“If you join with us in a just cause, you should not fear to step forward.”
I can work with this, Mayweather thought. “We do not fear to step forward!” he declared. “If you want to put us on trial, fine. I will stand trial and answer whatever charges you have to make.”
“He lies,” the Malurian said.
“I have no reason to lie, because I’m not afraid of the truth. Have we made mistakes?” He nodded. “Sure. Some of us have made some questionable calls. Or done things that seemed right at the time but turned out badly. Every society has. But it’s only by facing those mistakes that we can try to make ourselves better. That’s why the Federation wants people in it who hold a wide range of different viewpoints—even people like you. Because having people who disagree with us keeps us honest, forces us to question ourselves and recognize our mistakes.”
“He’s right,” Rey Sangupta said. “Listen, I’m from a former colony world myself, and sometimes we feel like we’re an afterthought, like our point of view gets drowned out by the big voices. But the fact is, we get to express that point of view, and nobody tries to stop us. And that’s what the Federation is about.”
“Propaganda,” the Malurian said. “Surely you aren’t blinded by this.”
“Do not question my vision, Rinor,” Ganaiar barked. “I will hear and assess all arguments. You will not dictate to me which one I believe.”
“Fine, that’s fine,” Mayweather said. “Put me on trial if you have to. But let the others go.”
Rinor sneered. “How noble.”
“It’s more than that. Velom, this Malurian’s allies have kidnapped two of my crewmates. We think they’re still alive, but we don’t know how long that’ll last. Please, we’re just trying to rescue our people. We came to you to see if you could help.” He looked at the chieftain imploringly. “If I agree to stand trial for you, will you let the others go and tell them what you know about where our people are being held?”
Ganaiar studied him for some moments. “Velom, you aren’t considering this?” the Malurian protested.
“Please, Velom,” Travis went on, holding the chieftain’s gaze steadily. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Rinor sighed. “No,” he said, pulling out a disk-shaped communicator. “You don’t.” He hit a switch, and a moment later, three swirls of energy resolved into armed Malurians surrounding the Chelons in the camp.
“This is outrageous!” Ganaiar boomed. “You agreed to come unarmed into my camp as a sign of allegiance. You swore to abide by my will.”
“And now you will abide by mine. Kill these three, or my people will kill you and them.”
“You need our cooperation.”
“We need a revolt on Rigel III. And the fact is, your martyrdom will achieve that just as well as your leadership. Our weapons are set to mimic Starfleet phase pistol signatures.”
The chieftain faced him with arms crossed. “Is that so, Rinor? Our weapons are more straightforward.”
A number of armed Chelons rose out of the surrounding undergrowth, drawing back on heavy longbows. The bolts flew true and impaled the Malurian ambush party. Mayweather winced and looked away, in time to see Rinor grappling with one of the humans’ captors over the latter’s crossbow. The Malurian was stronger than he looked, able to resist the massive Chelon’s grip and force the weapon toward his opponent’s head. But the guard clung to him firmly, and soon Rinor began to weaken and tremble. His eyes rolled back, and when the guard released him, he fell to the ground with a heavy thud and lay there twitching.
“Oh, my God,” Sangupta said. “Their contact venom. It’s lethal stuff. He’s got hours at most.”
Mayweather stepped forward, arms still bound behind him, and looked pleadingly at the chieftain. “Do you have an antitoxin? We need to find out what he knows about our people.”
Ganaiar studied him. “I am sorry, no. We have not yet devised one for his kind.” The Velom surveyed the other bodies. “As for the rest . . . were they Chelon, they would have simply been wounded. As it is . . . unfortunate, but they left us no choice.”
Mayweather gazed down at Rinor, who was trembling harder and starting to moan. Sajithen came up alongside him. “It is taking effect quickly,” the director said. “He received quite a dose. The agony will be extreme.”
Travis faced the Velom. “Can you at least give him something to ease the pain?”
“He will not be coherent enough to tell you what you seek, even given an incentive.”
“You think that’s what I care about?” Mayweather shouted. “Just ease his pain, please! Nobody deserves to suffer like that.”
The chieftain studied him for a long moment . . . then gestured to an attendant. The attendant’s heavy staff lifted into the air . . . and came down with great force on Rinor’s neck. Travis closed his eyes, wincing.
When he looked up again, he saw Ganaiar examining him with surprise and approval. “Release them,” the Velom ordered. As the attendants complied, Ganaiar went on. “I regret that I know nothing about where they hold your people, Commander Mayweather. And I regret that I was unable to deliver them to you alive for interrogation.
“Most of all, I regret that I allowed Rinor to mislead me about your Federation. If it appoints people like you as its military officers, that reveals much about its true intentions.”
Mayweather accepted the apology with a grave nod. “You thought you were doing what was necessary to protect your people. Believe me, I understand that.”
“Yes.” Ganaiar gave him the Chelon equivalent of a smile. “But while I cannot help you locate your people . . . I do have some knowledge regarding the First Families’ operative inside the Trade Commission.”
“If you mean Rehlen Vons,” replied Sajithen, rubbing her unbound wrists, “we know of him.”
“Rehlen Vons is dead, and a Malurian wears his face. But perhaps I can direct you toward the source of the information they needed to replace him.”
June 24, 2164
Babel Station
Sedra Hemnask answered the door of her suite, attired in casual evening wear. Her eyes widened when she saw Jonathan Archer standing there. “You’ve been released!”
“And you’ve been avoiding me,” he told her, perhaps redundantly.
Eyes darting furtively, she summoned him inside. Once the door shut behind him, she said, “I felt you faced enough scandal without me complicating things.”
“You could’ve given me an alibi for the shooting.”
“Clearly you didn’t need one. I knew you were innocent. And whoever attempted to frame you must have been a fool to think anyone would believe it.”
He stepped closer. “Still . . . they didn’t have to prove me guilty. Just create enough anger and suspicion to scuttle the talks.”
She smiled. “And that hasn’t happened. Your reputation carries much weight, it seems.”
“And you were just . . . protecting that reputation,” he added in slow, skeptical tones, “when you refused to come forward.”
Hemnask came up to him and stroked his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. It was selfish of me. But please believe me . . . there are . . . family obligations that keep me from admitting the truth. Obligations I can’t explain in terms you would understand. But it’s not a problem anymore. There’s no reason it should—”
She had begun moving in to kiss him, but he stopped her with his hands on her shoulders, then stepped away. “I don’t think you give me enough credit for understanding, Sedra.”
Archer moved to the door and opened it, watching Hemnask’s face as she saw who stood beyond it now. “You know T’Rama,” he said as he showed the new guests in. “And I believe you’re acquainted with Lieutenant Commander ch’Terren, the head of security here.”
Hemnask nodded at them, her response wary but tightly controlled. “Madam. Commander. To what do I owe this visit?”
Archer fielded the question. “I thought you’d like to know that they’ve captured the s
hooter.”
After a brief moment of surprise, she smiled. “That is excellent news. Who was it? What was their purpose?”
Commander ch’Terren moved forward and held up his scanner, whose screen displayed an image of a humanoid with skin flaps on his cheeks and white hair along his temples. “Director, do you recognize this man?”
Hemnask studied the image. “I believe he is a Mazarite, but beyond that I do not know him.”
“He registered with Babel Security under the name Rihat Diraf,” ch’Terren told her. “He was posing as the proprietor of a clothing shop on the esplanade.”
“Posing?”
“Since his arrest,” ch’Terren replied, “we have determined that he is in fact Ibed Tarzah, an assassin for the Zankor syndicate, a prominent Mazarite criminal organization.”
“Of course,” Hemnask said, almost to herself. She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “Another syndicate threatened by the Federation’s rise.” Her large eyes focused on the investigators again. “How did you find him? What led to his arrest?”
T’Rama stepped closer. “When we interviewed neighboring proprietors, they remembered seeing you and Admiral Archer visiting his shop on the evening before the shooting. He scanned the admiral to measure him for a suit. We determined he used the biometrics thus gathered to gain entry to the admiral’s quarters and steal the uniform used to impersonate him.”
She scoffed. “A careless frame.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Sedra.”
The director stared at him. “Jonathan, what do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember? You were the one who got me to stop at that kiosk. You talked me into getting scanned. You talked with that man for twenty minutes—the man you just said you didn’t recognize.” His expression hardened. “I would’ve thought you’d have a more vivid memory of the night we first kissed.”
She froze, staring. After a moment, she lowered her gaze, thinking, and finally sighed. “I see where this is leading,” she said, turning away. “You’ve investigated me now.”
“That’s right,” Archer said. “We got some information last night from Pioneer’s first officer—a lead on the abduction and replacement of your assistant Rehlen Vons with a Malurian operative. Now, Malurian mask technology is good enough to fake the biometrics they needed to get into the vault, but someone had to give them Vons’s code phrases and teach them enough about him that they could carry off the impersonation. T’Rama had a hunch—sorry, a logical hypothesis—that you might be involved. So she and Commander ch’Terren asked my people at Rigel to help them look into your past. The Trade Commission was very cooperative as well, in light of recent events there.”
She turned back to him, pleading and fear in her eyes. “But you already know my secret. You know I am the last person that would have anything to do with the First Families.”
“That’s the secret you shared with the Commission. But a secret isn’t much use to you if you tell the whole thing. My people dug a little deeper. They found that your mother—and you—have had periodic contact with your birth father, Voctel Thamnos.” She winced at the name. “Clandestine contacts, but fairly regular—and initiated on your end. Not something you’d do with a man who violated your mother.
“That was a convenient story, wasn’t it?” he asked her. “The only kind of family tie that a Zami Rigelian would be expected to renounce totally—the kind that was forced. But it wasn’t forced, was it?” He shook his head in disgust. “The very same First Families you’ve been telling me for months how much you hated and wanted to bring down—and you’ve been in their pocket the whole time.”
“You don’t understand!” Hemnask cried. “I do hate them. I do want them broken . . . because of the hold they have over me. Because they can force me to do their bidding when it’s the last thing I want.”
“I know how much the Zami value family ties,” he said, “but this . . .”
“You don’t know all the facts.” She was weeping now. “You’re right . . . Voctel didn’t rape my mother. He chose to claim he did because it gave him prestige within his twisted clan—and let him hide the fact that he had fallen in love with a commoner. My conception was accidental, but hardly coerced. Voctel was too young to handle the responsibility for raising me, especially knowing how I would be treated within the clan as a half-common bastard. So he helped my mother flee to Five, where she and I would face no stigma, and convinced her to go along with the lie that she had fled his cruelty, for his own protection as well as mine.
“But once he matured enough, he married—and he had more children. I have half-brothers and half-sisters . . . and some of them have children. This is why we stay in touch. Voctel sought us out so I could know my blood kin. But though he meant well, his actions entrapped me.” She shook her head, loose waves of hair tumbling around her face. “The First Families are corrupt and cruel. They elevate family, but not through love and protection. Rather, they demand loyalty and obedience at all costs. Failure, betrayal . . . these are severely punished. And as a child of the Thamnos, even illegitimately, my actions reflect on my father and my kin. If I fail in what they expect of me . . .” She sank to the bed. “My siblings, my nephews and nieces could suffer.”
Archer hesitated to trust her now, but her fear and distress seemed sincere. “Then . . . why this convoluted plan? Seduce me, then frame me?”
She looked up at him, almost amused. “Give me some credit, Jonathan. I wouldn’t be so sloppy. Whoever sent that Mazarite to frame you, they’ve exposed me and doomed my efforts to failure. I don’t know what might happen to my family now because of their stupidity.”
“But you and Tarzah—”
“There’s the terrible irony of it. I was honestly just having fun. He offered to fit you for a suit and I was genuinely curious. I didn’t even remember his face because I was busy admiring his wares!” She gave a bitter laugh. “Think about it. If the shooting hadn’t happened, no one here would have investigated me, and my secrets might never have been exposed. Far from being my accomplice, Mister Tarzah has ruined my plans entirely.” She sighed. “For which I’d be extremely grateful . . . if not for the cost to my kin.”
“Then if you weren’t involved with the shooting . . .”
Hemnask stood, moving close to him. “Jonathan . . . my instructions were to seduce you to create a scandal. To convince the Rigelians that you had in fact seduced me into supporting membership, and then to retract that support once the scandal broke.” She sighed. “I did as I was ordered . . . and I know this sounds like something from a cheap melodrama, but I found afterward that I couldn’t go through with it. You were too . . . kind.” She reached out as if to stroke his hair, but stopped, lowering her hand a moment later. “Too lonely. I could tell that what we shared . . . it meant something to you. It was something you had needed for a long time. I couldn’t bring myself to ruin it for you.”
She turned to T’Rama. “Instead, I kept my silence about that night, and carried on with the other part of my instructions: to persuade the ambassadors that joining with Rigel could drag the Federation into the very war that the First Families seek to provoke. To make us undesirable to you as members.” Hemnask released a bitter sigh, squeezing her eyes shut. “The damn Thamnos, they take joy in forcing me to protect the very status quo I hate. I would give anything to see the Federation bring its law to Rigel and crush the Families once and for all. But I am a prisoner of my blood, and my blood kin are hostages to my obedience.”
Hemnask wrapped her arms around herself. “And poor Vons . . . I had no idea they would kill him. I didn’t realize how ruthless the Malurians were. I almost confessed when I found out, but the threat to my family held me back. I didn’t know what else to do.”
She trembled, looking lost, and Archer chose to believe her. He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, feeling the palpable relief in her body when he did so. “Sedra . . . maybe there’s something we can do, with the Rigelians’ help, to prote
ct your family on Rigel IV. But we’d need something from you in exchange. The First Families still have your archives, and two of my officers. Anything you can tell us that will help us find them . . . would go a long way toward proving your sincerity.”
She gazed up at him with gratitude. “I’ll help you any way I can. I may never fully cleanse the stain from my conscience . . . but I welcome the opportunity to try.”
Thamnos estate, Rigel IV
“What were you thinking?” Garos demanded, leaning forward in his seat. “I had my own plan in motion on Babel! And now your ham-fisted assassination ploy has ruined it!”
On the large monitor in his suite’s overly ornate, not especially functional workspace, D’Nesh glared, no doubt resenting being spoken to in such a way by a male. “Remember, Garos, you are the one who answers to us, not the other way around!” Next to her, Navaar looked on in concern, while Maras hovered behind her looking bored. The youngest sister seemed to participate in these conference calls only to provide the visual of the Three Sisters as a united front—an image Garos was beginning to have his doubts about.
“So you take responsibility for allowing that incompetent Zankor to proceed with this?”
The fact that Eldi Zankor was right next to the Sisters had not deterred Garos’s insult in the least. “It was a good plan!” the Mazarite crime boss insisted. “We were trying to tear down Archer, the same way you were!”
“You imbecile. Making the Rigelians question Archer’s integrity is one thing. Getting the Federation to believe their great peacemaker would attempt murder is another. Don’t you understand the first thing about a con? You want to convince the marks of what they’re already inclined to believe! Push too hard against their preconceptions and they’ll sense they’re being fooled.”
“He does have a point, sister,” Navaar said. “It was a little unsubtle.”
“As opposed to Garos’s plan? His is so subtle I can hardly tell how it was supposed to work!” Navaar just stared, arms folded over her otherwise mostly uncovered chest. D’Nesh sighed. “We had an opportunity,” she insisted. “Zankor could get a man in place on Babel. We have hooks into Thoris’s advisors, so they could divert him to Babel to make a high-profile speech, then sabotage the ship so it’d be stuck there for repairs.” She spread her arms. “Even if we failed to discredit Archer, think of the sympathy we gained for Thoris! It was worth the risk to get our puppet closer to the presidency.”
Star Trek: Enterprise - 016 - Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel Page 21
