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Before Desai could answer, Reyes held up his hand. “What about my staff? What happens to them?”
Looking across the table at him, Sereb asked, “Except for Lieutenant Commander T’Pry
Reyes was, of course, troubled by the thought of any proceedings that might be launched against his intelligence officer—assuming she ever regained consciousness and only if she somehow managed to avoid any serious or prolonged damage induced by her affliction. Despite that, Reyes wondered if Sereb’s offer was something he could accept. In truth, he had been trying to prepare himself for just such a decision for weeks, attempting to come to terms with what it might mean for his life going forward and especially any future he hoped to share with Rana.
Screw it,he decided. You’re old enough to retire, anyway, right?He knew it was going against everything he had been telling himself for weeks, to say nothing of what he had communicated first to Commander Spires and then to Rana, but what he had been trying to ignore during that time—the single thought that had been gnawing at him during those uncounted hours alone in his cell—was that he simply was tired and wanted all of this to be over. With it done, perhaps he and Rana, assuming that her own career aspirations did not preclude a continuing relationship with him, might settle somewhere, build a life and a home together, and maybe even start a family. He knew Rana was hesitant at the notion, but perhaps this sort of life-altering event was just the thing to renew the infrequent, fragmented conversations they had shared on this topic.
Long past time to seize the day, I suppose.
With a slow, resigned sigh, Reyes finally looked to Desai and nodded.
“Diego,” she said, her face a mask of concern, “are you sure about this?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s best for everyone involved. You and I both know they’ve got me. It’s just a matter of how much they want to beat on me before they finally throw me in a cell somewhere.” He sighed. “Why go through all of that when I can just put it all behind me? Everybody would probably be better off.” The words were sour in his mouth. He despised the idea of compromising, particularly with anyone he considered an enemy. For purposes of the court-martial, Sereb was that opponent, and realizing that the best course of action for all concerned was to agree to the attorney’s proposal made Reyes feel both anger and defeat.
After a moment, Sereb offered a perfunctory nod, his blunt nose moving up and down in rapid fashion as he folded his beefy arms across his broad chest. “Excellent. I thought as much.”
Frowning in confusion, Reyes glanced at Desai, whose eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“Well,” Sereb replied, “as you say, we’ve got you, and it’s just a matter of degrees at this point. I simply wanted some firsthand insight into the defendant I will be prosecuting.” To Reyes, he added, “You are fully culpable for every charge against you, Commodore, and it’s my duty to prosecute you to the fullest extent of Starfleet regulations, which is precisely what I intend to do.”
He was sizing me up.The bitter thought pounded in Reyes’s mind in response to the realization of what he soon would be facing in the courtroom. Cu
“How dare you come in here and ambush my client under false pretenses,” she said, her already crisp accent taking on a brutal, clipped quality underscoring the anger she clearly was trying to keep at bay. “This meeting is over. We’ll see you in court, Counselor.”
Sereb reached for his briefcase, and Reyes was certain that he caught a hint of smugness crossing the Tellarite’s pudgy features. “Indeed you will. Good day.” With a formal nod, he turned and exited the room. Reyes and Desai watched him until the doors closed behind him.
27
“So,” Nogura said as he took in the expansive area of the Vault and nodded in appreciation, “this is where the fun happens.”
All around him, nearly a dozen Starfleet officers and civilian scientists busied themselves at computer workstations or in several of the laboratories and offices he could see from where he stood inside the office currently occupied by Dr. Marcus. In this part of the station, which on technical schematics appeared as an area devoted to environmental-control and waste-extraction systems, was housed the sum total of knowledge that Starfleet had collected with regard to the Shedai and the Taurus Meta-Genome.
“I suppose that’s one way to put it,” replied Marcus from where she stood behind her desk, looking over one of the numerous reports littering her office. The room itself was not that large, and its limited space was cluttered with boxes, reports, data cards, and other managerial flotsam.
Numerous ongoing efforts ensured the facility’s secrecy. As far as the vast majority of Starbase 47’s Starfleet and civilian contingents were concerned, the Vault did not exist. The people working here appeared on perso
Marcus stepped around her desk and moved for the door. “If you’ll follow me, sir, I think we’ve got something you’ll find very interesting.”
“I’d imagine that term fits pretty much everything in this room,” Nogura said as he fell in step beside her, and the pair proceeded down the Vault’s central corridor. “At least, it seems that way according to what I’ve been reading.”
Marcus nodded. “You don’t know the half of it.” She gestured to the labs they passed. “When I think about what’s out there for us to find, compared with what we actually know at this point, it boggles the mind. You’ve read the reports, Admiral, so you know we’re not exaggerating when we say we may be on the cusp of expanding our knowledge a hundredfold in so many different areas of science and technology. It’s all out there, waiting for us.”
“We have but to understand how the key fits the lock containing all of this information,” Nogura said, repeating a phrase he had come across on several occasions, in reports submitted by Dr. Marcus as well as Lieutenant Ming Xiong.
“Exactly,” Marcus said. “The problem is that the meta-genome is so complex, and when we couple that with the ma
“I hadn’t noticed,” Nogura replied wryly. In fact, he was quite aware that there seemed to be an energy permeating the room, something palpable enveloping the effort being expended here. The people around him were driven to understand the mysteries they had been tasked with solving. One of the things that had interested him upon reading the regular Vanguard updates was how young everyone seemed. Carol Marcus was in her early thirties, according to her perso