Star Trek: Vanguard: Declassified Page 11

  These, Jetanien decided, were problems for tomorrow, as this day already had seen its share. If even the smallest fraction of the potential represented by Operation Vanguard came to fruition, there would be all manner of new questions to answer and challenges to overcome, and much work to be done.

  Much work, indeed, for all of us.

  HARD NEWS

  Kevin Dilmore

  For Colleen, for whom a dedication is long overdue;

  and for Dan, Larry, Deborah, Jane, and Paul—Star Trek

  journalists without equal.

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  The events of this story take place in 2266, one week after the publication of Tim Pennington’s accounts of the disappearance of the Jinoteur system and the actions of Commodore Diego Reyes on Gamma Tauri IV (Star Trek Vanguard: Reap the Whirlwind).

  THE TAURUS REACH

  2266

  1

  “Biological perversions. That’s what they have going on down there.”

  Admittedly, I had been half listening to the Starfleet ensign at that particular point in our conversation, which was discourteous if nothing else given that he had paid for the round of drinks sitting before us. The young man had his urgent whisper to thank for snapping me back to attention. Evidently, he had reached the salient point toward which he had been steering for the twenty minutes or so that we had been there.

  “Right, um, perversion,” I said. “Now, you’re not talking about unnatural monsters with a taste for human flesh or something, are you?”

  The ensign’s look soured a bit. “I’m not sure you’re taking me very seriously, Mister Pennington.”

  “It’s Tim, please,” I said, and smiled, hoping a little familiarity might soothe his offense. “And I apologize if I’m coming across as disinterested. Remember, it’s my role to be the skeptic here. I need to dig into this story, poke holes in it. As a reporter, I’m the advocate for all the Federation News Service readers who might have a harder time swallowing all of this than I.”

  Wrinkles smoothed from his brow as he appeared to mull my words. In a moment, he nodded affirmatively. I guess he bought it—or at least enough of it to continue talking. “Like I was saying, the word is that somewhere in the lower decks, in a place that is so secret it doesn’t show up on the station’s schematics, is a research laboratory that houses specimens from across the Federation and outside it, too.”

  “Okay, but consider it from my side, Ensiiign . . .” I drew out his rank long enough to fire whatever neurons in my brain would enable me to come up with his name. Damn me for messing it now.

  “Um, Saura?”

  “Of course, Saura. Sorry, mate,” I said, cursing myself silently. Regardless of whether I found the young man’s story credible to this point, I certainly could not rule out his offering up at least one fact or idea I’d not yet considered in this latest hunt for news. But there is no quicker way of closing up a source than to scarcely recall his identity in the middle of an interview. He appeared to shrug it aside, so I continued. “On the surface of things, it’s no surprise to anyone that Vanguard has research facilities on board. It’s the largest Federation presence in this sector. When you’re this far out from the center of civilization, it’s bound to have everything they can pack inside its hull.”

  And pack the hull of Starbase 47 they did. At nearly one thousand meters tall and more than eight hundred meters wide, the place was more spaceport than Starfleet facility, housing a crew larger than five starships and half again as many private citizens—including me. Vanguard came complete with civilian residences, terrestrial green space, shopping and recreation centers, restaurants and bars such as Tom Walker’s, the one in which we sat. The station even housed hotel accommodations for deep-space passersby. Not that many people toured the Taurus Reach for the thrill of it all, but still, this was no mere way station for simply refueling and restocking a ship out of necessity. That said, I had been here more than a year, now, and there were plenty of places on Vanguard I certainly still had not seen. Secret research lab? I would not rule that out in the least.

  “And you know as well as I do, Ensign, that the publicly available schematics of Starfleet facilities and equipment contain plenty of sensitive areas blacked out for security reasons. Even I can appreciate the boundary between the public’s right to know and the security of the Federation.”

  “I’m a Starfleet officer, Mister Pennington,” he said. “I’m not arguing that aspect of it at all.”

  “Fair enough,” I said before taking another sip of my drink. Just then, I caught the eye of an approaching server, a young and round-faced brunette I had seen here before only recently, and waved her off from interrupting us. Had I been here alone, I might have knocked back a pair of whiskeys by now. As I had simply doubled Ensign Saura’s request for some sort of foul-tasting fermented cider, a move to help instill a little camaraderie with him from the get-go, I continued to nurse the one I had rather than subject myself to more of it. And at that point, I was not going to buy us a second round, either. “So, what you’re suggesting is that it’s not the secrecy of the lab itself that alarms you, but what is happening inside it.”

  “Exactly,” he said, leaning forward to me again. “From what I hear, our scientists are conducting genetic experiments on all sorts of species down there. Animals from Earth, creatures of all shapes and sizes from any number of worlds, and more.”

  “What do you mean by more?”

  “It’s not just animals that are being tested and experimented on,” Saura said. “It’s other races—sentient beings.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I heard. There’s even a Tholian captive down there, being held against its will and having who knows what done to it by our scientists.”

  The thought soured my mouth even worse than did my cider drink. In my time aboard Vanguard, there had been a number of aspects of Starfleet’s mission that I had learned on my own, and others of which I had been made aware by station personnel, including by the now-former commanding officer of the station, Commodore Diego Reyes. I knew full well the lengths that Reyes would go to fulfill Starfleet’s mission in the Taurus Reach, despite my not being privy to just precisely what that mission might fully involve. But I also knew Reyes well enough—at least I imagined so—that I believed he would not condone any such secretive inhumane actions on his watch. This was a man who just days before had all but given up his command, his career, his freedom itself not to hide but to reveal unflinching details about his role in Starfleet’s operations in this sector. Reyes not only allowed me to report on the fate of Jinoteur IV, a planet that inexplicably blinked out of existence entirely, he authorized the release of my own video from an alien city on that planet that may have been home to the Shedai, an ancient race of super-beings unlike any we have before seen. And if that were not enough, he chose me as his confessor for his decision to decimate the planet of Gamma Tauri IV, sacrificing every living thing on its entire surface in order to protect the quadrant, maybe the galaxy, from those very beings. As someone so willing to stop himself from being burdened by harbored knowledge, he did not seem the type to exploit another being without mercy. A tortured soul such as his seemed unlikely to create another, even complicitly.

  “That’s a very serious allegation you’re making, Ensign,” I said. “It’s certainly not one that would be taken lightly. Do you have any evidence of this happening beyond your tapping into the rumor mill?”

  “No,” he said. “I figured getting that was your job.”

  “I’m a reporter, not a human-rights investigator.”

  “But these aren’t humans I’m talking about!”

  I responded to his elevated tone by taking another sip from my cider, hoping that my calm might encourage him to dial back any rising sense of urgency. “What I mean, to be clear, is that I remain on the station at the will and pleasure of Starfleet administrators. I could attempt to investigate the kind of offense you’re describing, but the n
umber of avenues I might take to even begin such an investigation is limited. If you’re this concerned, might I direct you to the station’s consular offices of the Federation Embassy. Ask for Ambassabor Jetanien. He’s the one who, well, who looks like a turtle.”

  “There’s that tone again, Mister Pennington,” Saura said. “The one that makes me think you aren’t that interested in my tip after all.”

  “It’s not a matter of interest, Ensign. Your story is plenty interesting. It’s a matter of credibility.” As soon as the last word came from my mouth, the young man’s eyes widened and he made a move to scoot away from our table. “The credibility of the information, not of you. If you would indulge me a moment, let me play the role of my editor and tell you how she might respond when I come to her with this tip of yours. First, she might ask what your source might be.”

  “Well, I don’t want to name names. Let’s just say that I’ve heard it around and from more than one person.”

  “Right. We’ll deem that ‘unsubstantiated’ then. So, at this point she might turn her attention to you. To what division are you assigned?”

  “I’m a communications specialist.”

  “And how long have you been stationed at Vanguard?”

  “Well, I’ve been here for the duration.” Saura’s tone and expression did not seem to mark his service milestone with pleasure.

  “The duration being . . . that you have been assigned here since the station opened.”

  “And before that,” he clarified. “I was attached to the station to help build its communications array.”

  “Excellent. Then you must be very proud of your service record and of your accomplishments here.”

  “You could say proud . . .” Saura’s voice trailed off.

  So I picked it back up. “Buuut, you’re ready for a different challenge, shall we say.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And you’ve been out here a long time.”

  “I’ve made no secret about wanting to rotate off the station,” Saura said. “I put in for transfer over a year ago.”

  “More than a year ago?” I unconsciously corrected his grammar, then sipped at my drink again. “And yet, here you remain.”

  “Evidently.”

  “So, if you’ve got no love left for the station, and you can’t get a move on, no matter who or how you ask for it, there’s always the hope that Vanguard gets put out of business.”

  “Pardon?” Saura narrowed his eyes. “Space stations don’t get put out of business.”

  “But one might get repurposed should a primary mission change,” I said, leaning forward. “Equipment would get changed out, crew assignments would shuffle. All of that isn’t hard to imagine as a result of a turn of public sentiment against a station’s purported goal. There isn’t a story that would kick up disapproval and distrust of activities at Starbase 47 faster than allegations of inhumanity against sentients sanctioned by Starfleet Command. And on the heels of the Jinoteur incident, too.”

  Saura sat up in his seat and spoke crisply. “That’s not at all what got this talk started.”

  “Sure would be a clean ticket home, right, Ensign? I mean, if everyone had to go.”

  “You’ve twisted my words completely out of context, Mister Pennington,” Saura said, and stood from the table.

  “I twisted no words, sir,” I said. “I merely speculated one path my editor might take to substantiate your information. Or not.”

  Saura left, but not before saying over his shoulder, “I should have expected as much from the press.”

  “Cheers,” I offered back, hoisting my half-full glass of the nasty brew in his direction but not following it with a quaff. Not that I was totally unappreciative of his time. It was simply that “tips” such as Ensign Saura’s were becoming the norm since the day I broke the news about Jinoteur and Gamma Tauri IV and the Shedai and Reyes—and the whole bloody mess. Whether I was walking through Stars Landing and the other civilian areas of the station or between Starfleet offices within its central command tower, a great many more eyes were turned to me as I passed by these days. Not that I became some sort of instant celebrity aboard Vanguard. I had been on the station long enough that my face was recognizable to those who paid any attention to FNS newsfeeds. But this time, my reports of activities aboard Vanguard broke big, leading news reports of the day practically across the Federation. Now, many of my station mates were sure they carried the one bit of information I would need to reveal even more wrongly kept secrets or uncover the next group of corrupt Federation officials or whatever perceived injustices they might harbor. They wanted to spill, and it was my job to listen to them all. Better that than to risk pushing aside any information that might actually be newsworthy—particularly in my editors’ eyes if not mine. They were as keenly interested in the next big news to come out of Vanguard as its denizens were.

  So I was no longer simply a reporter. No, I was a muckraker— a lovely, little centuries-old sobriquet we get saddled with whenever one of our stories brings down someone in power, whether in politics, private enterprise, or, in this case, Starfleet. In the wake of my story, Commodore Reyes was relieved of command and arrested outside his own office—hell, the man called me ahead of time so I could come see it transpire myself. And why not? Had I delivered a phaser blast rather than a news story, I would have watched him fall just as ignobly. I owed it to him to pay witness to the results of my actions.

  We might not have fully realized it back when we conversed in my emptied apartment merely a week ago, but for Reyes and me, our worlds changed forever in those moments: mine after choosing to publish and his after choosing to permit me. The question that continued to dog me from the moment he was taken into custody was . . . why? Why did Starfleet respond so quickly and harshly against Reyes? Why did Reyes seem not to care what happened to him as a result? Why would even a single detail of information offered by my reporting be capable of compromising any aspect of Starfleet’s operations from Vanguard? Reyes let me report what I saw, knowing full well what I knew as I was writing it: no matter what I said, or showed, about my experiences on Jinoteur, no one out there would have the first clue what to make of the Shedai, their capabilities, any of it. Even I scarcely understood what the hell happened—and I lived through it.

  A pair of beeps from my pocketed data device shook me loose from my thoughts. I checked the soft glow of its readout to find a text notification of a pending subspace communication from my FNS editors, and I had just enough time to rid my system of what cider it had processed and make my way to a public comm station to catch it.

  So, why tell everyone, Commodore Reyes? Hell, why not?

  2

  In the shopping promenade of Stars Landing, the screen on the public subspace viewer kiosk I occupied was filled with printed words on a shaking sheet of paper. The voice coming from behind the paper was unmistakably my editor’s.

  “ ‘Fact-finding continues in the case against a Starfleet officer accused of publicly revealing his orders to destroy a planet in the Taurus Reach.’ This is your lead,” came the voice, which by then sounded about as unsteady as the wavering paper.

  “That one’s mine, yes,” I said, my back pressed against one wall of the viewer kiosk while I sat on a thinly cushioned stool anchored to the floor. “The Federation News Service just paid for an awfully expensive call for you to confirm that.”

  The paper dropped from view within my vantage point to reveal the scowling face of a clearly disgusted Frankie Libertini, the latest in my career run of editors to oversee my work for the FNS. Assigned to the Alpha Centauri bureau, there must have been a dozen other editors closer in physical proximity to me than she was. My guess is that after Arlys Warfield dumped me, my supervision became an editorial short straw that Frankie was merely the latest to draw. Frankie was a lifer in FNS terms, having covered Starfleet before I was even born. Consequently, she kept a fairly hands-off approach to how I ran my beat here. For her to request a subspace vi
deo connection with me on Vanguard meant either she wanted to check on my general well-being or she wanted to look into my eyes while scolding me. Evidently, any good grace I had earned from my Reyes story was being exhausted more quickly than I had hoped.

  “How about the fact-finding mission I just finished, Tim? Would you like to ask me about that?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I found no new facts in this alleged news story you filed today.” I laughed a little, but more from the sneer that tightened Frankie’s mouth than her clever turn of phrase. It did not endear me to her. “This is a recap story at best, and even that’s a generous word for it. Did you even write this today?”

  “I did. At least, I wrote the lead you liked so well.”

  “This is not the follow-up I assigned, and it’s not the followup that anyone who gives a damn about this story would want to read,” she said. “You might as well have come out and said that you don’t know what’s happened in the case for a week.”

  “Well, I don’t know what’s happened in a week.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “As you might imagine, I am not on the best of terms with the majority of my sources right now,” I said, looking over my shoulder at a pair of passing shoppers before leaning into the viewer’s recessed microphone. “And, to be honest, this isn’t the atmosphere most conducive to this particular conversation.”

  “What, are you in a public booth or something?”

  “I am, actually.”

  “And what were you thinking when you connected with me from there?”

  “Well, until you establish a Vanguard bureau office, I pretty much have to rely on my own resources.”

  “What happened to calling me from home?”

  “I’ve . . . run into a bit of a situation, there,” I said, not wanting to delve into the details of how my ex-wife had relieved our apartment of every single possession we once shared, including our personal communications equipment. I still had not put together the time or the resources to return the place to anything resembling actual occupancy. Had Lora chosen to rid me of my own clothing as well, I would probably still be wearing the same outfit I had on at the moment I discovered she had left and petitioned for divorce.