“Yes, but you’re doing the opposite!”
“Am I?” She twirled her hair again. Things were getting louder; Maras, having grown impatient waiting for violence to break out, had leaped naked into the fray to overload the men with her pheromones, and now they were starting to roar, swing, and bite at one another. Eager to watch the bloodshed, Navaar moved forward, beginning to shed her own minimal garments. “Have patience, sister,” she said before it became too noisy to speak. “This is only step one of my plan. After all—it’s not just Maltuvis whose actions we can manipulate.”
3
January 28, 2166
Lyaksti, Sauria
ANTONIO RUIZ HAD KNOWN from the moment he decided to stay on Sauria that things would get ugly. He had grown up on Earth in an era when oppression and revolution had been a thing of the past, but he had studied his history, and the history of his native Cuba and its Norteamericano neighbors was not lacking in illustrations of the atrocities that could be perpetrated by dictators—both the ones rebelled against and the ones installed by rebellion. When Maltuvis had solidified martial law in the nations he’d occupied during the “alien” plague he himself had spread, when the Saurian Global League and the Federation had been too paralyzed by political cowardice and economic self-interest to expose his crimes and take a stand against his rise, Ruiz had seen what was coming and resolved to stay and fight it, no matter the risk. He knew that it would be dangerous for him, as an offworlder on a planet whose populace had been increasingly fired up with xenophobic paranoia by Maltuvis’s deft propaganda. He had anticipated how things would progress when the Global League had refused to condemn that xenophobia for fear of losing the support of the electorate. He had known that aliens would first be ostracized, then required to submit to registration and tracking, then forcibly expelled, then even worse. And once the people had become inured to hate against aliens, it would open the door for Maltuvis’s hate of Saurians not belonging to the M’Tezir race and culture, and they would be the ones getting registered, tracked, and worse. And they would not act to head it off until it was too late for them, because they had not thought it would matter to them when it was just the aliens who were affected.
But that was exactly why Ruiz had to remain, to try to get the message out. He may have been just a mining engineer before all this, but he had come to care about the Saurians as if they were his own people, and he had felt an obligation to help them in any way he could. He had been shown the way by another human, a man who called himself Albert Sims—though Ruiz was convinced that had been a cover identity for a Federation agent, an operative for some group so hush-hush that he couldn’t even name it. Sims, or whoever, had worked with Ruiz to infiltrate M’Tezir facilities, retrieve the plague cure for mass distribution, and obtain the proof of Maltuvis’s culpability for the plague and the oppression his forces imposed in the lands they had occupied. But when Maltuvis had gotten ahead of the publicity, releasing the cure himself and calling it a M’Tezir innovation, the Saurian people’s fear had made them gullible, and they had praised Maltuvis as their savior, making the Global League and the remaining free journalistic outlets on Sauria too afraid to denounce him. After that, Sims’s superiors had pulled him out and washed their hands of the whole affair, and Sims—a man Ruiz had thought he admired—had lacked the courage to defy them. He’d even come this close to threatening Ruiz with consequences if he stayed to fight Maltuvis, since the Federation relied on M’Tezir for much of their mineral reserves.
But Ruiz still loved Sauria, so he had chosen to follow the example of the man he had wanted Sims to be rather than the man he had truly been. Ruiz had stayed in Lyaksti, cultivating allies who had helped him stay ahead of the registries and the roundups and the purges. He had made clandestine sorties into occupied territories to gather evidence of Maltuvis’s atrocities and broadcast it to Sauria and to the galaxy beyond—though Maltuvis had conditioned the masses to mistrust any news that came from offworld sources, or indeed from any source but his own propaganda engines. Ruiz had worked with those seeking to expose how Maltuvis had manipulated elections in several key Global League nations by undermining progressive candidates with trumped-up scandals and making sure his own puppets were put in power—but their efforts to expose the truth had been insufficient to overcome the voters’ loss of faith in the League and their deep-rooted mistrust of aliens. Saurians were a robust, adaptable people who could withstand the harshest conditions and who rarely grew ill; in their eyes, most aliens were weak and handicapped, and Maltuvis’s use of a plague allegedly caused by aliens had been an inspired way to tap into their fear that such weakness was contagious. Governments that welcomed offworlders were defeated in election after election, and the resultant crackdowns on aliens and those who harbored them had laid the groundwork for further subjugation of Saurian rights. Protests against such oppression had given Maltuvis’s puppets a pretext to request military aid from the M’Tezir Empire and thereby surrender their countries to his conquest without a shot being fired.
Ruiz, like many other enlightened observers, had seen every step of Maltuvis’s conquest coming in advance. Sauria had its own history of fascist states, just as Earth did, and the lessons were there for any who would listen—yet they had been unable to stop what they had known was coming. They could only watch helplessly as it happened, as in a nightmare.
But none of Ruiz’s expectations could have prepared him for how bad things became when Maltuvis had finally launched his global conquest four months ago. He had been here in Lyaksti, the core nation of the Global League and the largest of the holdouts against Maltuvis, when the M’Tezir tyrant had launched a fleet of ships into the skies. In one terrible morning (for Saurians were nocturnal and at their most vulnerable when the sun came up), his fleet had swept across the planet and blasted every rival nation’s military forces into slag, killing hundreds of thousands. The war fleet had been more advanced than anything ever built on Sauria before, attacking from low orbit and staying far above the range of enemy aircraft and missiles. Their weapons had been tactical atomics and high-energy plasma beams able to burn through any defenses the Saurians had devised. The leaders of Lyaksti and several other nations had gone underground before the invading forces had landed and destroyed or occupied the government headquarters, but a number of other progressive leaders had been either killed in combat or arrested and held for later execution. By noon that day, the entire planet had fallen, and the M’Tezir tyrant had announced the birth of the Maltuvian Empire.
Since then, it had become increasingly difficult to survive as an offworlder on Sauria. Ruiz had been sheltered by his allies in the Lyaksti resistance, but many other offworlders had been rounded up for imprisonment or deportation—though Ruiz had heard very credible rumors that the “deportations” were a cover for mass executions. In the adjoining nation of Chonaksti, one of the lands whose citizens were most willing to harbor and shelter aliens, there had been a suspicious release of volcanic gases that had swept over much of the land, causing merely discomfort and coughing fits for the hardy Saurians but killing any offworlders who hadn’t found shelter in time. Ruiz and his fellow offworlders in the resistance had made sure to set up airtight bolt holes and carry oxygen masks with them, in case a similar “natural disaster” befell Lyaksti.
But now that the attack had come, it was far worse than Ruiz had expected. This time, there was no attempt to target only aliens or opposition forces. This time, there was no pretense of a natural disaster. This time, Maltuvis’s ships soared over Lyaksti’s capital and blasted it with plasma beams and X-ray lasers, targeting its inhabitants indiscriminately. Ultritium bombs were dropped on some of the larger buildings, blowing them apart or collapsing them to kill everyone inside, while also causing heavy damage to adjacent structures. Offworlders and Saurians, rebels and obedient subjects, adults and children, the bombardment felled them all. Ruiz, by a fluke of fortune, had been off in the hills, using his geological knowledge to find new hid
ing places for the resistance. It had given him an all-too-perfect vantage point to witness the horror of the attack—and to capture it on the imager he always carried with him.
“This is Maltuvis’s idea of a stronger, richer Sauria,” he choked out through his sobs as he recorded the atrocity for posterity. He did not know if his broadcasting facility would survive the attack, or if he could find another way to get the message out if it did not—but he had to document it anyway. Someone had to witness it. “Civilians, children . . . hospitals, schools, museums . . . He could’ve just dropped a nuclear warhead, but he wants it slow. He wants the Lyaksti to suffer, to feel terror at his wrath. This is not about protecting his people or making his world better. This is pure sadism—the brutality of a petty, bullying coward. This is what comes of the Federation turning a blind eye for the sake of their precious minerals. This is what comes of us failing to do something while we had the chance! We made Maltuvis wealthy, we started him on this path, and this is the end result that anyone could’ve seen coming!
“I don’t know if I can get this message out to the galaxy. But if any of you ever see this, look closely. Look at all the people dying down there, and remember.” Another volley of rays blasted into the city, another barrage of bombs fell, and the roar of dozens of collapsing buildings, explosions, and screaming crowds silenced his narrative. By the time he could be clearly heard again, he had reconsidered his words.
“No, don’t just remember. If you see this . . . do something. God damn you, do something!”
January 31, 2166
Palais de la Concorde, Paris, European Alliance
The audiovisual recording of the atrocity in Lyaksti had spread swiftly across known space, bringing outrage and calls for action from multiple quarters. Countless voices, both inside and outside the Federation, called the young union to account for its role in funding Maltuvis’s rise to power, and demanded that it follow the impassioned plea of the broadcast’s narrator to “do something.”
The tricky part, of course, was deciding what that “something” should be—if anything. That was the question that Vinithnel sh’Mirrin had called Admirals Archer and Shran to her office in the UFP’s newly completed executive building to discuss. The office sat on the tenth floor of the Palais de la Concorde’s cylindrical tower, its broad, curved window affording a spectacular view of the Champs-Élysées, the Axe historique of monuments along its length, and the Arc de Triomphe at its far end. Jonathan Archer supposed it was a fitting view for the Federation’s defense commissioner to have while making decisions regarding the use of force—a view that invited a contemplation of history and a commemoration of the great cost inflicted by wars even in the midst of victory. So far, in the four years and change of its existence, the Federation had managed to avoid becoming embroiled in open war, though at times only by the narrowest of margins. Archer fervently hoped that was not about to change.
Shran, however, did not appear to have the same concerns. “We have to take Maltuvis down before he does this again!” he implored sh’Mirrin. “Our self-interest let this happen—we can’t let our timidity stop us from correcting it!”
“We can’t be sure what we’re getting into, Shran,” Archer cautioned. “Don’t you find it suspicious that Maltuvis’s censors somehow let this video slip through their net, when we’ve had to rely on scraps of intelligence about less extreme atrocities?”
“Why would he let it out on purpose?” Shran demanded. “To dare us to come after him? Well, I’ll take that dare. The Saurians on the ground may be helpless before those orbital ships, but an interstellar battle fleet would make short work of them.”
“And then what? You know your history, Shran! If we go in there as an occupying force, we’ll only turn the Saurians against us. Remember, that was V’Las’s endgame in the Vulcan civil war. Maybe it’s Maltuvis’s too.”
“You give that tin-pot tyrant too much credit for intelligence.”
“We have good reason to believe the Orion Syndicate is backing him.”
“Petty criminals and smugglers. We’ve put them in their place more than once.”
“We can’t underestimate them or Maltuvis! This is what I’ve been saying. It’s easy to get overconfident, to assume our technological advantage makes us smarter than other species. But nobody’s as smart about an alien species as its own people. The assumptions we make from the outside can be dangerous. That’s how Maltuvis got to this point in the first place. We overestimated how unified the Saurians were. We didn’t realize how easy it’d be for a demagogue to stir up their xenophobia.”
“Then, maybe, but this is now! This isn’t another Partnership, Jon. We’ve had years to get to know the Saurians. Even if you’re right that it was a mistake to rush into that trade deal, we can’t change that now. Not unless you have a time-traveling friend you haven’t mentioned.” Archer remained studiously quiet. “We made the deal,” Shran went on, “and what’s happened since is our responsibility. We can’t just turn away from it.”
Commissioner sh’Mirrin had been standing before the window, gazing out at Paris while the admirals argued. Now she turned and spoke. “Shran is right, Jon. You both make good points, in fact. Yes, we do bear a responsibility for what’s happening on Sauria, and it would be wrong to walk away because we’re too afraid of making further mistakes. If we let our policies be governed by fear, we might as well dissolve Starfleet and go home.” Shran puffed out his chest, his antennae taking on a curl of smug satisfaction. “But it is also true that no one is better qualified to judge the Saurian situation than the Saurians. The decisions should be theirs, yes. But that does not mean they have to be left to make them alone.”
The lanky Andorian shen resumed her seat behind the desk. “What I propose we do, for now, is to send in military advisors. A small contingent will be landed in secret to make contact with the resistance forces and any surviving leaders of the Global League. They will work with the resistance to provide logistical support and training, and depending on what the Saurians decide they need from us, Starfleet will provide additional materiel, intelligence, and further support as warranted. It’s their world to liberate on their own terms, but we will help them do it. Agreed?”
Shran appeared guardedly satisfied. It was less than he had wanted, but at least it was something. “Agreed.”
Archer was more uneasy, aware that any intervention had unseen pitfalls. But he couldn’t dismiss the widespread consensus that the Federation bore some responsibility for Maltuvis’s rise. Archer had spent years pushing the UFP’s leaders to sever the trade deal with Maltuvis before it made the dictator too powerful. By the time he had finally convinced them to act, it had been too little and too late. Now that Archer’s fears about Maltuvis’s tyranny had been realized, how could he advocate just walking away?
This was the whole reason Archer felt that nonintervention was the best policy for Starfleet. The surest way to avoid the kind of disasters reckless contact had brought to the Partnership and on Sauria was to avoid contact altogether, at least until a civilization was mature enough to meet the Federation on an equal footing. But when contact had already been made and damage already done, surely that entailed a responsibility to stay involved, at least until the damage was dealt with. He would continue to push for a hands-off policy regarding new contacts, but Sauria had to be a different matter.
“Agreed,” Archer conceded. “Who do you recommend we send in, Commissioner? It should probably be someone who’s had prior experience with the Saurians, who understands their society and how they think.”
“My thinking as well. I propose Captain Shumar and the Essex crew. Who better than the ones who first opened relations?”
Shran’s antennae folded back in displeasure. “They were reassigned last year to Starbase Twelve, on the far side of the Federation from Sauria. It would take them more than two weeks to get there.”
“I know it’s not ideal, but it gives us more time to gather intelligence and formulate
plans. As Admiral Archer has persuasively argued, it’s better to learn all we can before intervening.” She turned her gaze to the human chief of staff. “Please apprise Captain Shumar and Admiral Narsu of Essex’s new mission. I want them under way for Sauria at their earliest convenience.”
“Yes, Commissioner.” Archer thought it over. He was aware that Essex’s first officer, Caroline Paris, was still here on Earth, taking an extended leave. This new mission for Essex would not allow time for a stop-off at Earth, so the Daedalus-class vessel would need a new first officer, along with replacements for other crew members still on leave.
But that need not be a bad thing for Commander Paris, he decided. The commander’s exploits as part of Shumar’s crew had come to his attention before, and he had found her record most impressive. Her sudden lack of a posting would simply create an opportunity for Archer to do something he’d already been contemplating.
Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco
“. . . And so, in view of her achievements and her demonstrated potential to serve in the higher grade, Commander Caroline Cecile Paris is promoted to the permanent grade of captain, United Federation Starfleet, effective this date, the thirty-first of January, 2166. By order of the Commissioner of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Starfleet.”
Captains Malcolm Reed and Marcus Williams applauded as Admiral Archer pinned a rank sigil to Caroline Paris’s dress uniform, officially granting her equal rank to themselves. On the wall screen in Archer’s office, Captain Bryce Shumar and the command crew of Essex applauded as well, with a slight delay over their subspace link from Starbase 12. Once the applause subsided, Paris cleared her throat and restated her Starfleet oath:
“I, Caroline Cecile Paris, having been appointed an officer in the United Federation of Planets as indicated in the grade of captain, do solemnly swear to uphold the regulations of the United Federation Starfleet as well as the laws of the United Federation of Planets: to represent the highest ideals for which they stand, to become an ambassador of peace and goodwill, to protect the security of the Federation and its member worlds, and to offer aid to any and all beings that request it.”
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