“That’s a fancy way of saying they want their pound of flesh,” Cooper added, “and they’ll be particular in how they go about getting it.”
Jetanien nodded. “Well put, Commander.”
Listening to the ambassador’s counsel and trying to order it within the teeming mass of information clogging his mind with respect to the current problems he faced, Cooper took a moment from all of that and reminded himself of the location of the nearest airlock.
4
“I have to say, I really love what you’ve done with the place,” said Ezekiel Fisher, making a show of looking about the station’s brig in dramatic fashion. The walls, deck, and ceiling all were painted in the same drab, utilitarian, gray color scheme dominating the bulkheads in nearly all of Starbase 47’s duty areas. Fisher had always hated gray. Fifty years spent serving aboard various Starfleet vessels and space stations had done little to alleviate that opinion.
Sitting atop the cot that was his cell’s dominant piece of furniture and with his back against the far wall, Commodore Diego Reyes regarded Fisher with the now-familiar sour scowl that seemed to have become his default expression. “That one was old when Napoleon was in prison,” he said, making no move to rise from the cot. “If you’re going to keep coming down here to visit me, is it too much to ask that you bring fresh jokes?” Filtered through the speaker grille set into the wall to Fisher’s right, the commodore’s voice was imbued with a hollow, artificial quality enhanced by the omnipresent hum of the force field separating the two men.
“Napoleon?” Fisher asked, allowing a small grin to tug at the corners of his mouth. “You know, that comparison almost works.” He shrugged. “Well, other than you being much too tall.” Eyeing the dull orange jumpsuit Reyes had been given to wear during his confinement, he added, “And he was a snappier dresser.”
Reyes gestured toward the hatch leading from the holding area. “Do me a favor. Knock on that door, tell Lieutenant Beyer to come in here, and have her shoot me with her phaser set to maximum.”
“She’s getting some lunch,” Fisher replied. “Said to hold off on that sort of thing until she gets back.”
Shifting his weight on the cot as though seeking a more comfortable position, Reyes grunted. “Well, I suppose you can stay, then.”
“I’m honored.” Fisher moved to the single chair that was the only piece of furniture on his side of the force field and lowered his lanky frame into it.
“Did you come all the way down here to insult my wardrobe?” Reyes asked.
Fisher shook his head as he made himself comfortable. “Well, that’s one reason. Another is that I thought you might like to know that the Klingons have demanded your extradition.” That news had spread with unbridled haste, adding to the tense atmosphere already permeating the station.
“Well,” Reyes said, “it’s certainly nice to be loved.” He released a tired sigh. “Still, Starfleet might be doing themselves a favor by handing me over to the Klingons. You can bet they’ll execute me when their trial’s over, and they won’t waste a lot of time worrying about classified information or any of that crap. Everybody wins.”
“That would make a twisted sort of sense, I suppose,” Fisher replied. “Can’t have that. It’s not every day they get to keel-haul a commodore. You have to be paraded around in front of God and everybody before they get around to making an example of you, which, at the rate they’re going, should be sometime next century.”
Reyes expelled a forced, humorless chuckle. After a moment, he asked, “How’s T’Prynn?”
“Same as before,” Fisher replied. “M’Benga’s been at it night and day for the past three weeks, trying to get some answers. He thinks somebody on Vulcan must have some idea about her condition or whatever might have brought it about, but so far, nobody’s talking.”
“Another life I might have saved,” Reyes said, “if I’d just opened my mouth.”
Fisher considered several responses but chose instead to say nothing. While it was true that Reyes holding up the release of T’Prynn’s classified medical records had hampered M’Benga and Fisher’s efforts to diagnose the Vulcan officer’s condition, Fisher himself was not entirely convinced that having such information would have mattered. Whatever illness gripped T’Prynn, the doctor suspected it had a great deal less to do with physical maladies than with the largely unexplored regions of the Vulcan mind.
Now you’re starting to sound like M’Benga.
When Reyes said nothing else after several seconds, Fisher decided to try changing the subject. “So, have many visitors?”
“No,” Reyes replied, his gaze shifting so that he stared at the floor between them. In the weeks that had passed since his arrest and confinement to the station’s brig, the commodore had allowed exactly one person other than his lawyer to visit him: Fisher. Members of the senior staff had made several attempts, all of which were rebuffed. Commander Cooper, Reyes’s executive officer and the unfortunate soul currently tasked with running the station until a formal replacement was assigned, had been ordered by Starfleet Command not to communicate with the commodore. In spite of that directive, he had relayed messages through the brig’s security staff, limiting his missives to queries about procedures and protocols. Reyes had allowed that much but had otherwise rejected almost all outside contact.
The silence hanging in the air between the two men was beginning to feel awkward, Fisher decided. “Has Rana been to see you? Even in an official capacity?”
Reyes shook his head. “Neither one of us thought it would be a good idea. She’s the ranking JAG officer aboard the station, and even if she doesn’t play a role in my court-martial, she’ll at least be called to testify. It’ll be hard enough on her without any perceptions that she’s going easy on me.”
Nodding in silent agreement, Fisher folded his arms across his chest as he leaned back in his chair. Captain Rana Desai, Starbase 47’s senior representative from Starfleet’s JAG Corps, had faced the unenviable task of arresting Reyes and filing the charges Starfleet had leveled against him. Disobedience of lawful orders, releasing classified information to unauthorized personnel, and conspiracy were the most serious offenses, any one of which would be sufficient to end Reyes’s career. The most serious allegations surrounding his allowing journalist Tim Pennington to publish a scathing exposé about what had happened to the Jinoteur system as well as on Gamma Tauri IV—thereby presenting restricted information to the public—likely would send the commodore to prison, possibly for the rest of his life.
That Desai and Reyes also had been lovers for months before these unfortunate events—a fact that remained unknown for now to all but a precious few souls aboard the station—only served to complicate matters. While their relationship might be a secret now, Fisher held no illusions of that continuing once whatever legal proceedings that awaited Diego Reyes began in earnest.
So,Fisher mused, I suppose I should cut the man some slack if he feels a bit grumpy.
“How’s your lawyer treating you?” he asked. “He seems like a decent enough fellow.”
“Spires?” Reyes nodded. “He’s a good man, very committed to the cause and so on and so forth. It’s a shame he’s got no chance of winning. Once we get past all of the legal smoke and mirrors, the charges are pretty clear-cut.”
Reaching up to stroke his short, trimmed beard, Fisher said after a moment, “Well, maybe not to some people. Even Jetanien, as by-the-book as he can be, isn’t ready to give up. I can’t believe he hasn’t punched his way through the wall to see you by now, Starfleet order or no.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Reyes replied. Shrugging, he added, “Well, yeah, he would, if it were anyone else but Rana who’d told him not to. They both know what’s coming, and Jetanien’s no good to anyone sitting in here next to me.”