Almost empty, anyway.

“Well, you look like hell,” Pennington replied, making no effort to hide his disdain. “Are you going to be able to pilot that flying death trap of yours, or not?”

“I’ve flown when I felt a lot worse than this,” Quinn said as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Feel free to stay behind, if you’re worried.”

Shaking his head, Pennington replied, “Ordinarily I might take you up on that, but I’ve got my own reasons for tagging along.”

“Oh, yeah,” Quinn said, recalling that the onetime reporter for the Federation News Service had lined up a series of interviews with several members of the colony on Boam II, one of the first such settlements to be established at the start of Federation expansion into the Taurus Reach. Pennington planned to write a story about how the colony had thrived in the sixteen months since its founding, in the hopes of showcasing some of the positive progress being made in this region.

“It’s not going to win me any prizes,” Pennington conceded, “but hopefully it’ll let me pay a few bills, assuming I get to write it.”

Nobody’s gonna buy it,he mused, but why rain on his parade?Under most other circumstances, Quinn probably would not have cared less that the journalist’s life lay all but in ruins—that he’d been fired from his job and dumped by his wife.

Of course, given that Quinn himself had played a hand, albeit unknowingly, in demolishing Pennington’s career, things were different. Acting on direction of the station’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn, Quinn had planted information that she had given him and that she had designed as bait to trick Pennington into writing a damning article for the FNS about the destruction of the U.S.S. Bombayat the hands of Tholian vessels last month. The information was fake, its sources either liars or phantoms created by the Vulcan for the sole purpose of luring the journalist to craft a story which could then—along with Pennington himself—be discredited. Her tactics had proven successful, with the FNS wasting no time firing Pennington and Starfleet using that opportunity to cloak in shadow whatever had really happened to the Bombaysomewhere deep in the Taurus Reach.

Whereas Quinn could accept that his chosen line of work might entail visiting hardship or even harm on others, he had his limits. He did not believe in killing except in self-defense, and he studiously avoided cheating or otherwise harming innocent people. Pennington’s only apparent crime had been one of unchecked enthusiasm as he wrote and published his story with the information he had obtained. Because of that, he was now a laughingstock in the professional journalism community and an outcast even here, aboard this station in the hind end of space. It was because of the guilt Quinn felt over his role in Pennington’s professional demise that he had befriended the disgraced reporter, without cluing him in to the true reasons behind his decision, of course.

I’m not acomplete idiot.

“So, are we going or not?” Pennington said, his voice seeming to acquire an even thicker accent as his annoyance level rose, and each syllable tapping a new nail into Quinn’s alcohol-ravaged brain.

Holding up a hand to silence his friend, Quinn said, “Yeah, yeah, we’re going. Just hang on a minute.” His brow furrowed as he recalled the previous evening’s activities. “The cargo’s already in the hold, and I took care of preflight last night.” Seeing the look of concern on Pennington’s face, he added, “ BeforeI started drinking, all right?”

Pennington appeared to relax. “Fine. Let’s go then.”

“Get your stuff and meet me at the docking port,” Quinn said as he began searching through the numerous pockets lining his shirt, trousers, and jacket. “I need to settle up with Tom.”

An expression of surprise appeared on Pennington’s face. “You’re settling your tab? Is this some sort of special occasion?” He frowned. “You’re not dying, are you?”

“I’m not that lucky,” Quinn retorted before waving Pennington toward the door. “Go. I’ll meet you there in five minutes. We’ll be out of here on schedule.”

Pennington pointed a cautioning finger at him, his frown turning skeptical. “Don’t be late,” he said as he turned and headed for the door. “I need this job, and so do you.”

“Don’t worry, dear. We’ll be fine,” Quinn said to the reporter’s retreating back before his gaze returned to the bar. Once Pennington was gone, he shook his head. “Two weeks with that,” he said to no one, imagining the round-trip voyage to Boam II and back. “Mommy, make it stop.”

And with that, he laid his head back down on the bar. Within seconds, the few innocuous sounds drifting through the tavern faded away as Quinn once more allowed sleep to reach out for him.

He had no idea how much time had passed before he felt another poke in his left shoulder.

“Dammit, Tim,” he said, jerking his head up and squinting in pain at the sudden movement. “You’re worse than my second wife.” He whirled around on his barstool, seriously considering punching Pennington for the second time since meeting the aggravating journalist.

Instead of Pennington, Quinn found himself staring into the face of Zett Nilric. Impeccably dressed, as always, in a tailored slate-gray suit with polished black shoes, the trim Nalori regarded him with an expression cold enough to freeze warp plasma. The tavern’s low overhead lighting reflected off his oily black skin and shaved head, making his expression appear all the more sinister.

“Mr. Quinn,” Zett said without preamble, his tone reserved and almost lyrical as he spoke, “Mr. Ganz wants to see you.”

Quinn sighed. That the Orion would send his right-hand man and most trusted enforcer to personally escort him to see their mutual employer could not bode well. “What did I do now?”

Zett, of course, did not smile. “Why, nothing. At least, not yet.”

4

Occupying his customary table at the rear of Starbase 47’s officers’ mess and without moving his eyes from the data slate lying atop the table near his left elbow, Commodore Diego Reyes reached with the fork in his right hand to stab at his eggs.

The fork scraped against the plate, alerting him that he had already consumed his breakfast. Looking over at the empty plate with an aftertaste of the meal still in his mouth, he realized that he had been so engrossed in his morning reading that he had failed to recognize how utterly horrible the eggs had tasted.

“What the hell did I just eat?” Reyes asked, frowning, as he reached for his glass of orange juice in the hope of washing away the aftertaste of…whatever.

Across from him, Dr. Ezekiel Fisher’s brown face warmed as he offered a wistful smile from over the rim of his coffee cup. “Ktarian eggs. I made a change in your diet profile for the galley after your last physical. Those are lower in cholesterol, and they’ve got all sorts of vitamins and minerals a growing boy like you needs.”

Reyes frowned at his longtime friend. “You know I hate Ktarian eggs,” he said. “Always have. I’d rather chew on my boot.”

“Your boot would offer more nutrition than what you usually eat. Besides, they taste better when you mix in green peppers,” Fisher countered, indicating Reyes’s plate with a nod of his head. “You didn’t seem to mind them this time.”

His scowl melting somewhat, Reyes said, “Is it part of a chief medical officer’s job description to harass and harangue those in his care in as many ways as possible?”

“Absolutely,” Fisher replied, nodding with conviction as he took another sip of his coffee. “It’s the second verse of the Hippocratic Oath, the one you never hear because most doctors are going on about doing no harm and whatnot. Me? I skipped right to the good part.”