"They're sure about this?" she finally said, after reading it for the fourth time.

"I know the S.C.E. crew on the da Vinci," Ross said. "If they say that Mendak did it, then Mendak did it."

Although Esperanza wasn't familiar with the folks on the da Vinci in particular, the S.C.E. in general had always impressed her with their ability to build anything that wasn't there, and figure out how to work anything that already was.

"All right, I'll bring this to the president. Thanks, Admiral."

Ross nodded but didn't smile. "You realize what this means, right, Esperanza?"

"Maybe." She let out a breath. "On the other hand, maybe Mendak is a rebel."

"That doesn't fit his profile."

Esperanza regarded Ross frankly. "Does anything on Romulus fit its profile anymore?"

"Good point. Still, I just don't see the hero of Brasito as someone who'd be working without the express consent of the praetor."

"I don't see the hero of Brasito as someone who'd be too thrilled with the woman who helped engineer Shinzon's coup as the praetor, either."

"Another good point." Now Ross did smile as he got up from the guest chair. "I need to head back to San Francisco."

Esperanza nodded.

After Ross left, she opened the intercom. "Zachary, is the president free?"

"I can check, but Dogayn wants to talk to you about something."

That surprised Esperanza. Dogayn 418 had proven to be a fine replacement for Xeldara, especially given hir knowledge of the first floor after working for Saltroni for so long. The Hermat also hadn't been one to ask for sudden meetings. In fact, that was one of hir qualities that Esperanza preferred over hir predecessor-Xeldara would ask to talk about the most ridiculous things at the most inconvenient times. Over the past three months, Dogayn had seemed happy to wait for the next scheduled opportunity.

Had it been Xeldara-or even Z4 or Myk-asking, Esperanza would have asked to put it off until after she could talk to the president about Klorgat IV, but the novelty of this type of request from Dogayn made her willing to take it. "Tell Mikhail I can give hir five minutes, no more-and check with Sivak about the president."

"Okay."

Two minutes later, Esperanza was told that she could see the president at noon-which was only fifteen minutes away-and that Dogayn was outside her office. "Send hir in."

Before the door had a chance to even close behind hir, Dogayn said, "We've got a big problem. Carda.s.sia's not gonna pa.s.s."

Esperanza blinked. "What?"

"It's not gonna pa.s.s."

"Why the h.e.l.l not?"

"Don't know, but Huang's voting against it."

Now Esperanza was confused. "Who else?"

"Not sure yet, but if Huang's voting against it, it's not gonna pa.s.s."

"That's ridiculous."

Dogayn shook hir head and took a seat in Esperanza's guest chair. "Unless the matter relates directly to Alpha Centauri, Huang has never, not once in twenty years in the council, voted against the majority on anything. She doesn't take stands, she doesn't go against the flow-again, unless it directly involved the homeworld. This doesn't, and if it looks like she's going against the tide, then that means the tide's shifted."

Esperanza got up from her chair and started pacing in front of the window that gave her a view of the Seine. "We can't just abandon aid to Carda.s.sia now-they'll fall to pieces."

"My guess is the argument will be that they already have fallen to pieces, and why waste time picking those pieces up?"

Esperanza turned to stare at Dogayn. "What do you think happened?"

S/he rubbed hir chin. "Last year, during the Tezwa mess, Enaren wanted to introduce a bill that was cosponsored by Gleer and zh'Faila. It was to cut off aid to Tezwa and increase reconstruction on Betazed, Tellar, Andor, and a bunch of other worlds."

"What?" Esperanza didn't remember anything about this.

"The bill was pulled after Zife threatened to veto it," Dogayn added. "So it was never discussed on the first floor."

And therefore, Esperanza realized, never in any official record.

Dogayn continued. "But everyone was talking about it in here. It's possible that Enaren's looking to get back to that notion now, and Carda.s.sia's aid renewal is the perfect time. If he's got Gleer and zh'Faila on his side again, then they can probably deliver all the votes they need. Gleer's been steaming ever since Krim's appointment, and he knows the aid's important to Bacco, so this will stick it to her. He's also got favors to call in because of the complete lack of support he got when he tried to block Krim-and even if he didn't, you know what Gleer's like when he gets on the warpath."

Esperanza snorted and walked over to the replicator. "Yeah. You want anything?"

S/he shook hir head.

"Tea, raspberry, iced."

The drink materialized in front of Esperanza with a quiet hum. "All right, get together with Ashante and fix this."

That seemed to confuse Dogayn. "Huh?"

"Fix this," Esperanza repeated as she went back to her desk and grabbed the padd Ross had given her.

"I thought the president- "

"This never gets on the president's sensors." As she spoke, she entered some commands that downloaded the padd's data to her workstation. "Right now I've got to go upstairs and tell her we're gonna have to tap-dance on a supernova in order to keep the Klingons from invading Romulus, and that on top of risking a repeat of the biggest diplomatic disaster of her presidency tomorrow with the Trinni/ek. The last thing I want is her being distracted by this."

"Distracted? Esperanza, it's- "

"Very important to her, yes. That's why I want you and Ashante to fix it before it even becomes a problem. Talk to whoever you need to talk to, but find out where the problem is and do what you can to fix it. If we can give some concessions, go for it-it took months to get the president and the council friendly, I don't want to reverse it over this."

Dogayn nodded and got up. "All right."

The two of them exited her office together. Dogayn moved toward the center of the floor, while Esperanza headed to the turbolift, saying, "I'm heading up there, Zachary."

"Right."

When Esperanza arrived on the fifteenth floor moments later, her thoughts turning to entertaining and painful ways of torturing Bera chim Gleer, Sivak gave her an odd look. "The president is busy."

And Sivak is just what I need this morning. "Zachary told me she was free at noon."

"It will not be 1200 for three more minutes. And even then, she only has ten minutes before- "

The door then slid open to reveal the secretaries of technology and transportation, as well as their a.s.sistants. The former, a short Androsian woman named Forzrat, was saying, "... and that's not even taking power consumption into account. We just don't know if it's feasible."

Following them out the door, the president asked, "Isn't that kinda the point of a study, to give us the opportunity to stop living in ignorance about this sort of thing?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, there you go. Take a look at it, that's all I'm saying."

"Thank you, Madam President."

Esperanza nodded to the four of them as they pa.s.sed her and headed toward the turbolifts. The transportation secretary, a tall Berellian named Iliop, said to her, "We need to talk about Rigel later."

"Set it up with Zachary."

Looking inquisitively at Esperanza, President Bacco asked, "You need me?"

"I just finished with Ross about Klorgat."

Her face fell. "Great. C'mon in."

As the pair entered, Sivak said, "Madam President, you have only ten minutes before- "

"I beat you b.l.o.o.d.y with a large blunt object?"

"You are, of course, welcome to use Ms. Piniero to hit me, ma'am, but that does not change the fact that you have the exterior secretary in ten minutes."

Smiling, the president said, "Fine." Looking at Esperanza, she said, "Can you believe what Diaz did?"

Esperanza knew that Taisha Diaz was the manager of the Pioneers, and she knew the Pioneers had played a game yesterday against the Salavar Stars, with whom they were in a dogfight for first place. Beyond that, of course, she knew nothing, but she had faith in the president's capacity for filling her in, so she played along. "I can't believe it, no."

"It's a tie game, you've got the heart of the order coming up, why the h.e.l.l don't you put Sookdeo in?"

"It's a mystery to me, ma'am."

The president shook her head as she went to sit in one of the guest chairs. "I mean, really, what's to be gained by saving Sookdeo for the eighth or ninth? And even if you are, why bring in Gordimer? The Stars've been handing him his head all year, and sure enough, he gives up six runs before Diaz brings in Sookdeo to stop the bleeding, but by then it's too late. Now we're two games out instead of tied. Drives me nuts. What did Ross have to say?"

Taking this as a signal that the president was done with her daily harangue on the subject of the Pioneers' inability to hold onto first place this season, Esperanza handed her the padd, then took the seat opposite hers. "The S.C.E. is now definitively saying that it was Admiral Mendak."

Accepting the padd without looking at it, the president's eyes went wide. "It was the Romulans?"

"No, ma'am-it was Admiral Mendak."

President Bacco snorted. "So we're buying Tal'Aura's a.s.surances now?"

"Not necessarily, but as that report indicates, we know that it's definitely Mendak himself, not anyone else."

After looking at the padd for half a second and frowning, the president then looked up at Esperanza with a slightly irritated expression. "Let's a.s.sume, just for the h.e.l.l of it, that I know as much about engineering as you do about baseball."

Esperanza smiled. "What it boils down to is that Mendak's fleet put in for repairs during the Dominion War at Starbase 375. The engineers who worked on the ships noticed something different about the Rhliailu, which is Mendak's flagship: Its disruptors were tuned differently to get maximum power out of them."

"Why only Mendak's ship? I mean, if they could be retuned to be more powerful, especially in a war- "

"The engineer asked the same question. Turns out there was a design flaw in the Rhliailu when it came off the yard. The disruptor couplings are misaligned, to the point where they have to keep the temperature in the disruptor chamber down around a hundred degrees Kelvin because it overheats so badly. They tried it on a few other ships, and they all either had a complete power blowout or the whole system just shut down automatically. For whatever reason, they couldn't reproduce it. It was great for Mendak, though-it's why he was able to win at Brasito-but it also means that the Rhliailu's disruptors leave a distinct signature. That is to say, if you know where to look."

"And the S.C.E. knew where to look?"

Esperanza nodded. "If it had been a regular Romulan ship that did it, the evidence wouldn't have been conclusive, since regular Romulan disruptors leave a resonance pattern that's pretty similar to what you'd get with tectonic stresses. I'm willing to bet that the original plan counted on that."

The president leaned back in her chair. "Great. Well, this techn.o.babble all sounds great, but you know what this means?"

"It means you need to talk to Tal'Aura right away-before you talk to the Klingons."

"No."

"Ma'am- "

"I'll talk to the Romulans, but I'm not going behind the Klingons' back with this. Set up a meeting for tomorrow after the council session with both K'mtok and the new Romulan amba.s.sador. What's his name?"

"Kalavak."

"Right. This way the Klingons can't say we cut them out." She gave a half-smile, then she added, "And they'll be too busy yelling at each other to yell at me and I'm done talking about it in half the time." She sighed. "This is the last thing I need, with the Trinni/ek ready to attack me in my sleep."

Esperanza couldn't help but smile, though she was now even more grateful that she'd kept the Carda.s.sia problem on fourteen. "They're not gonna attack you in your sleep, ma'am. You have bodyguards, remember?"

"That just rea.s.sures the c.r.a.p out of me. You and your boyfriend are sure they'll be fine?"

Sighing, Esperanza said, "Amba.s.sador Morrow is not my boyfriend, ma'am, and I talked to him this morning. He said they seemed a little tired, but eager to make up for their bad first impression."

"After this is all over, you should ask him out. You'd make a cute couple."

"Ma'am- "

"I know about these things, you know. Who do you think got Fred and Ashante to finally tie the knot?"

"Yes, ma'am, when you're no longer president, you can spend your retirement years as a very successful yenta."

The president laughed. "All right, I've got to talk to Safranski. I'll fill him in on this disaster, too. Mind if I keep this?" She held up the padd.

Esperanza nodded. "I've got a copy. Safranski did good on ICL."

"I missed it. How was T'Vrea?"

"She wasn't-her first officer was on instead."

Again, the president frowned. "That's odd. It's not like T'Vrea's camera-shy."

"I wouldn't worry about it, ma'am. Something could have called the captain away, and she sent her XO."