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  “Don’t count on it,” he grumbled.

  “I think I’ve heard enough,” Cornwell said. “Section 31’s test was a bust, Leland, because the whole recruitment was a bust. From what I understand, she never took the job seriously, nor your mission.”

  “I certainly did,” Georgiou said. “I even selected an alias. Your spies use them, don’t they?”

  Leland rolled his eyes. “We were not going to call you Divinity Churchmouse.”

  “Wasn’t it innocent-sounding enough? I really don’t know. Where I come from—”

  “Yes, yes. They eat kittens for breakfast.”

  “No, not breakfast.”

  Cornwell forged ahead. “It all comes back to this: that you should never have been recruited in the first place.”

  Georgiou leered at her. “You recruited me first, Admiral. Starfleet gave me the captain’s chair of Discovery.”

  “When the Federation was on the brink of defeat, ready to try anything. It was almost a dreadful mistake. Burnham and Discovery saved us from violating our core principles.”

  Georgiou winced with nausea, not all pretend. “You also gave me a token signifying my freedom—which you knew would be completely useless while I was on Qo’noS. You knew L’Rell would keep me penned up. I suspect it was your first official request to her.” She chortled. “You introduced me to the Discovery crew as having escaped from a Klingon prison. Little did they know that was where they were delivering me.”

  Leland kept pressing his case. “The emperor has skills, Admiral. She has knowledge—of places that exist in both universes that we haven’t yet gotten to see. We can use her.”

  “She’s using you,” Cornwell said. “Can’t you see this has always been about escape for her?”

  Leland shook his head—and then turned his gaze toward Georgiou. “Is she right? You were really just trying to get away?”

  “Qo’noS was getting boring,” the emperor said. “But I wasn’t about to trade one prison for another. Even that pretend one of yours.”

  “But there’s so much you can do with us.”

  “For you. Not for me.” Georgiou turned her plate upside down.

  “It’s the Terran mind,” Cornwell said. “She’s never worked a day in her life for anyone else. Why should she do it for you?”

  Georgiou sneered. “Especially for a so-called secret organization that has its own ID badges—and whose leader takes orders from a computer program!”

  Cornwell’s eyes darted to Leland, who shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Georgiou rolled her eyes. “This again.” She looked to the admiral. “For someone who lies for a living, he’s got the worst ‘nonchalant’ face I’ve ever seen. He couldn’t keep a newt undercover.”

  Cornwell watched her—and then glanced at Leland. “It sounds like she knows.”

  “We hadn’t told her anything about that yet,” he said. “I swear!”

  “I got it out of one of your underlings,” Georgiou said. “The homely one. You all lack the imagination to think of anything truly diabolical, so you farm it out to an algorithm. Or me. What do they call it, ‘Control’?”

  Leland put up his hands. “I’ve never—”

  “Save it. The name fits perfectly. You’re all starved for leadership here in this universe, but no one will step up. So you have to invent something to think for you.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re almost not worth the trouble to conquer. I could just reprogram the machine and you’d all serve me.”

  Cornwell flinched. “Could she do that?”

  “No!” Leland put up his hands. “She doesn’t even know the first—”

  “I was an engineer, among other things. But relax,” Georgiou said. “Sneaking in and subverting is no way to start an empire. That’s no fun at all.”

  “All right,” Cornwell said. “We know what you were and where you came from. You’d be cautious, too, in our place, if someone like you appeared.”

  “Don’t presume what I would have done. I was on the lookout for secret weapons all the time,” Georgiou said. Then, idly lifting her plate, she decided to engage the matter. “But if someone did come to my universe—someone who was smarter, craftier, and deadlier than anyone else around? I would have killed that person. Immediately, before she ruined everything. But you won’t. And that’s why the Federation will fall.”

  “To you?”

  “To me—or to the Klingons, or to someone.”

  “Section 31 exists to prevent that,” Leland said. “We think of things that the Federation Council would never—”

  Georgiou moved suddenly, slinging the plate at Leland. It flashed noisily against the force field, causing both her visitors to stand—and Leland’s chair to crash backward as he drew his phaser.

  Georgiou clasped her hands on the edge of the table and stared right into the weapon. “Deactivate the force field. Set that to kill and fire.” Her focus didn’t waver. “If you really exist to protect the Federation, then you have to do it.”

  He stared at her, spellbound.

  “Do it! And stop wasting my time.”

  Cornwell’s eyes darted from Leland to her. “And if he did deactivate the field, you’d flip that table up into his face, blocking the shot. Then you’d kill us both and escape. And that wouldn’t help the Federation at all, would it?”

  “It would sure help me.”

  Cornwell spoke coolly. “You’re just a big bundle of hate, aren’t you?” She retrieved her chair and sat down. “Such rage. Do I need to find you a counselor? Someone to hurry you along through your stages? You seem to be stuck on anger.”

  Georgiou glared. “What are you talking about?”

  “Stages of grief,” Cornwell replied, picking up her slate and speaking matter-of-factly. “It was an old psychological construct. More of an aid to understanding than an actual progression.”

  Seeing Leland holster his weapon, Georgiou knew her gambit had failed. She leaned back in her chair. “We have such a model too—for coping with the loss of status.”

  Cornwell raised an eyebrow. “This should be good.”

  Georgiou reeled them off. “Defiance. Murder. Plundering. Destruction. And my favorite: Vengeance.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “One: refuse to accept your defeat,” Georgiou said. “Two: kill someone, anyone, who bars your way. Three: take what you need in order to build your power anew. Four: lay waste to all your enemy’s works.”

  “And five?” Leland asked.

  “Leave nothing of him but a stain on your palace floor.”

  He smirked. “Come to think of it, it does sound a bit therapeutic.”

  Georgiou crossed her arms and shrugged. “When you’re wronged, who else should defend you, if you refuse? Either you take the power, or you take the punishment.”

  Cornwell shook her head. “Who hurt you?”

  Leland gawked. “You’re going to psychoanalyze a whole universe, Doctor?”

  “That’s Admiral. And no, I only was really asking about one person. But one’s enough—and I’ve seen enough.” She stood and looked down at the seated Georgiou. “We took you on once when the Federation was in dire straits—and you nearly made us regret it. I don’t care what special skills or point of view you have. Letting you loose on the universe was bad enough. Giving you an intel job would be putting a phaser in your hands.”

  “I don’t need a phaser. You might have seen.”

  “It was a metaphor. Here’s another. You’re an invasive species, Philippa—a threat to the ecosystem. L’Rell knew that better than anyone. It’s why the Klingons did such a good job keeping you cooped up. But the Federation isn’t willing to give them the job again.”

  Leland volunteered, “What she knows is still useful. Section 31 could hold her.”

  “I trust you only marginally more than I trust her,” Cornwell said. “If you have a problem, have Patar take it up with Starfleet Command. But
the Federation Security Agency has its own powers, and it agrees with me. Discovery kept a future Klingon emperor in the brig for weeks. I’m betting Pacifica can hold a Terran one indefinitely.”

  Leland put up his hands. “Let’s discuss—”

  “It’s done.” Cornwell waved her data slate before Leland. “And one more thing. This Thionoga place is clearly not somewhere the Federation needs to be sending any more business to—covert or otherwise. I’ll see the judicial authorities get a report on that place!”

  The admiral stood, stopping in the doorway just long enough to look back with incredulity. “Divinity Churchmouse?”

  After Cornwell departed, Leland mumbled, “That report will get lost.”

  Georgiou chuckled. “I almost appreciate the boldness of your hypocrisy, Leland. Very Terran. But you’ll never take it to the next level.” Then her smile dissipated. “I don’t suppose your machinations extend to finding a way to get me out of this place?”

  Leland let out a deep breath. “The Federation’s terrified of you. I can’t imagine any situation that would make them release you.”

  “I forgot—your computer does all your imagining for you.” She stood. “Now unless you can find me some real food, get the hell out of my throne room. No more audiences today.”

  10

  Shuttlecraft Leizu

  BETA QUADRANT

  “So those medals of yours,” the bearded pilot asked the Trill woman. “Are they really gold?”

  “You know, I’ve never asked.”

  “Are you wearing one now? I mean, under the uniform.”

  Emony Dax tried to let an exasperated sigh serve as her answer. When the pilot didn’t stop staring, she said, “That’s a no.”

  “Just curious.”

  When Lieutenant Kubisiak still didn’t look away, she threw up her hands and retreated to the rear of the shuttlecraft. That’s a no too.

  Having spent most of her young life on display, Emony had discovered that fame produced different responses in those she encountered. Some, like Leizu’s pilot, fawned over her, asking about this Olympiad or that one, plumbing for gossip about the other athletes, and generally getting overfamiliar. Her long experience dealing with such people meant they usually weren’t more than a nuisance.

  Another group of people, however, was trickier. Its members assumed gymnastics was all she knew, dismissing her potential to do anything else. Leizu’s other passengers certainly had started with that view—and it was harder to take, because what people thought of her intellect had never mattered before. Emony’s physical feats did the talking for her.

  For most of her life, that was more than enough; critically, it had brought her to the attention of the Trill Symbiosis Commission. The Dax symbiont, having resided inside legislator Lela and mathematician Tobin, had longed to be paired with someone more physically active. Emony fit that bill perfectly.

  Receiving the symbiont felt at first like a reward—but it turned into a blessing. Beyond what she gained from accessing Dax’s wisdom and experience, Emony found the joining enhanced her skills, keeping her competitive far longer than her age should have allowed.

  And that was the problem. Modern medicine, diets, and training regimens had made it possible for athletes of many species to compete well into their adult lives. But whether Trill, human, or something else, gymnasts started their careers young. It didn’t matter that Emony’s body was up to the challenge; she had no interest in taking honors away from rivals who were now half her age, especially when the symbiont was giving her an advantage. It didn’t matter that the Trills had never revealed the existence of the symbionts to outsiders; she knew, and so did Dax, who understood her trepidation. Its curiosity satisfied, the symbiont agreed it was time for a change. The 2256 Olympiad had been her last.

  Emony had first thought of going into medical research years earlier, when visiting a university in North America to judge a competition. She’d encountered a young medical student there, whose unconcealed interest in her made Leizu’s pilot seem like a smooth operator. But Leonard McCoy had also thought highly of her intelligence, poring over texts with her in an antiquarian bookstore on the Oxford town square. “If you ever get out of this racket,” he said in his Mississippi drawl, “consider medicine.”

  She had—only to find, to her chagrin, that doctors needed to start early too. The Dax symbiont had more years of experience than any being she’d ever met, but it was the wrong kind of knowledge. Starfleet hadn’t panned out, and neither had her other offers. The best she could manage was signing up with a team of civilian researchers looking into a subject she knew something about: astrokinesiology.

  How sojourns in different gravities and atmospheres affected physical mobility was something Starfleet was keenly interested in. Since the subjects of study were always on the move, it fell to mobile research efforts like hers to go to them. After nearly a year of voyaging from one far-flung Starfleet vessel to another, Dax felt she’d made the jump from athletics to academics. But she’d never fully convinced her companions on the team—

  —and her boss was a lost cause. Rodolfo Eagan didn’t look up from his data slate as she entered the shuttle’s lab area. “There you are, Dax. Did you enjoy chatting up the new pilot?”

  “Time of my life.”

  “Another fan, I suppose. Must be nice to be recognized for something.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  A long-range warp-capable shuttlecraft detached to Eagan’s team, Leizu had picked up a new pilot every other starbase stop; she’d barely gotten to know any of them. And she’d also stopped waiting for Eagan to give her something useful to do.

  He looked up at her, his nose wrinkling. “I need to tell the pilot to watch the antimatter intermix in chamber two,” the gray-haired man said. “We’ll make better time.”

  “I can do it.”

  “Better if I do.” Eagan stood and headed forward. “It’s pretty involved. Dax, see if Garber and Winnock need you to proofread their reports.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  That was what he wanted to be called. As a Starfleet officer years earlier, Eagan had led science vessels like Hipparchus and Archimedes, though only on an interim basis; he’d never achieved a command of his own beyond small survey ships. He’d since retired and returned to his original calling, heading research efforts—but from the way he ran his people, he clearly still thought he belonged on a bridge, and that anyone younger was a rank plebe. Doctor Winnock, previously the beleaguered rookie before Dax came along, had put it best: “People never really leave the captain’s chair; they travel with their own.”

  Garber, the other of the team’s research physicians, handed her a data slate. “Sixteen files this time. Just see how it reads; don’t worry about the technical stuff.”

  “But I want to worry about it.”

  He smiled. “I know. Just don’t let it slow you down.”

  She’d gotten more support in single days from Garber and Winnock than she’d gotten from Eagan all tour—though often it just took the form of sympathy.

  “You’re still feeling like a glorified courier?” Winnock asked.

  “And not sure where the glory comes in.” Dax was going to elaborate, but Eagan barged back in on his way aft, causing her to step back.

  “We’re coming out of warp in a few minutes,” he said. “Let’s get set quicker this time. Our subject is a big starship, four hundred people—we’ll need to work fast.” He began pulling cases from a locker. “This is a type-one protocol, basic as it gets. They’ve been studying a volcanic planet for a while now, so there may be physiological differences between the ground teams and their previous baselines.” He turned his head. “Dax!”

  She was still just a meter away. “Present.”

  “Take these.” He began piling medical sample cases into her arms. He pointed toward the cockpit. “When whatshisface—”

  “Kubisiak.”

  “—when Kubisiak there lands, I want you out
following the doctors wherever they go.”

  She acquiesced. The routine hadn’t changed once in eighteen stops, yet Eagan felt the need to explain it to her each time.

  “This would go faster if they just beamed you aboard their starship and then to the planet. But you’ve got your thing,” Eagan said, hitting the last word with annoyance.

  Dax’s “thing” was a reluctance to be transported aboard Starfleet’s top-of-the-line ships; she had no idea whether their advanced sensor systems would identify that she was carrying a symbiont. None of the Trills knew for sure whether that was a possibility, and it remained a worry for a people who liked their privacy. It had also punctured her original Starfleet hopes.

  Eagan swore. “I knew I forgot to ask something. Dax, put all that down and tell the pilot to add something to his hail. The type-one test reactants are sensitive. We need atmospheric pressure readings for every site we’re visiting.”

  “Check.”

  Unable to find a place to stow her cargo, Dax just carried it forward to the cockpit. She plopped the mountain of cases on the copilot’s chair beside Kubisiak. He smiled at her. “Missed me, did you?”

  If someone gave me a phaser, I wouldn’t. “Captain Eagan—”

  “Is no captain—unless you count those twelve minutes the year I was born.” Kubisiak rolled his eyes. “What’s his lordship want now?”

  “Planetside data. He needs—”

  A jolt went through Leizu as the ship dropped out of warp before a red planet with volcanic features. “Look at it yourself. Tycho IV dead ahead.”

  And the starship orbiting it: U.S.S. Farragut.

  “She’s big,” Dax said, spellbound.

  “Constitution class. Some buddies of mine serve on her—Drake, Gilhooley, Morwood.” Kubisiak adjusted the shuttle’s course. “I was just about to hail.”

  Dax nodded. Then she focused on something in the nearer space before Farragut. “What’s that?”

  It was a thing without shape: a will-of-the-wisp, a smudge in space swirling its way through the void above Tycho IV.

  Shapeless, but not aimless. It was headed for Farragut.