by David Mack
“No,” he lied. “You all right?”
Her antennae twitched as her blue brow furrowed—telltale signals of simmering fury. “Kedair left me off the boarding detail.” She clenched her jaw. “For no reason.”
Tarses didn’t know what to say to her. He was no stranger to the ostracizing effects of racism—his quarter-Romulan ancestry had ensured that, even within the proudly accepting polyglot culture of the Federation—but the latest rash of discriminatory behaviors toward Andorians, in the wake of their homeworld’s secession from the Federation, was so thick with fresh bitterness and raw emotion that he had no idea how to address it without inflaming it.
It didn’t help that sh’Pash had a talent for taking offense where none had been intended. In contrast to Tarses, who had smoothed his way through Starfleet basic training and, later, Starfleet Medical School by cultivating a persona of agreeable compromise, sh’Pash had earned a reputation for confrontation.
Which probably explains why I’m a doctor and she’s a security officer.
He reached out and gently stroked his pale hand along her blue arm. “Thyla, are you really sure you’d want to help enforce an embargo against Andor?”
True to form, sh’Pash bristled. “What’re you saying, Simon? You don’t think I can do my job? That I’d let my racial identity trump my oath to Starfleet?”
Now I’ve done it. He sat up. “No, sweetheart. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?” If sh’Pash was guilty of embodying one species stereotype about Andorians, it was her propensity for seeking out fights. It might have been enough to scare Tarses off had the young shen not been so damned fetching, brilliant, courageous, and beguiling.
Only half awake and still bleary-eyed, the chief medical officer chose his words with care. “I’m saying that our current assignment is questionable on a number of levels. At the very least it seems unjust; at worst, I’d say it was designed to perpetuate the pain of innocent people on Andor so our president pro tem can polish up his security credentials for an election.”
For a moment, he thought he’d gotten through to sh’Pash. Her anger shifted from a full blaze to a slow burn. Then she spoke, and he realized that in an Andorian, a long cold fire in the heart was a far more terrifying prospect than any moment of fury, no matter how intense. “Of course Ishan is hurting Andor to help himself. It seems like that’s the new national sport of the Federation. But that doesn’t mean I can’t fulfill my oath. So if Kedair’s bumping me from the duty roster, it’s because she doesn’t trust me. She might as well call me a traitor.”
Tarses knew he had to tread carefully. “If there was something I could do to help, would you want me to try? Or would you prefer I stay out of it?”
The shen tucked her long bone-white hair behind her ear, so as to be able to fix Tarses with her pointed suspicion. “If you were going to help . . . how would you do it?”
“I’m senior staff, Thyla. I could discreetly suggest to Commander Bowers that he review Lieutenant Kedair’s recent personnel choices for boarding parties. I might also hint that I’ve heard rumors of discrimination or favoritism in her assignments.”
A crooked smile softened her mocking incredulity. “As if Bowers doesn’t know you and I have been sleeping together for the last eight months? He’ll know you’re standing up for me.”
“Maybe I want him to know.” He kissed her shoulder. “Maybe I want everyone to know.”
“Careful, Simon. Keep that up and you might start using the dreaded four-letter word. And then where would we be?”
A soft chuckle concealed his disappointment at once again being gently returned to arm’s length from the object of his ardor. It had felt like this between them from the beginning: he in pursuit, she in resistance; he in declaration, she in denial; he in love, and she only deeply in like. At times such as this, he protected his naked feelings by changing the subject. “Let me ask you a hypothetical question. If we were sent into action against an Andorian ship, and Kedair ordered you to fire on other Andorians . . . would you do it?”
The question seemed to trouble sh’Pash, as Tarses had hoped it would. “It would depend upon the circumstances. I’d have to know what was at stake. What the consequences would be.”
“What if it was life or death? Shoot to kill or be killed? Andor or the Federation?”
Grim resolve turned her hard and cold. She got out of bed and showed Tarses her back as she strode to the window. “Don’t ask me those kinds of questions, Simon.”
Sensing he had inflicted a deeper rhetorical cut than he’d intended, he filled with remorse. He got out of bed and moved with caution to stand behind sh’Pash. He knew she could see his dim reflection on the transparent aluminum window in front of them, and he was relieved when she did not tense at the touch of his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry.” He kissed the tender spot along her right shoulder, where it met the nape of her long, elegant neck.
She reached back and covered his right hand with her own. “Not your fault.” Then she bowed her head, as if maintaining eye contact had become too painful. “The reason I said don’t ask is that I don’t want you to think less of me if I admit that, sometimes, I feel like I would choose Andor. That I’d give up everything I’ve worked for”—she turned, pressed her bare flesh to his, and wrapped him in a fierce hug as her voice shrank to a breathy whisper tickling his ear—“and everyone I . . .”
Tarses almost had to laugh. Sh’Pash hated that “four-letter word” so much that even in an intimate moment such as this, she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.
Maybe that’s for the best, he decided. Because if she ever said it, he would have to admit the truth, too—that there was nothing he wouldn’t do, and no oath he wouldn’t break, for her.
And then where would they be?
Five
“The situation on Andor is becoming untenable.” Thot Naaz, the head of the Breen Intelligence Directorate, knew this was an unpopular topic with his Romulan and Tholian peers, but it was one that could no longer be ignored. “It has been nearly three years since the truth of the Shedai Meta-Genome was revealed. Why have the Andorians not yet found a cure to their dilemma?”
Projected on one side of the vast holographic display in Naaz’s office was Tozrene, the Tholian Assembly’s current Facet for External Security—a job title he had been assured was analogous to his own; looming larger than life on the other side was Chairwoman Tesitera Levat of the Tal Shiar, the foreign-intelligence apparatus of the Romulan Star Empire. Levat’s short temper was in clear evidence; gauging Tozrene’s mood was a more challenging proposition.
“The Meta-Genome data is quite complex.” Tozrene’s reply, despite being filtered through a vocoder, came with a sharp edge of annoyance. “Isolating the sequences applicable to the Andorians’ genetic crisis has been exceedingly difficult.”
Levat’s ire deepened. “Had you allowed us to review the raw data, we might have been able to help you expedite the extraction of relevant sections of the genome.”
“Unfettered access to the secrets of the Shedai is forbidden,” Tozrene snapped, his synthesized voice as metallic and shrill as an overheated drill bit boring into metal.
Naaz was thankful that his snout-shaped mask, a mandatory component of the uniform of the Breen Confederacy, concealed his reflexive contempt for the Tholians’ xenophobia. “Now you sound like the Federation. Need I remind you that it was their reluctance to share this intelligence with their allies that led them into crisis? Would you have us repeat their errors?”
Tozrene’s customary golden radiance took on ominous crimson tints. “Forbidden.”
The Romulan woman looked tired; she was heavyset, her hair was graying, and the lines in her face betrayed her life’s hardships. But as weary as she looked, her manner suggested that a core of iron will still dwelled within her. “We all share an interest in Andor’s future. Persuading them to turn their backs on the Federation was only the fir
st step. If we wish to sway them to our side, we will have to give them a superlative reason to trust us.”
“She’s right, Tozrene. We’re on the verge of a breakthrough. We mustn’t waste it.”
Angry hues coruscated within the Tholian’s crystalline torso and head. “We have provided the Andorian government with more than enough information to complete this task. If those sequences have not been shared with their researchers, that is beyond our control.”
Naaz was baffled by the implications of Tozrene’s reply. “Why would the Andorian government not share the Shedai genome data with its own scientists?”
• • •
“Political leverage,” opined Professor zh’Thiin. “Why else would ch’Foruta and his cronies have set themselves up as gatekeepers for the genome data?”
Her guests at the Science Institute remained subdued. Gathered around a long table in the middle of the Institute’s spacious research library, Ulloresh th’Forris of the Unity Caucus and Narwanit ch’Szaan of the New Restoration Party volleyed anxious glances before both turned hopefully toward the third and senior member of the delegation from the Parliament Andoria.
It was Kellessar zh’Tarash, Leader of the Loyal Opposition and head of the Progressive Caucus, who first ventured an answer. The lithe zhen’s slight, delicate features belied the steely quality of her convictions. “I’m sure the presider and his advisers would argue they need to vet the Tholian data as a matter of planetary security, before clearing it for research purposes.”
“A convenient excuse,” zh’Thiin said. “Who would they trust to inspect the raw data? Who would understand it any better than I and my colleagues?”
Th’Forris sat forward and folded his hands atop the conference table and faced zh’Thiin with the apprehensive air of someone who dreaded speaking in public—a trait zh’Thiin found curious in a politician. “Forgive me, Professor, but isn’t it possible the data is being scrubbed of—I don’t know—malicious code?”
“Why would the Tholians want to sabotage our research when it was their contributions that made it possible in the first place?”
“If we’re speaking hypothetically,” ch’Szaan said, “why did they help us at all?”
That was the burning question behind the entire Shedai Meta-Genome controversy, and the one whose answer was both too obvious to deny and too damning to admit aloud.
• • •
Federation President Pro Tem Ishan Anjar interrupted his senior advisers’ debate by slamming his palm onto his desk. “The only reason the Tholians got involved on Andor was to make us look bad!”
Admiral Marta Batanides, the director of Starfleet Intelligence, hid her distaste for Ishan’s emotional outburst as she looked around the room to gauge the reactions of her peers. None of the other counselors gathered on the fifteenth floor of the Palais de la Concorde seemed eager to contradict Ishan’s reading of the Typhon Pact’s role in the Andorian fertility crisis. They preferred to admire the room’s view of Paris by moonlight rather than confront Ishan. All of them except Rujat Suwadi, the irascible Zakdorn director of the Federation Security Agency.
“If the Typhon Pact was trying to embarrass us, they’ve done a poor job of it. Andor’s scientists don’t seem any closer to a cure for their genetic crisis than they did pre-secession.”
“Not for lack of trying,” shot back Galif jav Velk. The Tellarite was Ishan’s chief of staff as well as his campaign manager for the upcoming special election, in which Ishan—a hawkish but relatively unknown councillor from Bajor, who was appointed temporarily to the presidency after the shocking assassination of his predecessor, Nanietta Bacco—was vying against a field of even less notable opponents to make permanent his installation as leader of the Federation. “The Andorians have been working on that cure non-stop. It’s only a matter of time until they find it.”
“And therein lies our dilemma.” Lean, soft-spoken, and unassuming in his appearance, Councillor Cort Enaren of Betazed defied one’s expectations when it came to Betazoid royalty. “If the Andorians find their cure using Tholian data derived from the Shedai genome, it’ll give the Typhon Pact a significant edge in their efforts to induct Andor as a new, full member. If that happens, it won’t just be our pride that takes a hit. We’ll have to contend with our rivals having a permanent base of operations right in our backyard.”
“That’s not something we can allow,” Ishan said.
“No, sir. It’s not.” In the wake of President Bacco’s murder, Enaren had become a quiet but firm proponent of forceful diplomacy throughout local space.
The tenor of the meeting troubled Batanides. “How would you propose we prevent it?”
Velk counted the steps on a three-fingered hand. “One: Disrupt the Andorians’ research with targeted acts of software-based sabotage. Two: Keep pressing the trade and travel embargo against Andor. And three: Make the Tholians halt the flow of Meta-Genome data by threatening to resurrect a technology we know scares them even more: the Genesis device.”
Around the room, postures stiffened and eyes widened at the mere mention of Genesis.
It was an insane notion, mad enough to make Batanides abandon decorum. She confronted Velk at point-blank range, her patrician nose all but jabbing his broad porcine snout. “Are you out of your mind? If you even hint you might do something like that, we’ll have every power in known space gunning for us—even the ones we like to think of as our allies.”
“That’s why it can’t be an idle threat,” Ishan cut in. “We’d have to develop at least two working prototypes. One to demonstrate, as a warning; the other to be held in reserve.”
Enaren stepped between Batanides and the Tellarite even as he addressed Ishan. “Sir, the admiral is correct. Reviving the Genesis technology is a recipe for disaster. Might I respectfully suggest a less inflammatory but potentially viable alternative?”
Ishan reclined his chair and folded his hands on his lap. “I’m listening.”
“Issue an executive order lifting the ban on the Shedai Meta-Genome data. Make it available to the upper echelons of code-word-clearance personnel. Start a new biomedical research program. This kind of science is what the Federation does best. I’m confident we could take the lead and help the Andorians find the cure before the Typhon Pact does.”
The president pro tem narrowed his eyes and studied Enaren with suspicion. “Councillor, the people of Andor rebelled against the Federation less than three years ago. They voted to secede, embarrassing us on the galactic stage and setting in motion a series of near-defections by dozens of other worlds. Now they’re letting themselves be courted by the Typhon Pact, our chief rival, a power that has engaged in violent espionage against us . . . and you want me to put my name on an executive order that rewards the Andorians for their betrayal? Are you serious?”
Unfazed by Ishan’s tirade, the gray-haired Betazoid replied in a low and level voice. “Sir, this is not a time to serve the whims of wounded pride. We have more to gain through a show of public generosity than we do from—”
“Absolutely not,” Ishan said. “If we make a show of trying to win back the Andorians, we’ll be telling every Federation member and colony with a grievance that the path to prosperity runs first through secession and then through our treasury. I won’t set that precedent. For now, we’ll continue with the embargo. As for the next step, I want proposals from each of you, outlining strategies to break the Andorians’ will. And since I have to be on a transport to Betazed by the crack of dawn, I’ll expect them bright and early. Dismissed.”
• • •
“I take full responsibility for putting us in league with the Tholians,” zh’Thiin confessed as dusk turned to night inside the library. “But how we arrived in this predicament is less important now than how we extricate ourselves from it. And to do that, we need to find the cure.”
The Progressive leader shook her head. “That gains us nothing, Professor.”
Th’Forris quipped, “It gains us the con
tinuation of our species.”
“But the Treishya and the Typhon Pact will reap the political benefits,” ch’Szaan said.
“Which is why you need to make sure they don’t get the credit,” zh’Thiin said. “The three of you need to whip your members into line and take the fight to ch’Foruta inside the parliament. Demand hearings, subpoena records and comm logs, do whatever you can to make the people of Andor blame the Treishya for the delays in finding the cure.”
Her recommendation worried the three politicians. After a fretful moment, ch’Szaan spoke for the group. “If we do that, it could spark civil unrest. Uprisings. Riots.”
“Maybe even civil war,” th’Forris added.
“Yes, that’s a risk,” zh’Thiin admitted. “But the alternative is political suicide.”
Her remark attracted zh’Tarash’s attention. “Why now, Professor? What’s the hurry?”
“Because events have been set in motion. Partly against my will, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. At any rate, if my colleagues and I are right, not only might we be on the verge of finding a permanent solution to the fertility crisis—we might have an opportunity to discredit the Treishya and help guide Andor back toward the future it truly deserves.”
• • •
“Above all else,” Tozrene screeched, “it is imperative that we be the ones to bring the Andorians the data they need to save their species. We must not permit the value of our contributions to be diluted by the tampering of others—either on Andor, or within the Federation.”
“On this point,” said Thot Naaz, “we are all in agreement. Chairwoman Levat, can the Tal Shiar keep us apprised of political developments in the Parliament Andoria?”
“We will share all reports from our assets in Lor’Vela.”
“Good. Then all that remains is to prevent any external interference in the Andorians’ work. Our field agents have identified all Starfleet and Federation civilian medical personnel who possess the requisite training and experience to affect the progress of the Andorians’ research. As of now, all have been placed under constant surveillance.” Electing to end the subspace-channel conference on a positive note, Naaz added, “With perseverance, my friends, it should not be long before we welcome Andor as the newest member of the Typhon Pact.”
