Not that it would make much difference, he figured. It’s not as if Commodore Reyes would let me file this story anyway.
Voices outside his window—pedestrians passing by—pulled him out of his thoughts. He looked up from his work and realized that he had lost track of time; he had been working for several hours. Outside his window, the darkness of a simulated night had fallen over Stars Landing. Dusky orange lamplight slanted through his vertical window blinds.
Yawning, he stretched his arms over his head. Maybe I’ll go out for a while. See if Quinn’s down the pub.
A knock on his apartment door echoed off his bare walls. Hope triumphed over experience, and he afforded himself a moment of optimism. He had hoped that Theriault would come calling, perhaps to buy him the drink she had promised him. Though he had never actually told her where he lived, it wasn’t as if he were hard to find: like every other permanent denizen of Starbase 47, his residence was listed in the public directory.
He set aside his data manager and stiffly pushed himself back to his feet. A few creaking-kneed steps later, he opened his front door—and felt the enthusiasm bleed from his face as he saw Diego Reyes looking back at him. “Commodore,” Pennington said, masking his hostility with humor. “Time for my inquisition already? I was sure I’d merit at least one night’s reprieve.”
“May I come in, Mr. Pennington?”
The manner of Reyes’s asking surprised Pennington; the commodore had sounded sincere and nonconfrontational. Stepping back from the doorway, Pennington replied, “Of course, sir.”
Reyes took cautious steps into the apartment, as if he were wary of an ambush. He looked around at the barren space and down at the half-consumed meal and beverage. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”
Pennington stood behind Reyes and leaned against the wall beside the front door. “I’d invite you to sit down, but I’m boycotting furniture.”
The commodore stepped into the middle of the room and picked up Pennington’s data device. He held it in one hand and looked back at Pennington. “May I?”
“May you what? Read it? Or take it?”
He didn’t expect Reyes’s low-key reaction, a contrite lowering of his eyes. “May I look at it?”
Folding his arms, Pennington replied, “Be my guest.” He watched for about a minute as Reyes reviewed his first-draft text article and the related video clips and images. Every few seconds, Reyes’s eyebrows lifted slightly, or he nodded slowly.
“Impressive,” Reyes said as he turned off the device. “I’d have thought the star system vanishing would leave you behind the eight ball, but you even made that work for you.” He kneeled, set the device back on the floor, and stood again. “I’m sorry I can’t let the Sagittarius officers go on the record.”
“No doubt,” Pennington said, already tired of Reyes’s slow dance around the obvious. “I know why you’re here, Commodore. Do us both a favor, and get it over with.”
At first, Reyes didn’t respond. He walked over to the window and peeked between the blinds, through the amber light, into the artificial evening of the station’s terrestrial enclosure. “Why do you think I’m here, Mr. Pennington?”
A trick question? Pennington hesitated before he answered, “To seize my footage from Jinoteur—and to tell me not to bother filing the story, since it won’t get past your censors.”
“Send it to me,” Reyes said. “I’ll make sure it goes out as written.”
Instantly suspicious of the commodore’s motives, Pennington considered a few possible scenarios at work: an attempt at entrapment, a cruel hoax, or another scheme to publicly attack his credibility. “Why?” he asked. “What’s in it for you?”
“The truth,” Reyes said. “Nothing more, nothing less.” The longer he stared out the window, the more distant his expression became. “Very soon, Tim—perhaps in a couple of days—word’s going to get out that I invoked General Order 24 against Gamma Tauri IV.” He looked at Pennington. “Do you know what that is?” Pennington shook his head no, and Reyes continued, “It’s an order to annihilate the surface of a planet—to exterminate every living thing, blast away its atmosphere, cook its oceans, and leave nothing but a red-hot ball of glass.”
It was a startling image. “My God,” Pennington whispered.
“I gave that order to contain a threat,” Reyes said. “To stop a massive attack by an enemy you’ve now seen with your own eyes.” He turned once more to the view outside the window. “More than thirteen thousand people died on Gamma Tauri IV,” he said. As he continued, his sorrow slowly transmuted to quiet anger. “But that’s nothing compared to how many would die if that enemy ever reaches a fully populated planet. We woke this nightmare, and now it’s loose, God knows where, running amok. And nobody knows about it, Tim. Nobody knows because we keep hiding the truth, hoping we can steal another handful of ancient secrets from these creatures before all hell breaks loose.” His anger abated, leaving only his somber tone of grief. “The crew of the Bombay died for this secret, along with a dozen men and women from the Endeavour and the Lovell. Now it’s claimed thirteen thousand souls on Gamma Tauri IV, including a woman who used to be my wife.” He sighed heavily. “How many have to die? How many lives are we supposed to sacrifice on the altar of security? When does this madness stop?”
Pennington’s throat tightened with anxiety. Outside of Starfleet, he was likely the only person who knew that Reyes had ordered the destruction of Gamma Tauri IV. It was as big a piece of breaking news as his experiences on Jinoteur. “Sir,” he said, concealing his apprehension with a neutral monotone, “what do you want me to do with this information?”
“Publish it.” Reyes turned away from the window and walked to the front door. “Write the truth, exactly as you saw it.”
“The truth about Gamma Tauri IV might make you look bad,” Pennington said, halting Reyes in the open doorway. “Very bad.”
Looking back, Reyes replied, “All the more reason.”
“But if you let my story go out uncensored,” Pennington said, “won’t you be court-martialed?”
For a moment he thought he saw Reyes almost grin. “Probably,” the commodore said. “It’s your call, Tim. Do what you think’s right.” Reyes walked away, and the door shut with a loud clack, leaving Pennington alone with its echo.
He stood staring at the closed door, recovering from the shock of the unexpected…and then, all thoughts of Quinn, a drink at Tom Walker’s place, and a grateful cute redhead left his mind as he scooped up his data device and resumed writing.
I can finish this story in a few hours, he told himself. Let’s just hope Reyes doesn’t change his mind before it’s filed.
The gauges above T’Prynn’s biobed had all but flatlined. Fisher frowned as he watched and waited during the prolonged lacunae between minuscule pulses of the Vulcan’s autonomic systems.
M’Benga stood on the other side of the bed, leaning into the pool of bright bluish light focused on T’Prynn. He made notes on her chart, which was cradled in his bent left arm. Noticing Fisher’s dismay, he said, “Don’t be alarmed by her vital signs. It’s perfectly natural.”
“Nothing natural about it,” Fisher said, the edges in his voice rougher than usual. “She’s one late breath from dead.”
They were alone with T’Prynn in one of Vanguard Hospital’s isolation wards. Soft synthetic tones beeped and whirred in the background. Ten times per minute, a deep thump emanated from the cardiopulmonary monitor, signaling another feeble beat of T’Prynn’s heart. Her breaths were long but shallow.
Not content to let a machine guide his entire diagnosis, Fisher reached down to grasp T’Prynn’s wrist and feel for himself the strength of her pulse. He pushed aside the edge of the thermal blanket that covered her from the neck down. As he grasped her radiantly warm wrist, he nodded at the blanket and asked M’Benga, “Is this thing really necessary?”