Good News

Posted on 11 Mar 2025 @ 4:00am by Lieutenant Commander Maurice Rubens

Mission: M4 - Falling Out
Location: Rubens Quarters
Timeline: M4 - MD27
1136 words - 2.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Rice circled his finger in the air in a rewind motion, “Wait. Go back. What’d Eloise Khadra-Vogel do? Where’d she go?”

“To the - er - art opening at Timeless Treasures,” Ensign Iskander bin Osman clarified.

The two diplomatic officers were in Rice’s de facto office: the dining room of his quarters. Admiral Harshman still occupied the Chief Diplomat’s own office while the Korinn negotiations dragged on. It’d been weeks. Rice was beginning to wonder if he was going to be permanently working from home. The idea grated on him. Moon wasn’t the tidiest of people, especially when the mood to sketch new designs grabbed her. Since she liked the analog feel of a real pencil in her hand, their quarters were littered with scrap paper with half-baked ideas. Some were an arm span in size while others were ripped off corners of pages about the size of Rice’s palm, which gave their abode the charm of a preschool classroom.

“Okay,” Rice felt aggravated. They’d all been working to keep the FNS reporter away from all things Ibis Xeri, feeding them new stories like the engineering conference. “Did she get close to Chief Xeri?”

“No, as far as I know, she won’t be there,” Iskander said, a slight note of awe in his voice. Somehow, he’d found himself Obsidian Command’s only media relations officer. Although he’d worked with the media before joining Starfleet, it consisted of begging favors from Earth-focused news to feature a small shipping operation in Singapore who was quite proud of their ‘speed records.’ Handling a figure as prominent as Khadra-Vogel was completely new.

“As far as you know?”

“I - er - no,” Iskander bumbled, realizing his mistake. “Mr. Brek told me that she wasn’t going to be attending. You know, Mr. Brek - ?”

“I’m acquainted with Brek,” Rice replied. He’d even grown accustomed to the Ferengi, Moon’s business partner, coming over for dinner.

“Well, he gave them access. He thought the attention would be good.”

“He’s a Ferengi wanting to make latinum. Of course he wanted attention, but that didn't mean it was a good idea.” Rice took a moment to squeeze the bridge of his nose. Between lawyers and the media, everyone seemed to want their pound of flesh from Major Wallace and Chief Xeri. He made a mental note to talk with Wallace and Xeri to make sure Khadra-Vogel won’t worm her way into their lives. “Okay. We need to give them something new.”

“There’s some work being done on the USS - er - something in spacedock. Maybe I could pitch them an engineering story?”

The Chief Diplomat gave the young officer a baleful look. “She already has those passes to the engineering conference. I doubt a ship in spacedock is going to interest her. Khadra-Vogel is a star reporter for the major news service. She could go to any starbase in the Federation for a story like that. It has to be something a little bigger.”

“What about an interview with the Korinn delegation?”

Rice nodded. “That’s along the right lines. Not sure the delegation is ready for her and I doubt it would help the situation.”

“Maybe a one-on-one with the Admiral?”

“Sependiyar?” Rice considered it for a moment, then shook his head. Not good enough. Throw a rock on Earth and it’d hit a hundred admirals before falling to the ground.

Iskander looked down at his shoes as if the leather boots held the answers he craved. When stuck, he liked to just start talking and that’s what he did. He rattled off everything he could think of, any thing of note. A story on the station disappearing and reappearing. The Pathfinder crew tracking down those pirates or maybe just pirate activity. That first contact coming up any day; a exclusive with the Norfar representatives. The native population’s near-civil war on the surface of Loki III.

For the first couple of suggestions, Rice shook his head, but as the list grew he simply didn’t answer in any way. Iskander felt like he should contribute something or at least give him a sense that one of his ideas might work. Instead, Rice stared at the table, chin resting his hand as if bored by the whole exercise.

“Maybe we could just slip Khadra-Vogel and her team across the border into Romulan Republic controlled space. ‘Rebel’ Romulans have to be some sort of story. No one’s filed a story from inside their camp yet.” Iskander immediately saw the problems with aiding and abetting an illegal border crossing, but he was seriously running out of ideas.

This one, however, made Rice sit up. “Say that again.”

“No one has done any reporting from inside the Romulan Republic…”

“Romulans…” Rice mused, “Huh. That…could…work…”

Iskander blinked. “It would be illegal,” he said, voicing his own internal monologue. “It would be aiding and abetting…”

“No, not that! They’d be killed by pirates or warlords. No, not sending them to the Republic, but the other Romulans. The Free State.”

“I’m sorry, Sir. I’m not following. How - er - how are we supposed to get them access to the Free State?”
Rice ignored the question. He was mostly talking to himself now. “Federation news inside the Free State is heavily controlled, by the Romulans and the Federation, too.” He snapped his fingers. “No one knows what’s going on...Yes…that could…she’s been pushing to go to the planet right?”

“Yes, but you wanted to restrict her access there, too. Any reporting she does on Obsidians killing Obsidians could inflame the situation,” Iskander said, verbatim repeating what Rice had told him just a couple weeks ago.

He jumped up from his chair. “She won’t be reporting on that. Release the passes, but make it for…” Rice checked his PADD briefly. “...day after tomorrow.”

“What about the art show?”

Rice waved it away like an irksome fly. Let the reporter go to the show; she’d soon lose interest in all things Ibis Xeri if she even got a sniff of the undercurrents swirling around the Korinn negotiations. If he could play this just right, Khadra-Vogel would soon have a big story.

“She’s going to forget all about it.”

“Why? What’s going on down there that would suddenly pull her attention away from Xeri and genocide?”

“Romulans.”

“The refugees?”

“Yes. She’s going to be very interested in them.”

“Why?”

Rice paused and looked up, realizing that Iskander might start putting two and two together if he said anymore. “For or against, refugees make good news.”