Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code (16 page)

“Forgive my unaccustomed hesitation, Hoshi,” she said. “I have been uncertain how to broach this topic.”

Sato looked uneasy, but replied, “Take your time.”

“I have waited more than long enough. There is a secret that I and others have been keeping for a considerable amount of time—a classified matter that circumstances now require me to reveal. It is also . . . a personal matter. The reason I have waited this long to broach the subject was that it required consultation with a certain individual who . . . cannot be communicated with openly.”

T’Pol suppressed a surge of frustration as she gazed at the meditation flame. For years, she had been able to commune telepathically with Trip during meditation, due to the unusually strong mental bond they had somehow forged as a consequence of their intimate relations during
Enterprise
’s mission to the Delphic Expanse. This ability to communicate across interstellar distances had saved both their lives on more than one occasion, and had facilitated their pursuit of a relationship despite their need to avoid open interaction. Trip had often said that his awareness of her in his mind was the primary thing that kept him emotionally stable in the course of his work for the secretive group that he called Section 31.

But three months ago, something had changed. V’Las had captured her and Archer and attempted to employ forced mind-melds to program them into doing his bidding. T’Pol had endured a similar mental assault years before, and the prospect of being subjected to another had been profoundly
disturbing—terrifying, to be quite frank. She had reached out to Trip’s mind, seeking comfort . . . and had been unable to make contact. This had not been unprecedented, given the intermittent nature of their connection; and she had been rescued soon thereafter, so she had given the matter no further thought. Yet in the weeks that followed, the bond had not resumed. She knew from
Pioneer
’s reports that Trip was alive and well, and the coded communications they had exchanged when the opportunity arose had given no hint of any problem. She had been reluctant to broach the issue overtly through such a detached method of correspondence, or to burden Trip with her concerns while he faced the crisis posed by the Ware. She had considered the possibility that
Pioneer
’s distance might be too great to allow their connection to form. Theory suggested that telepathy was based in quantum entanglement and thus independent of distance, but in practice, it seemed to become increasingly difficult as distance increased—at least in Vulcans, who were primarily touch telepaths.

Yet
Endeavour
had been drawing closer to
Pioneer
for two weeks now, ferrying one of the Federation’s top diplomats, Ambassador Boda Jahlet of Rigel, to negotiate with the Partnership of Civilizations on behalf of
Vol’Rala
’s captain and crew. Thanks to Chief Engineer Romaine’s creative efforts to boost
Endeavour
’s speed and Ensign Ortega’s deft selection of the most expedient route, the starship was now more than halfway to the rendezvous point, within the range of distances that had allowed T’Pol to communicate with Tucker in the past. And still there was nothing. The loss of contact was becoming a source of concern for her. Could something Trip had experienced in Ware space have closed his mind to her—or made him turn away by choice?

At the moment, there was nothing she could do to address that question. She turned her thoughts back to the here and now. “I also hesitated for another reason. This revelation could be upsetting. I had hoped to think of a way to soften its impact for you.”

Sato laughed nervously. “Whatever it is, you’re just making it feel worse at this point. You should probably just tell me.”

“Very well.” She took a deep breath. “Hoshi . . . Trip Tucker is alive. We falsified his death a decade ago so that he could pursue a deep-cover mission in Romulan space. He is currently aboard
Pioneer
as the civilian engineering consultant Philip Collier.”

The human’s reaction was unexpected—a deep sigh of relief. “I knew it! Oh, and here I was worrying what terrible thing you were going to tell me.”

T’Pol frowned. “You were aware that Mister Tucker was alive?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly
know
 . . . not in the sense of having proof, or anyone telling me. But I figured it out long ago.”

The captain studied Sato, struck by all the ways this woman continued to surprise and impress her. “When did you realize the truth?”

“I guess it was at the Battle of Cheron. Remember how I recognized the coded transmissions from that agent calling himself Lazarus? Then I saw how—forgive me—how agitated you were about rescuing Lazarus from his escape pod.”

“I need not forgive the truth,” T’Pol admitted. “It is an accurate assessment.”

“And Admiral—well, Commodore Archer seemed pretty intense about it too. So I realized Lazarus had to be someone
important to both of you. You and he didn’t really have a social circle in common outside the
Enterprise
crew.” She shrugged. “And the name ‘Lazarus’—to someone like me, who thinks about words and their origins all the time, it indicated someone who’d come back from the dead. And that brought some of the oddities about Commander Tucker’s ‘death’ into focus for me. Not right away, but when I thought about it afterward, I saw how it all fell into place.”

“Impressive deduction,” T’Pol said. “I am relieved at your equanimity. When Commander Mayweather learned the truth, he was justifiably angry at the deception. It took him some time to come to terms with the situation.”

Sato looked down at her lap, pausing to choose her words. “I was upset too. Hurt that I and so many others who cared about Trip were being lied to, made to grieve when they didn’t have to. It felt very cruel.” T’Pol could not dispute her words. “But over time, I came to think it must be even harder on Commander Tucker. And on you.” She cleared her throat. Hoshi was one of T’Pol’s closest friends, and was aware to some extent of the nature of her relationship with Charles Tucker before his ostensible death; but by the same token, she understood T’Pol’s reluctance to discuss such matters. “I realized you wouldn’t be doing this if there were another choice. That it must be for a good reason.”

This time, T’Pol was less sure of her agreement. The reasons for Trip’s continued affiliation with Section 31 were nebulous to her, and there were times when it appeared they were nebulous to Trip as well. But she did not wish to trouble Hoshi with those doubts.

“Why did you say nothing?” she asked. “Naturally, you would not publicly discuss classified information, but you could have broached the subject in private.”

“It wasn’t my place. I figured you must have had good reasons for keeping Commander Tucker’s survival a secret. If you didn’t want to talk to me about it, then it would’ve been an invasion of privacy to bring it up myself. Besides, I didn’t ­really know, I just guessed. So it was better just to stay quiet and hope that, someday, the need for the secret would pass.”

T’Pol pondered her words for the duration of a deep breath. “Unfortunately, that need has not passed. Mister Tucker’s work is clandestine by nature, and it is important that we help him maintain his cover. Of those involved in this mission, only you, I, Malcolm, and Travis are privy to Philip Collier’s true identity.”

Sato frowned. “What about Elizabeth? She’d probably recognize him if she saw him again. And there are a few others aboard who worked with him on
Enterprise
. Plus, Ambassador Jahlet met him at the Coalition talks.”

“It is preferable that we not reveal Trip’s survival to more people than necessary. It may be possible to arrange duty rosters to prevent them from interacting directly. Or perhaps we can convince Lieutenant Cutler that there is simply an unusual resemblance between the two men. She was enlisted on
Enterprise
and did not interact with Trip as frequently as his fellow officers. As for the ambassador, she met him only as a member of a large group a decade ago. And it is unlikely they will have much need to interact.”

They spent some time discussing their approach to maintaining Tucker’s cover once the ships rendezvoused. T’Pol could tell that Sato was not happy about the situation. Still, sharing the truth with her had lifted a weight from them both. More than ever, she was grateful for Hoshi’s friendship and support.

Though it still troubled her that Trip’s support was so elusive.

August 29, 2165

U.S.S. Pioneer

“I hope you’ve been able to get more from the Partnership than just guilt trips, Sam,” Travis Mayweather said to the young historian, whose sandy-haired visage was displayed on a wall monitor in
Pioneer
’s situation room. Captain Reed and Lieutenant Williams flanked Kirk on the screen, while Mayweather was joined around the situation table by Charles Tucker and science officer Rey Sangupta.

“I have, sir,”
Kirk replied.
“I’ve gathered every bit of data and lore I could find in the Partnership’s records about their origins, the order in which their founding worlds received the Ware. That gives us a sense of the direction it originally came from.”

“But you couldn’t find a reference to its origin?” Sangupta asked, a frown wrinkling his handsome bronze features. “The Partnership has been benefitting from the Ware for centuries. You’d think they’d have wanted to know who created it.”

“
They have looked. I’ve found references to a number of searches for the origin world. But they were never able to locate it. I’m doing my best to scan the records for some clue, but maybe that’s a job for a science officer, Rey. Hopefully you can find something I’ve missed.”

“There’s something else, Travis,”
Reed put in.
“Apparently we aren’t the only ones asking these questions. Just about everyone we’ve spoken to has told us that Daskel Vabion visited them first.”

Mayweather grimaced. “I knew it. He’s still trying to crack the mysteries of the Ware for himself. I don’t like the idea of him beating us to the answers. He’s done enough damage without them.”

“Don’t worry, Captain Reed,” Tucker added. “We’re keeping an eye on Vabion’s ship, thanks to a tracking program I
installed in the long-range sensors. If he finds a lead before we do, we’ll be able to follow him.”

“That’s good,”
Reed said.
“But following him may not be enough. I’d prefer it if you could beat him to it.”

“We’ll do our best, sir,” Sangupta affirmed, “but there are a lot of variables. The other task force ships have helped us piece together a pretty good map of the Ware’s spread, but there are multiple loci, signs of the Ware being pushed back and then re-expanding. I’ve been running simulations, produced a few candidates for origin sites, but it’d take time to check them all out. And there’s no way to know in advance if they’re the original origins—so to speak—or more false alarms like the Pebru and the Partnership.”

“If you have candidate sites, then I suggest you begin searching them. We’ll keep looking on this end.”

Mayweather saw Tucker flinch briefly. No doubt the engineer had been hoping to be on hand when T’Pol arrived with
Endeavour
. But he hid it quickly, thanks to his years of training in intelligence work. Mayweather could imagine how strong the emotion had to be for it to slip out. He sympathized, but he could do nothing about it. He needed Tucker’s expertise on hand in case they found the origin world, and it might jeopardize Tucker’s secret identity if he acknowledged the man’s desire to wait for
Endeavour
.

Besides, there were bigger concerns. “I have to wonder, sir,” Mayweather said to Reed, “if maybe the Partners aren’t telling you all they know about the Ware’s origins. After all, if we find its builders, that might give us the answers we need to stop the Ware.”

“I thought of that,”
Kirk said.
“One of the first things you learn in studying history is to read defensively, to be skeptical of your sources. Lots of people lie, or have unconscious biases. But so far, the Partners seem to
be remarkably forthright about their relationship with the Ware. Like they’re determined to prove to us that they’ve got it licked, that we’ve been misreading the whole affair. They’re so sure they have right on their side that I don’t think they feel the need to hide anything.”

“If you ask me,” Tucker said, “those are usually the people you need to watch out for the most.”

10

September 3, 2165

Mempa VII colony

��Y
OU EXPECT US TO
HIDE
behind machines?!” General K’Vagh loomed over Lokog, shouting in disapproval at the privateer’s proposal. “True Klingon warriors fight our own battles!”

Lokog refused to let himself be intimidated by the general’s bulk or his deep, roaring voice. After all, K’Vagh needed what he had to offer, even if the fat old veteran was loath to admit it. The very meeting room in which they stood, within the public hall of Mempa VII’s most intact remaining city, survived only because of the commodity Lokog bargained with.

And the leading nobles of the
QuchHa’
resistance must have recognized that, for two of them had come all the way to this border world to meet with him. K’Vagh was one; the other was Kor, son of Kaltar—a proud, robust
QuchHa’
from a Great House, which he had renamed from the House of Kor to the House of Mur’Eq a decade ago, in order to remind others that he and his kin were direct descendants of the mighty Emperor Mur’Eq, no matter their current appearance. According to Captain Laneth, who stood nearby at the head of several of her officers, these two were among the staunchest advocates for
QuchHa’
standing and power within the Empire, Kor out of the nobility’s sense of entitlement and K’Vagh
out of devotion to the Klingons under his command (among whose number Laneth proudly counted herself). Both men recognized that their people were being slaughtered, that they had no hope of victory against the ridged majority without something to reorient the battlefield.

Knowing this, Lokog was able to meet K’Vagh’s bluster with a confident smile. “With respect, General—how many battles do you personally lead? Was it not Laneth and her men,” he went on, gesturing to the striking, bronze-haired female, “whom you sent to fight and die in your name?”

“Do you call me a coward?!”

“Of course not, General. I merely point out that not all battles are fought one-on-one. You cannot be everywhere, so you must strike at your enemies from a distance. You send Laneth to defend the colony. She sends torpedoes to hunt and kill its attackers. Ware drones are no different. They are simply another weapon to wield against our enemy. A weapon that will grant our people the victory that has been elusive until now.”

Kor shook his head grimly, stroking his full, thick beard. “I do not like it. Yes, privateer, we send our soldiers to battle for us. But they are warriors like ourselves, with their own honor. By allowing them to spill their blood in noble combat, we grant them honor and thereby earn it ourselves. Mindless drones cannot win honor on a battlefield; they reduce combat from an art to a mere chore. If I send these machines to kill my foes while I sit back in comfort, how can I tell my boy Rynar that I have guarded honor above all?”

Laneth stepped forward. “That is easy to say, Lord. But B’orel and Ja’rod also talk of honor to justify their lies and their massacres. The
HemQuch
claim they have more honor than we do, claim that burning helpless farmers and infants
from the safety of space is an act of honor, merely because they have the power to define honor in whatever way suits them.”

Kor’s eyes flashed. “You speak dangerously, woman.”

K’Vagh growled. “Mind your tongue, son of Kaltar. Her title is captain.” Despite his reflexive defense of his officer, the general seemed nearly as offended by her words as did Kor.

Laneth went on. “I recognize, Lord Kor, that it was not honor that saved this colony, any more than it was honor that nearly destroyed it. It was superior strength and ruthlessness. We were completely outmatched by the
HemQuch
forces—until they became outmatched by the Ware.

“Power, not honor, is what shapes our fates. Without power, without new weapons, the
QuchHa’
will not survive. These weapons Lokog provides will let us win a place of power for ourselves within the Empire. Perhaps even its rule. And then we will have the luxury of quibbling over honor.”

Kor started forward, but K’Vagh’s thickset arm held him back. “I know her words rankle. Her tongue has always been her sharpest blade. But its aim is true. Our people are not in a position to argue among ourselves. We need to be united in our goals if we are to earn survival. And we need whatever advantage we can gain. The
HemQuch
do not fight honorably, so they do not deserve the consideration of being fought honorably. Let us treat them as they treat us: as an obstacle to be swept aside. Then we can restore true honor to the Council and to Klingon society.”

After some consideration, Kor nodded. “Very well. We shall employ this Ware. But I fear that if we grow too comfortable with winning by any means, then we may lose sight of our nobler principles.”

“If you want to die for your principles, go ahead,” Laneth
told him. “I choose victory as my principle.”

Her warriors backed her up in her call for victory: “
Qapla’! Qapla’!
” K’Vagh and finally Kor joined in the chant, but Lokog could tell they did so grudgingly.

For himself, Lokog thought that Laneth had the far wiser perspective. Honor was just a word, an excuse Klingons used for doing whatever they wished. He had lost his wealth, his ship, and his place in the Empire, forced to scrounge on the fringes as a pirate because of those who defined honor purely as a property of the bone structure of one’s forehead. So what was honor to him? No—Lokog craved victory, just as Laneth did. And he had found, in his years on the fringes, that victory could be gained only by those willing to use any means at their disposal to win.

Maybe that should be the Klingon way from now on,
Lokog thought, catching Laneth’s eye and wondering what means would be necessary to conquer her.

September 7, 2165

U.S.S. Pioneer

“There you are, Collier,” Olivia Akomo said as Charles Tucker entered
Pioneer
’s engineering lab. “I’ve been looking over the Partnership’s software hacks.”

Tucker found her parlance a bit old-fashioned, but he figured that was an occupational hazard of working for Willem Abramson—the current alias of a man Tucker knew to be far, far older than he appeared.
Poor Olivia,
he thought.
That’s two of us whose real names she doesn’t get to know.
“And?”

“And they seem pretty sound,” the civilian engineer replied. “Based on what we’ve deciphered so far of the Ware’s programming, these are pretty effective workarounds.”

“As far as we can tell,” Tucker countered. “We still haven’t
been able to break through to the Ware’s kernel program—and neither has the Partnership. Whoever designed this stuff, they were fanatical about secrecy.”

“Well, you should know.”

“The point is, we don’t know if the Ware’s really being fooled or is just playing possum. Lulling the Partnership into a sense of complacency.”

“For hundreds of years?”

“Nothing’s more patient than a machine.”

“Damn, you sound paranoid even for a spy.”

He resisted the urge to glance around furtively, aware that they were alone. Akomo had necessarily been aware of his clandestine purpose from the beginning, when he had come to Abramson to request forged credentials as a member of his cybernetics firm and to solicit Akomo’s expert assistance on the mission. He had never revealed the existence of Section 31 to her, but she knew he worked for some branch of Federation intelligence. Yet she had reliably kept his secret from
Pioneer
’s crew, despite her disapproval of his methods. Perhaps it was because they’d developed a good working relationship as fellow engineers.

“Try to think a little more optimistically,” Akomo went on. “What if we’re wasting our time trying to find the Ware’s creators? Maybe we’ve found all the answers we need already. Maybe the Partnership found them for us—found a way to get all the benefits and luxuries the Ware provides without having to sacrifice a single life.”

“People still have to sacrifice.”

“A few months out of a lifetime. Sure, it doesn’t sound pleasant, but neither does jury duty or paying taxes. There were countries in the past where citizens were required to serve in the military for a couple of years. One of the Martian
colonies drafted random citizens into its legislature for a year, rather than let career politicians make the decisions. Is this really so much worse? Especially considering all it gives them in return?”

“It’s not the same. None of those things is the same as having control of your mind taken away from you—being reduced to a cog in a machine, not even able to think for yourself. You saw what being forced back into the Ware did to Travis. How he and all the others took the first chance they could to get away from it.”

“When they were forced, yes. Doing it by choice makes a huge difference.”

“Not enough of one. There are better ways. Someday we’ll have computers powerful enough to do all these amazing things without needing to enslave living minds. Maybe Abramson’s neural circuitry’ll make that happen. We just need to be patient enough to get there on our own.”

Akomo shook her head and laughed. “Look at you—the champion of morality. Quite a change from the black-suited company man who skulked in the shadows and blackmailed my boss into giving his help.”

Tucker winced. That had not been one of his finer ­moments—­discovering the scientific miracle of a man who had lived for thousands of years and threatening his exposure to force him to cooperate. But it was not the first moral compromise he’d needed to make in the name of Federation security as Section 31 defined it, and he doubted it would be the last.

She studied him, tilting her close-shorn head. “That actually bothers you, doesn’t it? Hm. Maybe you’ve been playing engineer so long that you’re forgetting how to be a spy.”

He thought about her words for quite some time.
Maybe. But is that such a bad thing?

September 14, 2165

Partnership planet Avathox

T’Pol stood inside a Ware-manufactured environment suit, watching closely as a team of Xavoth worked to revive one of their people and remove her from her berth within a Ware central data core—while another team worked alongside them to prepare another Xavoth to take her place. Normally, T’Pol would not have entrusted herself to a life-support garment of Ware manufacture, but in this case, there had been no alternative; Starfleet EVA suits were inadequate to withstand the extreme heat, pressure, and acidity of the Xavoth homeworld’s atmosphere. The conditions on Avathox were comparable to those of Venus in the Sol system, albeit with greater reserves of fluorine, sufficient to support the type of fluorocarbon-­sulfur biology that was capable of thriving in these temperatures.

Alongside T’Pol were Captain Reed, his armory officer Lieutenant Williams, and one of Williams’s security men, as well as Ambassador Boda Jahlet, a pale, craggy-featured Jelna-Rigelian woman who had shed her traditional mantle of wooden beads to fit into her own environment suit. Also present were two Senior Partners, the rodentlike brachiator Tefcem var Skos and the ratite avian Rinheith Chep, the latter of whom was accompanied by his hominid aide Fendob. All were similarly accoutered in Ware environment suits tailored to their distinct anatomies. Reed, for his part, had witnessed an equivalent exchange of processor volunteers weeks before, in less extreme conditions than this. But once
Endeavour
had arrived, T’Pol and Jahlet had insisted on seeing the procedure for themselves. According to Rinheith, the Avathox facility had been the most convenient one with a revival scheduled in the near term. When T’Pol’s first officer, Thanien ch’Revash,
had questioned the necessity of risking such hostile conditions, the Hurraait representative had reacted with surprise. Apparently the Partnership’s citizens considered this kind of movement among extreme environments to be routine, facilitated by the advanced life-support technology the Ware provided for them. T’Pol had found that intriguing.

The Xavoth were a flying species, averaging nearly two meters long with torpedo-shaped bodies and stubby delta wings, more than sufficient for lift in this thick, buoyant carbon dioxide atmosphere. Three pairs of slender limbs, ending in three-digited appendages serviceable as both feet and hands as needed, descended from the underside of the body, able to fold flat against it in flight. They were among the more dexterous species within the Partnership, limited in technology more by their inhospitable environment than their anatomy. As T’Pol watched, two Xavoth experts, a doctor and an engineer, perched on their hindmost limbs while using their others to detach the neural interface and feeding tubes from the comatose Xavoth on the berth between them, an individual whose wings were wrapped tightly around its body and limbs so that it somewhat resembled an ear of Earth corn. Despite the volunteer’s compactness, T’Pol recognized that the berth was larger and more ergonomic than the bare slabs she had observed thirteen years ago during her rescue of Travis Mayweather from the Ware repair station that had captured him. Also, the entire data core facility appeared more clean and inviting, allowing for the profoundly alien needs and aesthetics of the Xavoth. It was clearly a place that was visited routinely, unlike a typical Ware data core.

Even so, the Partnership technicians worked briskly and with an air of calm alertness. T’Pol could understand why. According to the task force logs as well as her own one-time
experience, the Ware possessed vigorous physical and digital security systems to resist any form of tampering. Normally, any intrusion into a primary data core would be objected to strenuously by the automated systems. Anyone who attempted to access a core would be summarily beamed away, and any who circumvented that and attempted to remove the living processors would be met with aggressive retaliation upon their exit, pursued relentlessly until the liberated “components” had been retrieved. T’Pol knew this security was not infallible; she had personally disabled the repair station’s transporters during Mayweather’s rescue. But she also knew that the Ware was capable of self-repair. That the Partnership had managed to bypass or spoof the programming sufficiently to allow this exchange of volunteers at all, let alone maintain it on a continuous basis on more than a dozen worlds, was truly impressive. Yet the hushed, vigilant haste with which the technicians proceeded was a reminder that the underlying threat of the Ware had not been eliminated, only tempered. Jahlet noted this in more poetic terms: “Like trying to remove a cub from the bower of a sleeping
raptor-wolf.”