Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code (13 page)

Signaling to Ensign Grev to mute the channel, Reed turned to his first officer. “He’s definitely up to something,” Mayweather said. “But at least we’d have him where we could keep an eye on him.”

“Agreed.” Reed turned back and nodded to Grev to reopen the channel. “Very well. But have your escort vessels withdraw before you attempt to board. I won’t lower
Pioneer
’s shields otherwise.”

“Of course. My only goal is to resolve this matter in a civilized way.”
Vabion’s expression grew smug.
“The question is whether you can say the same.”

•   •   •

“My people foraged and hunted across the plains of our world for uncounted thousands of generations,” Senior Partner Rinheith Chep intoned to the gathered personnel in
Pioneer
’s briefing room. “We sang great songs that spread from pride to pride, trading history, lore, philosophy, and myth. We studied our environs as best we could, learned how to thrive within their cycles and evade predators, watched the stars and developed intricate calendars to guide our
migrations. From them, we developed abstract mathematics and theoretical astronomy.”

The Senior Partner, a member of a species called the Hurraait, sat with Vabion across the table from Reed, Mayweather, and Charles Tucker, with Ensign Grev on hand in the event of translation difficulties and Lieutenant Williams standing watch over the visitors. The final person in the room was Rinheith’s aide Fendob, a robust humanoid female with a hairy back and shoulders and a pronounced brow ridge. She appeared quite subservient to Rinheith and barely spoke.

“But there was little we could achieve beyond abstraction,” the Hurraait went on, “for, as you can see, we lack the advantages of your kind.” He spread his vestigial wings, emphasizing his lack of hands or other fine manipulative organs. “We have enough dexterity in our beaks and tongues to handle rudimentary tools. We could use them for some limited horticulture, for making basic traps for small animals, for the creation of art and mathematical notations. But we could not farm fields or build cities or invent the wheel. We never created a written language, for our society was never complex enough to require the keeping of records. And we never developed more than the crudest medical techniques or any understanding of disease. We were as intelligent as any race, but we were trapped by our inability to build a civilization.

“And then the Ware came. A gift from the heavens that could provide all the tools and medicines and scientific knowledge we could ever hope for. Yes, it demanded payment in raw materials and resources. It took us much time to scrape together enough minerals and rare chemicals to pay for the products of the Ware, but with those products came the equipment to mine more, and in time our prosperity grew. At last, we were able to make our dreams into reality, to use our
minds to affect the world rather than merely describing it. We could enlarge our population, fill our world with more and wiser minds to bring greater knowledge and enlightenment. We could even travel through space and meet other species—others who relied on the Ware, making us part of the same community from the beginning, even before we formed the Partnership.”

“But sooner or later,” Mayweather said, “you must have realized the enormous cost.”

“We did come to realize that the Ware demanded sacrifices, yes. For a long time, we and our fellow Partners endured this as a necessary cost of civilization. We developed a tradition of volunteers, brave individuals who gave up their lives for the sake of the majority. Some worlds in the Partnership selected sacrifices by lot instead.

“Yet we studied the Ware, hoping to find a way to modify its programming and free ourselves from this painful trade. It took us generations, but finally, our most brilliant minds found a way to penetrate the data cores and safely revive the sleepers. We still required volunteers to keep the Ware functional, but they need only sacrifice a small portion of their lives, after which they would be replaced by others. By staggering the cycles, awakening and replacing only some at a time, we could maintain the benefits of the Ware continuously without the losses it demanded.”

“You understand why we find that hard to believe,” Reed declared. “We read about you in the Pebru’s historical records. You gave them the Ware, exploited them as processors for it. They were hardly volunteers.”

Rinheith lowered his head. “As I said, it took us generations to find a better way. The Pebru were among our early members, centuries ago. Yes, they were victimized by the Ware,
but so were all of us at the time. During our search for a better way, the Pebru discovered how to redirect the Ware to target other races. They presented this as the solution we needed, but the other Partners refused to prey on others to spare ourselves. The dispute could not be resolved, and the Pebru severed ties with the Partnership in order to enact their rapacious solution. Once we found our own solution, we offered it to them. But our separation had been acrimonious, and they did not trust what we offered.”

“For once, I’m with them,” Tucker declared. “We’ve seen how tightly the Ware holds on to its ‘property.’ Anyone who gets sprung from a data core gets hunted down and plugged back in.”

Vabion looked down his nose at the engineer. “The Ware does not bother to distinguish between individuals any more than you care for the difference between an electronic circuit and its replacement. As long as a new processor is installed to replace the missing one, the Ware is satisfied.”

“And what about the damage to the volunteers?” Mayweather insisted. “Loss of memory, cognitive defects, neurological problems . . .”

“Most of which,” Rinheith countered, “can be repaired by the Ware itself. Assuming a volunteer remains long enough for damage to occur at all. We monitor them closely to minimize the risk.”

“But the risk shouldn’t be necessary. There are other ways to get technology, ways that don’t require giving up so much.”

“That’s the trap of the Ware,” Reed added. “It’s designed to make you dependent, to give it more of what it needs in exchange for the benefits it provides.”

“And yet it has given us an independence we would never otherwise have had. And not only us.” He gestured to Fendob
with a wing, prompting her to step forward. “As you can see, Fendob is like you, blessed with sensitive fingers and a strong back. But her people are not quite dexterous enough, either in fingers or in creative thought, to invent a sophisticated technology of their own, and they lack sufficient linguistic skills to communicate complex scientific knowledge. On their own, they would have been as incapable of civilization as we were.”

“Surely you have recognized the pattern by now,” Vabion put in. “I have seen Partnership records of the worlds whose Ware you have neutralized, of the species that occupy them. The Enlesri, a brachiating species with syndactyl forefeet, the digits fused together into a clamplike configuration—excellent for clinging to branches, but ill-suited to fine manipulation. The Nierl, methane-­breathers from an environment whose atmosphere will not allow fire to burn. The Sris’si, sentient but blind aquatic mammals. And of course you know of the Pebru. Not one of these species is capable of creating high technology on its own.”

“That is what defines and unifies the Partnership,” Rinheith went on. “Every one of the Partner species owes its entire civilization to its membership in the Ware community. Through its bounty, we have built cities, enlarged our populations. We have traveled the stars and colonized worlds we could not otherwise inhabit. We coexist with races deeply alien to us, in environments that would kill us without the protection of the Ware.

“Do you not see, Captain Reed? This is the crime of your Captain sh’Prenni and her crew. By shutting down our Ware, she was not liberating us, but condemning us to the loss of our very civilization. And eventually to the death of most of our population.”

•   •   •

Reed was reluctant to believe the shocking claims made by Rinheith and Vabion. The Ware thrived on deception and
false promises, and any ally of Vabion’s—let alone one who employed Klingon pirate crews—was not high on his list of people to trust. Still, he could not deny that every Partnership species encountered so far would have been incapable of developing high technology or civilization on its own—or sustaining what they now had without considerable assistance. He’d seen the difficulties the Pebru had faced in adjusting, and they had at least possessed a modest technological capability without the Ware. How much harder would it be for species with no such capability at all?

Once the Partnership representative and Vabion had returned to their command ship, Reed ordered Grev to contact
Kinaph,
the light cruiser that sh’Prenni had left behind at the planet Etrafso to assist its people following the shutdown of their Ware. Though
Kinaph
was a
Sevaijen
-class vessel of Andorian design, its home port was Arken II, the newest member of the Federation, and its name and most of its thirty-eight-person crew were Arkenite. Its captain, Kulef nd’Orelag, was a tall, pale-skinned member of that species who looked younger than his forty-three years, though he seemed to have aged significantly in the week since they had last spoken. Yet when Reed asked for a progress report on the transition process for Etrafso’s citizenry, Captain nd’Orelag was oddly evasive.

“I need specifics, Kulef,” Reed told him. “Captain sh’Prenni and her crew are in prison on a Partnership world, awaiting trial for attempted genocide. The Partnership alleges that it’s impossible for their civilization to survive without the Ware. I need to know whether there’s any truth to their claims.”

The Arkenite fidgeted. Even with his
anlac’ven,
the black, inverted-U headband he wore to stabilize his sense of balance away from the magnetic field of his homeworld, he seemed
to have difficulty keeping his footing.
“There have been . . . challenges, of course. This was bound to be a difficult process. But we are coping. Sh’Prenni would never have abandoned these people.”

“I appreciate your loyalty, Kulef. But you can best help her by telling us the truth. We need to know what we’re facing.”

Finally, with great reluctance, nd’Orelag spoke.
“Captain . . . the situation is
 . . . desperate. The main population of this planet is Enlesri, who are adapted to warmer conditions than are natural for this world. Many are suffering from the cold, though we are doing all we can to restore power to their heating grids.

“But they have it easy compared to others. There are Nierl here as well, beings for whom the native environment is lethally hot and oxygen is a poison. They have environmental suits that are self-sustaining, but limited in their power reserves. There are also the Xavoth, a fluorocarbon-based species native to an extremely hot planet. Restoring their life support has been a top priority, but . . . we have already lost several thousand.”
Reed winced. Beside him, Mayweather gasped audibly. On his other side, Tucker listened with disquieting stillness, revealing nothing.
“It’s not just life support. They need food, and we do not have enough understanding of their biology to synthesize it. My science teams are attempting to retrieve the data from the Ware’s matter-synthesis systems, but the technology is beyond us.”

Striving to understand, Reed asked, “Why are there so many different species from such alien environments, living together on one world?”

“Apparently they migrated here to be closer to their fellow Partnership races and to have fuller access to Ware products. The Ware did not colonize their worlds as it did with the Vanotli or the Kyraw; they were visited by other Partnership races who shared the Ware with them and assisted them
in developing technology and civilization.”

“And required them to offer ‘volunteers’ to the Ware in payment,” Mayweather said, though his anger was muted. If
Rinheith had spoken truly, then every Partnership world paid the same price for membership.

“Kulef, why didn’t you report how bad things were there?” Reed pressed.

Nd’Orelag spoke haltingly.
“I have requested assistance from
Flabbjellah
. And I’ve put out a call to the Tyrellians, requesting additional resources and personnel to aid in the transition.”

“ ‘Aid in the transition’? Captain, from what you’re telling me, you’re in the middle of a planetwide disaster! You should have notified me as soon as the magnitude of the problem became evident.”

The Arkenite straightened with pride.
“Captain sh’Prenni charged me with the task of aiding the people of this world. I cannot fail in that obligation.”

Reed began to realize where this was coming from. The dominant Arkenite culture had a deep-rooted belief in the importance of debts and obligations, and Reed knew from experience that nd’Orelag shared that belief. “I know that sh’Prenni championed your captaincy, Kulef. You feel indebted to her, don’t you? You didn’t want to admit that her methods might have been . . . excessive.”

“My debt is not merely to her,”
nd’Orelag said.
“The Andorians sponsored our membership in the Federation. Even though they could have been vindictive about our struggle for independence from their empire, they chose to set aside the past and embrace us as partners. And Starfleet, the ­Federation—you welcomed us as well, and brought me to where I am today. I cannot be disloyal to that.”

“Captain, the first duty of any Starfleet officer should be to the truth,” Reed said tightly. “Your obligation was to report the crisis on Etrafso immediately, not attempt to downplay it at the cost of lives!”

Nd’Orelag lowered his bulbous, bald head.
“Then I have failed
in my duties. I misunderstood. Perhaps my people are not ready for Federation membership after all.”

“Let’s not go that far,” Mayweather offered. “You made a mistake. That’s part of the learning process.”

“And frankly,” Tucker put in, “this isn’t about you. It’s about all those people you need to be helping.”