A low, thick fog hung over the bay, and a brisk breeze blew out of the west. The chilly spring morning in San Francisco was a far cry from the sunny hills of Provence they’d just left. Admiral Reyes and Dr. Hall made their way inside, navigating a sea of red, yellow and teal uniforms as they approached the central reception desk.

A commander in security yellow looked up at them. Flag officers were the norm at Starfleet Headquarters, but the five pips on her collar got his attention. “Good morning ma’am,” he greeted courteously. “How may I be of assistance?”

“Here for Fleet Admiral Shelby.”

“Your name please? And do you have an appointment?” The security officer made it his business to know all the senior staff that frequented these halls, but he didn’t recognize this Fleet Admiral. She had a strange air about her too, a demeanor more reminiscent of a frontier line captain than a senior administrator.

“Fleet Admiral Allison Reyes, and no, I do not, but I’m here on an urgent matter of Federation security,” she answered with a firm tone. “I need to speak with the CinC at once.”

“Please give me a moment to call upstairs,” the commander asked kindly. The Commander-in-Chief of Starfleet did not have a lot of unscheduled guests, and she, along with the rest of Starfleet Command’s senior staff, were incredibly busy getting ready for Frontier Day. He didn’t even know if she was onsite today. Most of the last week, she’d been either entertaining dignitaries in Paris or supervising final preparations at Sol Station.

Admiral Reyes and Dr. Hall took a seat in the lobby to wait.

“Shelby huh?” Dr. Hall asked her colleague. “Bold move going straight to the top.”

“Absolutely. I want to hear from Shelby herself why she turned her back on billions of our people and left the Fourth Fleet to stand alone,” Reyes replied quietly enough that no one else could hear. “If she knew what was happening and did nothing, then she abdicated her oath. If she didn’t know, then this place is utterly incompetent.”

Dr. Hall smiled. Those were fighting words, and this was going to be mighty interesting.

The commander approached them a few minutes later. “I am sorry ma’am,” he apologized. “But Fleet Admiral Shelby’s office says her schedule is full, and she is not taking any visitors.”

That was not an acceptable answer. Admiral Reyes stood up and drew herself uncomfortably close to the security officer. “Commander, let me be very clear with you. I am not a visitor. I am a Fleet Admiral who just got back from fighting a war that you all failed to notice.” Her words were cold and biting, and they caught the security officer completely off guard. “If Elizabeth is too busy hanging decorations for her little jubilee, then find me a member of the command staff that is actually down to do some real work.”

The security officer stood there in shock at her choice of words. 

“If it’s not clear, that’s an order,” Reyes snapped as her gaze narrowed on him.

He hustled off.

“If they won’t see us, odds are that they knew and intentionally did nothing,” Dr. Hall observed. “After what you did to the Command Council a few years ago though, I’d think they’d at least send a lowly Vice Admiral down here to lie to our faces.”

“You’re so cynical, Dr. Hall,” Reyes replied. “I’ve got to have hope that maybe, just maybe, this shit doesn’t run all the way to the top.”

“Shit usually flows downhill Admiral.”

And so they waited, and waited, and waited. Dr. Hall walked over to the reception desk a couple times to check on the commander’s progress. Each time she’d return to Admiral Reyes, her observations were the same. The commander appeared to be trying to help them, but he was coming up short again and again. The Chief of Staff was out of office. The heads of Starfleet Security, Starfleet Tactical and Starfleet Intelligence wouldn’t see them. Even the deputies were supposedly too busy. Admiral Reyes hoped Commander Lewis and his team were having better luck in Milan.

After the better part of an hour, a senior figure descended the grand staircase and approached them. But it wasn’t an Admiral or even a Commodore. Instead, it was a man wearing the pips of an Ambassador. Admiral Reyes knew him well.

“Michael,” she said with a smile and she embraced him in a hug. Then she stepped back and introduced him to her colleague. “Dr. Hall, please meet Admiral… or should I say Ambassador Michael Drake, a former TFCO within the Fourth Fleet.”

“Wow does that take me back,” Ambassador Drake laughed as he shook hands with Dr. Hall. “It’s been well over a decade since I hung up those pips. But it’s a pleasure to meet you Dr. Hall.” He turned back to his old friend. “And Allison, what a surprise seeing you here. I’m going to guess, knowing you, that you didn’t come for the fireworks or the parade?”

“Oh, I assure you I couldn’t care less about what happened a hundred and fifty years ago,” Reyes replied flatly. “I’m here to speak with Command about what happened last month in Dene…”

Drake raised his hand to stop her. “Not here,” he cautioned as he looked over his shoulder. “And none of them are going to hear it from you anyways so let’s go for a walk outside.”

Admiral Reyes frowned. Her stubbornness wanted to rip the building apart until she could find someone to give a piece of her mind to, but she understood what Drake was saying. Reyes and Dr. Hall followed Drake out of the building into gardens. “I assume you are aware of what happened in the Deneb Sector?” Reyes asked as they made their way through the gardens.

“I’ve heard whispers here and there,” Ambassador Drake nodded. “Although I’ll admit more of it came from foreign representatives than our own staff.” The Cardassans had been his best source of information, and it was understandable given their prior experience with the Dominion.

“What the hell is going on with Command? Why did they sit idle?”

“They’re unwilling to even entertain a conversation on the topic,” Drake replied disappointedly. “Not with me, not with you, not with anyone. But thankfully, as I understand from the Cardassians, you guys clutched it out, and the Lost Fleet has been sent packing back to the Gamma Quadrant… which begs the question, why are you here?”

“Looking for answers.”

“You will find none of those here,” Drake said disappointedly. Reyes shot him a frustrated look that told him she wasn’t in the mood to hear such an answer. But that was all the answer he had. “Allison, trust me, there is nothing here for you except frustration and disappointment. You’d be best to turn around and…”

“That’s not going to work for me Michael!” Reyes interrupted impassionately. “Nine hundred and thirty five died on my watch, retaking Nasera from those monsters. All across the sector, it was the same story again and again. You cannot wash away the blood of our officers and our colonists that easily!” Drake just shook his head. “What has gotten into you?”

“Nothing,” Drake replied in a resigned tone. “I’m just being realistic. This is not the Starfleet it used to be. Never has been since the attack on Mars. It looked like things might turn around after you guys launched the Osiris Initiative, but after staring down the Romulan fleet over Coppelius, and then that whole thing with the Borg, there are many within Starfleet that want us to keep our focus here in the defense of our homeland.”

“Deneb is our homeland,” Reyes snapped as she drew to a stop. “Those colonists, they are Federation citizens. They put their trust in us, and we let them down. If we cannot defend our own and meet our oath, then who are we?”

“Go back to the frontier Allison,” the Ambassador urged, doing his best to ignore her plea even though deep down inside, he agreed. “You’ve got a good thing going out there with Ramar, Dahlgren and Beckett, an opportunity to actually make a difference. Here, you’ll just get swallowed up in a bureaucracy that doesn’t want you.” Like he had.

Admiral Reyes looked at him quizzically. This was a former Admiral in the Fourth Fleet, a man she had long respected for his leadership and his determination. To hear him now, disappointing didn’t come close to capturing it. 

“Edir is missing,” Reyes said. “If you’ve so given up on Starfleet that you don’t care that they sat idle while our people died, at least tell me you still care about our old friends.”

“She’s what?”

“She’s missing,” Reyes explained. “A few weeks ago, I asked her to find a way to go public with stories we collected from those who suffered under Dominion oppression in the Deneb Sector. You know, to build a public movement to compel Starfleet to act. But she went over to Milan to speak with the FNN, and then she disappeared.”

“I’m not even going to get into the laws you’d have broken doing that,” Drake replied, shaking his head. He couldn’t imagine that his son, Reyes’ JAG officer, would ever have signed off on such a thing. “But what are you saying? Are you insinuating that someone here had something to do with her disappearance?”

“If not, then it’s a mighty suspicious coincidence.”

“You’re chasing ghosts Allison.”

“Am I?”

“Look, I feel for you. I really do,” Drake offered empathetically. “And I feel horrible about Edir. I’ll reach out to a few old friends and see if I can find anything out. But Allison, you’re playing a dangerous game here. Shelby and Co. will not take kindly to you doing anything that messes up their grand vision.”

Reyes shook her head, absolutely baffled. “To listen to you now, your son and your daughter, they would be embarrassed,” she said, trying to snap him out of his malaise. “Elsie and Robert, they’re still both living in the ideals of Starfleet, the real Starfleet, out there in the stars beyond. To think that their father, the man they looked up to, the man they followed into Starfleet, would sit here idle like this, yeah, I don’t know what to say.”

The ambassador sighed. He wished it wasn’t this way. He wished that he was out in the stars like Admiral Reyes and his kids, but he wasn’t. He was here, and this was his reality. All he could do was make his little mark on the Federation Diplomatic Corps. He’d tried to do more, but they wouldn’t listen. After so many years of trying, he’d just accepted it. 

“Look, I’ve offered you my counsel Allison. Take it or leave it,” Drake concluded as he turned to leave. “But if you insist on sticking around and poking the bear, just watch your back.”

Without another word, Ambassador Drake walked away.

Admiral Reyes and Dr. Hall watched him go.

“It’s curious, isn’t it?” asked Dr. Hall.

“What?”

“Ambassador Drake’s entire demeanor,” the psychologist responded. “He knows more than he’s letting on. You waived his duty, his friend, and his children in his face, and yet he never really reacted. It’s almost as though he was sticking to a script.”

“You might be right,” nodded the admiral. “That’s nothing like the Michael Drake I knew all those years ago.” Neither was this Starfleet anything like the Starfleet she had joined all those years ago. Something was very wrong.