And even her most sensual dances, and those of her slave-sisters, had failed to get them into any Deltan beds so they could gather more intelligence. The Deltan spectators had responded mainly with polite, restrained applause. Some of them seemed more amused than anything else. When Parrec-Sut had made it clear that all three women’s companionship was available as a gift to any interested party, as “a gesture of friendship between two peoples with much in common,” every one of the Deltans had courteously declined. When pressed, a chubby-faced but fit older male named Tanla had said it would not be appropriate. “We have learned the dangers of taking advantage of—forgive me—sexually juvenile peoples.” All of Sut’s protests about his women’s extensive experience in the arts of pleasure would not change their minds, to the slaver’s utter bewilderment.
Still, a few of the Deltans had praised the grace of Devna’s dancing, so Sut had decided that maybe her subtler approach would work better with these ethereal people than the raw animal passion of Rilas and Ziraine. So he had sent her back in to ply her demure wiles and determine, on her own, the viability of enslaving the Deltans.
With the entire mission now riding on her, Devna was well aware that another failure could mean her death. So she had proceeded with her greatest care and delicacy, wielding all her skills as both seductress and spy to win over the Deltans. Yet still she got nowhere. The Deltans continued to perceive her as unready to play in their league, although they seemed to hope she might learn something from observing their frequent sex play. But the more she watched, the more confused she became.
Now, she sat alone in a deserted observation gallery, gazing out at the scintillating Iatu, which glared down on her like a divine, condemning eye as the station’s polar orbit took it above the planet’s southern extreme. That eye blurred with tears—her own, as she despaired of ever solving the paradox and proving herself worthy of the second chance Maras had given her. The prospect of her death if she failed troubled her less, for she had always known that her existence was merely an indulgence extended by her masters until such time as they chose to withdraw it.
“You’re trying too hard.”
Startled, Devna gathered herself, wiped her eyes, and turned. Standing behind her was a young, brown-skinned Deltan woman named Pelia, whom she recalled from the first day—the hairless beauty had complimented her dancing, yet had expressed puzzlement at the bits of fabric and metal she wore, which only obstructed the view and dug into the skin. Devna had made it clear that Pelia was welcome to remove the offending garments from her, but the Deltan woman had suddenly pulled away, making polite apologies.
Now, it seemed, Devna had a second chance. “What do you mean?” she asked, pitching her breathy voice for maximum innocence.
“What you just did,” Pelia replied. “Everything you do, everything you say, is calculated for effect. Even your sincerity is a pretense.” She sighed. “I’ve been trying to be polite like everyone else, let you down gently, but I’ve realized that’s no less a pretense. Someone should be blunt with you.”
“I would welcome that.” She said it as a ploy, yet realized she was completely sincere.
Pelia responded mainly to the former, her huge dark eyes holding Devna’s with impatience. “You Orions don’t seem to understand that what you do is in very poor taste.”
“What we do?”
“Attempting to use sexuality for . . . for manipulation, deception. Gaining influence over others.” She grimaced in distaste. “Is this how you always relate to one another? Is it all about trickery and games, jockeying for advantage?”
Devna’s uncertainty this time was completely unaffected. “How else would it be? What would any person do but try to serve their own ends?”
Pelia sat next to her and lightly stroked her shoulder. “Rely on others to aid them, perhaps? None of us are alone, friend.”
Devna’s green fingers brushed against Pelia’s brown ones, gently and enticingly. Pelia pulled her hand away just as gently. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know you want me to,” she challenged.
“I do,” Pelia affirmed in relaxed tones. “But what concerns me—what concerns all of us—is what you want.”
Laughing, she purred, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“I’m afraid it is,” Pelia said. “What’s clear is that what you’re doing . . . it isn’t what you want. It’s what your companion Parrec-Sut wants of you. It isn’t about your wishes or feelings at all.”
“Oh, it is,” Devna asserted, allowing more strength into her soft voice. “I want nothing more than to attain what I seek.”
“But not for your own sake. You seek to prove yourself to someone else. Maybe Sut, maybe another. Why can these others not come to us and assert their desire freely? Why do they use deception, send you in their stead?”
Devna stared at her. “How do you know these things?”
Pelia smiled. “We are like you in the strength of our pheromones, our libidos. But we are also empathic. We share our emotions, our sensations, not only our bodies. So we can tell that what you feel is not from you and is not toward us. And we can tell that what Parrec-Sut feels . . .” She shuddered. “There is something predatory in him.”
“He is a male. Have you no predators among your own?”
“Aggression has its place,” Pelia granted. “But not as part of sex.”
Devna scoffed. “Now you use deception. Sex is pursuit. Sex is conquest.”
Pelia shook her smooth, elegant head. “There was a time, long ago, when some of my people believed that. When they made it into that. We’ve seen the same in other species, like the Carreon. But that’s a corruption, a misunderstanding of sex.”
“My people understand sex extremely well.”
“You understand how to use it as a weapon. You don’t understand what it’s for.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Pelia took Devna’s hands in hers and closed her eyes. What came over Devna a moment later was . . . beyond her capacity to describe. It was powerful, profound. It was passionate, yet not venal. It made her feel like . . . no, that wasn’t right, because there had been no her. It was like she had no longer been herself, but had been part of something greater. She had never felt so whole. “What was that?” she gasped.
“A taste of how we make love. Of what making love is truly for.” Pelia continued holding her hands as she went on, smiling. “Sex didn’t evolve for power or control. It creates life. It builds bonds within social species like ours—creates trust, relieves stress, eases sadness. It’s meant to be an act of giving, of sharing. Using it to take, to control—that isn’t what the universe intended it for.”
Moments ago, Devna would have dismissed that as superstition. But after what she had just been through, the universe seemed somehow more tangible to her. “I . . . I would like to learn more,” she said.
Beaming, Pelia leaned in and kissed her deeply. Devna stared at her afterward. “I thought . . . you didn’t want to.”
“I was waiting for you to express a true desire of your own. Now you have.” She kissed Devna again. “And now . . . you’re finally ready to learn.”
May 26, 2165
U.S.S. Pioneer
“Forward shields are at forty-nine percent!” Valeria Williams cried even as Pioneer shuddered under another barrage from the Ware battleships. “But they’re holding for now.”
“They’ve held this long,” Malcolm Reed replied. “We just have to hold out a little while longer.” It had only taken a day this time for the drones to arrive in retaliation after Williams’s security team had raided the trading post and liberated four survivors: three humanoids from Vanot, who were very confused and asking if they were someplace called the Underland, and a large, vulpine biped who called himself a Balduk and would have likely gone on quite the rampage if he’d been in any condition to move before translation could be establis
hed.
“Doing my best, sir.” Spears of phased nadion energy lashed out from Pioneer’s flank and tore into the nearer cruiser as Ensign Tallarico swung the ship around in an evasive arc. A moment later, a photonic torpedo flew with surgical precision to pierce the resultant weak spot in the robot ship’s shields, blowing it to scrap.
Or so it seemed. “That drone is twenty-seven percent intact,” Ensign Achrati reported from the science station. “It may still be able to self-repair.”
“Acknowledged,” Williams said, chastising herself for her premature sense of victory. “But right now there’s a higher priority.”
A hammer blow rang against the hull, nearly knocking Reed and several others from their seats. “I suggest you attend to that priority with alacrity, Val,” the captain grated out. It sounded like he’d bitten his tongue.
“Working on it, sir,” she said, wincing in sympathy. “Dorsal shields now at thirty-seven percent.”
“Redirect power to dorsal plating.”
Her hand had already moved to the appropriate controls. “Redirecting, aye.”
“Sickbay to bridge.” It was Liao’s voice. “Starfleet may have upgraded the ship to take this kind of knocking around, but the crew are as fragile as ever. We’re running out of beds down here. Any idea how much longer we have to keep this up?”
“Until they stop coming or we find out what we need!”
“You realize you’re gambling with the lives of your crew.”
“I am keenly aware of what’s at stake, Doctor!” he grated. “And I’m trusting you to see that that doesn’t happen again. So trust me to do the same.”
After a moment, the doctor’s chastened voice came back. “It’s a deal, Captain. Sickbay out.”
Williams redoubled her focus on the battle, aware of the corollary to Reed’s words: He was trusting her to carry out his tactics and ensure the crew remained protected. But at the same time, Liao’s words were a reminder that Williams was partly responsible for putting them in harm’s way in the first place. She’d agitated for this mission with Admiral Archer, determined to repay the Ware for killing Detzel and the other three—but what if her zeal to avenge them only got more of her crewmates killed?
She knew she didn’t dare second-guess herself in battle. But her decisions seemed to keep endangering her crew. Last year in the Rigel system, her decision to save an innocent Rigelian girl from assault had delayed her delivery of vital intelligence to Pioneer and gotten the ship’s historian, Samuel Kirk, tortured and almost killed as a result. She’d grown rather fond of the gentle, thoughtful historian, yet he’d barely spoken to her since then—or perhaps she’d simply been avoiding him. It took time to get over something like that, and she didn’t want to force any reminders on him.
Instead, she’d thrown herself into her work, determined to do better in the future—only to fail to save four of her crew from Ware attacks. That was unacceptable. This time, with so much more practice and preparation, with so much more at stake, she had to get it right.
As if to mock her, a new contact appeared on her tactical board. “Sir,” she reported heavily. “Two more Ware battleships closing at one-twenty-eight mark thirty. ETA nine minutes.”
“They’re getting closer together,” Reed said. Once they’d taken out the first two ships, they’d been given a good six hours to make repairs before this battle began. Even if Williams did succeed in taking out the second drone ship before its reinforcements arrived, the shields might not be able to withstand much more. And this time, there’d be no chance of the drone ships battering down the shields and beaming off the liberated “components,” for the four rescuees had already been transferred to the courier Tashmaji and spirited swiftly away. If they didn’t gain the necessary information soon, they might have to abort this stratagem—a better failure than losing lives, but a failure nonetheless. But Williams prayed that the arrival of this newest pair of ships would give them what they needed.
Five minutes later, she managed to cripple the second ship, but only after the torpedo tubes had been compromised. But Achrati shook her head grimly. “It’s already self-repairing, sir,” she said. “And the other one’s showing signs of life too. In a few minutes we could be under attack from four directions.”
“Mister Collier, estimate on torpedo tube repairs?” Reed asked.
“Twenty minutes at least, Captain.”
Setting his jaw, Reed turned to Grev at communications. “Ensign, signal Captain sh’Prenni.”
But Grev’s gentle eyes widened as he stared at his console. “Sir, Captain sh’Prenni is hailing us!”
Reed and Williams traded a look of tentative triumph. “Put her on.”
Reshthenar sh’Prenni’s strong-jawed, striking blue face appeared on the viewscreen. “We have a result, Malcolm! Those last two filled in the gap quite neatly.”
“Not a moment too soon, Thenar,” Reed told her. “How long until you can reach us?”
“Just watch.”
Less than a minute later, the U.S.S. Vol’Rala surged out of warp behind and beneath the two approaching drone ships and strafed them fiercely with its wing cannons as it swept by, the kinetic energy of its high-sublight flight adding an extra kick to its particle beams. The Kumari-class cruiser then spun in its path and fired backward at the drones as it thrust to decelerate, letting them close with it. Before long, two Sevaijen-class light cruisers, which Val recognized as sh’Lavan and Flabbjellah, followed their flagship out of warp and caught the Ware drones in a pincer. The robot ships broke and ran in opposite directions; Vol’Rala altered course to pursue one while the two smaller battleships harried the other.
But Pioneer was taking a renewed pounding from the two drones Williams had damaged, and without torpedoes, her phase-cannon fire had limited effect. “Dorsal shields are out!” she barked, wishing there were a way to channel her sheer fury into the phase cannons.
“Regina, keep our belly to them,” Reed ordered. But the more intact, mobile drone was maneuvering to trap Pioneer between the two robot craft.
But then it rocked under a barrage from the third Sevaijen-class ship, Kinaph. The lithe, maneuverable cruiser, still fresh and unwinded by battle, handily dodged the drone’s erratic fire and finished it off. Moments later, the bulbous-browed, pointed-eared visage of Kinaph’s captain appeared onscreen. “Do you think you can handle the last one on your own?” asked Kulef nd’Orelag. “I don’t want to place you under too much debt to me.”
After a nod from Williams, Reed told him, “We can handle it, Captain. And rest assured, I won’t forget that debt.” Nd’Orelag was the first Arkenite captain in Starfleet, his ship commissioned to commemorate the former Andorian subject world’s recent admission as the Federation’s ninth member. Arkenites had a very strict and clear-cut set of beliefs about the payment of personal or communal debts, and Williams hoped Reed wasn’t getting himself in trouble by accepting the obligation.
With no more need to divide her attention, Williams took satisfaction in blowing apart the surviving drone fragment with phase cannons alone. By now, though, the two remaining drones were doing their best to circle around toward Pioneer and fulfill their relentless quest. She could hear over Vol’Rala’s comms that the drones were attempting to broadcast their ultimatum about the “theft of primary data core components”; Reed had long since ordered Grev not to bother airing the predictable hails, but apparently sh’Prenni hadn’t grown sick of them yet. Indeed, the tall, lively captain seemed quite amused by the drones’ mindless insistence on the return of their so-called property and the relentlessly pleasant voice in which the threats were delivered. For a while, it almost seemed like she was toying with her drone, for it continued to function even after Flabbjellah and sh’Lavan had finished off theirs. But before the drone could draw too near the damaged Pioneer, sh’Prenni grew serious, her antennae angling forward decisively, and she ordered a
series of maneuvers that swiftly reduced the last drone to dust.
“That should do it, Malcolm,” the Andorian captain reported, smiling over the viewscreen. “Sorry Thelasa-vei couldn’t join the party, but it needed to be far enough out to confirm the triangulation. Thanks to Captain th’Zaigrel’s data, we’ve successfully calculated the probable origin point for these drones. And it’s consistent with both the map you got from the trading post and the dispersal pattern your Mister Collier proposed for the planetary Ware components. We may have just found their source.”
Williams pumped her fist in triumph. There had been a point to this after all. She sent the shipwide signal to stand down from tactical alert and transmit final damage reports to the bridge, and she was relieved to pass along sickbay’s notification: “No fatalities or critical injuries, sir.”
“Excellent.” Reed turned to the screen and gave Vol’Rala’s captain an appreciative smile. “Thank you, Thenar. I never doubted that a ship named Enterprise would come through for us.”
“It’s a storied name in both languages, true; but let’s give a little credit to the shen in the center seat, shall we?”
“Absolutely. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Damn right. You almost didn’t do it with us. You said you could hold out long enough. That was cutting things very close.”
“But we did hold out.”
“I’m simply saying that next time, you should let us be the bait. We’re bigger than you are.”
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time,” Reed said. “If we finally find the Ware’s makers and can actually talk to somebody, maybe we can get them to listen.”
Sh’Prenni looked skeptical. “Malcolm, these people have no problem with enslaving and devastating primitive worlds to feed their chambers of horrors. Trust me: There will be a next time.”
Williams took her warning to heart. One success was not enough. No matter what came next, she could not let herself fail again.
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