Rise of the Federation Read online

  Reed cleared his throat. “No pressure, then.”

  She laughed. “No, it’s all right. Because it’s not just about the physical. What was so overpowering was the emotional connection. The way it made me feel like being part of another person. Maybe nothing human can match that intensity.

  “But it doesn’t need to. I feel really close to you, Malcolm. I let you in because you didn’t push, because you respected my boundaries and gave us a chance to get to know each other first. So I know that the connection I feel for you isn’t just some ghost of what I experienced on Delta. It’s grown organically within us. And I think that wherever that leads us is somewhere I’m ready to go.”

  She pulled his head toward hers—slightly up toward hers, for she had three centimeters on him in height—and kissed him deeply. When it finally ended, she took a deep breath of satisfaction. “That said . . . there are some things I picked up on Delta that I’d be happy to teach you.” Laughing, she pulled him toward the bed.

  January 5, 2166

  Oakland, California

  “Your move.”

  “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

  Val Williams tried not to fidget while Sam Kirk studied the chessboard in her father’s living room, stroking his chin as he contemplated his options. Normally she was more patient with his deliberations, but Captain Marcus Williams was watching over her shoulder, his burly arms crossed in a way indicating that Sam was not making as good an impression as Val had hoped.

  For her own part, Val was playing an aggressive, risky game in the style her father had taught her, deliberately exposing her king to danger in order to lure Kirk into a trap. But he wasn’t taking the bait; instead, he was playing it safe, passing up opportunities to capture her pieces and instead positioning his own with a longer strategy in mind. He was now a move away from checking her black king with his white king’s pawn—a move she’d almost missed because it was so unassuming. But if she let it happen, she could then move her king into a position that would lure out the white queen. She had moved her queen’s bishop to the second rank to position it for that strategy.

  That was the situation Sam was now contemplating, and the senior Williams was growing more impatient as the time dragged on. “Maybe you should be using the timer,” he suggested.

  “It’s just a friendly game, Dad,” Val reminded him.

  “Well, okay. I guess some people need a handicap.”

  Val glared up at her father, but fortunately, Sam was too immersed in contemplation to notice the dig. Finally, he went ahead with an unexpected maneuver, putting his king’s knight one move away from checking her king again, from either of two black squares. As soon as she realized this, she moved a pawn to force him to choose the one that would let her move her king to threaten the knight in return.

  “This is ridiculous,” her father said while Sam considered his response. “Eight moves in and not one piece has been captured yet.”

  “But he’s had me in check three times, Dad.”

  “Only because you’re giving him too much time to think.”

  “I’m not as good at thinking on my feet as your daughter, Captain,” Sam said to him. “And I don’t want to make any mistakes, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  At another glare from Val, her father subsided. Sam eventually moved a pawn, leaving a clear path for his queen’s bishop to protect his knight. “Okay,” Val muttered, seeing where things were headed and how bad it looked for her king. She tried to distract his attention using a feint with her queen’s knight, but he didn’t fall for it. With careful consideration, he began to spring his trap, a series of moves that checked her king and left her only one response leading immediately to another check, three times in a row. Yet each time, he pondered and bided his time before making the obvious move.

  Captain Williams could no longer keep his silence. “You’re closing in! Don’t you know what you want to do?”

  “Just making sure, sir. Ah, yes.” Moving his knight to e6 not only exposed her king to his other bishop, it put the knight one move away from capturing Val’s queen.

  But the only move she could make was to counter the check with the one available pawn, which would inevitably be captured to end the game. Instead, Val tipped over her king. “I resign. Well played, Sam!”

  “I don’t believe it,” the captain said. “A whole game without one piece captured!”

  “He would’ve taken my pawn for mate, Dad.”

  The elder Williams puffed air through his lips. “One measly pawn.”

  “Don’t underestimate them. Sam checked me with a pawn three different times.”

  Kirk shrugged. “The triumph of the little guy.”

  “I’ll say,” Val replied. “You really had my king on the run there. Half my moves were of the king, most of them to get him out of check. I never even got to move my queen.”

  “I only moved mine once.”

  “Yeah, but you made her the anchor for the formation you assembled around my king.” She shook her head as she examined the board. “Look at that. We only moved seven distinct pieces each. And you mated me in thirteen moves.” She smirked. “In case you’re wondering, Dad, his mating usually takes a lot longer than that.”

  Sam blushed, and her father winced. “More than I needed to know, hon.”

  “It’s just a matter of focusing on the long-term goal instead of instant opportunities,” Sam said—and then blushed harder. “In, in the game, I mean. The chess game.”

  Val was laughing now. “Among other things.”

  Her father cleared his throat. “I understand strategy,” he said, trying to get back to a more comfortable topic. Predictably, the former wide receiver followed up with a sports metaphor. “There’s no game without a game plan. But you can’t always win by playing it safe. I mean, not only did you shy away from sacrificing your own pieces, you didn’t even take any of hers!”

  “I didn’t see the need, sir. My real target was the king. And luckily, I was able to work around the other pieces this time. Taking hers would’ve cost me mine and reduced my options.”

  “And leaving her strength completely intact didn’t bother you?”

  Sam smiled, meeting Val’s eyes. “Her strength is what I love about her, sir. And playing the long game until she gave me an opening has worked for me before.”

  Her father seemed unimpressed. Later, when he went out to the rear patio to heat up the barbecue for dinner, Val managed to get him alone while Sam chopped vegetables in the kitchen. “You don’t approve of him, do you?” she asked bluntly.

  Captain Williams was just as blunt, as had always been their way with each other. “He’s sure not the kind of guy I ever thought I’d see you fall for. So timid and intellectual. No toughness in him.”

  “Why do I need someone tough? Don’t you think I’m tough enough for two?”

  Her father’s eyes widened. “Of course you are, hon! But if we’re talking . . . well, if you think this is serious . . . I’m your dad, Val. I can’t help thinking about what my grandkids are gonna be like.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for—I’m not trying to pick out a stud horse here. And if and when I’m ready to think about that, it’s my decision, not yours.”

  He held up his hands placatingly, though one still held a large pair of tongs. “That’s not what I meant. I just don’t think he’ll be able to keep up with you in the long run, and I think you’ll get tired of waiting for him.”

  “That’s what I thought at first. That’s why it took me so long to realize what he had to offer. But I was wrong. He’s taught me the value of patience and quiet.” She gently touched her father’s muscular arm. “Which is why I believe he’ll win you over too, if you just keep an open mind.”

  He lowered his head. “I’ll try, hon. For you.” But his tone was grudging.

  Val could tell she would need patience. This was going to be a long game.

  January 8, 2166

  Smithsonian Orbital Annex, Enterp
rise XCV-330 exhibit

  “This seems to be my week for giving tours,” Malcolm Reed said as he led T’Pol through the enviropod of the first UESPA ship named Enterprise. The cylindrical pod was the approximate size and shape of a midsized passenger shuttle, though with a cramped, submarine-like interior. Luckily, this was a private tour after the museum had closed for the evening, a perk of the captains’ combined clout, so they did not have to contend with crowds of tourists squeezing their way through the cramped hatches. The pod sat at the front of a long, narrow boom, almost like the kind used in Klingon ship designs—but at the rear of the boom was a single vertical vane connecting it to a pair of wide, flat rings instead of the more familiar cylindrical nacelles. “You’ve really never been to see this exhibit before? I’d have thought it would be the sort of thing to interest you.”

  “Not particularly,” the Vulcan captain answered. “Humans were not the first protégés of the Vulcans to attempt to emulate the annular warp drives of Vulcan starships. And the Experimental Coleopteric Vehicle program was discontinued twenty years before I came to Earth, in favor of Henry Archer’s Warp Five Project. As you are aware,” she went on as they entered the navigation and briefing area just aft of the bridge, “the latter was of much greater concern to then-Ambassador Soval when I was assigned to his staff.”

  “He sure made me plenty aware of it back then,” came a new voice from the bridge. One of its acceleration seats rotated to reveal Charles Tucker III smiling back at them. As usual, their secret-agent friend had managed to slip into the vessel without being observed until he wanted to be. Reed had done his share of intelligence work, but he’d never mastered that particular trick. “But we’ve all come a long way since then, haven’t we?”

  The other two descended the short flight of steps to the deck of the bridge, which occupied the top half of the foremost section of the enviropod, giving it somewhat more headroom than the three decks of quarters and crew facilities farther back. At the front of the bridge was the upper half of the transparent aluminum dome that formed the nose of the pod, affording a view of the Orbital Annex hangar beyond. A portion of NX-01, the subsequent Enterprise on which Reed, T’Pol, and Tucker had once served, was visible beyond, giving Reed a rush of nostalgia.

  The warmth with which T’Pol greeted the former engineer was subtle, recognizable to Reed only because of his fifteen years of friendship with them. “It is good to see you safely returned from your recent travels, Trip. We have been understandably concerned for your welfare.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Tucker assured her. “Phil Collier of Abramson Industries may be one of Starfleet’s most wanted right now, but the Section did its usual thorough job of severing any data trails that could tie that identity back to me.” He rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “And as you can see, their cosmetic surgeons put my lovable mug back to rights, or as close as it gets these days.”

  “I’m just surprised you went back to that nose,” Reed teased. But it was said with fondness and relief. He and Tucker had been given a rare chance to renew their friendship during the lengthy Ware mission. They had seen each other infrequently over the preceding years since the former engineer of Enterprise (the one visible outside, not this abandoned prototype) had faked his death to become an operative of the secretive, extralegal intelligence cabal informally known as Section 31, after the clause in the Starfleet charter whose ambiguous wording about extraordinary measures in times of great crisis was regarded by its leaders as the authorization for its existence. Reed had only himself to blame for that separation, for it had been he who had proposed the idea, seeing it as a way to infiltrate the Romulan Star Empire and undermine their impending war plans. Reed believed that Tucker had done important work during the war, even playing a key role in preventing a Romulan victory.

  Yet Tucker had remained dead in the eyes of the galaxy even after the need for that deception had passed, carrying on as an anonymous intelligence operative. Reed had come to fear that Tucker had gotten too deep into the spy game and begun to lose himself in the process.

  The discovery of the widespread threat posed by the Ware, a technology that the two men had encountered and bested once before aboard NX-01, had allowed Reed to offer Tucker a chance to become an engineer again, even if it was under an assumed identity as the civilian consultant Philip Collier. It had worked out well, with Tucker’s team discovering a means to deactivate the Ware and liberate its captives—and later, on behalf of the Partnership, attempting to develop a bioneural surrogate that would enable the Ware to be used safely without drawing on the brains of imprisoned sophonts. Things had gone wrong when their research had accidentally created a program that triggered the Ware to tear itself apart in an autoimmune reaction—an ideal weapon for its destruction, yet potentially devastating for the Partnership races that depended on it. Tucker and his colleagues had continued their search for a better option . . . but Section 31 had used another infiltrator to leak the destruct protocol to the Klingons as part of a secret deal to head off their invasion of the Federation. The Section had then arranged for “Collier” to be implicated as the source of the leak—both to tie off loose ends and to compel Tucker to abandon that identity and return to the shadows.

  But they had not counted on Tucker’s conscience. Saving the Federation from Klingon invasion had meant condemning the Partnership to the same fate and wiping a unique civilization from the galaxy. That had been the last straw for Tucker, and his former Enterprise crewmates had agreed to assist him in doing something about it. Something decisive—and hopefully survivable.

  “In any case,” T’Pol told Tucker, “your propensity for secret meetings aboard museum vessels named Enterprise is growing predictable. It might be best to choose a different type of venue in the future.”

  “She’s right,” Reed said. “If you’re serious about bringing Section Thirty-One down from the inside, we’ll need rendezvous protocols you haven’t used while on assignments from them.”

  Tucker held his gaze. “Believe me, Malcolm, I’ve never been more serious. I’ve already set certain things in motion. I have . . . a very resourceful ally now. I’ve just gotten back from making arrangements with him. He’s not willing to get his hands dirty directly, since he has good reason to protect his secrets. But he’s been around a long time and he’s learned a lot of tricks. He’s given me some leads that have helped fill in some of the bigger picture that Harris has kept me from seeing.” Harris, Reed knew, was the name of Tucker’s supervisor in the clandestine organization—the same senior officer who had recruited and handled Reed as an intelligence asset early in the latter’s Starfleet career. “And he’s given me the means, when the time comes, to disappear in a way the Section won’t be able to track.”

  T’Pol frowned. “But your hope is to expose and neutralize the organization.”

  “Yeah, but we humans can be the vengeful type. I can’t be sure they don’t have some failsafe set up to retaliate against whoever brings them down. Better safe than sorry.”

  “That will only become an issue if we succeed in bringing them down,” Reed said. “I presume that’s why you requested I bring my own dossier on Thirty-one.”

  “That’s right. Between what you’ve pieced together, what I’ve learned from eleven years on the inside, and what my new silent partner’s been able to add, I’m hoping we can finally build a complete enough picture of the Section’s structure that we can tie all its players together—and hopefully link them to tangible proof of a crime.” Tucker sighed. “There’s no shortage of things I could come out and confess to, but that wouldn’t implicate anyone else without hard evidence.”

  “Of course,” Reed said. “They’ve always been careful to compartmentalize that way. That’s why we need enough to bring it all down at once.”

  “Not to mention,” T’Pol added, “that if Trip were to reveal himself to the authorities, it would raise many questions about why he falsified his death and what actions he has taken in the interim. T
his would risk exposing certain facts that could be damaging to many—for instance, facts pertaining to the Romulans’ true nature.”

  “Believe me, I’m well aware of that, T’Pol,” Trip said. “That’s why I’d prefer to leave that as a last resort. Better to just disappear again—make Harris and his cronies think I’m dead. That way, they won’t come after me or any of my friends.”

  “Then we’d better get started,” Reed replied.

  Tucker led them back into the navigation and briefing area, where he’d attached a more up-to-date interface to its small situation table. “This archaic tech should be harder to tap into or decrypt later,” he explained. “Most of the folks who’d know how are retired or dead.”

  Reed loaded his dossier of collected intelligence on Section 31 into the interface, and the two captains and the engineer began to look it over. “To summarize,” Reed said, “I’m fairly certain by now that the ‘Section’ is essentially one man’s rogue operation.” He highlighted the name and image of a gray-haired man he and Tucker both knew well, bringing up a sparse informational inset. “Matthew Harris. When I first met him more than twenty years ago, he was a captain in Starfleet Security, assigned as its liaison with Starfleet Intelligence. SI was a fledgling organization then, and it needed to draw heavily on Security assets for its operations—which is how I became involved.” That was a story all three knew well by now. “I eventually became aware that some of the missions Harris assigned me to were not officially sanctioned by either Security or Intelligence. Since his division was operating in an administrative gray area, he’d taken advantage of that ambiguity to turn it into his own black-ops unit, in the belief that it was sometimes necessary to do the wrong things for the right reasons.”