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“You’re our Palais correspondent,” Farik had said on the screen on her workstation, his enviable view of the Tenaran ice cliffs behind him, “you don’t do this sort of thing.”

“I used to. Remember that expose I did on the Orion Syndicate? The one I- “

“Won the Gavlin for, yes, I know, and that’s why you got the Palais gig. You deserved it.”

“And I’m grateful, Farik, I really am. But I feel like I’m trapped on Earth. I want to get out some more. Besides, you’ve been wanting to do a follow-up on Tezwa, and with Vara gone and Baleeza retired, you don’t have anyone who- “

“All right, all right!” Farik had laughed, then, and held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll get Gora to cover the Palais for a month or two while you go to Tezwa.”

Tezwa had almost been the flash point of a war between the Federation and the Klingons. The Tezwan prime minister, a lunatic named Kinchawn, had acquired Federation nadion-pulse cannons from the Orion Syndicate and had threatened a Klingon colony. The Klingons had responded, along with a Starfleet ship, and they’d been decimated by the cannons until the Starfleet crew had managed to disable them. The commanding officer of that ship-a rather infamous captain named Jean-Luc Picard-had then claimed the right of batyay’a, which meant that he took credit for conquering the world, thus keeping it out of Klingon hands.

Unfortunately, Kinchawn hadn’t yet finished. Though he’d been deposed after the cannons’ destruction, he’d gone into exile and made dozens of guerrilla attacks on the capital city, which, combined with the damage done by the Klingons in their initial attack, had led to a body count on Tezwa that had been at Dominion War levels.

However, in the last few weeks, the Romulans had crowded Tezwa off the newsfeeds.

Vara deserves better than that.

Vara Tal was the reporter from Seeker who’d been sent to cover Tezwa. She’d been killed when a runabout had been blown up by Kinchawn’s forces-an explosion that had also claimed the lives of several civilians and Starfleet personnel. Farik had sent Seeker’s seniormost reporter, Baleeza Gral-who also reported for Seeker when he was Renna Gral and Tristor Gral-to replace Vara. What he’d seen had been sufficiently awful to convince him to retire from reporting, after doing it for two hundred and fifty years as three different people.

Nobody’s reporting this story anymore. Somebody has to do it for Vara.

A moment later, her holocom beeped, and she found herself sitting, as usual, between Edmund Atkinson of the Times-who would no doubt claim to be in his office in London but who she knew was really on a beach in Mexico-and Regia Maldonado of the Federation News Service, who was, she was sure, in FNS’s Tokyo office. Several other reporters were scattered around the room, most legitimate, a few not so much, in Ozla’s estimation. She was amused to see that Annalisa Armitage of the Free Vulcan Gazette-probably the most laughable publication in a Federation that, thanks to the total freedom of the press, had its share of laughable publications-was still coming to the briefings, despite being mocked at every turn. Then again, the FVG’s probably used to that, since they’ve been advocating Vulcan superiority since the twenty-first century. Hell, the only reason the Vulcans themselves don’t mock the FVG is because they don’t do that kind of thing….

At the podium stood the only two people who were physically in the room: Kant Jorel, the liaison between the press and the Federation Council, and his assistant, an Andorian named Thanatazhres th’Vroth. Zhres had actually lasted in the job for more than two months, which, Ozla thought, was probably a record. Kant had been the press liaison since shortly after his native world of Bajor had joined the Federation three years earlier, and he had gone through over half a dozen assistants in that time.

“First of all,” Kant said, and his words quieted the room down, “President Bacco has said that she’s looking forward to the negotiators on both sides of the current dispute between