A contest of principles, p.27
A Contest of Principles, page 27
“I can only confirm that V’sta is unlikely to be in the hands of the authorities.”
“Why do I get the distinct impression you’re not telling me everything, Mister Spock?”
“Perhaps because it is the nature of your profession to seldom take anything at face value?” Spock said, deflecting. “It occurs to me, however, that I should also inform you that the UBF did provide me with a possible clue to Doctor McCoy’s whereabouts.”
“Now we’re talking,” Colc said, his curiosity visibly piqued. “Don’t hold out on me, Spock. Give.”
Spock shared V’sta’s revelation that an Ozalorian courier ship had departed Braco in approximately the same timeframe as McCoy’s disappearance.
“A diplomatic vessel, you say?” Colc grinned wolfishly. “Consider me intrigued. Let me do a little digging and see what else I can come up with.”
Spock had anticipated that Colc would find the clue tantalizing. He hoped to benefit from the reporter’s investigative talents and contacts.
“Any additional intelligence you can provide will be appreciated,” Spock said. “In exchange, I may be able to facilitate a one-on-one interview with a certain fugitive UBF leader, who has good reason to get her own side of the story out to the general populace.”
Colc’s brows shot upward. He took a moment to process Spock’s offer, as well as its implications. His eyes narrowed as he chuckled knowingly.
“Remind me not to play tiles against you, Mister Spock. Tell me, are all Vulcans so crafty?”
“I’m quite certain I don’t know what you mean,” Spock said.
“Sure you don’t.” Colc winked at him. “Anyway, I’ve got to go run down that new lead of ours. Be talking to you.”
“Affirmative,” Spock said.
Colc’s face vanished from the globe as the transmission ended. Levine glanced over at Spock.
“You sure we can trust him to get back to us?” the security officer asked.
“It is in his best interests to do so,” Spock said. Although reluctant to interfere in Braco’s affairs, he saw no harm, and possibly only benefits, in promoting a peaceful dialogue between the UBF and the public via the free press, in lieu of an endless cycle of violence. And if the prospect of landing an exclusive interview with V’sta provided Colc with an additional incentive to remain in contact with Spock, so much the better. “Let us hope that Mister Colc’s journalistic acumen can build on the data we acquired from Hynn V’sta.”
“You said it, Mister Spock,” Levine agreed. “Guess it can’t hurt to milk every connection we have on this planet.” He peered through a porthole at the cheerless gray sky outside. “You really think Ozalor had something to do with kidnapping Doctor McCoy?”
“We cannot eliminate that possibility,” Spock said carefully, “particularly in light of this new information. Are we fully prepared for takeoff?”
Levine nodded. “Awaiting permission from Flight Control now.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.”
By Spock’s calculations, Ozalor was 46.8 hours away, so he wanted to get underway as promptly as possible. He turned back toward the passenger compartment to inform Nurse Chapel and the rest of the shuttle’s crew of their imminent departure, only to be interrupted by an urgent chime from the shuttlecraft’s comm unit.
“We’re being hailed, sir,” Levine said redundantly.
“So it appears, Lieutenant.”
Consulting the instrument panel, Spock saw that the hail was on a priority channel and coming directly from the Bracon Tranquility Bureau. He answered the hail, quietly bracing himself for the discussion ahead. He did not anticipate it being a particularly congenial one.
“Spock here,” he said. “How may I assist you, Chief Inspector?”
Wibb’s face occupied the globe. “Mister Spock. I am pleased to see you well and at liberty. We feared for your safety after your Starfleet rescue operation failed to report back to the Bureau in a timely fashion.”
“There were… complications,” Spock replied, “but we succeeded in liberating ourselves without any casualties.”
Despite the bombardment Wibb had ordered.
“Glad to hear it,” the inspector said. “And Doctor McCoy?”
“The UBF denied responsibility for his capture.”
“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” Wibb retorted, none too logically.
“I am relatively convinced of their veracity. Moreover, we now have reason to believe that McCoy may no longer be on Braco at all.”
“I see,” Wibb said skeptically. “Is that why your shuttlecrafts have requested permission to exit our world?”
The Bureau was clearly in touch with the spaceport and monitoring the status of the Starfleet vessels. Spock had assumed nothing less.
“That is correct,” he said. “Our gratitude for your hospitality and cooperation.”
Listening in, Levine snorted.
If Wibb overheard the less-than-diplomatic response, he chose to ignore it. “What’s this about, Mister Spock? What have you discovered?”
Spock preferred not to implicate Ozalor on such slender evidence. The politics of the sector were too fraught to make unfounded accusations, or even raise dire suspicions, without more solid proof. At the moment, Ozalor was merely a planet of interest as far as the search for McCoy was concerned.
“Nothing conclusive, Chief Inspector,” he said honestly. “We merely seek to pursue other avenues of investigation beyond Braco’s environs.”
“You need to revise your plans,” Wibb declared. “I’m afraid I cannot allow you and your associates to depart Braco at this time. If nothing else, you need to be thoroughly debriefed on your encounters with the UBF. We must review everything you saw and heard while you were in the hands of the terrorists. As long as Hynn V’sta and other key figures remain at large, this case remains open.”
“For you perhaps,” Spock said, “but our purpose on Braco is concluded for now. Our mission calls us elsewhere… and without delay.”
“Need I remind you, Mister Spock, that your doctor was abducted, your people ambushed, on Bracon soil?” Wibb puffed on his pipe as though to assert the primacy of Bracon ways over Starfleet preferences. “That makes this very much a Bureau matter, which means you are not going anywhere until I’m satisfied that you have cooperated fully.”
Spock repressed a sigh. He had expected this response. He was also prepared for it.
“Am I to understand that you now intend to hold us hostage?”
“Don’t try playing games with me, Spock. Hostages are kept by criminals. I represent the government.”
“The Provisional Government, to be exact.”
“That is immaterial,” Wibb said, scowling. “Do you wish me to file a formal complaint with the Federation, informing them that you have defied the lawful orders of our world’s recognized authorities?”
“That depends,” Spock replied. “Do you wish me to report, quite accurately, that you endangered the lives of Federation citizens by launching fusion missiles at a location where you had every reason to believe that we were being held, and that the bombardment continued even after the Bureau received an explicit message from me alerting you to the fact that I and the other hostages were in immediate danger from your assault?”
Spock had naturally kept a recording of his urgent transmission to Bureau headquarters during the attack on the underground base.
“You may consult your own communication logs to verify that last point.”
“That was a strategic decision,” Wibb said stiffly. “After your rescue operation failed to check in, I had no choice but to assume that Lieutenant Levine and his team had been killed or captured by the enemy. Stealth had failed, so extreme force was called for instead.” His pipe jutted from one corner of his mouth as he paused to draw on it, then exhaled a puff of smoke that was mercifully confined to his end of the transmission. “It was a hard choice, a regrettable choice, but I stand by it.”
Spock privately questioned just how difficult the decision to launch the assault had truly been for Wibb, but he saw nothing to be gained by expressing such doubts out loud.
“That is your prerogative,” he said, “but I cannot guarantee that the Federation will see it quite the same way, depending on how I frame the incident in my report. The facts are not in dispute, but how they are interpreted may well determine whether or not your ‘strategic’ decision sparks an unpleasant interstellar incident, which I am certain your superiors would prefer to avoid… if possible.”
Wibb’s face flushed. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Do not test me, Chief Inspector. You have already risked one awkward rift between Braco and the Federation. Do you truly wish to compound that by grounding Starfleet vessels against our will?”
Wibb’s bravado faltered. He put down his pipe and licked his lips nervously, as though worrying about how he was going to explain this to Braco’s ruling coalition.
“Now, now, Mister Spock,” he said in a notably more conciliatory tone. “It doesn’t have to come to that. We’re both reasonable men after all.”
“I would hope so, Chief Inspector, in which case you will do the reasonable thing and let us go on our way.” Having gained the upper hand, Spock offered Wibb a carrot along with the stick. “If it is any consolation, it may be that we will be able to prove that Braco and its people had little or nothing to do with Doctor McCoy’s abduction. Surely that is an outcome to be desired… from your government’s point of view.”
“I suppose,” Wibb said, wavering, “when you put it that way…”
“Be thankful that we are departing unharmed and that Doctor McCoy was not, in fact, found captive on your planet.” Spock let that sink in. “To employ a germane human expression, Chief Inspector, take the win.”
Wibb peered unhappily from the globe. His jaw clenched for no less than forty-seven seconds before he finally brought himself to say:
“On consideration, I will inform Flight Control that you are free to go. Good hunting, sir.”
Spock considered wishing the inspector a long life and prosperity, but found he had little inclination to do so.
“Acknowledged. Spock out.”
Thirty-Two
Braco System
“You may be onto something, Mister Spock.”
D’Ran Colc’s voice emanated from Copernicus’s comm unit. Although the shuttlecraft was still within Braco’s solar system, it was out of range for anything except audio transmission, and even that was growing steadily weaker the farther they traveled from the planet, forcing Spock to dial up the volume. He considered it fortunate that the reporter had managed to contact Copernicus before it exited the system entirely. As it was, a time lag of approximately 2.56 seconds prolonged the dialogue to a mildly irritating degree.
“How so, Mister Colc?” Spock asked from the copilot’s seat. The forward ports offered him a clear view of empty space, which was a pleasing change from Braco’s dismal weather and dank, clammy caverns.
“I did some digging, called in some favors, and get this. That diplomatic courier that left here the same night McCoy vanished? Seems it was carrying none other than Count Rayob, majordomo to His Excellency, Salokonos, Yovode of Ozalor.”
Spock naturally recognized the name of Ozalor’s current monarch, but he was unfamiliar with the other individual cited. “I gather this Rayob is a figure of some importance?”
“And then some,” Colc said. “Longtime advisor to the royal family and very much part of the Yovode’s inner circle, or so it’s said. I don’t claim to be an expert on Ozalorian royal gossip and palace intrigues, but he’s supposed to be a fixture at the court. Been close to the royals for decades now.”
Spock trusted Colc to be better informed on such matters than he was. Given the long, contentious history linking Braco to both Vok and Ozalor, it stood to reason that the savvy reporter would pay attention to the politics of the rival planets, each of which claimed Braco as the cradle of their race… despite certain evidence to the contrary.
“Interesting,” Spock observed.
“You can say that again,” Colc replied. “The question is, what was an Ozalorian big wheel doing on Braco the same time your doctor got snatched? And who else, besides the majordomo, was on that sudden flight back to Ozalor?”
Not wanting to leap to conclusions, Spock played devil’s advocate. “Was there any particular occasion to account for Rayob’s visit to Braco?”
“That’s the thing, Mister Spock. As far as I can tell, there was no official reason for his visit: no diplomatic conference, trade negotiations, state dinner, funeral, video op, or any of the usual pomp and circumstance. If anything, his recent trip to Braco was surprisingly, maybe even suspiciously, low profile. I like to think I stay on top of these things, but even I hadn’t known he’d been here until I started asking the right people the right questions. He slipped on and off the planet with no fanfare… almost as though he went out of his way to avoid attracting attention, if you know what I mean.”
“I do indeed,” Spock said.
Granted, as the son of an ambassador, Spock was well aware that interstellar diplomacy sometimes needed to be conducted discreetly out of the public eye. Sarek could often be rigorously closemouthed about his work; Spock recalled more than a few occasions when not even he nor his mother knew precisely where and what Sarek was doing while away on assignment. That being said, Spock also knew that such sub rosa negotiations were more usually conducted via intermediaries or lower-level representatives, at least in their preliminary stages. What could be so important, or so potentially explosive, as to require Rayob’s personal supervision on Braco?
The abduction of a Starfleet medical officer, perhaps?
Spock’s familiarity with diplomatic protocols prompted another thought. “I assume, as is the norm, that a diplomatic courier ship from Ozalor would have been exempt from any customary inspections?”
“That’s right, Mister Spock. Diplomatic vessels are generally off-limits to that sort of thing.” Colc quickly grasped the implications of this fact. “Wouldn’t have been too hard to smuggle McCoy off-planet in that courier.”
“And with judicious speed,” Spock added.
The courier’s hasty departure, along with the whirlwind nature of Rayob’s visit to Braco, certainly fit the scenario under discussion. If Ozalor was behind McCoy’s kidnapping, they would surely want to get him off Braco as quickly as possible.
“In and out… just like the majordomo.” The glee in the reporter’s voice was unmistakable, despite the long-distance transmission. “This story is getting juicier by the moment. A possible link to the royal family, maybe even to the Yovode himself? This is big, as in seriously big. The headlines practically write themselves.”
His enthusiasm concerned Spock, who did not need to confer with Commissioner Dare to understand that merely suggesting that the hereditary ruler of Ozalor might have sanctioned McCoy’s abduction could have severe political ramifications throughout the entire sector and beyond. In particular, the accusation might have a decisive effect on the presidential election on Vok by lending support to the hardliners’ position that Ozalor could not be trusted—on Braco and elsewhere. Spock could too easily imagine General Gogg and his supporters making the most of a high-ranking Ozalorian official being implicated in such a crime on the disputed world, with the news possibly turning the election in Gogg’s favor.
“I caution you not to release your story before the facts are in,” Spock said. “If there is even a possibility that responsibility for the abduction reaches all the way to the throne of Ozalor, then it behooves us to tread carefully.”
“What are you asking me, Mister Spock? To sit tight on the story of the sector, possibly the biggest scoop since the imperial sex scandal on Tybalt Prime?” Colc’s voice alone conveyed his resistance to the idea. “We’ve talked about this before. I’m a reporter, not a big-picture guy. My job is to spread the news as I uncover it, and let the tiles fall where they may.”
“I would argue that the bigger the story, the greater your responsibility to ascertain the truth before breaking the news. Putting aside any potential consequences for the moment, I assume you take pride in the accuracy of your reporting?”
“I’m a reporter, not a fabulist,” Colc maintained. “I don’t make up my stories.”
“Then I would urge you to refrain from reporting until you are certain of your facts. We are presently en route to Ozalor to investigate this very matter. Allow us time to provide you with more than mere uncorroborated speculation.”
“Assuming you don’t disappear like McCoy,” Colc said. “Last I heard, you Federation types are persona non grata on Ozalor. What’s your plan anyway? To just drop in on the royals uninvited and ask His Excellency if he ordered your doctor kidnapped?”
“Our strategy is a work in progress,” Spock admitted, “but I believe you have already benefited from our agreement to share information regarding this matter. Give us the opportunity to find out what we can rather than risk airing a misleading story… if only for your own credibility’s sake.”
“That’s what follow-up stories and corrections are for,” Colc said. “Still, I’ll concede that our arrangement has paid off so far. My in-depth report on the bombing of the UBF base, citing you as an anonymous source, is causing a sensation. Everyone is talking about it.”
“And it may be that we will be able to provide you with additional information, perhaps even definitive answers regarding McCoy’s disappearance. Is that not worth waiting for?”
“Are you promising me another exclusive? I don’t know, Mister Spock. You’re asking a lot. I’m not the only investigative reporter on Braco, you know. What if one of my competitors gets wind of the Ozalor connection and beats me to the scoop?”
Spock was less concerned with who got the “scoop” than with any number of more important concerns.
“That would be unfortunate, but there is another vital issue to be considered. If you reveal this lead prematurely, you may alert Rayob and his confederates to our suspicions and thereby compromise our mission to rescue Doctor McCoy. Indeed, it is even possible that fear of exposure might spur McCoy’s captors to go to greater lengths to conceal him… or perhaps even to dispose of him.”
