Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code

by Christopher L. Bennett

  Archer opened the channel from Essex. “Captain Shumar. What have you got for me?”

  The bronze-skinned, mustachioed captain looked as stiff as ever as he gave his report in crisp British tones. “Not a pleasant tale, I fear, Admiral. We were far too late to make a difference, of course, but the situation was worse than we could have imagined. The planet was lifeless, devastated by chemical and bacteriological warfare. From the evidence we found, and from the few surviving records, it seems the planet was overrun by a wave of mass insanity. The natives tore each other apart in a genocidal rage, and no one understood why.”

  Archer was stunned. “Could you find any evidence of a medical cause?” he asked.

  “No, sir. The Theta Cygnians were some sort of land-dwelling invertebrates. Remarkable anatomy, judging from the artworks we found, but leaving no skeletons or other hard remains. After thirty years, there’s nothing left to autopsy.”

  “And none of them survived or escaped? If they had the means to send an interstellar distress signal, even by radio . . .”

  “There was evidence of dozens of ships being launched. Amazingly many, in fact, given that their civilization was descending into madness all around them. Nuclear engines, probably like a DY-series sleeper.”

  “Any chance of tracking them down?”

  “Not an easy prospect, Admiral. Theta Cygni burns hot—its stellar wind has probably scattered any ion trails, so it would be difficult to determine their speed or direction. By now, if they haven’t already arrived at their destination, they’re probably coasting in low-power mode, which would make them easy to overlook. It would be one hell of a long shot to find them, sir.” Shumar gave a subtle smile. “Which is why I intend to try anyway.”

  Archer had to admire his exploratory fervor. A scientific mystery like this, especially with the prospective rescue of a dead civilization as the payoff, was just the anodyne he needed for the headaches he was facing elsewhere in the galaxy. “I don’t blame you, Captain. And I think we can spare your services for a while longer.”

  “So Admiral Narsu hasn’t yet convinced you to reassign us to Starbase Twelve, sir?”

  “That’d be a decent-sized hop from your current position. I appreciate that you and the admiral are old friends . . .”

  “I want only to serve where I’m most needed, sir. And these sectors are still badly in need of charting.”

  Archer smiled. Maybe he and Shumar had more in common than he’d realized. “I couldn’t agree more, Captain. Good hunting.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. Essex out.”

  The screen went dark. Yawning and stretching, Archer ­realized it was getting late. The thought lightened his heart, for it meant he could go home to Dani. Having Danica ­Erickson in his life was the thing that made this job bearable, for her love, friendship, and beauty gave him the strength and peace of mind to handle its frustrations. Checking the chrono­meter, he decided he could take Williams’s advice, delegate the rest of the day’s work to his staff, and return home just a little early.

  But then Williams buzzed him and forwarded a report from Admiral Shran: One of the ships in the Ware task force had been attacked and damaged, and it seemed their prisoner Vabion had found a way to reactivate the Ware and make his escape—with help from a Klingon ship. Archer sighed and asked Williams to have a yeoman bring him some coffee. It seemed he was going to be staying late again.

  3

  July 9, 2165

  U.S.S. Pioneer NCC-63

  THE U.S.S. FLABBJELLAH WAS NAMED for an Andorian musical instrument that doubled as a kind of truncheon or throwing club. Right now, though, as Travis Mayweather studied its scans on Pioneer’s situation table, it appeared neither harmonious nor hazardous. Pioneer and Vol’Rala may have arrived in time to scare off Flabbjellah’s attackers before they could destroy it, but they hadn’t been in time to prevent serious damage to the ship and its crew, including one fatality, the ship’s chirurgeon Veneth Roos. The surviving thirty-seven crew members were currently split between Vol’Rala’s and Pioneer’s sickbays, except for Captain Zheusal zh’Ethar, who now stood in the situation room at the rear of Pioneer’s bridge, observing the damage alongside Mayweather and Captains Reed and sh’Prenni, among others.

  “Man, Vabion really did a number on you,” said Charles Tucker III—or “Philip Collier,” as Mayweather reminded himself to think of the engineer. His old friend and Enterprise crewmate, whom he’d believed dead until just months ago, had instead—through a bizarre series of circumstances—become an intelligence operative for a Starfleet agency so secretive that Travis wasn’t sure it was even legal. But for all his remaining questions and doubts about “Trip” Tucker’s current life, Mayweather was grateful that he still lived, and at times like this, it was pleasing to see Tucker’s old personality peeking through the subtly altered brows and nose, the dark red hair and thick beard, the false eye color, and the changed accent and mannerisms. “We’re gonna have our work cut out for us bringing those engines back online.”

  “He had help,” replied zh’Ethar, a wiry zhen in Andorian middle age.

  “Yes,” sh’Prenni said. “Vabion is a nuisance, but he’s from a backward world. I’m more concerned about the Klingons getting involved here. Judging from the scans, the attacker was SuD Qav. It’s a ship I encountered back while we were cleaning up the Kandari Sector—no significant threat to us, but its captain is brutal and rapacious, with a real sadistic streak toward his victims. If he were to get his hands on a working Ware combat drone, he could do some real damage.”

  “With all due respect, Captain, you shouldn’t underestimate Daskel Vabion,” Mayweather said. “He may have come from a pre-warp world, but he’s a genius, and he’s spent years reverse-engineering a technology even more advanced than ours. When it comes to the Ware, he has the advantage over us.”

  “That’s right.” The speaker was the last member of the group: Olivia Akomo, a stocky, dark-featured cyberneticist whom Tucker had recruited as a mission specialist—as well as part of his cover identity as a consultant from Abramson Industries, Earth’s leading robotics firm, where Akomo was one of the head researchers. “We would never have devised the awakening protocol without his discovery of the recognition codes for upgrades. The Ware aggressively resists analysis of its software and hardware. The fact that he achieved so much starting from, essentially, a twentieth-century knowledge base is a testament to his brilliance.”

  “And his ruthlessness,” Malcolm Reed added in his polished English accent, “considering all the lives he had to sacrifice to the Ware’s defense systems in the process. The fact that he was able to reactivate that drone ship right under our noses—no offense, Zheusal—is a testament to the risk he poses.”

  “You are right to criticize me, Malcolm,” zh’Ethar said to the goateed human captain. “Do not retreat from it. I let that damned Vanotli fool me into thinking he was cooperating. He’s just so . . . so reasonable, so polite. I thought that meant he was tamed. But he was more Andorian than I realized: the calmer he gets, the more dangerous he is.”

  “Vabion is a cool, calculating man,” said Mayweather, who’d had the most direct contact with the Vanotli industrialist. He had been taken hostage by Vabion while undercover on Vanot to investigate, and attempt to counter, its infiltration by the Ware—a technology that Vabion had embraced as his own. As part of his plan to best the Pebru, Vabion had allowed them to reinstall Mayweather into the Ware as a live processor, forcing him to relive one of the worst experiences of his life. The fact that Vabion’s act had played a key role in allowing Pioneer’s crew to shut down the Pebru’s Ware had not made it any easier for Travis to live with the memory. “He believes his superior intelligence entitles him to superior power. He’s not gratuitously cruel—or at least he likes to think he isn’t—but he’ll unhesitatingly murder you if he thinks he’ll profit from it, and then he’ll send a thoughtful condolence
note to your family afterward. No hard feelings, because he hasn’t got any.”

  “Except pride,” Tucker reminded him. “The man’s got plenty of that. I’ve seen the way he reacts to the Ware. He takes it as a personal affront that there’s a technology he can’t master.”

  “Yes, yes, I saw this,” replied a thoughtful zh’Ethar. “I knew he was willing to work with us because we sought to understand and reprogram the Ware as well. I saw that as a way to control him, keep him cooperative. Rescuing the stranded Pebru, restoring their ships to basic functionality, let all of us gain more knowledge of the technology, and I tried to show him that it was in his best interest to work closely with us.” Her antennae drooped. “I thought I had outsmarted him. That he had accepted the wisdom of deferring to our greater advancement.”

  “Vabion doesn’t accept anyone as his superior,” Akomo told her.

  “Then he’s a megalomaniac?” sh’Prenni asked.

  “Certainly not—at least, no more than any genius on his level. He reminds me very much of Willem—Mister Abramson.” Akomo’s clarification was hardly needed; her employer was Earth’s most famous recluse. “He’s the kind of man who recognizes his limitations, but is convinced they’re temporary setbacks. Vabion started from nothing and built himself into his world’s leading industrialist, a man who had the entire government in his pocket. So he doesn’t believe there’s any height he can’t reach.” Mayweather frowned. She sounded almost admiring.

  “Sounds very human,” sh’Prenni said. The four humans stared at her, and she stared back. “It’s a compliment! Although, granted, he’s somewhat more ruthless.”

  “Thanks, Thenar . . . I think,” Reed said. “Meanwhile, I gather you’ve encountered one more difficulty to add to the list. Care to tell us about it?”

  The Vol’Rala captain efficiently filled the others in on her vessel’s experience with the station belonging to the Partnership of Civilizations. “It’s the flaw in the awakening protocol that we never considered,” sh’Prenni added. “We wake the captives up within the system, let them realize what’s been done to them, and wait for them to free themselves. But what if they don’t want to be freed? We never expected anyone would be tricked into volunteering for Ware enslavement.”

  “I can’t imagine,” Mayweather said. “I’ve been inside those things twice. I’ve felt what it’s like—the helplessness, the trapped feeling. The cold, mechanical pressure on your mind.” He shuddered. “I would’ve thought anyone who was aware of that feeling would do anything to escape it.”

  “People can be trained to endure anything,” Tucker said softly, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “To tolerate any level of repression, suffering . . . so long as they don’t realize they have a choice.”

  “From what you tell me, Thenar,” Reed said, “the incentives seem considerable. The species you met would have no civilization at all without the Ware. They must be completely dependent on it from birth.”

  “Which is no doubt why this Partnership is able to fool them into volunteering for Ware enslavement. It’s the Pebru all over again—they’ve found a way to evade captivity by giving the Ware alternative victims. Only they’ve selected victims too helpless to have a choice. Species so dependent on what the Ware offers that they submit to it voluntarily. It’s brutal.”

  “Now, hold on,” Reed told her. “I agree it looks that way, but we haven’t yet met the Partnership leaders. We need to gather more information before we decide on a strategy.”

  “That could take weeks, months,” Mayweather protested. “There are people suffering, slowly dying inside the Ware right now. We can’t just leave them there.”

  “Travis is right,” sh’Prenni said. “And it’s not just them. As long as there’s any Ware active, it can spread the infection to other worlds. The only way to keep the Federation safe, to keep the Vanotli and the Menaik and the other races of this region safe, is to shut down all the Ware. Leave none of it active. And to do that, we need a way to force through a shutdown command regardless of the live processors’ participation. I’ve already put Banerji and ch’Gesrit on the problem.” She turned to Tucker. “Mister Collier, would you be willing to lend your team’s expertise to the problem?”

  “Glad to help,” the undercover engineer told her, “so long as Captain Reed’s okay with it.”

  “That is why you and Ms. Akomo are here, Mister Collier,” Reed replied with care. But then he noticed Mayweather’s subdued look. “Travis? You have a concern?”

  “I dunno,” the first officer replied. “I agree that we shouldn’t leave them trapped there, but . . . something about trying to take their choice out of the equation rubs me the wrong way. It seems too much like what the Ware does to them.”

  Sh’Prenni clasped his shoulder. “It’s a noble principle, of course. But we don’t live in an ideal universe. These people have been tricked into wanting their oppression. Sometimes people need to be helped even when they aren’t willing to help themselves.”

  Mayweather couldn’t see a reason to reject her assertion. He tried to imagine wanting the experience he’d undergone inside the Ware, believing it was necessary and just. Would it really be so wrong for someone to free him from that condition, that conviction, over his protests? Would he be better off staying inside? He couldn’t believe that.

  Asking the question is what keeps you honest, he told himself. As long as you remember why you’re doing it, and never forget who you’re doing it for, then . . .

  “All right,” he said to the others. “Let’s get them out of there.”

  July 12, 2165

  Qam-Chee, the First City, Qo’noS

  If there was one advantage to the Klingons’ warrior lifestyle that Phlox had to concede, it was that they were not, as a rule, prone to squeamishness. He had no shortage of spectators for his postmortem examination of the late Chancellor M’Rek, as the leaders of the various factions within the High Council crowded into the autopsy room of the Council’s private medical wing, keeping his every move under careful scrutiny. This puzzled Phlox at first, given that their entire reason for inviting him was that he was the one physician they had been willing to trust. He soon realized, though, that they were far less willing to admit to trusting an offworlder.

  Thus, Phlox needed to rely on the assistance of Doctor Kon’Jef to keep the councillors from crowding in too close and interfering with his work. Kon’Jef was large and intimidating even by Klingon standards, so Phlox was grateful that he had secured the position of personal physician to Chancellor M’Rek, by virtue of being married to M’Rek’s closest advisor, Fleet Admiral Krell. Phlox had worked with Kon’Jef once before, a decade ago, to reattach Krell’s left arm after Jonathan Archer had severed it in the course of diplomatic negotiations, Klingon-style. It had earned him a measure of respect from the towering doctor, which proved useful to their collaboration now.

  Certainly Phlox needed every advantage he could get, given the squalid conditions of this treatment facility. He had seen in the past how little regard Klingons had for medical care or basic sanitation; even the most dedicated Klingon healer Phlox had ever met, Doctor Antaak, had allowed his pet targ to wander freely about his laboratory. Antaak and other scientists like him were capable of sophisticated genetic engineering; indeed, it had been Antaak’s attempt to repurpose human Augment DNA (left over from Earth’s Eugenics Wars) for Klingon use that had led to the release of the metagenic virus responsible for the cosmetic transformation of the QuchHa’. But the members of the High Council had little use for intricate genetic studies, so their medical section was geared more toward treating the gross bodily trauma sustained during the frequent combats that served as political debate within the Council. Having seen these facilities before, Phlox had made sure to bring the necessary equipment with him; but with condensation dripping from the ceiling, stains of blood and bloodwine liberally adorning all surfaces, and High Councillors she
dding hair and spraying spittle as they declaimed and gesticulated toward one another, there was only so much he could do to avoid contamination of the body even with his sterile field emitter in place.

  Thus, it was a minor miracle that he was able to isolate the virus responsible for the chancellor’s long illness, and to confirm that it was the underlying cause of his death. But identifying the virus and determining its origin was a trickier matter. Kon’Jef had been unable to link it with any known strain, hence his inability to cure it.

  “Does that mean it was artificial?” demanded Councillor Khorkal. The gray-bearded centenarian, head of the ancient and distinguished House of Palkar, was one of the leading contenders for the chancellorship, a career politician eager for leverage against his foes.

  “Not necessarily,” Phlox told him. “After all, Klingons are a well-traveled people. This could be some alien strain that came to Qo’noS through trade.”

  “Then why have others not fallen ill as well?”

  “There are countless factors that can influence viral susceptibility. I’d need to know much more about the virus to be sure. It has an unusually lengthy genome containing complexities that are difficult to account for.”

  “Too complex to be natural?” Khorkal pressed.

  “With respect, Councillor, it is imperative that I avoid preconception or bias in my investigation. That is why you brought me here, after all.” He cleared his throat. “However, I would welcome some assistance from an expert in viral genetics. If Doctor Antaak could be consulted—”

  “No!” The fierce objection came from B’orel, a hotheaded veteran councillor that Phlox remembered from his previous visit here. “Antaak has disgraced himself by bringing the QuchHa’ plague to the Klingon people. Had M’Rek’s softness not held us back, we would have eradicated Antaak and all the others of his kind by now!”