36. Sales Pitch
Much as with Admiral Harlaown's experiences with armed guards, Jean-Luc Picard had often had politicians look at him with barely-disguised hostility. In fact, this was not even the first time it had happened in the Federation Council Chamber. Given the disaster that his last speech had ended up being there, though, getting the exact same reaction before he had even opened his mouth was not a good thing.
In the end, it was the Orion councillor who spoke first.
"She insulted my dress-sense," she stated petulantly.
It took considerable effort on Picard's part to keep a straight face. "Then I apologise on her behalf, Councillor Ayla, and compliment you on your adherence to the values of the Orion people." It only makes sense that the oldest profession should have a few traditions of its own, after all.
The Betazoid telepath in the front row started sniggering, and Councillor Ayla shot him a filthy look.
At the head of the chamber, President Min Zife rubbed the cartilaginous ridge bisecting his face with a blue-skinned hand, as if staving off a headache. "Picard. I should have known. Was triggering a civil war in our darkest hour not enough for you? Must you tear the very heart from our Federation? Whatever your newest allies paid you was ill-spent – rest assured that the Council will not submit to the demands of a cowardly traitor such as yourself."
"Arf," Admiral Harlaown enquired mildly, "did you by any chance suggest to these good people that we were engaging in a coup against them?"
"Well, you see, Brig Pinter was going on and on and I sort of lost the thread halfway through and had to figure things out by context and I'm pretty sure that I got the general gist and... wait, we're not organising a coup here? Why do we never get to organise a coup?"
Picard raised a hand. "For the record, I'd like to mention to the Council that I had no part in this."
"Me neither," Chrono growled. "I apologise, honourable councillors, but it appears that my... subordinates" – he shot a meaningful look at Pinter and Arf – "got a little bit carried away. Since I'm prepared to chalk up at least some of it to Arf being... herself, that means you get yelled at second, brigadier. This way, specialist..."
"Wait... what are you... owowOWOWOW..." Dragged along by her ear, the familiar kept up her string of complaints almost all the way to the exit... until she saw the look in her commander's eye.
Beside Picard, Brigadier Pinter gave an audible whimper. The chamber was silent for a moment, before the distant sounds of an extremely annoyed naval officer at maximum volume began to filter through the walls.
"So what did you intend here, Picard?" Zife asked, with the exact same tone of strained patience that Admiral Harlaown had used scant minutes before.
"To talk. That's all. To exercise my rights as a Federation citizen under Article 367/J. Is that acceptable, Mr. President?"
"That depends. Which of our government's founding principles do you wish us to compromise this time? I'd prefer that it wasn't universal equality – I've got a rather nice office, and it'd take a while to move all my things out of it."
Picard smiled. "None of them, actually."
"Oh? Then I am interested, even if it is the morbid fascination of an impending shipwreck. Go ahead, captain."
"Understood, Mr. President." He turned to the viewing gallery. "Sergeant, is the equipment ready?"
Half-buried in a tangled mass of 'liberated' journalistic paraphernalia, a Bureau technician gave him an awkward combination between a salute and a thumbs-up. "Full multimedia, sir. Going international in 3... 2... 1..."
The massive holoprojectors the advance team had deployed lit up, showing the interiors of the Aldebaran Alliance's General Assembly and the Klingon High Council. Most of the politicians on-screen looked almost as bewildered as the Federation councillors.
"Zife, what in the Emperor's name is going on?" the Klingon chancellor, Gowron, snarled.
"I know about as much as you do, chancellor," the president replied, seeming unnaturally cheerful at this fact. "Ask him."
"Well, it's perfectly simple, Chancellor Gowron," Picard replied smoothly. "I wish to present an offer on behalf of an interdimensional civilisation opposed to Chaos. Not just to the United Federation of Planets, but to the Aldebaran Self-Preservatory Alliance and the Klingon Empire."
He paused for dramatic effect – or, more accurately, to get his own thoughts in order. He was quite aware that the Bureau were using him for their own ends, whatever those might be, and while Admiral Harlaown's intervention had certainly helped restore his faith in their good intentions, it had not done the same for his faith in their competence. Even the fact that he could see no other alternative was not hugely encouraging – he had felt exactly the same way when he came up with the genius idea of attempting to convince the Federation to abandon the Prime Directive. All in all, he just hoped that history would either vindicate him this time, or be sufficiently occupied with the wider effects of the ensuing catastrophe to forget about the person who helped start it all. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead...
"Let me ask you a question, my friends. Why did I suggest the repeal of the Prime Directive? Why did the Aldebaran Alliance go along with it, even to the point of separating from the Federation, without the slightest concern for those they forcibly uplifted? Why did the Federation itself declare war in the face of annihilation, stressing unity above all else? Why does the mighty Klingon Empire wait dormant, rather than imposing its will upon the galaxy at large? Not ideology, my friends. Not the oath-sworn principles of our offices and cultures. Only fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of annihilation. Fear of the enigmatic, terrible beings who swept us aside like ants to sate their own self-righteous, murderous caprice. We creep in their shadow, some paralysed, some lashing out, some trying desperately to appease these new gods. All have but one goal in mind; to ensure that their tormentors – our tormentors – do not return and finish what they started."
"Objection!" Supreme Commander Menelaus of the Alliance shouted. "President Zife, I demand that these... these insults be stricken from the record!"
"For once, I agree with the Aldebaranian puffball," Gowron rumbled. "Nobody may accuse the Klingon Empire of cowardice."
By now, Min Zife wore the dementedly cheerful smile of a man tap-dancing through a minefield. "As astonishing as a junior lawyer such as yourself might find it, Menelaus, this is not a court-room. If it was, I suspect that this whole farrago would be concluded far more swiftly. Carry on, Picard."
"Thank you, Mr. President." Picard gestured, and another projection appeared next to him, showing a pair of ships approaching each other in deep space. "This is a recording of an engagement two weeks ago. I'm sure you recognise the combatants – one is a Borg cube, one of their few warships remaining in the quadrant, and the other is a Sovereign-class battlecruiser. Specifically, my own Enterprise-E. The latter has been upgraded with a hybrid technology developed by the Time-Space Administration Bureau, the extradimensional allies I spoke of – a technology they call the 'Spiral Driver'."
The illusory vessels had already engaged, the colossal cube dwarfing its opponent. It almost seemed to be toying with the Enterprise, flicking out cutting beams and shield neutralisers with the closest thing to bored contempt a three-kilometre-tall biomechanical battleship could muster. The Federation cruiser, though, did not seem to be having any of it, blocking every attack with a barrier of solid green fire.
Then, it began its counterattack. Every phaser bank fired at once, covering the space between the two in a web of flickering, verdant beams. The cube's shields collapsed in seconds, fragments the size of city blocks melting and crumbling away from its hull. In desperation, its own barrage intensified, disruptors and torpedo launchers across its surface focusing on the interloper that dared wound it so. The Enterprise weathered antimatter explosions that could demolish cities, blasts designed to shake it apart on a molecular level, and beams capable of slicing through a planet's crust, with little effect other than the brightening and expanding of its barrier.
"When an appropriately-fitted vessel's Spiral Driver banks are activated, its weapons and shielding are strengthened exponentially," Picard explained. "You will note that the Enterprise achieved these results using phasers exclusively – no torpedoes or more advanced weaponry were involved. In addition, the vessel begins to manifest several more unusual abilities – particularly once the enemy start shooting at it."
As he said it, the cruiser's barrier flared enormously, causing its target to stop shooting for a moment as its sensors overloaded. A second later, it collapsed, reforming into an enormous phantom drill which struck the side of the cube like the heavens' wrath. There was a single, frozen instant where nothing happened, and then over twenty-seven cubic kilometres of heavily-armoured battleship shattered like glass.
Ignoring the gasps from around the room, Picard continued his spiel. "Apart from the energy-absorption, Spiral Drivers also allow interdimensional travel, as well as temporary alteration of the ship's hull, usually in order to add further, exotic weaponry to its arsenal. Ah yes, and since you haven't yet seen what they do to quantum torpedoes..."
Within the drifting wreckage of the cube, something moved. A battered, armour-plated sphere shot out, moving away from the Enterprise with unsettling speed for something so large. Its hull crackled with energy as its abused warp drives prepared for a jump – though the Borg had no real concept of fear, whoever or whatever was commanding it clearly felt that discretion was the better part of valour.
In response, the Federation cruiser fired a single torpedo. The audience saw a greenish streak as the missile crossed the distance, and then the star-field behind the sphere twisted and its dull grey surface rippled like jelly. The screen went white.
As the video feed returned, they saw that the sphere had vanished. So had half of the demolished cube. All that remained was a faint afterimage of a spiral overlaid on the display.
Picard studied the reactions of the various heads of state. Gowron was staring at the projection with naked avarice, Zife was giggling quietly to himself and appeared to be on the verge of tears, and Menelaus looked like he would much prefer to be back in his own home, hiding under the sheets and hyperventilating. Astonishingly, it seemed that Brigadier Pinter had actually managed to get two out of three predictions correct.
"This," he continued, "is what the Bureau wishes to give all three of our nations. A power to challenge gods. A road to the multiverse in all its glory. A total paradigm shift in how we perceive the universe, and in how we interact with it. In return, they ask only one thing."
"The destruction of Chaos," Chancellor Gowron stated with unholy relish.
"Their censure and containment, at least," Picard amended, ignoring the frantic hand gestures from Pinter. He realised the clarification would do nothing to help sell their offer, but in his experience, it was best to nip the legendary Klingon bloodlust in the bud before it got out of hand and the war crimes started to stack up. Besides, there had been more than enough half-truths and misdirections in this little affair to make him appreciate a spot of honesty.
Gowron merely raised an eyebrow in the inimitable manner of his species. "If those are the terms you wish to use, then yes."
It was not a reassuring reply, but he decided to press on anyway. "My friends, we have lived in the shadow of the Stiletto long enough. With the assistance of the Bureau, we need no longer fear the agents of Chaos. We need never let them taint another universe with their influence again. No more running. No more hiding. No more compromises. Today can be the day that we reclaim our place in the multiverse. Today can be the day that we cast aside the infighting and animosity that have bedevilled us in our darkest hour, and show our foes that the Alpha Quadrant cannot be bullied, cannot be oppressed, and cannot be discounted. Citizens of the Federation, sons and daughters of Kahliss, signatories of the Alliance, today can be the day that we DRIVE THEM BACK!"
He was shouting now, swept up by a cheap, gaudy tide of patriotic fervour and righteous fury that he knew to be entirely fabricated, and he did not care in the slightest. People were cheering, their voices seeming to come from miles away, and a small, detached part of his mind dimly noted that some of them had been patiently waiting for him to either leave the chamber or spontaneously combust not long before. The Betazoid councillor was looking deeply worried, Councillor Skadath was frantically whispering into his communicator, and Councillor Ayla's outfit had done what it had been threatening to do all afternoon, and nobody seemed to have noticed.
Grinning for reasons he didn't fully understand, he turned to Gowron's image. "Chancellor, my old security chief once told me one of the myths of your people. He told me that you destroyed your gods, sounding their death-knell with the very first heartbeats of your ancestors. These ones may require a little more effort, but would antimatter warheads be an acceptable alternative?"
The chancellor replied with the closest thing to a genuine smile he had given since the broadcast had begun. "Contrary to popular belief, the Klingon Empire is not entirely opposed to the marvels of modern technology. Your offer shall be considered, Picard of the Federation."
"And you, supreme commander?"
Menelaus looked pale, determined, and very, very young. "I was part of one of the first expeditions to New Syracuse after the Year of Chaos ended, captain. Rest assured, the Alliance bears little affection for the Stiletto or its masters. This new technology you speak of may be no more than smoke and mirrors, but if it isn't..."
"I assure you, sir, it isn't." Picard just hoped that the Aldebaran Alliance's leader would not ask him what the Spiral Drivers were like – the greasy caress of the terrible, alien power they channelled was something he suspected would revisit him in his nightmares for quite a while to come, and the fact that the crew interfaces strongly resembled Borg technology didn't help, either. He was quite aware that he had more than a few unresolved issues where the assimilator collective was concerned, and being reminded of them every time he walked onto his own bridge was far from a welcome experience.
He made the appropriate formal farewells, signalled for the technicians to cut the feeds, and turned back to the presidential podium. The temporary elation was already wearing off, replaced by the chill sobriety that his younger self recalled from those times when he had woken up in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar warm lump next to him and the general sensation that something had either died in his mouth or at the very least been extremely ill.
The Federation, of course, would be getting most of the Spiral Drivers. The pretext would be its greater size, but in reality, its greater stability would be far more important. A new balance of power would be created, maintained by the careful expansion of various nations' stockpiles of alien superweapons. The worst part was that it had sounded so very reasonable when Brigadier Pinter initially suggested it – leaving out some of the more salient details tended to do that.
For a moment, he considered ditching the whole thing. It wouldn't even be all that hard – everyone who could do something about it would be right in the room with him. All he had to do was open his mouth and start talking, letting the truth flow out as was a Starfleet officer's first duty. That was it.
Then Pinter gave him a friendly little wave from across the chamber, and he saw the gleam of dark red metal in the lanky brigadier's hand. It would be easy... and at the same time, it would be entirely impossible.
The mage had not indulged in any of his usual fidgety mannerisms on the day he showed Picard the folder, and he had read its contents with a calm smile and a conversational tone. Everyone had their own little levers, the things that they valued more than their nation, their pride, and even themselves, and Pinter had found them, laid them out on the table, and politely asked what the captain wanted to happen to them.
Starfleet was well over two hundred years old, and an organisation of that age was bound to accumulate a few legends. One was the Kobayashi Maru, an Academy training simulation from the twenty-third century. It had been deliberately programmed to deny any chance of victory, in order to assess how cadets would deal with impossible decisions where the only winning move was not to play... and Picard was in far too deep for that to be an option any more.
Instead, he merely composed his face into a neutral expression, and looked up at Min Zife. "So, Mr. President. Your opinion?"
The old Bolian politician did not answer him immediately, instead pinning Brigadier Pinter with a level, searching gaze. "Your people, colonel. They do not place much stock in the Prime Directive, do they?"
"The Directive, as I remember it, states that nobody 'may interfere with the healthy development of alien life and culture'," Pinter replied, his smooth voice at odds with his impressive collection of nervous tics. "With all due respect, Mr. President, the Year of Chaos blew that out of the water. All we seek to do here is patch up the mess the Stiletto left behind, whilst simultaneously allowing you the chance to regain what was lost and defend yourselves against those who might seek to take advantage of you. The multiverse has found you, ladies and gentlemen, and no amount of closing your eyes and covering your ears – or equivalent sensory receptors – will make it go away."
"Thank you for the elaboration," Zife commented drily. "You want to know what I think, Picard? I think that you have exceeded yourself. The speech on the Directive was nothing compared to this – a mere wave in an ocean, a mere tremble in the earth. Anything I say or do now is irrelevant. This is bigger than me, Picard. It is bigger than the Federation itself. All we may do is follow the stream, and let history be our judge... unless a presence closer to home decides to fill in for it first."
He knows. He knows what Pinter's doing. Zife, I'm sorry I voted against you. "Then may I cede the floor?"
"Certainly. I'm sure that my colleagues will wish to debate this at length." An ironic smile, half towards Pinter and half towards the Betazoid councillor. "If the good brigadier will permit it?"
The mage simply nodded and smiled. He'd won, and he knew it.
"Ah – one thing first, please," another voice said.
Admiral Harlaown walked onto the floor, a thoroughly subdued Arf trailing after him. "The specialist would like to make a public apology for her behaviour. If you would...?"
The familiar looked wretched, her ears drooping and her tail between her legs. "Umm... yeah. Sorry for, you know, the intimidation, the fashion critique, the stealing of the equipment... you get the picture. Sorry for all of it."
"Apology accepted, miss," Zife replied, his voice dripping with hollow magnanimity. "It's not as if you needed the extra leverage, anyway."
Councillor Skadath raised a hand. "Wait... does this mean that the whole business with the guards isn't happening? Bygones being bygones, and all that. Just so we're clear on this."
Despite being one of the few full-blooded humans in the room, the admiral's answering smile had fangs in it. "Oh, no. That stands. The Bureau honours its deals, and besides... you aren't the only civilisation where military and law enforcement get tied together. I hope you have a good lawyer, councillor."
Silence reigned, and then Zife started chuckling, building up to full-blown, hysterical laughter. If it had not been for the last, tenuous shreds of his sense of decorum, Picard would have felt like joining in. Dozens of councillors leapt to their feet, howling in protest, as security personnel filed in to herd Skadath, Dubois, and their ilk away, and the journalists grabbed their pilfered equipment and surged forward, rattling off questions with the gusto of sharks around a haemophiliac.
Amidst the mayhem, the TSAB teams quietly packed up their things and left.
"I'm disappointed, Pinter," Harlaown began. "Very disappointed. Your mission here was to help get the Federation's universe up and running again, lay down the foundations for future Bureau-sponsored aid programs, and, as an optional extra, enlist them as allies in the battle against Chaos. Playing power games that end up making us look like a bunch of manipulative, disruptive imbeciles was not on the agenda – or did you forget that you're working for the Time-Space Administrative Bureau rather than, say, the Belkan Empire?"
"I consider myself an intelligence officer, sir," Edsyl Pinter replied tightly. "That's all."
"Which justifies this... how? No, no, I don't need to hear the answer to that. It'd probably take hours on end and leave me twice as confused as when we started. My only regret's that I have to head off on another assignment before I get back in touch with Naval Command, but rest assured – when I do, I'm submitting a full report. Let's see what Fleet Admiral Thundra's opinion is on this, hmm?"
"As you wish, sir."
As he watched the boy make a beeline towards their pet Starfleet captain, Pinter couldn't help but fume. There were a lot of things he could have said a moment ago. He could have pointed out the military value of the Federation's antimatter and replicator technology. He could have explained that it was because of the very existence of Bureau Intelligence, a body willing to go to any length to ensure the vast organisation's survival and prosperity, that people like the good admiral had the freedom to lord their moral superiority over everyone else. He could have mentioned how Harlaown and his clueless minions had not helped matters much either, or how insufferably difficult it was to read one of those freakish, inhuman familiars. He mentioned none of this, though, because there were several ways in which he was not prepared to waste his time, and one of them was attempting to reason with a bone-headed, wet-behind-the-ears Navy pup who was the recipient of some of the most spectacular nepotism in recent history.
Nevertheless, a problem remained. He had nearly completed the groundwork that would gradually, inevitably turn not only the Federation, but the entire Alpha Quadrant into dependents of the Bureau. A quarter-galaxy's worth of potential mages and exotic technology at their disposal for the protection of the multiverse, and his supervisor wanted to run off to daddy right at the least opportune time. At least there were solutions to that sort of thing – particularly when said supervisor was about to head into enemy territory, a place where accidents were famous for happening. He just wished he wouldn't have to spend so much valuable capital in order to arrange it.
Idly, he brought up the feed on his Device's heads-up display from one of his monitor drones. Harlaown and Picard were talking quietly, and it was but the work of a moment to pierce the other mage's encryption field. The boy-mage was currently describing a secure channel to the captain that would allow the latter to contact him privately if he ever felt the need – standard procedure for people one considered to be under undue pressure. Clearly, someone had been paying attention to that damned telepath the Council had – he knew Harlaown hadn't done as little research on this universe as he'd claimed to. Pinter made a note to have it jammed, along with the admiral's other unmonitored lines.
Despite Harlaown's rank, that procedure would actually be fairly easy. All he had to do was have one of his associates wrap it up in some guff about an investigation of the boy's private life and drop it into the feeding tank that was Internal Affairs. Intimations of a financial motive would perhaps be best – the pay for senior officers in the Navy was not quite what it might have been, and when one factored in Harlaown's explosively-breeding family, the narrative essentially wrote itself. As the great Inspector Acous once put it, nobody, no matter their station, could evade the eyes of Bureau Intelligence... and whilst that wasn't a particularly original way of putting it, he felt that the source gave it a merit of its own.
Sorry, Harlaown. Nothing personal. He paused, and recalled some of the insults the boy had heaped upon him. All right, so maybe it is a little bit personal. Such is life, I guess.
He still had some time before he needed to execute the scenario, though, and there were other matters he needed to attend to in the meantime. He navigated through the HUD, selecting a private channel of his own use. It was labelled 'Obsidian', a name chosen in deference to the 'Obsidian Order'... the old title of the Cardassian Intelligence Bureau.
Sometimes, it astonished him just how straightforward shaping the destiny of a galactic civilisation could be.
Author's Notes: As you may have noticed, the Star Trek universe is probably the major setting I have the least intimate knowledge of in this story. Hope it doesn't show too badly.
Incidentally, I decided to down-grade phasers a little in this fic. According to Trek background, they're actually pretty devastating, with the larger ones nearly equivalent to one of Warhammer 40,000's lance turrets in destructive potential, and even the hand-held jobbies easily outmatching an Imperial Guard lasgun. With that in mind, I honestly couldn't see how the Stiletto could have cruised so effortlessly through the Alpha Quadrant's defences (except for generous helpings of plot armour – not that I'm y'know, implying anything), so a swing of the nerfbat was evidently in order.
That said, I point-blank refuse to do the same for photon torpedoes and their bigger brothers, quantums. Whereas phasers are powered by technobabble, and thus are as powerful as the plot deems them to be, the antimatter warheads on photon torpedoes are a known quantity to modern science – and an obscenely powerful one, at that. Quantum torpedoes, meanwhile, whilst still powered by technobabble, are defined as 'more powerful than antimatter warheads of equivalent size' – which, again, makes them something of a known quantity. As such, expect antimatter to play a big part on both sides, whether delivered by photon torpedo or otherwise. After all, Chaos has N2 mines, too...
