What Judgments Come

I could get used to this.

After a moment, his right hand turning his glass in a slow circle as it sat atop his thigh, Reyes said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Tim, but what the hell are you doing here? I know you didn’t come all this way for a drink.”

“Well,” Pe

Releasing another small laugh, Reyes sipped from his whiskey. “I’ll get right on that. Okay, out with it. What really brought you to the ass end of space? To talk to some washed-up relic nobody’s going to remember in a hundred years?”

“There are a handful of people who know the truth about what happened out there,” Pe

Reyes eyed him. “You can read about it in my memoirs. I’ve got a contract from Broht and Forester sitting on my desk. They want a juicy tell-all book for Christmas.”

Laughing at that, Pe

“I got it from one of the books Zeke gave me before I left the station,” Reyes replied, waving toward one of the shelves near the fireplace. “The first time, that is. You know, before all that fun I had with the Klingons and Orions.”

“Right, that,” Pe

“I lost the books Zeke gave me,” Reyes said, “thanks to those Orion pirates’ blowing up my prison transport.” He paused, and Pe

“I figure this might take a while,” Reyes said, setting the bottle on a small table positioned between the two recliners before reclaiming his seat.

Pe

“It’s not like they’ll ever let you write about it,” Reyes said, his gaze drifting to the fire before them. “You try publishing anything, and the best you can hope for is being allowed to retire gracefully to some backwater colony.”

“Maybe we could be roommates?” Pe

“Not for nothing,” Reyes replied, “but I have a shovel and access to a lot of uninhabited forest. You won’t be missed. At least, not for a while.”

Laughing at that, Pe

“No, it doesn’t sound crazy at all.” Reyes sipped from his glass, saying nothing for a moment, but then he released a sigh that to Pe

“All right. What do you want to know?”

THE TAURUS REACH

2268

1

“What do you want to know?”

Tim Pe

“I want to know what the hell you’re doing here!” Pe

Leaning against the bar, a thin rectangular glass held in his left hand, Reyes paused to scan the faces of nearby patrons, as though trying to verify that he and Pe

“I gathered as much,” the journalist replied, taking care now to ensure his voice did not rise above the crowd noise. Still, he tossed glances over both shoulders to check for potential eavesdroppers, but saw no sign of anyone appearing to engage in such activity. Everyone in the room appeared to be focused on the gaming tables, or their meals as they sat at tables or in booths, or the lithe figures of the Orion waitresses as they drifted around and among the patrons. A thin veil of multihued smoke lingered near the ceiling lights, a by-product of the different tobaccos and other noxious substances of which various customers were partaking. Pe

The man now standing before Pe

What had come as a shock was their learning of an attack on the U.S.S. Nowlan,the transport vessel carrying the disgraced officer to Earth. The ship had been reported destroyed with all hands, so it came as an even greater surprise to subsequently learn that Reyes was alive and in Klingon custody. Further, it appeared that the former Starfleet commodore had provided the captain of the Klingon vessel with sensitive information, ensuring a successful attack on Starbase 47. For reasons that remained a mystery, Reyes had found a way to trade his Klingon hosts for Orions—specifically, the merchant prince Ganz and the crew of the Omari-Ekon,where he had been for the past several months. Though the vessel was docked at Vanguard, it remained sovereign Orion territory. As such, Reyes was beyond the grasp of Starfleet regulations and Federation law.