“Your daughter’s a fine officer, Marc. Perhaps a little impetuous at times, but she respects the chain of command.”
Williams smirked. “If only that had been true when she was a teenager.”
“Well, she speaks highly of you now.”
“Who said I was the one in command? You’ve obviously never been married.”
Don’t remind me. “Anyway, she’s conducting inventory in the armory now, if you’d care to drop by for a visit.”
“I appreciate it,” Williams said. “Lead the way.” As they headed down the corridor, he continued. “The impetuousness . . . I’m afraid it runs in the family. Lord knows, I’d be happier if she’d gone into engineering or, or linguistics than security.”
“She’s never given me cause to doubt her judgment.”
“Easy for her captain to say. I’m her father. Worrying comes with the job.”
Reed studied him. “Well, then maybe I’m better off not having children.”
His fellow captain thought it over. “No way. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
It wasn’t the answer Malcolm Reed had hoped to hear.
March 13, 2163
Deneva Colony, Kappa Fornacis III
Deneva was a testament to human perseverance. The colony, established in the late 2140s as a support base for asteroid miners in the Kappa Fornacis system, had been conquered by the Romulans in the first year of the war; upon its liberation the following year, not a single survivor was found. Earth Starfleet had established a base to defend the system’s resource-rich asteroids, but had no expectation that another civilian colony would ever be established after the massacre that had occurred. Yet thousands of new settlers had come nonetheless, drawn by the asteroids’ riches, by Deneva Prime’s natural beauty, and most of all by the determination not to let the Romulans cow humanity into submission. When the Romulans retook the system three years after its liberation, resettlement had seemed a terrible mistake; but this time, all the colonists had been evacuated or gone to ground in the asteroid mines, waging a guerrilla campaign to redirect small asteroids onto impact trajectories with the planet in hopes of driving the Romulans off. The occupying forces had deflected most of the asteroids, but enough small ones had gotten through to keep the Romulans from solidifying their gains until the war came to an end some eight months later. In the nearly three years since, the colonists had returned and rebuilt their home settlements better than before, and the resurgent mining operation had continued to draw new colonists seeking to make their fortunes.
Though a fair-sized impact crater remained a few kilometers away, the heart of the capital city had been fully restored—including the government center where the ministerial conference would be held. The center was an architecturally simple, glass-walled structure that had originally been part of the Starfleet base, but had since been extensively adorned with murals and sculptures reflecting the brief, turbulent history and cultural fervor of the Denevan settlers. The initial reception was held outdoors in its sculpture garden to take advantage of the lovely local weather at this time of year—though it was still a bit cooler than normal due to some residual asteroid dust in the upper atmosphere.
The attendees at the conference were even more diverse than the group who had initially approached Archer. Since the conference had been announced, other governments had come forward to report known or suspected Mute attacks. The Xyrillians had lost more than one ship in the region, and the Tesnians, alarmingly, reported that an entire colony of theirs had disappeared. Search parties had found all ninety-three settlers missing, along with most of their technology, their belongings, and even their buildings. There was no sign of Mute habitation on the planet, leaving their motives as mysterious as ever. But if they had now escalated to attacking planetary habitations, there was no telling how far they might go next.
“Admiral Archer, there you are!” Archer recognized the female who approached him as Boda Jahlet, the Rigelian ambassador, whom he had first met during the initial Coalition of Planets negotiations eight years ago, and who had been one of the emissaries to approach him about arranging this conference. Her craggy, marble-colored face was adorned with horizontal green stripes, while a pair of black lines arced from her hairline to the corners of her mouth, bisecting her eyes and outlining a darker-hued section on either side of her nose. Archer had never been sure if they were natural coloration, tattoos, or makeup, but the elaborate beads that hung from her multihued hair and across her chest indicated she was no stranger to self-decoration. “And Admiral Shran. A pleasure to see you again.”
“Ambassador,” Archer said, and Shran nodded greetings beside him.
Another figure moved up beside Jahlet—a heavyset, purple-robed humanoid male with a yellow face mottled with dark spots, a protruding brow, no nose, and a high, hairless cranium. Archer had first encountered his species at the Rigel X trading post during Enterprise’s maiden voyage. “And you remember the Xarantine representative, Orav Penap,” said Jahlet.
“Of course. Good to see you again.”
Penap clasped his hand warmly. “A pleasure, a pleasure. We’re so glad you could make it, my friends. I hope these talks will be fruitful for us all.”
“They’d better be,” came a gruff voice from behind Archer. “I’d hate to have come to this dismally bright place for nothing, so you’d better not be wasting my time.”
Archer smirked, having grown accustomed to this sort of comment during the journey. “Ambassadors, this is Min glasch Noar, the Federation Defense Commissioner. You’ll have to forgive him for having the bad taste to be born a Tellarite.”
Noar barked a laugh, appreciating Archer’s mastery of Tellarite Civil Conversation. The ambassadors took it in stride, having dealt with Tellarite representatives before and understanding their fondness for argument.
“Rest assured,” came a new, resonant voice, “the threat we are here to address is genuine and imminent.”
The speaker came forward, and Archer was startled to see his gray reptilian features. He turned to Jahlet. “I wasn’t aware the Malurians were part of this conference,” he said, his voice tightly controlled.
The Malurian stepped closer. “I can’t blame you for your hostility, Admiral,” he went on in his polished, rich baritone. “Certainly you’ve been given little reason to trust my people, and I confess I’ve played a part in that myself.”
Archer felt a shock of recognition. He’d never seen the man’s true face before, but he remembered that voice, a voice that had come from a Malurian disguised as an Akaali merchant. The reptilian face before him now had much the same structure as the false Akaali face he remembered, rounded features that hovered somewhere between babyish and thuggish. “Garos, wasn’t it?”
The Malurian bowed. “Dular Garos is my full name.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing yourself here.” He turned to Jahlet and Penap. “Ambassadors, do you know this man is a criminal and a killer?”
Garos held out his hands. “I confess, I made some tragic mistakes in my past. Mistakes I’m still paying for to this day.”
“Funny. I don’t see any prison bars here.”
A heavy breath. “Such things can be subjective, Admiral. I am an exile from my people. We Malurians tend to stay close to home. Indeed, we must, for our females rarely leave Malur. My alignment believes we must nonetheless reach out into space.”
“Alignment?” Commissioner Noar asked.
“A social and political grouping . . . you might call it a corporate state, though in many ways it is more of a family. My alignment, Raldul, believes that expanding beyond Malur is the only way our people can survive in an increasingly crowded and competitive galaxy. The majority alignments disagree—vehemently. The Raldul are treated like criminals for our interest in space . . . and we have been forced to act as such, which is what led to the circumstances where we met, Admiral.”
“But you say you’re in exile,” Archer challenged.
; “Thanks to you,” Garos said without evident rancor. “Or rather, thanks to my own actions on the Akaali homeworld.”
“Because you killed all those people? Or because you failed in your mission for your . . . alignment?”
“As far as my judges were concerned, they were the same offense. If I had simply used a less toxic drill lubricant, you never would have discovered my operation.” He lowered his scaled head. “And ever since, I have had to live out here, cut off from my home and my mate, and try to make amends for my negligence by serving Raldul to the best of my ability.”
Archer found his show of remorse unconvincing. “And what about the attack on the Tandarans a few months back? Did your alignment have anything to do with that?”
Garos shrugged. “I’m afraid you’d have to take that up with them, Admiral. I am no longer central in their confidences. They tell me what they need me to know.”
Shran’s antennae twisted skeptically. “But you say they’re the only alignment that’s actively involved in space.”
“An excellent point, Admiral Shran,” Garos replied as lightly as if they were enjoying an abstract philosophical discussion. “I concede that my people have not been the best neighbors in the past. But surely you of all people,” he said, gesturing to all the UFP representatives, “appreciate that former rivals can unite in their common interest.”
“Indeed, indeed,” said Penap, coming up beside Archer and Garos and spreading his fat arms to symbolically encompass them both. “Many of our peoples have had our clashes in the past—even we Xarantine, who try our best to help everyone obtain what they need. But these Mutes. . . .” He shook his mottled yellow head. “These Mutes are a threat unlike any we’ve faced before. How can we deal or negotiate with beings who won’t even speak to us? Whose intentions and actions we can’t understand, whose needs we can’t define? Who attack all of us indiscriminately, not caring who we are?”
“They are as mysterious and intractable a foe as the Romulans,” Jahlet added, beads rattling as she shook her head. “Maybe more so. We may not know what the Romulans look like, but at least we have talked with them, negotiated a cease-fire.”
“You mean we made them accept a cease-fire,” Commissioner Noar boasted. “Rest assured, the Federation is not a power to be trifled with. We simply have to show these Mutes who’s got the power.”
“That is why we approached the Federation for help,” Jahlet said. “If anyone can defeat them, you can.”
“Indeed,” Garos intoned. “While it is true that you have yet to surmount certain . . . technological obstacles,” he went on, making Archer wince, “one thing you have successfully proven is the strength that lies in unity. We are all better off working together . . . setting aside old grudges.”
His brown eyes held Archer’s as he spoke. But the admiral offered no words in return. Garos had a point that the current crisis outweighed past disputes. But he still had that same smarminess that Archer remembered from the Akaali planet. Archer would negotiate with him for the good of all the represented worlds—but he wasn’t about to lower his guard.
March 14, 2163
U.S.S. Endeavour, Deneva orbit
“You have to admit,” Shran said to Archer as they dined with T’Pol in the captain’s mess after the first day of the talks, “so far Garos seems to be on the level.”
“Granted,” Archer replied. “The evidence of the Mute attacks on Malurian ships was pretty compelling. I’m willing to concede that they’re as genuinely concerned about this threat as the rest of us. It’s just . . . I’d feel better if they’d sent a different representative.”
“Perhaps,” T’Pol suggested, “you should set aside your personal history with the man and consider the matter more objectively.”
“T’Pol’s right, Jonathan,” Shran said after taking a sip of pale blue Andorian ale, which to this day he could handle far more easily than Archer could. “I more than anyone should know that if there’s one thing you’re good at, it’s putting past grudges behind you—and convincing others to do the same.”
Archer sighed, feeling embarrassed. “You’re right. What matters is solving the current problem. And the joint task force that Garos is pushing for isn’t that different from the one we organized to find that first Romulan stealth ship all those years ago. And that was the first step toward the Federation.”
“And we all know that wasn’t without its turbulent moments,” Shran said, his voice solemn as he remembered the fatal consequences of the Andorian-Tellarite feuding that had almost derailed the alliance before it began. He shook off the moment of melancholy with a puff of breath and another swig of ale. “Any group like this, there are going to be people with their own agendas, their own contentious histories. The trick is finding common ground, and the Mutes certainly provide that. If we combine our ships with the unaligned fleets, we’ll have a large enough force to patrol the region, locate the Mute pirates before they strike defenseless ships, and track them to their homeworld.”
T’Pol’s gaze swept between the two males. “What would we do once we located that world? As yet we have no way of communicating with these aliens.”
“Once they see their homeworld surrounded by enemy ships, they’ll have to talk,” Shran said.
“And what will we do if they do not?”
Archer interposed. “I doubt it’ll come to a planetary bombardment, if that’s what you’re worried about. We’ve seen how these aliens behave. Weird as they are, they’re still just common bullies. They harass you until you show you can give them a bloody nose, then they run away. A show of force should be all we need to bring them to the table.”
The Endeavour’s captain set her tableware down and pondered. “Not long ago, in this very room, you said that our strength was not an asset if it made others afraid of us.”
“I meant neighbors like the Tandarans or Arkonians. Not pirates like the Mutes.”
“You meant species that might be provoked into a more aggressive response. The principle is the same.” She regarded Archer. “Consider. Why did the Xindi launch their initial attack against Earth itself? Why not test their prototype on some remote planet so humanity would have remained completely unaware that the main attack was imminent?”
That was something Archer had wondered himself from time to time. “I guess . . . they wanted to demoralize us. Break our spirits.”
“Make you afraid of their power.”
“Yes.”
“And did humanity cower in terror, too frightened to fight back?”
Archer realized where the captain was going. “No. We stood up to defend our own and took the fight to them.”
“Exactly,” T’Pol said. “Surak wrote of this in the Kir’Shara. ‘Aggression in the name of defense provokes its own reflection.’ Employing intimidation as a means to subdue an enemy usually backfires, making them more aggressive rather than less.”
“Come now, T’Pol,” Shran said. “I’ve lived with the Aenar long enough to understand a thing or two about pacifism. Well, a little, anyway. But what’s the alternative here? We can’t just lie back and let the Mutes attack ships and settlements with impunity. Their raids grow more numerous by the year. How long before they attack someone’s homeworld?”
“Space travel in this region has also grown more frequent in recent years,” T’Pol pointed out. “The peace between formerly hostile worlds has promoted an increase in trade and civilian travel throughout the region. Increasing prosperity and technology have promoted expansion to found colonies or locate new resources. Conversely, groups preferring to operate on the borderline of civilization, such as the Malurians and many Xarantine traders, have been pushed farther out by the emergence of the Coalition and now the Federation. Perhaps it is not the aliens’ aggression that has grown, but merely the number of available targets.”
“Targets they haven’t hesitated to go after. Either way, they’re ramping up their attacks, and once they get used to more active raiding, they’ll want m
ore, believe me.”
“Shran’s right, T’Pol,” Archer told his old friend. “We need to nip this threat in the bud. Hopefully once we find their homeworld and get them to talk to us, we can find common ground, negotiate a resolution. If we can’t . . . if they’re just too alien . . . then maybe we can figure out how to stay out of each other’s way.
“But this is just the sort of thing the Federation is for. We have the strength to do something together that nobody could do alone. I mean, we have all these ships now, this whole great big combined Starfleet. Should we just let it go to waste patrolling our borders? Or should we use it to make a difference for everyone?”
“Is that what this is really about, Admiral?” she asked. “Would this task force truly be a necessary response to an otherwise intractable crisis . . . or simply an attempt to find a justification for the continued existence of our warfleet? Are we solving a problem, or manufacturing a problem to fit our solution?”
While Archer pondered her words, Shran threw her a look. “We haven’t manufactured anything, T’Pol. They came to us for help. Would you have us turn them away?”
“It is not their request for our aid that concerns me, but the type of aid they requested. Do we want the Federation to become known primarily as a military power? As, to use a human expression, a hired gun that others can recruit to fight their battles for them? What precedent would that set? And what reactions would it trigger? The Malurians were almost able to provoke the Tandarans into war out of fear that we had aggressive designs on them. And while the Klingons have withdrawn to deal with their internal strife, they have done so only because they do not believe the Federation poses a threat to them. If they decided that we did, then all of our combined forces would not be enough to defeat the Imperial warfleet.”
“Not yet, anyway,” was the most Shran would concede.
Archer realized, though, that T’Pol’s words echoed his own advice to President Vanderbilt about the risks of expanding too aggressively. Surely military adventurism would be even more provocative.
Star Trek: Enterprise - 015 - Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures Page 10
