Reke looked at Scott, struggling to focus through eyes dilated with intoxication. Perplexed, he looked down at the bottle in his hand, then glanced pleadingly at Ganz, who scowled back. Cowed, Reke thrust the bottle toward Scott, who took it.
The chief engineer stared at the bottle for a moment, then lifted the cork and sniffed its aggressively pungent contents. “Good God, man, you could strip dilithium with this! What in blazes is it?”
Wobbling on his feet, the henchman belched. Through a thick gurgling croak, he forced out the words “It’s green,” then he doubled over and vomited on Scott’s left boot.
Imagining himself back in Starfleet basic training prior to the start of his academy classes twenty-odd years ago, Scott simply pretended that nothing was amiss. He didn’t flinch. His posture remained straight. Eye contact with his host was unbroken. Ganz nodded at him, apparently satisfied with what he had seen. “Enjoy it in good health, Commander.”
“I will. Thank you…. What do I owe you?”
“Call it a gift,” Ganz said. “I don’t do business with Starfleeters. Too many…complications.”
“Right,” Scott said. “I see. Mighty generous of you, then.”
“You know,” Ganz added, “if I was you right now, I’d be—”
“Leaving,” Scott said enthusiastically. “A capital idea.” Scott lifted his soiled boot free of Reke’s mound of ejected stomach contents and shook away the larger chunks. He gestured his farewell to Ganz with the bottle of green mystery booze, then departed without another word to the Orion boss.
Zett was at Scott’s back by the time he reached the stairs to the lower level. “I trust you can show yourself out?”
“Aye, count on it.”
Despite Scott’s assurance, Zett shadowed him all the way to the airlock and escorted him into the corridor beyond. He offered up his unctuous, jet-black grin. “A pleasure.”
Scott was halfway down the corridor to the station core before he heard Zett head back inside Ganz’s ship. Only as he rounded the corner did Scott permit himself a heavy sigh and an unheard, softly muttered retort of “Wankers.”
Rana Desai’s feet dragged like leaden weights. Exhaustion had left her feeling like a shell of herself. She had expected to be home more than two hours ago, but a flurry of last-minute work had made this evening into just one more of a long series of painfully late nights in Vanguard’s office of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General.
Turning the corner toward her quarters, she imagined the look on her boyfriend’s face. She had wanted to let him know about the delay that kept her and two of her lawyers trapped after-hours in the JAG office, but she hadn’t been able to steal a private moment to relay the bad news. He’ll understand, she hoped. It’s the nature of the job. He knows that.
Her door swished open as she approached, and she entered to a faint aroma of grilled fish. She stopped at the dining table. A pair of still-burning tapers had consumed themselves to within half an inch of their bases. At her place, an immaculate plate was flanked by gleaming silverware. Her water goblet was filled. An open bottle of Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse stood behind her tulip-shaped wineglass.
Reyes stood and stared out the broad window on the far side of the room. He downed the last dregs from the wineglass in his hand, then spoke without turning around. “I started without you.”
“So I see.” Desai picked up the serving fork and poked the untouched fillet of sea bass, which had long since gone cold, neglected in the middle of the unoccupied table for two. She placed the fork back on the platter, perfectly parallel to the fillet. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, pouring herself half a glass of the vintage white wine. “But it’s all Pennington’s fault.”
Reyes continued to gaze out the window. “Mm-hm.”
She picked up her glass, circled around the table, and joined him at the window. Trying to read his silences was still a challenge for her, but sensing his moods was getting easier. “What’s wrong?”
He looked down into the bottom of his empty glass with a forlorn expression. “Bad news from home.”
Placing one hand on his arm, she gently turned him toward her. “What news?”
“My mother.” Anguish had recast his normally intense, stoic visage into something tragic. “She’s been diagnosed with Meenok’s disease.”
Desai’s voice was a dismayed whisper. “Oh, no. What’s the prognosis?”
Reyes’s voice cracked and faltered like he was being strangled. “Terminal. A couple months, maybe.” He fought to pull in a new breath and exhaled through clenched teeth as he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the window. “And here I am, at the ass end of the galaxy.”
Meenok’s disease was a degenerative neurological affliction that continued to haunt the descendants of Earth’s first lunar settlers. Its similarity to other, more benign conditions meant that it was almost always misdiagnosed until its final, fatal stages. Victims of Meenok’s almost always remained lucid. Unfortunately, its chief symptom during its final stage was gruesome, debilitating pain. Just about the only mitigating factor was that this suffering, though extreme, was brief. So brief, Desai understood, that there was little chance that Reyes could make the journey back to his family’s home in New Berlin on Luna before the end came.
A lonesome tear escaped from Reyes’s closed eyes. Desai took the empty glass from his hand and set it down on a corner table beside her own. Normally, she found budging him to be like moving a mountain, but tonight Reyes responded to her gentle guidance, like a vessel set adrift. With a gentle nudge, she guided him toward the sofa, eased him down onto it, then settled herself beside him.
“When did you hear the news?”
“About an hour ago. I got the message while I was waiting for you.”
Taking one of his large, weathered hands into her own, she said, “Is there anything I can do?”
He shook his head. “Funny thing about life—it sneaks up on you.” Squeezing her hands, he continued, “We get over the illusion of our own indestructibility, but we forget that our parents are mortal. Then, one day, one of the people who made you is gone…and you realize you’re next in line.”
“She’s not gone yet,” Desai said.
“No, not yet. But soon. I recorded a message…but it’s not the same. It’s not like being there.” Reyes leaned back and craned his head over the back of the sofa. She watched him study the featureless gray ceiling. He sighed. “I’d always imagined the way she’d smile when I finally told her she was a grandmother…. Then I went and married Jeanne and wasted eleven years.”
Desai nodded but said nothing; Reyes rarely spoke of his ex-wife, and she had learned that asking him questions about Jeanne or their marriage or their divorce was strictly verboten. The real reason for her reticence, however, was that this was the third time in as many months that Reyes had made some kind of oblique reference about a desire to be a father. As enamored as she was of him, she found the idea of starting a family to be premature. At times like this, she struggled not to hear her own mother’s voice chiding her: You’re not getting any younger, Rana! A few more years and you won’t be able to have children! What are you waiting for?
She pushed her back to the end of the sofa and pulled Reyes toward her. He leaned back against her torso, and she began kneading the tension from his shoulders. His muscles were rock-hard, coiled with the kind of stress that—according to Rana’s father, a doctor—would send a person to an early grave. Her delicate-looking hands clenched and pulled at his rocklike trapezius until it slowly became pliable. Reyes rasped out a half-grunt, half-sigh that spoke of pain, pleasure, and relief.
Half an hour later, his neck and shoulder muscles once again feeling like human flesh instead of marble, Reyes was asleep in Desai’s arms. She leaned down and kissed his deeply creased forehead. Her stomach growled and gurgled softly from beneath him, but rather than risk waking Reyes she ignored her hunger and decided to try and get some sleep instead.