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  Finnegan chuckled. “Thionoga has a lot of artisans, you might say.” He knelt forward and spoke covertly. “It turns out the native breads they pass out to the Orions ferment in the saliva of Tellarites.”

  Cornwell winced. “And you drink it?”

  “I sure wouldn’t. That’s disgusting.”

  “I agree.”

  “But the Nausicaans have a liking for it.” Finnegan jabbed his thumb back in Ohtak’s direction. “Including the trustees who stock the warden’s pantry. They’re happy, I’m happy.” He grinned, satisfied. “It really does take all kinds.”

  Cornwell finished tending to his bruise. “You are, as ever, a spectacle.”

  “That’s what your da used to call me.” He grinned, his missing front tooth in evidence. Then he considered for a moment. “Would it help if I told you they won’t medicate my injuries here, and that the drink eases the pain?”

  “Would it be the truth if you told me that?”

  “Would telling the truth get me out of here?”

  “Not on its own.” Cornwell put away the hypospray and pulled a data slate from the pouch slung over her arm. “You can’t believe how long it took for us to sort out exactly who’d put you here, and why.”

  “I admit I’m a bit hazy about it now.”

  “You punched an alien prince in the face.”

  Finnegan’s eyes widened. “Ah, that’s right.”

  Cornwell read from the slate. “Apparently since your last dismissal from Starfleet, you’ve had a variety of odd jobs—including working security for the ceremonial heads of state of Troyius. They dumped you here after you broke the crown prince’s jaw.”

  “Well, now, to be fair, he had it coming to him. A man shouldn’t commit to a contest, no matter what his station, if he’s going to be a sore loser.”

  “What contest?”

  Finnegan scratched his head. “There was drinking—and I know it had to do with large pieces of furniture and a window.” He raised his index fingers. “There was definitely some fire involved.”

  “That explains the pictures of the palace,” Cornwell said, shivering as she dismissed the file from her data slate. “How’d you come to this, Sean? No one’s ever had any problem with your performance of your duties. You were the top of your class—competent at just about anything we assigned to you.”

  “Competent? That’s all they’ve said?” He laughed and gestured to his ore cart. “Ask the foreman. I get done early.”

  “That’s the problem. You always had too much time on your hands. At Starfleet Academy, you were a one-cadet hazing committee.”

  “Someone had to do it.”

  “No, they didn’t,” Cornwell said. “We don’t have hazing committees, Sean.”

  He chortled. “Are you telling me you want a Starfleet Academy where no one ever tests the cadets’ mettle? Sees whether they can survive a little ribbing?”

  “Yes, Sean, I am telling you that.” Cornwell grabbed his collar and bared her teeth at him. “That’s exactly what we want. No more brawling!”

  “You think Shiner Hendrix would be captain already if I hadn’t knocked him around a bit? Or that Guiler fellow? Or Stovall?”

  “Have you noticed that you’re not a captain? Have you wondered why? I’ll give you a minute if you need to work it out, but someone at the top of his class really shouldn’t need it.”

  “I was tops, wasn’t I?”

  “For five years. Most people are out in—” She released him and turned away. “Never mind. It’s useless.”

  Finnegan watched her for a moment, and then stared down into his ore cart. He and doing the right thing had never gotten along for more than a few days at a time. Thionoga was, by far, the worst place he’d wound up; maybe the universe was telling him something in bringing Kitty to him.

  He looked to her. “I want to say, I do appreciate your looking after me all these years.”

  Cornwell glared back at him—and then softened. “Well, your grandmother was more than a neighbor. Before you were born, my mother wasn’t around a lot. Your nana was very good to me.”

  “Rest her soul,” Finnegan said. “I loved staying with her. It probably helped me survive past age ten.”

  She chuckled. “I always imagined you had a lot of brothers back home and roughhoused all the time.”

  “Sisters, and they could sure deliver a punch. Those summers were like a time-out.” He looked down and sighed. “I’ve never really thanked you for sending all the messages over the years—you know, the ones to get me back into the Academy, and then back into Starfleet. You’ve given me more chances than I deserve.”

  He looked up after a moment, to see Cornwell staring at him, evaluating. “Well, I may have something else.”

  Finnegan’s heart leapt. “Oh, if you could get me into Starfleet again!”

  She put up her hands. “I never said—”

  “You’re so right about the others passing me by. You know who I saw a ways back? Little Jimmy Kirk! I ran into him on Earth—I think he was avoiding me.” He cracked a gap-toothed smile. “He told me he got Farragut. I told him he needed to eat less alien food.”

  “What?”

  “Farragut. It sounds like a digestive complaint.” Seeing her react with revulsion, he added: “It’s a joke.”

  Cornwell finally understood. “No, you wouldn’t have heard. Not in here.”

  “Heard?” Finnegan’s smile broke. “What, did Jimmy make captain already? That’s really… well, soon.” He shook his head. “Maybe it was that last punch in the gut for luck.”

  “Sean, just shut up.” Cornwell called up something new on her data slate and turned it toward him. “Shut up and look.”

  Finnegan cast his eyes on the imagery—and the breath went out of him. The halls of a proud starship, strewn with uniformed bodies. The face of every corpse shown in close-up was blue and contorted. “This is Farragut? What the devil happened?”

  “We’re only now getting recovery vessels out to her. Much of what we know comes to us from a civilian medical researcher who was first on the scene,” the admiral said. “There was an invasive cloud that attacked—”

  “A cloud? A cloud of what?”

  “Dikironium is the main substance detected. But the cloud acted as if it was alive. It sought out the crew—and drained them of their red blood cells.”

  Finnegan framed furtively through the images. “Is he alive?”

  “Who, Kirk?”

  “Yes!”

  “He’s one of the survivors. But they all had a rough time of it.” Cornwell nearly had to pry the data slate out of Finnegan’s hand. “As a matter of fact, Sean, what happened to Farragut is the reason I returned here.”

  That baffled him. “You can’t be so down on recruits you’d look for replacements in Thionoga.”

  “That’s not it. The Federation has a problem, and we need your help. You have a connection…”

  She paused, leaving him puzzled. “Unless you’re in the market for pre-chewed bread, I’m not sure what else I can do.”

  “It’s more who you are than what you can do. I mean, the Federation needs you to do something, but—” Cornwell stopped again and touched her forehead. “This is so frustrating.”

  Seeing her unease, Finnegan raised his palms upward. “This is Little Sean here—you know, the fast study? You used to say I could learn anything in five minutes. Just take it from the top.”

  She gestured to the slate. “We’ve only seen victims like these once before. Twenty-five years ago, on a trading ship called Jadama Rohn. And the person who saw them was Philippa Georgiou.”

  Finnegan recognized the name. “That woman I helped the other day called herself Georgiou.”

  “That’s right.”

  Something new occurred to him. “Philippa, though. Wasn’t there a captain by that name?” Focusing, he spoke with more assurance. “Yeah. Won the Star Cross.”

  “There was. She died in the war.”

  “Hate t
o hear that. I never met her—I’ve been in and out of service…” Then he scratched his head. “What, is there some connection between these two? Are they related?”

  “We need to take this up someplace else,” she said, waving for the warden to approach. As they waited, she eyed him. “This is going to be a little complicated. You are sober now, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. What time is it?”

  15

  Shuttlecraft Doolittle

  Kitty, you’re diabolical, Finnegan thought. She’d had him figured out years earlier—and she’d also devised a way to keep him quiet for much of the flight from Thionoga. Waiting aboard Doolittle had been a Starfleet medic who knew dentistry, and who had spent the past half hour replacing the tooth Finnegan had lost to Georgiou days earlier.

  The medic stepped back. “It’s a perfect fit.”

  “You’re a saint.” Finnegan bit down a couple of times. “They say the dentist at Thionoga learned his trade from a Klingon who skins wild targs with a dull spoon. I’m not sure what a targ is, but I gave it a pass.” He shook the medic’s hand. “I owe you a drink, friend.”

  “Just stay safe. I’ve seen rugby players with more original equipment.” The medic retreated to the rear of the shuttle. Finnegan stretched and headed for the cockpit.

  “Good as new?” Cornwell asked from the pilot’s seat as the stars flew by.

  “Good enough. Handy you had that fellow along.” He claimed the chair beside her. “Shall I take it again from the top, teach?”

  “Admiral. And yes.”

  “So you’re telling me this woman who looks like Philippa Georgiou is her—but from a different universe, where she’s an evil emperor.”

  “Was,” Cornwell said.

  “Was evil?”

  “Was an emperor. We don’t know if she’s still evil.”

  “And in this other world, I’m her loyal lapdog.”

  “Deadly assassin. But yes. Someone she trusted.”

  Finnegan sat back in the navigator’s chair and rubbed his temples. “And I thought my head was hurting before.”

  Cornwell had worked quickly. The Federation had fixed things with the Troyius royal family, leading to his speedy release from Thionoga. He was certain Warden Ohtak was probably celebrating his departure still—and discovering she had fewer bottles of her favorite spirits than she thought she had.

  For Finnegan’s part, he needed a drink.

  “Our Georgiou,” Cornwell said, using a nomenclature they’d resorted to repeatedly, “only had a basic tricorder when she boarded Jadama Rohn. But later on she analyzed the data and interpolated a malady that matches what we saw on Farragut. She also thought she saw a cloud—and both those things she reported to her commanding officer.”

  “And that’s the officer you said that recognized it on Farragut.”

  “Right. And before Eagan died, he dispatched a member of his team to alert both the Federation and Section 31.”

  “Those guys,” Finnegan grumbled.

  “Yes, those guys.” Cornwell looked away from the controls. “You know about Section 31?”

  “They turfed me out after four weeks a few years ago.”

  “How were you even in?”

  “One of your recommendations caught the attention of a recruiter who needed someone that had an in with the Antaran embassy.”

  “On Vulcan—where you’d done some security work.”

  “I was supposed to sneak back into the embassy and look for…” Finnegan paused, remembering. “Well, let’s just say it’s best if we don’t go to wherever Antarans come from.” He thought for a moment. “Or Vulcan.”

  Cornwell sighed. “It’s a wonder my recommendations count for anything anymore.”

  Finnegan could tell the admiral had gone back and forth repeatedly about bringing him in. He hastened to sound useful. “I think I actually get it. You can’t trust this woman, but you have to. And you think she might accept me helping her, because I was this ally of hers from the other side.”

  “Leland’s going to pair her up with veteran agents. That’s what the Federation Security Agency wants too.” Her jaw clenched. “I don’t think that’ll fly. She’ll ditch them on general principle. But from the little surveillance Thionoga still had working—and from what you said—it’s clear she likes you.” Cornwell paused. “Maybe that’s too strong a word. She’ll tolerate you.”

  “Because she thinks I’m Crackerjack.”

  “Blackjack. Like the game.”

  “Ah, yes. We played it back at the Academy. But I’ll tell you, I’m more partial to ones where you drink. The cards just get in the way.”

  “You have to stop saying things like that,” Cornwell said. She soldiered on. “From the interviews we’ve done, we get the impression her Blackjack is someone who’s ruthless, efficient, and trusted—though maybe not a talker.”

  “She already knows I’m not that person. How hard should I try to be the guy she wants me to be? Should I snarl and spit and break things?”

  “Do whatever’s necessary—within reason. This is a psychological play, Sean. I figured we needed options.”

  “Well, she may opt not to accept me.” He pointed to his replaced tooth. “She did that, remember?”

  The shuttle jolted as it dropped from warp. Finnegan spotted the large Starfleet vessel up ahead. He oohed. “Nimitz class. Yours?”

  “She’s called Pacifica. We got a double play-on-words there—for the water planet, and also Nimitz, who commanded in the Pacific.” She patted the console. “Her shuttles are named after Pacific aviators.”

  “That’s a relief. I thought Doolittle was a remark on my career so far.”

  U.S.S. Pacifica

  The Section 31 operations trainer paced around Georgiou’s desk, the only one in the onboard center. “Let’s try again,” the Andorian said in a flinty voice. “What do we do when we need to inform your controller of your location and no encrypted subspace link is available?”

  “I stand up and rip off those stupid antennae,” Georgiou replied. “Then I shove them up your nostrils for daring to include yourself in the royal we.”

  The trainer threw his data slate to the deck in disgust. “Teaching you is impossible! You haven’t the slightest interest in becoming a useful asset. And that’s exactly what I’m going to tell Leland!”

  “Give him my love,” Georgiou called out as the Andorian stormed into the hall.

  The second the door behind him sealed, her gaze fell upon the data slate, still on the deck. Casting her eyes about, she knelt and reached for it—

  —only to have it disappear, carried away by a transporter beam.

  Typical, she thought. They hadn’t stopped watching her, even after releasing her from the brig and putting her back into a Section 31 uniform. And she was sure they wouldn’t stop, not while she was still aboard Cornwell’s starship.

  It was bad enough that Georgiou had been forced to endure a crash course in Section 31’s operations for the second time in a few weeks. What made it worse was that she’d also once again had Federation Security Agency officials breathing down her neck, interrupting her “studies” at irregular intervals to evaluate the potential threat she posed. And whenever those sessions ended, a Section 31 analyst was sure to be along, grilling her for her every memory of the Troika.

  The greatest insult was that it was all another deceit. The Trill couldn’t possibly have been part of anything important for Section 31; if Emony Dax were any greener, she’d be an Orion. The whole thing, Georgiou had decided, was all about one thing and one thing only. The real reason Leland—and possibly his digital overlord, Control—had taken such an interest in her: the future. Their future.

  For years, Georgiou had known about the Federation’s universe from the records brought to the Terran Empire in 2155 by Hoshi Sato. She, who named herself empress when she realized what immense power she had; she, who changed her title to “emperor” when she understood she never again needed to care what
any male thought. Georgiou had chosen her “Iaponius” name to suggest a connection to Sato’s homeland.

  The records about the Federation’s universe found aboard Defiant went to 2268, about a decade ahead. Starfleet and the Federation knew from Michael Burnham that some traveler from their future had gone to Georgiou’s past, but the emperor doubted Discovery’s crew had shared many more details than that. Georgiou supported that caution. It wouldn’t do to warn Defiant away from its date with destiny if it meant unpredictable results for her own existence. It was a good bet, however, that Section 31 and Leland knew at least as much as the Federation did, if not more. She suspected he’d been more involved with time-travel research than he’d been letting on. It was all a farce. Leland wanted her around for what she knew, not what she could do—and he had figured she’d be more likely to spill her guts outside a prison cell.

  It would help if I really did know the future, Georgiou thought. But her secret fact—and current grief—was that as emperor, she hadn’t studied the alternate historical records in depth. She’d been busy consolidating power—and the Defiant files, so long the reward for new emperors, had already lost much of their value. What had mattered in her universe was the immense power of Defiant itself, and the technological secrets its records held; knowledge about locations and species not yet visited in her universe also had been useful. But most of that information had already been acted upon by her predecessors. Its impact could be seen both in the Empire’s starships and the map of imperial territory; conquests already made. “The good stuff,” to use an expression of her universe’s Lorca, was gone.

  What remained was trivia, mostly for entertainment purposes. There was little actionable intelligence in the fact that the Klingon Empire attacked the Federation in this universe. Sure, it might have underscored that the species was a potential threat, but Terran emperors had started addressing that years before.

  Leland, of course, didn’t know any of that. She’d had some fun, suggesting, sometimes with no more than a raised eyebrow, that she knew more about the future than she actually did. But whatever amusement that might have held for her had long since been exhausted. Something had to give, and soon.