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“I beat you bloody 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 hell 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 assurances 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 assume, just for the hell 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 technobabble 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 ambassador. What’s his name?”

“Kalavak.”

“Right. This way the Klingons can’t say we cut them