Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code (26 page)

“My God, what were the Klingons thinking?” Paris grated. “I’ve seen some sore losers, but this?”

Shumar put his hand on her shoulder briefly. “They were thinking that if they couldn’t make Ardan Four a foothold, they’d at least make sure we wouldn’t have it either. Or its dilithium, or the supplies and repair materials for our fleet.” He exhaled heavily through his nose, ruffling his mustache. “They wanted to weaken our border, and they’ve succeeded, though not as much as they’d planned.

“We’d hoped that stopping this attack would avert a war,” Shumar went on. “But I think it’s safe to say the war has just begun.”

October 14, 2165

U.S.S. Pioneer

Charles Tucker sipped his cold coffee, idly praying that this latest dose of caffeine would fire up the right neurons to give him the key insight he needed. His hopes buoyed more substantially when Olivia Akomo entered the engineering lab. “Good, you’re still awake,” he said. “I could use a fresh set of eyes. I’ve been going over this code for hours, trying to see a way we can fix the autoimmunity problem. Maybe you can find a new angle.”

Akomo’s dark eyes studied him for a time before she replied. “Are you sure the autoimmunity reaction is a problem? Maybe it’s the solution.”

He gave her a sour look. “There are a lot of people in the Partnership who wouldn’t see it that way.”

“Is that really our responsibility, Phil?” He blinked at the name. He was too practiced in the use of his Philip Collier alias to have trouble recognizing it, but it was surprising
to hear Akomo address him so familiarly. “Don’t we have a greater responsibility to the Federation?”

“What are you saying?”

She moved closer to the worktable, leaning in over him. “I’m saying the Klingons have already destroyed Ardan Four. They’re about to invade the Federation, because they blame us for the Partnership giving Ware to their own rebels. But what if we could offer them a solution to the Ware problem? A way to destroy it once and for all, in exchange for the Klingons calling off the invasion?”

Tucker rubbed the bridge of his nose, still a bit surprised to feel the bump that had been surgically added to it as part of his disguise. “I thought of that. Of course I did. But you know it’s not that simple. Those rebels are an oppressed minority, one we had a hand in creating in the first place.”

“And that makes us responsible for them? Hell, that’s just one more reason the Empire wants to destroy us!”

“It means it’d be a pretty rotten move to throw them in front of a hovertrain for our convenience.”

“It’s not like they have any less reason to want us dead.”

“And what about the Partnership? You know the Klingons wouldn’t stop with their rebels. Give them a way to disintegrate the Ware and the invasion would be over in days. The
Partnership
would be over.”

“They’re the ones who made a deal with the rebels.”

“And that means they deserve to be conquered?”

“It means they’re not our priority. We serve the Federation first.”

“At others’ expense?” He shook his head. “You sound like my bosses back home.”

She glanced away, shifting her weight. “Yeah, well, there’s a reason for that.”

Even bleary and sleep-deprived as he was, he caught on to her meaning and shot to his feet. “You’re working for the Section?” Her silence was confirmation enough. “How long?”

She sighed. “Only recently. I was contacted by your Mister Harris over subspace. You know he has ways to do that undetected.”

“I know a lot about the way he operates.”

“And he knows you aren’t happy when it gets morally edgy, like it did on Sauria. So once he saw the way things were heading with the Partnership and the Klingons, he decided you needed a backstop. Someone to remind you of your responsibilities to the Federation in case the shades got a little too gray.” She gave an abashed sigh. “I didn’t like what he was selling. Not at first. But there’s more to consider here. There’s all we’ve learned about the Ware. Advanced technology and medicine that could do miracles for the Federation. Solve our transporter problem, give us matter replication—”

“Sure, except what good is it if the Klingons can disintegrate it with the push of a button?”

“I know, I know. But the situation has changed. New technologies won’t benefit us if the Klingons destroy us first. I was willing to do almost anything to crack these secrets—”

“Just like Vabion.”

“No! He wanted it for personal glory. I wanted it for the good it would do my family, my community, my Federation. That was worth bending a few rules, making a few compromises. And if I have to sacrifice all this technology for their survival, then that’s worth it too.”

He stared at her. “Your community. Your Federation. You think that’s just about places and things? What about the
ideas that built the Federation? People and species overcoming their differences to build a peaceful, cooperative society. That’s what the Partnership is! They represent everything we stand for. They’ve built something amazing here, something we can learn so much from. Give the Klingons the means to destroy the Ware and most of these races will lose all their technology, go back to living like animals, lose everything they’ve achieved. Assuming the Klingons don’t just kill them all out of revenge!

“Is that defending the Federation, Olivia? Or is it destroying everything we are?”

“Fine words, Mister Collier. Grand ideals. But they won’t matter much to the millions of people who’ll be in the Klingons’ way when they make their push for Earth and Vulcan. Like my sister who lives on Deneva, with her husband and two kids. What am I defending if I let my sister die?”

Tucker stared at her. He wondered how much Harris had told her about his true identity and past. Was she deliberately playing on the memory of his own sister’s death in the Xindi attack? Was she capable of such a low blow? Or had Harris merely studied her history and personality and predicted that she would be the optimal psychological tool with which to goad Tucker?

Either way, it had an impact. He did know all too well, even after so many years and changes of identity, what it was like to lose family to an arbitrary act of destruction. He couldn’t easily set that aside in the name of an abstract principle.

But if he didn’t, then all the good people he’d met here in the Partnership would probably suffer that same loss. How could he choose one over the other?

Maybe, he realized, it was a false choice. “There might be a third option,” he told her. “All we need is to crack this problem, find the solution we wanted all along. If we could control the Ware without destroying it, then we
and
the Partnership could work together to stop the rebel attacks on the Empire. That should be enough to head off an invasion of the Federation.”

She shook her head. “We don’t know how long it’ll take to find a solution. You saw what rushing led to the first time. The Klingons are gearing up to strike now.”

“But we can tell them—the Section can tell them, through Starfleet, that we’re close to a solution. Use that as a negotiating tactic, offer it in exchange for their backing down.”

“That won’t work. Not against Klingons.”

“We don’t know that! Sure, Klingons are angry and bluster a lot, but they aren’t stupid. We just have to convince them we have something they need, and that’ll give us leverage.”

“It’s too risky.”

“Everything is risky. Even with your—with Harris’s plan, there’s no guarantee the Klingons wouldn’t turn on us anyway once they were done with the Partnership. So let’s not throw away our principles before we have to. Sure, sometimes there’s no other choice, but the Section is supposed to be a last resort. Our responsibility is to do
nothing
until we’re sure that every other possibility’s been exhausted.

“So let’s at least try it my way first. If the Klingons don’t go for it . . .” He sighed heavily. “Then we can talk about more extreme options.”

Akomo pressed her lips together and considered his words for a time. “Fine,” she agreed. “I’ll go along with your
recommendation—for now. But you’d better hope you can be as convincing to Harris.”

“You let me deal with Harris,” he said. “I’ve got practice.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “Yeah? And how well has that worked out for you before?”

16

October 15, 2165

Enphera Desert, Antar

I
N ANCIENT TIMES
, Enphera had been one of the cradles of Antaran civilization. Its dwellers had perfected agriculture in the flood plain formed by its three great rivers, built sprawling cities from the local wood and clay, and quarried great stones from the nearby mountains to erect massive statues and temples in honor of their fertility gods and goddesses. In modern times, Enphera was a blasted ruin. Dry, barren mud flats stretched clear to the horizon, and fragments of the once-great statues lay scattered about the foothills, whose already uneven landscape was broken further by dozens of sizeable impact craters and a scattering of smaller ones.

As Doctor Phlox peered over the fragmented torso of a once-revered deity, he saw that one of the large craters—the result of an impact that had blasted through the roof and two floors of an underground temple complex and converted it into a sort of natural amphitheater—was now occupied by a dozen or so Antarans in olive drab. They had cleared away much of the accumulated sand and dust and assembled the surviving slabs of granite and sandstone into a facsimile of a courtroom . . . with a young Denobulan man held in irons before the bench as a self-appointed prosecutor declaimed the case against him.

Golouv Ruehn tugged at Phlox’s sleeve, prompting him to lower his head again. “You’ve seen them, Doctor. Don’t let them see you.”

“They have Mettus,” he said. “The trial is already underway. Given that the verdict is already decided, I doubt we have much time.”

“Don’t be so sure, sir. These lunatics like to talk. See those cameras all around? They need to justify their atrocities to themselves as much as to their listeners.”

“But why wait? Surely you have the proof you need to arrest them.”

“Yes, and they have sentries around the ruins. We need to get our people into position to take them all down at once. Otherwise lives could be lost. You and your friends don’t want that, do you?”

Phlox conceded her point, glancing at the other members of the five-person IME combat-medicine team he had insisted on bringing to the raid as a justification for his own presence. He prayed their services would not be needed.

“Here,” Ruehn said, handing him a spare earpiece of the sort her CIB officers were using. “We’ve got audio surveillance on them. It sounds like it’ll be a while before Bokal is done speaking.”

Phlox took the earpiece and put it in with some trepidation. Fintar Bokal, he remembered, was the leader of this cell of the True Sons of Antar. (Phlox had wondered why no true daughters were included.) He was a young man, younger than Mettus, and he spoke with the self-assured arrogance of youth.
“. . . these Denobulans call us a threat to their purity, their ecology. But the truth of things is evident all around us, here in the ruins of our great Enpheran forebears. This historic site stood for thousands of years, revered and preserved by countless
generations of Antarans. Yet the Denobulans did not care! They called us the ravagers of their world, but it was they, in their vindictiveness, who targeted our oldest and greatest ruins, the remains of our first civilization, and bombed them into rubble, destroying much of our priceless cultural heritage.”

“Oh, please.” Ruehn shook her head. “It was the corporate state’s fault as much as anyone’s, building their space command headquarters so close to the ruins. It’s not like they cared so much about history—they were the ones who dried the rivers and turned this place into a desert.” She wrinkled her nose. “Hmf. Not to mention that Enphera was only our second or third civilization. But it’s not only Denobulans these people hate. As far as Bokal’s concerned, only his own ancestors count as civilized.”

“I see little sign of civilized behavior so far,” Phlox said.

But Bokal’s rant was interrupted as another True Son came up to him and whispered in his ear.
“Ah,”
the fanatics’ leader said.
“I gather that a vehicle has been spotted nearby. Probably the puppet regime’s stormtroopers coming to silence our truth.”
Phlox peered around the edge of the broken statue for a better view.
“I had hoped to give a fuller accounting of the crimes of this ­Denobulan—­of all Denobulans. Now we must cut these proceedings short. But Mettus-sollexx-oortann’s crimes speak for themselves. The guilt of all Denobulans is carved into the stone around us! So let us expedite justice.”
He pulled out his sidearm and placed it against Mettus’s head.
“This will make our statement as effectively as anything I could say!”

Phlox was in motion before he even realized what he was doing—and before Ruehn and her men could stop him. “No, we’re not ready!” he heard her whisper sharply behind him.

He crouched behind a low rise to put some distance between himself and Ruehn’s team, acting instinctively to shield
them from harm as a result of his actions. He only prayed he would have time. Mercifully, he heard Bokal taunt Mettus:
“Does the guilty party wish to cleanse his soul with a confession before I send it on its way?”

“The only guilt I feel,”
Mettus snarled,
“is for my failure to kill every last one of you!”

“Oh, Mettus,” Phlox muttered, shaking his head.

Bokal made an inarticulate noise.
“Here, Denobulan. Let me demonstrate how it’s done.”

“Wait!” Phlox shouted at the top of his lungs, popping up into view. At the last second, he remembered to remove the police earpiece from his auditory canal and toss it into the rocks. “Don’t shoot!” he hollered. “I’m alone! I’m unarmed! I’m a doctor!”

He continued in that vein until two of the green-suited bigots arrived to hold him at gunpoint and drag him down before Bokal. Mettus stared at him in shock and disbelief.

“Another Denobulan?” Bokal asked, his voice deeper and harsher without the earpiece’s modulation. “Who are you? Who is with you?”

“There’s only me, sir. My name is Phlox. I am Mettus’s father.”

“That was your vehicle we spotted?”

“Yes. Yes, there’s only me. I tried to get help,” he babbled purposefully. “Tried to convince my government, your government, the IME, even Starfleet, but none of them would lift a finger!” He didn’t need to reach very deep to feign frustration. “So I came alone. I had to do something.”

“How did you find us, then, if you had no help?”

“I am a medical officer aboard a Federation starship,” he extemporized. “I have access to the most advanced biosensors in the quadrant. You don’t think I wouldn’t be able to track
my own son’s DNA, do you?” Given how xenophobic Bokal and his men were, Phlox doubted they knew enough about Starfleet technology to see through his lie.

After a moment’s contemplation, Bokal laughed. “And naturally the Denobulans would not help you find your son. It is well known that Denobulans do not value their families the way Antarans do. You do not commit yourselves to a single mate, a single set of children. You spread your seed promiscuously, even within your own sex. You live your lives with no ties or commitments.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Phlox snapped. “I’ve crossed dozens of light-years and trudged through a desert to find my son. If not to rescue him . . .” He held Mettus’s eyes. “Then at least to be with him one last time. To say the things I should’ve said long ago.”

Bokal paced around him. “You want to speak,
Doctor?
Very well—speak! Address this tribunal. Confess your crimes as a Denobulan—so that all will know the reason for your impending execution.”

Any time now, Director Ruehn!
Phlox thought. But there was still no movement from the rocks. He hoped he hadn’t complicated matters by providing the True Sons with a hostage whose life actually meant something to the Antaran government. Not that he’d had much choice.

But his years working with Starfleet had been nothing if not an education in adaptability. “All right,” he said. “You want a confession? Very well. I can certainly do that.

“My people are not blameless in the dark history between our worlds. When your people came to Denobula, when you arranged for mining rights and drew on our resources, we came to believe you were despoiling our world. Rather than work with you to develop more sustainable practices, we
violated our agreements and provoked you to retaliate. We came to see your very presence on our world as a source of pollution and expelled you by force. Matters escalated on both sides until we became convinced you were a threat that had to be contained at the source—leading to tragedies like the bombardment that destroyed these ruins and the famine that killed so many of your people. We have lived with the guilt of those crimes for centuries, as your people have lived with the guilt for the massacre at Zenubex and the burning of the Gintoril rainforest.”

“Do not taint your confession with lies.”

Phlox ignored him, fixing his gaze upon Mettus. “All of us, Denobulan and Antaran alike, bear some share of guilt for the centuries of enmity between our peoples and the mutual damage it has done. Our alienation . . . our refusal to communicate, to bend, to listen to each other for so long . . . all it has done is to create a rift that festered and made the divide even worse.

“Yes, I am guilty of that,” he went on, holding his son’s eyes. “I confess that guilt freely. I must. We all must. Because it is only by admitting our own mistakes, our own failings . . . that we can begin to forgive others.” Mettus’s expression hardened and he turned away. “I don’t suggest that those wrongs should be forgotten,” Phlox insisted to him. “Nor should they be excused. The pain, the harm they caused was very real, and nothing can change that. But that’s not what forgiveness is about. Forgiveness is about healing. It doesn’t erase the damage of the past, but it lets us begin to move beyond it. Clinging to resentment and blame and bitterness only perpetuates the pain . . . and creates a cycle of new wrongs and ever-worsening pain. Forgiveness is the only way to break that cycle.”

Bokal sneered and opened his mouth to speak, but Mettus beat him to it. “Just get this torture over with already! I can’t listen to any more!”

“Very well,” Bokal intoned, signaling his men to drag Phlox over near Mettus and force them both to their knees.

It was to Phlox’s very great relief when the sounds of stun pistols and fisticuffs descended from all around the rim of the crater. The CIB forces finally erupted into view and poured over the edges, descending toward the group below. The True Sons hunkered down behind pieces of rubble and began firing on the security forces, who fired back.

But Bokal was bent on his own goals. Leaving his men to handle the attack, he raised his weapon and aimed it at Mettus.

Phlox gave no thought to the ironic symmetry as he flung himself bodily in the path of the plasma bolt fired toward his son.

•   •   •

Phlox awoke to find himself under both a medical tent and the care of Doctor Turim, one of the Tiburonian physicians in the IME party. “You’ll be all right,” she told him, relating the specifics of his injury in terms intended to reassure him—but it simply drove home how much worse off he would have been had Bokal’s aim been just a few centimeters to the left.

Turim waved someone over, and Phlox soon saw it was Director Ruehn. “That was the most foolish and suicidal move I’ve ever seen, Doctor, but you somehow made it work. We have the entire cell in custody. A few injuries on both sides, but no fatalities.” She flushed a bit. “And our techs discovered that their cameras have an open link to the True Sons’ headquarters. We’ve tracked it to its source and we’re
launching a raid on their leaders even now. Your way worked after all.”

Phlox had higher priorities than saying he’d told them so. “Mettus?”

Ruehn glanced over at a subordinate and nodded. The man left the tent . . . and returned a moment later with Mettus in tow, dirty and scraped from his fall and shackled with CIB manacles, but otherwise safe and well. Phlox almost fainted from relief.

Mettus looked down at him in dull bewilderment. “I don’t understand. Why did you come? Why did you”—he gestured weakly at Phlox’s wound—“do
this
for someone you’ve hated for so long?”

Phlox’s heart fell at the boy’s words. “Oh, Mettus. I have never hated you. I have been furious at you. Bitter. Gravely disappointed. And deeply sad. But hate . . .” He shook his head. “Hate is a disease, Mettus. A virulent plague that infects its victims in order to propagate itself at their expense—to make them do harm to others and create more hate in return. It causes destruction to both the hater and the hated. And so it runs counter to the natural impulse of life to preserve life, to promote survival.

“That includes the natural impulse of a father to love his son,” he went on, his eyes tearing up. “That is what drove my anger, my disappointment, my bitterness for all these years. But it is also what drove me to cross parsecs for you, to fight for you. That is life fighting to preserve life . . . and that is more powerful than the hollowness of hate can ever be.” He lowered his head. “I only pray that someday you will understand that.”

Mettus gave no sign that he did. But he offered no resistance as the rightful Antaran authorities took him away . . . for he was lost in silent thought.

October 16, 2165

Partnership planet Cotesc

At last, Reshthenar sh’Prenni stood before the representatives of the Partnership of Civilizations—their Senior Partners and their judicial council in an extraordinary joint session to hear her plea. Ambassador Jahlet stood by her side in the open, white-floored space before the curved council benches, present to demonstrate that her petition had the backing of the Federation. But the Rigelian ambassador let sh’Prenni speak, as she had wished to do for so long.

“We came to you because we believed we had a common enemy,” the captain said. “We assumed you were victims of the Ware and would welcome our liberation. In our arrogance, we underestimated you. In our ignorance, we did you great harm. We should have waited. We should have listened and learned, let you tell us what you needed, so that we could come to a solution together.