hold the artifacts, but no idea how to make it start. It’s like having hardware with no operating software.”
“In other words,” Nogura grumped, “a very expensive piece of junk.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Xiong said.
Nogura was about to tell the scientists to do their best and then dismiss them, when T’Prynn looked down the table at him and spoke up from the far side of the room.
“Admiral . . . I might be able to help.”
Quinn awoke to the sound of two sets of footsteps, the cold touch of a hard surface under his bruised and stubbled cheek, and the grotesque sensation that his guts were filled with boiling mud and rotten eggs. A man’s voice announced with bored hostility, “Wake up. You have a visitor.” Then one set of footsteps walked away. The angry buzz of a force field generator in Quinn’s ears made it clear to him where he was.
He rolled over and regretted moving. A deep pounding ache felt like a lead weight trying to ram its way out of his skull. Each throbbing beat of his pulse made him fear that his abused brain had grown nerve endings just so it could protest what he’d done to it the night before. He groaned pitiably. Why can’t I ever have a coma when I really need one?
Squinting against the cold, white light of one of Vanguard’s numerous, immaculate brig facilities, he labored to focus his eyes. Then he sat up on the edge of the bench and cradled his head in his hands. Hunched over in misery, he realized he’d put his bare feet down in a broad splatter of spilled soup. He hoped it was soup.
“I can hear you breathing, Newsboy,” he mumbled, through a vile taste human mouths were never meant to know. With effort, he turned his head. “If you’ve come to—”
Words failed him as he realized his visitor wasn’t Tim Pennington, who had bailed him out so many times that he figured he’d be in the Scotsman’s debt for the rest of his natural life. It was T’Prynn, who had recruited him years earlier as a covert civilian operative of Starfleet Intelligence. She stood at ease, hands folded behind her back, exuding a quintessentially Vulcan neutrality. “Hello, Mister Quinn.”
He narrowed his eyes in tired contempt. “You’re dead to me.” He winced at another crushing throb in his temples. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’m dead to me, too.”
“The arrest report indicates you were ejected from no fewer than six establishments for drunken and disorderly behavior before you were taken into custody.” She arched one eyebrow. “You do appear—what’s the expression? ah, yes—worse for wear.”
Her gingerly mocking didn’t make him feel better, but it gave him a reason to be mad, and that helped him focus on something other than how awful he felt. “Goddamn, lady, you got a gift for understatement. I spent all my credit and wound up feeling like phasered shit. It’s like I mugged myself, except someone else got the money.” Massaging a vicious crick from his neck, he shot a one-eyed glare at the Vulcan woman. “What do you want with me, anyway?”
She seemed unfazed by his blunt challenge. “During your last mission for SI, you witnessed what you described as a ‘huge, moving equation’ that the Apostate said was the key to the Tkon array. But your final report contained no specific details of that equation.”
“I know.” He turned his head, growled the foulness inside his mouth into a wad, and spit it on the floor. “Like I said, it was all just a blur. I don’t remember the details.”
T’Prynn edged closer to the invisible force field that separated them. “I think you could remember much of that equation, Mister Quinn, perhaps even all of it, with my help.”
This didn’t sound as if it was leading anywhere good. “I know I’ll probably be sorry I asked, but what’re you driving at?”
“I need you to consent to a Vulcan mind-meld with me.”
“Go to hell.” He tried to turn away and lie down.
The urgency in her voice stopped him. “Please, Mister Quinn.” She waited until he looked back at her, then she continued. “I would not ask you to permit so profound an invasion of your privacy if the security of the Federation and the safety of its people were not at stake.”
“Like I give a shit?” Confronted with so much national security claptrap, it was hard for Quinn not to vent his scorn as laughter. “You assholes have been runnin’ around out here for years, breakin’ rules, wreakin’ havoc, gettin’ good people killed—and for what? What’ve you got to show for it? Nothing. ‘Federation security,’ my ass. What a joke. Hell, for a while there, you even had me playin’ your stupid game, flyin’ all over hell and creation, lookin’ for your little bits o’ junk and trackin’ down your runaway monsters. I’m sick of it.”
She looked taken aback by his tirade. “In light of the personal loss you suffered, I can understand your animosity toward Starfleet and the Federation, but that—”
“Dammit, you’re not listening to me. I ain’t sayin’ no because I got a grudge with the Federation, and I ain’t saying go to hell because I give a damn about you invading my privacy. What I’m sayin’ is, I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to do it because I never want to think about that day ever again, as long as I live. All I’ve done since I got back was try to forget it.”
There was sympathy in her voice. “Have you?”
“Have I what? Tried?”
“Forgotten.”
He slumped against the metal wall and stared at the light on the ceiling. “Not yet. But I plan to keep drinking till I’ve killed so many brain cells, I lose my own name.”
T’Prynn reached over to the control pad beside the cell and with a few deft taps deactivated the force field. She stepped inside and looked down at Quinn. Her dark eyes had a quality that he would never before have thought to ascribe to a Vulcan: soulfulness. “I understand why you want to forget that day. But I don’t need you to recall all of it—only the moments when you saw the machine. Nothing more. If you grant me this request, I will try to help you in return. Please, Mister Quinn.”
He was too exhausted to argue with her. What harm could it do? He responded with a grudging nod. “Fine, all right. But first, get me someplace else.”
“Time is of the essence,” T’Prynn said. “This place will serve as well as any other.”
“No, it won’t.”
His defiance seemed to irk her. “Why not?”