Williams grinned. “We do. It goes: ‘There is no honor among thieves.’ ”
“A great comfort you are not.”
“Which is very comforting to me.”
Garos rose and came over to her. “Mind your hostility, Lieutenant Williams. As of now, we have a common enemy in the First Families.” He reached down and undid her shackles. “I have information you can use to retrieve the stolen files—oh, and your unfortunate colleagues.” She restrained the urge to throttle him at that, aware that he was making a case worth considering. And freeing her was itself a surprising show of good faith, enough to get her attention. “Whereas you have Starfleet and the Rigelian government at your back, and thus are more than capable of recovering them and putting the Families in their place, once I give you the information you need.”
She rubbed her wrists. “So that’s the deal? You help us out in exchange for immunity?”
Garos smiled. “Oh, I am immune to your justice no matter what. I intend to drop you off at some neutral location with the data your people need to swoop in and save the day like the fine Starfleet officers you are . . . by which point I will be comfortably, and gladly, away from this whole misbegotten star system.” He started to turn away, then looked back. “If you ask me, the Federation is welcome to it.”
Williams had much the same sentiment toward the being before her right now: that she would gladly never see him again, unless it was in chains or in a courtroom. But in his own way, Garos had displayed an unexpected trace of . . . of something that it would be a reach to call nobility, but that might be the beginning of something. And what was the Federation about if not making allies out of enemies? “Garos,” she began. He turned back around, and she chose her words carefully. “I know you’re doing what you think is right for Maluria. Just consider . . . there’s a better way. If you’re willing to work with us today, maybe that means it’s worth doing again.”
Garos’s smile was almost affectionate. “I want you to know I sincerely appreciate the offer, my dear. Such graciousness, after all that’s been done to you, is truly touching—if a bit gullible.
“But subsume Maluria’s destiny within that of the Federation?” He shook his head. “Let Rigel fall into that trap. Oh, I will gladly exploit the Federation’s aid when it works in my world’s favor. But if your agendas get in the way of Maluria’s again, I will just as gladly tear you apart.”
He smiled again. “From a safe distance, of course—and in a way you’ll never see coming.”
13
Undisclosed location
SAMUEL KIRK TRIED not to enjoy the sight of Rehlen Vons’s death.
He certainly had reason to feel hatred toward the Malurian who had ordered his torture and then watched it like a spectator at a sporting event. But if he gave in to that malice, it would mean that they had won—that they had contaminated him with their own cruelty. So he resisted the sense of satisfaction that welled up in him.
What helped quell any pleasure, certainly, was that the executioner was none other than Damreg, the Zami who’d actually carried out the torture, and thus the one person he hated more than Vons. The Malurian, still in his Jelna disguise, had just gotten a rather harried emergency communication from his superior Garos. But it had come just too late, for Damreg had surely gotten a parallel warning just moments earlier. Vons had barely been able to draw his sidearm before Damreg’s beloved knife buried itself in his spine.
Now Grev, who had been slaving over the decryption equipment under Vons’s eye, jumped away in shock and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Kirk, watching Damreg intently. The assassin smirked at the ensign’s reaction as he pulled out the knife and wiped its blade on Vons’s jacket. “Don’t worry, pig, we still need you alive until you break the rest of the code. But you know I don’t have Vons’s patience, and he’s not here to hold me back now.” His eyes met Kirk’s, and the historian had to force himself not to look away. “You get my meaning?”
Grev moved in front of Kirk protectively. “We understand.”
“Good,” the assassin said, not embellishing it with a smile as Vons would have. Instead, he drew his plasma pistol. “Now let’s go. We’re moving out before Vons’s people get here. Or anyone else.”
Kirk hoped that meant Pioneer’s crew was drawing closer to finding them. But with the falling-out between the co-conspirators, the situation had become more volatile. He didn’t know what that meant for their chances of being found—or of lasting long enough to be found alive.
June 25, 2164
U.S.S. Pioneer
Malcolm Reed was delighted to have his armory officer back, so soon after his executive and science officers had returned safe and sound from Rigel III. But the way it had occurred was hard to credit. “So Garos just let you go?” he asked once the rest of the bridge crew had welcomed her back.
Valeria Williams shrugged. “Once he found out the First Families’ plans would hurt Maluria, he wanted to stop them as much as we do. But he was in no mood to answer to Starfleet for his actions. So he used me to pass along what he knew and let Starfleet fix things while he went slinking back home.”
“And he told you where the hostages and the archives are?” Reed turned to the main viewscreen, which was split between feeds of Captain T’Pol aboard Endeavour and Admiral Archer at Babel. It was the latter who had spoken.
“According to him, sir, they were being held in one of the asteroid mines around Rigel I’s L5 point.” Williams frowned. “But with his man getting killed, it’s a safe bet they’ve moved them.”
“But at least we can narrow it down to the inner asteroids,” Archer said.
“There are thousands of individual mines in the Trojan clusters,” T’Pol countered. “And they would surely be taken to a location of which the Malurians were unaware, so Commander Williams could offer no insight. How can we narrow it down?”
“There may be a way,” Archer said. “Director Hemnask has been very cooperative. She’s shared her knowledge of some of the First Families’ secret contact frequencies and encryption protocols.”
“And now that we know where to look,” Hoshi Sato added from T’Pol’s side, “we can intercept their communications and scan for keywords.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Reed asked.
T’Pol looked uncertain. “We should keep in mind that Dular Garos is a master of deception and manipulation. It is not inconceivable that he has falsified this sequence of events in order to misdirect us.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past Garos,” Archer agreed. “He’s completely ruthless. He wouldn’t have let Val go if he didn’t have some angle.”
Williams shook her head. “With respect, Admiral, I don’t think so. It all fits too well with what I learned in the Corthoc estate.”
“And if he were more aware of the Families’ plans than he led you to believe,” T’Pol countered, “he could have constructed his deception accordingly.”
“I don’t agree, Captain,” Reed told her. “Everything fits too neatly. Val’s findings on Rigel IV. The Trade Commission’s reports about the spate of corporate blackmail attempts, not just on Rigel II but on Five and the Colonies.”
He faced his erstwhile captain squarely. “Captain T’Pol, Admiral Archer, I understand you both have good reason to mistrust Garos. Maybe too good. But I have to go by the evidence, and that tells me that what Lieutenant Williams was told is probably true, regardless of the source.”
T’Pol studied him. “You are confident of this?”
He looked within himself . . . and nodded firmly. “In my judgment it’s the right call.” He took in Williams with his gaze, then told T’Pol, “I trust my officers.”
She met his eyes approvingly. “Then I concur.”
Archer took in the exchange silently, but Reed got the sense that he saw exactly what had passed between them. “Okay, then, Captains. I’m sending Hoshi the comm protocols she needs. Now go bring our people home.”
Lyaksti, Sauria
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br /> “They shut down the bar right after the occupation,” said the Saurian female on the monitor screen. “They said the saunas were contaminated with alien germs, had them filled in. Tore apart the whole place to decontaminate it. Oh, they rebuilt it, according to state-approved plans, but it hasn’t been the same.” The speaker’s face was not in the frame, but her hands kneaded a richly textured cloth. Her voice was disguised, but her story and the calluses on her hands told Jeremy Lucas that this was Bavot, the bartender from Redik’s. Antonio Ruiz and his friends had taken Lucas there a few times before the crackdown.
“Some of the old crowd never came back,” Bavot went on. “A few . . . Naralo was arrested for protesting state policy. I . . . don’t know what became of him.”
“All these arrests,” came Ruiz’s voice. Lucas knew the young engineer had used his connections to sneak into Narpra and reconnect with his old friends—those who would speak to him—although the man he’d gone in with had remained anonymous, keeping silent and out of the imager’s view. “The curfews, the laws against assembly, the soldiers patrolling the streets. Why are the people standing for this?”
“You saw how bad it got before Maltuvis came to our aid!” She sighed. “Yes, it’s been hard, but these austerity measures are necessary while the economy recovers.”
“And do you really think Maltuvis will let up once things get better? You must see what’s going on here. You’ve been occupied. He sent the plague to give him a pretext.”
Her hands kneaded the cloth more ferociously. “They told us the aliens would claim that. That they’d say anything to hide their own culpability for all the death.”
“ ‘The aliens’? This is me you’re talking to.”
“Yes, and you shouldn’t even be here. If I’m caught with you . . .”
“Look at yourself, amiga. You’re afraid of your own leaders. Is that what—”
He had been reaching for her hands, but she yanked them away. “I’m more afraid that they might be right. You . . . you should go now.”
After the playback ended, Presider Moxat, the elderly green-bronze female who chaired the Executive Council of the Saurian Global League, blinked her enormous eyes at Lucas. “What does this prove, Doctor? Only that the Narprans accept M’Tezir’s presence there.”
“You’ve seen the other evidence,” Lucas told her. “The data we obtained from the clinic in Veranith, the samples of their treatment. I can prove that the M’Tezir have deliberately weakened the serum so that it only controls the symptoms. Sobon is already synthesizing a full-strength version that should be a permanent cure. It’s not a fraction as expensive as Maltuvis claims, and it should be easy to teach Saurian physicians how to manufacture and administer the cure for themselves. Presider, we can prove that Maltuvis has been lying to the people!”
“You can assert it,” Moxat replied in a weary tone. “Even back it up with evidence. But many will not trust evidence from offworld sources. You heard that Narpran. Even she, who has felt the bite of Maltuvis’s oppression as long as anyone outside M’Tezir itself, believes that aliens would lie to conceal their guilt.”
Lucas peered at her through narrowed lids. “Is that what you believe, Presider?”
Her reply was apologetic. “It is what I am concerned the electorate would believe, Jeremy. The opposition is threatening a vote of no confidence against our coalition. They are backed by a growing popular movement that wishes to sever our trade deal with the Federation and expel all aliens from our world.”
“But we can prove that belief is based on M’Tezir propaganda! Lies!”
“And do you really think so many would be ready to admit they were so gullible? More likely they would choose to believe you were the liars. It would only inflame matters.”
“Then what are you suggesting, Presider? That we just let Maltuvis keep spreading this plague and holding the planet hostage to his half-cure?”
Moxat rose and moved around her desk, speaking more softly to mollify him. “Of course we will distribute the cure—and let its existence and availability reveal the lies in Maltuvis’s words. Believe me, there is no one who wants to reclaim our lost territory from that petty tyrant as much as I do. But . . . forgive me, Doctor . . . it is best if we present the cure as a Saurian breakthrough. It will be more readily accepted planetwide if its true origins are not known. And we can wage the rhetorical battle with M’Tezir more effectively if we focus on the issues where we can gain ground without inflaming matters further . . . which means that, for now, it is best if we stay quiet on the issue of alien acceptance.”
Lucas seethed, but he held back the caustic reply he had in mind. He reminded himself that, however much contempt he felt for politicians and their self-serving games, he was still a healer first. If Moxat’s political maneuvering had impeded the availability of the cure, he would have fought it to his last breath. But as galling as it was, Moxat had a point: this bit of political compromise probably was the best way to get the cure distributed as widely and swiftly as possible. Maltuvis had gotten Sauria so stirred up with xenophobia that many would reject the cure if they knew it came from Federation doctors—even if all those doctors had done was purify the watered-down medicine the M’Tezir were already using.
“Consider the long game, Jeremy,” Moxat said. “With Maltuvis weakened and the plague defeated, in time the fear of offworlders will subside. The League will maintain its trading ties and its current policies toward offworlders for as long as my coalition stands. Eventually matters will normalize again.”
Lucas huffed a breath, ruffling his mustache. “I hope you’re right, Moxat. But something tells me Maltuvis isn’t just going to take defeat lying down.”
Basilic Palace, M’Tezir, Sauria
Maltuvis paced slowly around the globe of N’Ragolar—“Sauria,” as the offworlders called it—and examined the lay of the land. The color of the lights illuminating Veranith from within the globe had finally changed to solid orange, indicating that the last active opposition had been silenced and the country was now firmly in M’Tezir control. That made fourteen nations, twelve of them former Global League members, that had now fallen under his rule.
Unfortunately, Veranith would be the last nation gained through the plague stratagem. “My spies tell me that the Federation has given the Global League the cure,” he told his visitor. “They’ve begun mass-producing it and will distribute it to affected nations promptly.”
Harrad-Sar crossed his muscular green arms. “You don’t seem too upset,” the Orion merchant prince said.
Maltuvis flicked a hand as though shooing off an insect. “I knew it was only a matter of time before they obtained a sample. You and your mistresses may love your games of deception, Orion, but the truth has a way of coming out eventually, and the successful conqueror plans for the contingency.” He gestured to the field of orange-hued states on the globe. “I chose the nations to infect carefully. M’Tezir has now gained a clear advantage in resources and strategic positioning. I have pincers around many of the Global League’s key states and a wedge driving between the two largest.”
“If you can hold on to the nations you have,” the Three Sisters’ lackey countered, “now that they’ll be told you lied about the cure.”
“I’ve already mobilized my medical troops to begin releasing the real cure, ahead of the League. I’ll tell them it’s a new breakthrough, one the League copied from us. Any claims to the contrary can be spun as more alien lies.” He directed a snide smile at Harrad-Sar. “No offense.”
The Orion simply glared from beneath those ridiculous hunks of metal he had driven through his scalp. “And what if they don’t believe you? You said the truth will come out eventually.”
“All I have to do is sustain doubt and division long enough to solidify my rule. Before much longer, it’ll be too late for them or the Global League to do anything about my conquests.”
“Don’t get overconfident, Basileus. The Federation knows what you’ve done.�
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Maltuvis scoffed. “And what can they do about it? They depend on the resources I now control. Besides, they’re preoccupied with their own internal strife, which your Syndicate has helped to exacerbate. The troubles of a world so far from their borders won’t be of much concern to them as long as nothing interferes with their precious flow of minerals.”
Harrad-Sar tilted his head in acknowledgment. “That’s the plan,” he agreed. “Just don’t get overconfident. The Federation takes its notions of ‘freedom’ more seriously than you might think. Best if you don’t provoke them too far.”
“I can bide my time,” he said. “I’ve waited this long for those ships you promised me, haven’t I?”
The Orion caught the implied chastisement and replied with some of his own. “Maybe you should concentrate on conquering this planet before you start going after others.”
“That is the point, Sar. Your concerns about my ability to hold my territory would be moot if I had a fleet of warships in orbit. N’Ragolar would be mine in days.”
“You know we have to proceed carefully with the ships. It has to look like you built them yourselves. We’re training your people as fast as we can, but—”
“I know, I know. Your insistence that there be no proof tying back to the Syndicate. A cowardly philosophy. I may use subterfuge to win, but I do not hide my face, my name, as I gain in power.” He gave a sharp hiss of disdain. “Where would be the point in that?”
Harrad-Sar, predictably, hid his true feelings behind a forced smile. “Rest assured, Basileus, our commitment to your goals is strong. Soon you will rule all of N’Ragolar. And that will be just the beginning.”
Yes, Maltuvis thought, raising his eyes from the globe to the stars in the window beyond. One world is too small an arena for me, now that I know the galaxy is in reach. Soon the M’Tezir Empire will spread across the heavens.
Star Trek: Enterprise - 016 - Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel Page 23