Split between irritation and amusement at Blake’s uncharacteristically capitalist (for a Human) request to begin the negotiations, Tornellis sat up straight and clasped his hands together on the table. In his own youth, he’d gone from a slave of the Orion Syndicate to a mover of goods between worlds without a lot of government red tape involved—a smuggler, in other words. That was a career path that made sense for an Orion, though. It didn’t make as much sense for a privileged Human from an agricultural colony to end up working for the Orion Syndicate. Whether or not they ended up getting the intelligence they needed from Blake, Tornellis was convinced that he was going to learn the boy’s full story.

“Our offer?” Tornellis repeated. He looked over at Counselor Sharma, who nodded. “Fine. To business, then. If you help us locate the Orion base of operations in this sector, we’ll drop the charges.”

Blake shifted in his seat, his mask of confidence faltering for a split second. Tornellis was fairly certain that Blake didn’t know where the Orions were operating out of. He’d likely been doing dead drops or meetings in neutral systems if the Orions were following their normal playbook.

“So, what if I talk and talk and talk, but you and your big, fancy ships can’t end up finding them anyway?” Blake asked. “If you’re right and they set me up, I won’t be helpful. If you’re wrong, I’ve betrayed the Syndicate. I’m fucked either way.”

Sharma cleared her throat and slid a PADD over for Blake and Commander Holland to see. “As a show of good faith, we’re taking anything you say as part of the investigation off the table in terms of any additional charges that could result from other crimes that we might become aware of,” the counselor said. “You’d have nothing to lose.”

Holland held his hand up, looking at the agreement. He turned to Blake. “Technically, anything you might reveal wouldn’t on its own be sufficient to convict you of additional crimes without corroborating evidence, but there aren’t any strings attached to this part of the offer, so I’d advise that you take it,” the lawyer said.

Blake moved the PADD in front of himself so that he could read it in more detail. There were only a few sentences explaining what Counselor Sharma had said in more detail.

“All right, fine. I’m going to need more than just my charges dropped, though. You blew up my ship,” Blake said.

“Technically, you blew up your own ship when you failed to comply with our instructions,” Tornellis reminded him. The sheer audacity of trying to flee from four state-of-the-art frontline starships in an old Ju’Day was staggering. “If your information is helpful, we may have more work for you.”

“Is this a job interview?” Blake scoffed. “I didn’t throw away my life just to end up working for Starfleet after all.”

Tornellis was very interested in that phrasing—Blake obviously didn’t love his current line of work if he considered it a life thrown away. It made incentivizing him more difficult, though, as having a clean criminal record could let him have his old life back, surely.

“You’d rather work for the Syndicate?”

“I don’t work for them,” Blake countered, tone sharper.

That was enough to get Tornellis to back off for a moment. He didn’t want to lose Blake trading barbs.

“How much were the Orions going to pay you for your shipment?” Tornellis asked.

“25 bricks of gold-pressed latinum,” Blake said with no hesitation.

That was an eye-watering sum of money, worth more than a legitimate small cargo operation would make in five years. That was far, far beyond the worth of the shipment Blake had taken. Tornellis couldn’t immediately tell whether Blake was lying or not, but it didn’t really matter.

“50 bricks should do it, then,” Tornellis replied cooly, though he knew that Lancaster would not be pleased with giving the young man a king’s ransom for information that might well turn out to be faulty anyway.

Blake blinked. “So, to be clear: if I help you find the Orion base, all criminal charges are dropped and you’ll pay me 50 bricks of latinum, and if we don’t find them, I get nothing and go to prison?”

“You’d go to trial,” Holland clarified. “Your cooperation would look good to a jury as evidence of contrition. In my professional opinion, you don’t have anything to lose by agreeing. Unless it turned out later that you were lying at any point. Then the deal would be off.”

“I guess I won’t lie, then,” Blake quipped, chewing on his bottom lip for a moment. “I agree to your terms.”

With that, Holland snapped the leather folio closed over his PADD and stood up. “Excellent. I’ll go make my report to the fleet captain. Nice working with you,” he said before breezing out of the room.

Tornellis tapped a few commands into the conference table console to pull up a map of the Olympia sector on the screen built into its surface.

“Let’s get started then. Show me the dates and locations of every pickup and drop-off you’ve made in this sector,” the intelligence officer said.

Tornellis and Blake went through the map with painstaking detail. This was partially a test of Blake’s ability to be forthcoming, as Tornellis was already aware of several meeting places. To his credit, Blake was accurate in his recollections and supplied several additional locations that Tornellis wasn’t aware of.

“If my navigational computer were still intact, this would be a lot easier,” Blake complained.

“If it is, engineering is currently sifting through the wreckage and will find it,” Tornellis noted. He circled the bulk of the locations with his finger. “All of these locations are within a day of the Theta Olympiae system. Did they ever mention it?”

“Not a chatty bunch,” Blake replied. “But it would make sense that they’d be operating just outside of Federation space, where you wouldn’t have jurisdiction.”

Tornellis nodded, deciding whether or not to reveal that they had other significant intelligence about Orion movements on the other side of the sector. None of those locations appeared in Blake’s intelligence, though.

“This is a good start. I need to report to my superior. We have a set of guest quarters for you. You’re free to use the public areas of the ship—with your two new best friends, of course,” Tornellis said, pointing to Chief Zhou and Crewman Seagraves by the door. “I’ll have more questions for you, later.”

“Maybe buy me dinner next time!” Blake managed to get out, before the doors closed behind the intelligence officer.