Rise of the Federation

by Christopher L. Bennett

  After a moment, he gave a weak laugh, shaking it off. “Well, maybe it wasn’t completely honest on her end. I’m pretty sure she gave up the Deneb information because it was just a short-term goal, something the Syndicate could withstand giving up if it diverted us from their bigger goals. And she said she liked me owing her a favor. I’m actually a bit surprised she hasn’t tried to collect.”

  “Yet now you hope to request another favor from her.”

  “I don’t see what choice I have. The Orions can’t be allowed to sabotage our relief mission on Sauria. The loss of life could be catastrophic.”

  “Not to mention,” T’Pol said, “that it would not allow you to incriminate Harris in the attempt.”

  “That’s why I need help from someone on the inside. Harris is happy to let the Orions do this themselves so he can keep his hands clean. But if I can arrange not only to expose the plot before it goes off, but to plant evidence implicating Harris in a conspiracy with the Orions, then I can still bring the Section down, and save a lot of Saurians.”

  T’Pol frowned. “Predicating the case against the Section on fabricated evidence is hardly a desirable course.”

  “I know it’s a risk, but it’s all we’ve got. Maybe we couldn’t make it stick, but it’d be enough to get him investigated by Starfleet and Federation Security, and that would unearth the real evidence that would put him and the Section away.”

  “And what if it comes down to a choice between saving the Saurians and incriminating Harris?”

  “Then I’ll put the Saurians first, of course. Believe me, T’Pol, I know how this looks,” he said, clasping her hand. “I’m not blind to the fact that I thought up almost exactly the same plan as the heads of the most ruthless criminal organization in known space. That’s why I came here so early. I was lyin’ awake all night, wondering if I could really bring Section Thirty-one down without becomin’ just as bad.”

  Her arm went around his shoulders. “For what it’s worth, Trip, I doubt Harris loses much sleep at night. Your insomnia is evidence that your conscience remains strong.”

  “I hope you’re right. And that’s part of why I want to recruit Devna for this. I want to offer her another chance at a way out of slavery. If she can help me save lives and expose the Section, then she’d earn a place in the Federation.”

  “What makes you confident that she would be willing to help? As you said, there was a tactical advantage to revealing information before. She did not act out of altruism.”

  “Maybe not. But I’ve been keepin’ tabs on her. There are records showing her at Delta IV last year, as part of the Orion party that kidnapped a group of Deltans and tried to enslave them. Essex tracked them down and freed them, but the Deltans refused to press charges, so they had to let the Orions go. But Essex’s security chief interviewed the Deltans afterward, and it seems they felt Devna was more enlightened than the rest of the Orions—that they’d bonded with her during their time together, when she was supposed to be sizing them up as potential slaves.

  “The thing is, Essex only found the slave ship by pure luck—or so it seemed. They had a huge volume of space to search, and the Orions had a big head start. But they picked up a stray signal from the slave ship’s warp engines—the kind that would be produced by a very subtle misalignment that would be hard for its engineers to spot. What are the odds that their ship just happened to have the exact kind of malfunction that would give it the best chance of bein’ detected in time to rescue those Deltans?”

  “You believe that Devna caused the engine misalignment in order to save them?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “But far from certain.”

  “I’ll just have to ask her when I see her.”

  T’Pol considered. “I will say one thing. Given her involvement in two failed Syndicate operations within two years, it is impressive that she is still alive. One wonders why the Three Sisters consider her valuable enough to offset those mishaps.” She quirked a brow. “You did say that she was attending them personally. If she is in their inner circle, it may be premature to trust her.”

  Tucker chuckled. “Well, there are other kinds of value besides spy stuff. The way Maras and Devna were interacting in that signal I saw . . . I’d say they’re lovers.”

  T’Pol’s lips pursed. “Hardly an apposite word to use for a master-slave relationship.”

  “Okay, fair point. But Devna didn’t exactly look reluctant, if you know what I mean.”

  Her gaze hardened. “And this is what captivated your attention?”

  He pulled back defensively, opened his mouth—then laughed. “You know, it’s really hard to tell when you’re teasin’ me.”

  She did that thing where she smiled without smiling. “Excellent.”

  “Look, are you gonna help me track down Devna or what?”

  Endeavour’s captain pondered. “Hoshi and Lieutenant Cutler did retrieve a considerable amount of data on the Orion Syndicate during our raid on Pheniot V last year. This included information on their organizational structure and contact protocols. The information was provided to Starfleet Intelligence, but we retained a copy aboard ship. You say you have kept tabs on Devna? I take it this includes some information concerning her activity or standing within the Syndicate.”

  “Some, yeah. Most of what I have is from when she’s been offworld, but I’ve been able to extrapolate some things beyond what SI would know.”

  “Then if we review the Pheniot data together, we may be able to extrapolate still more.”

  Tucker smiled. “That’s one thing I loved about our time in the Ware task force. You and me, workin’ together to solve a problem. Felt like old times—back when I could be me.”

  “Then let us begin.” She stroked his cheek and gave him a gentle kiss. “And if we succeed . . . perhaps you can be you once again.”

  February 4, 2166

  Orion homeworld

  Devna had hoped she would one day have the opportunity to encounter Charles Tucker again, in order to collect on the favor he owed her from Rigel—and perhaps for other reasons she hesitated to admit to herself. She had never expected him to take the brazen step of contacting her directly over the console in her private chamber—an indulgence she had only recently earned as a benefit of being Maras’s favorite. He had assured her that his agency’s technology allowed him to make contact with no record being preserved, even on the chamber’s surveillance system—that, indeed, he had rigged his system to blind even his own agency to the contact. Still, what Tucker was asking her to do was startling.

  “Perhaps humans have a different understanding of how favors work,” Devna told the pink-complexioned, black-suited agent on the screen. “I’m the one entitled to ask you to do something for me.”

  “I am doing something for you. I’m giving you another chance to do the right thing, to use your position to prevent an atrocity. Like you did with the Deltans last year.” She tried to mask her surprise, but he caught it anyway. “That’s right, Devna. I know. Well—I suspected. Now I know.”

  “I see,” she said when she’d recovered her poise. “Then you intend to blackmail me into cooperation.”

  He sighed. “No, that’s not it. What I mean is . . . you defied your masters to help the Deltans because you knew it was the right thing to do. Maybe you helped me on Rigel for the same reason, even though you got something out of it too.”

  “ ‘Got something out of it’?” Devna protested, her breathy voice growing chillier. “I spent a year demoted to the lowest tier of slavery as punishment for the indiscretion you pushed me into. I was an object, the property of anyone who wanted me at any time. I was used and humiliated in ways you’d be embarrassed to imagine. I had to earn my way back to a position of trust, and I only had that opportunity thanks to my mistress Maras’s favor.”

  The sheer, unfeigned horror and guilt on Tucker’s face defused her anger. “My God . . . Devna, I had no idea. I never thought . . . You seemed to think
you’d be okay.”

  “I am ‘okay,’ Tucker. It was nothing I had not endured growing up. Nothing I had not earned my way out of before. I knew it would be the price for my action, and I chose to accept it.”

  He studied her. “And what would the price have been if they’d found out what you did for the Deltans?”

  Devna hesitated. “I made sure they did not.”

  “They would’ve killed you, wouldn’t they?”

  “My life has always been their property, granted me at their indulgence. I have never expected to live longer than it amused them to permit it.”

  “Still, you didn’t have to give them a reason. You chose to risk yourself to help others—again. I believe in that impulse to do good. Even after all I’ve seen, all I’ve done . . . I know it when I see it. And it gives me hope.

  “That’s what I have to offer you, Devna. Hope. Come with me to Sauria, help me prevent the disaster your mistresses are trying to engineer, and I can get you out. I can offer you a better life in the Federation. Or on Delta, if you prefer. They’d be happy to have you back, I’m sure.”

  “I am comfortable where I am, as you can see. I have the favor of a Sister. There is no higher privilege for a slave.”

  “Slavery is never a privilege. I know you don’t believe freedom is real, Devna, but there are much greater degrees of freedom than what you have now.”

  She studied him, gauging the intensity in his eyes and voice. “And that is what you seek, is it not? This is your play to win freedom from your own masters.”

  “Yes. For me and for a lot of people who could be at their mercy in the future. Not least of all the Saurians. They don’t deserve to suffer for the Sisters’ schemes any more than the Deltans did.”

  “People rarely get what they deserve.”

  “Not automatically. That’s why other people have to take action to make it happen.”

  “Be honest with me if you want my trust. This is something you do for your own freedom, is it not?”

  He took a moment before answering. “Yes. Yes, it is. But not just freedom from my employers. Freedom from . . . havin’ to live with choices that condemn other people. I think you can understand that, Devna. If you’re being honest with yourself.”

  She could find no answer to that.

  Tucker took her very silence as an answer. “If you decide to help me, then meet me at the coordinates I’m sending you.”

  The coordinates appeared on the screen, and Devna committed them to memory rapidly, as she was trained to do. “What makes you think I can arrange to get away?”

  “You’re a resourceful lady, Devna. You’ll figure something out.” He smiled. “See you soon.”

  The screen went dark, and she marveled at his human arrogance. He was so sure he understood her. How could he, when she struggled to understand herself?

  The curtains rustled, and Maras emerged from her own adjacent chambers. Tucker may have taken steps to shield their communication from electronic surveillance, but he had not reckoned on the junior Sister’s gift for eavesdropping. Of course, hardly anyone was aware of that. Maras had carefully cultivated a reputation as an oblivious hedonist with the mind of a child. Her sexual allure and pheromonal potency were so intense that even her loving elder sister Navaar would have seen her as a threat had she not concealed her superior intellect and made herself appear harmless and unambitious. Devna was one of a privileged few slaves whom Maras had entrusted her secret to—and one of the only ones still alive. Maras’s idiocy may have been an act, but her ruthlessness was real enough. Devna knew that her life depended on keeping Maras’s secret. But the danger was worth it for the privilege of being Maras’s confidante and the thrill of being her lover.

  Devna rose and moved toward her mistress, shedding the filmy robe she had donned for her communication with Tucker. “You heard, mistress?” she asked, keeping her head deferentially lowered.

  Smiling, Maras placed a long, sharp nail under Devna’s chin and tilted her head upward. “I can never resist the sound of your voice.”

  “My lady, what should I do? Freeing the Deltans did nothing to undermine the Syndicate. They would have been poor slaves in any case. You assured me of that yourself.” Devna had not even tried to keep the secret from her mistress, knowing that Maras would have seen through any attempt at deception and easily compelled her to speak the truth. She would have accepted death if that had been Maras’s will. But her mistress had been pleased that her favored spy had shown the resourcefulness and cunning to defy the elder Sisters without detection, telling Devna that she might have a use for such skills in the future. “But this . . .”

  Maras stroked her hair comfortingly and nuzzled her cheek. Her pheromones thrilled Devna at this range, even though Maras was keeping them restrained for now. “What do you want to do?”

  She knew that Maras, unlike most owners, would not punish her for voicing a thought. “I want to help the human.”

  “Not the Saurians?”

  Maras was a woman of few words, but there was much meaning in them when she wanted there to be. Devna nodded, acknowledging her insight. “I feel for him, mistress. He does not belong in this life. It brings him such sorrow. He set me free once . . . I would do the same for him, if I could.”

  The Sister tilted her head, pondering. “He appealed to your empathy. It is interesting. But you know it has little use to us.” Devna nodded. She had told Maras everything Pelia and the other Deltans had taught her about empathy and the shared bond among all beings. Maras had opened her mind to the ideas, as she did with all ideas, but she had not been converted. She was a pragmatic woman, and practicality told her that cooperating with the sadism of Orion society, even appearing to rejoice in it, was better for her own survival. As she had explained to Devna, her current position could allow her some opportunity to mitigate the excesses of her elder siblings, by making subtle suggestions at the right moments to provoke ideas they believed to be their own. Yet any open attempt to change the Syndicate from within would merely lead to her death and that of accomplices such as Devna, and then nothing would be gained.

  Devna accepted Maras’s reasoning, but when she spoke to someone like Tucker, when she was reminded of the warmth and love she had shared with Pelia and her friends, some secret voice inside her found Maras’s cold calculations unsatisfying. Self-interest was not all there was. She had tasted more, and sometimes she wished she could know it again.

  Maras, perceptive as ever, read some of what she was feeling. She pulled Devna close and kissed her deeply. “I don’t want you to be sad. If you want to help him, you can help him.”

  “Mistress!” Devna cried when she found some trace of breath. “But what of your sisters’ plans?”

  “Their plans,” Maras echoed, rolling her eyes at her siblings’ comparatively crude strategic abilities. “I have my own. Help your pet human tie his employers to my sisters’ plot—but tie them only to D’Nesh.”

  Devna understood. Navaar doted on Maras, cherishing her so long as she maintained her façade of the innocent, silly child who needed her big sister to take care of her. But D’Nesh, the middle Sister, was jealous of Maras’s privileged treatment and contemptuous of her apparent stupidity. Maras had explained that part of the reason she had cultivated Devna as an ally was that she expected D’Nesh’s resentment to escalate to the point of betrayal. Now Maras was taking the opportunity to move on D’Nesh first. Evidence linking Tucker’s employers to the middle Sister would create scandal not only in the Federation, but in the Syndicate as well. It could lead to D’Nesh’s disgrace, even her death. After all, the Syndicate did not bother with the Federation notion of fair trials. Merely destroying Navaar’s already tenuous trust in her sister would be enough to seal D’Nesh’s fate.

  Devna trembled as the danger of this move set in. “My lady . . . what you ask me to do . . .”

  “I know,” Maras replied, stroking her cheek. “Exposure will mean your death. But inaction could mean mine—an
d you would suffer without my favor.” Devna nodded. The risk she took was only to herself; even if Maras didn’t take steps to conceal her involvement, who would ever believe the idiot Sister was a secret mastermind? But it was her place to serve. At least Maras was an owner she was willing to die for.

  Her mistress gave her another deep kiss. “I trust you, Devna. You learn. You grow. That’s rare for us—our system doesn’t reward it. It’s your secret weapon, like mine. Our minds give us the edge. So you won’t fail.” Letting her own minimal garment fall to the floor, Maras pulled Devna down onto the bed. “You’ll never fail me.”

  February 5, 2166

  Sierra Nevada Mountains

  “Are you out of your mind?” Jonathan Archer asked Charles Tucker. The two men stood together with Malcolm Reed on a broad ledge halfway up a midsized mountain. Archer and Reed had come up the hard way; this was not the ideal season for mountaineering, but Archer liked a challenge, and the fact that he made a habit of climbing in midwinter made it easier to conceal a clandestine meeting with a man who was supposed to be long dead. Reed had clearly not enjoyed the ascent, though he had made it stoically. Tucker, for his part, had arrived by transporter. He seemed unconcerned about the potential long-term hazards of using the technology, something that both Archer and Reed had experience with. The admiral’s days of tackling challenges like Mount Whitney in winter were behind him due to the motor impairment that heavy transporter use had caused him, although Doctor Phlox’s treatments had restored enough mobility to let him handle a more moderate slope like this one. Archer sometimes wondered if Tucker’s casual transporter use meant that Section 31 had access to a more advanced, safer transporter technology that they were keeping from the rest of the Federation. But why would an organization supposedly dedicated to the safety of the Federation’s citizens do something like that? Then again, the whole reason the three men were meeting was because they agreed that Section 31 had lost sight of that purpose.