Private Control

It was the sound every captain dreaded: alarms blaring, cries from injured crewmembers, as the ship shuddered, out of control; and through it, the computer's calm, death-knell voice:

Brenda Shoemaker wondered why it was so calm.  Who programmed it to sound calm, making an announcement like that?  It should have been yelling, The ship's going to explode!  Get out while you can!  Run for your lives!  Flee, hurry, escape!

She was delirious.  She couldn't speak.  Couldn't move.  Couldn't get out the words, All hands to escape pods.  Not that she had to.  The system had been redesigned; computers used reserve power for transporters, beamed out the incapacitated, and sent everyone to safety.  The lifeboats would autopilot away.

On the viewscreen, what should have been the peaceful blue blossom of a wormhole danced, jagged, crackling, undulating wildly.  It was a sight, a wormhole spinning loose of its subspace axis; dangerous, and breathtaking.  Not that she could appreciate it, or glimpse it for more than a second.

She needed a new body.  The doctor told her that whatever struck her, cracked her like glass.  She couldn't bring herself to review the logs.  Seeing how badly she got pulverized on her own bridge didn't interest her.  It was just as well, they said.  If it made her uncomfortable, then she shouldn't.

They didn't tell her that the logs had been classified, anyway, limited to a command level she didn't possess.  She didn't know, so she didn't ask.

The Lavir.  Who, or what, were they?  It was a question on many a mind in Starfleet Command, in the year 344.  Seven ships.  Seven Quantum-class ships, scattered in distant parts of the universe, other galaxies, met with the same end.  UFS Humanity's was the only crew to escape.  A force with that kind of reach, and power...

Theories existed that a super-Federation might encompass galaxies, as far above the Federation as the Federation over a primitive tribe on some backwater planet – with as much moral reticence about swatting a few pesky starships as people had with stepping on ants.  They might not have even realized they were doing it.

Since the attacks, and the grounding of the fleet, Brenda went looking for answers.  She was an admiral; it was part of her job to know what they were up against.  She had her adjutant interview crewmembers from the Humanity who made it back.  Most didn't know what happened, but it happened fast.

One gave a very telling, and, at the time, unsettling response.

Brenda strolled down the Dolphin's back.  Delphinus, Latin for dolphin, was one of the strangest urban structures she'd ever come across.  It was only a building, part of a city, yet a city unto itself with its vastness, amazingly engineered.  The city floated on an ocean, in a warm, temperate zone of the planet Arion, beneath a blue sky.  The ocean glistened miles below.  The Dolphin, the massive centerpiece of this equally massive structure, was, literally, shaped like a dolphin, as if poised, sprung from the depths in a curving arc, frozen in mid-jump, about to plunge back in.  Anti-gravity generators kept everything in place.  She shuddered to imagine the fall from the underside, the Dolphin's "belly".

As admiral, she was too busy to conduct personal interviews, but this was different.  Connor Ezra had filed a protest after the incident, blaming the ship's loss on crew negligence.  The report got buried and lost.  Starfleet records never got lost, unless it was intentional.  He was threatened with investigation, which translated to possible time in a social re-education program, and promptly resigned his commission.  What did he have to hide?  Whatever it was, she wanted to meet this man.

She found him at a sidewalk table, nibbling crackers, over a glass of wine and an old-fashioned book.

"Mister Ezra?"

He looked up.

"Esara."  He got out of his seat, brushing his hands off, and motioned to the empty chair across from him.

Brenda checked her complant's memory file.  "You're filed as Connor Ezra."

"Connor Ezra."  He nodded.  "Originally Esara.  Macedonian.  It got corrupted into Ezra, which is Hebrew, which I'm not.  It rolls off the tongue, but that's not my name.  I changed it back."

"I see."  She took the open chair.  A waiter started to approach; Brenda waved him off.  "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me," she said.  "I'll try not to take up too much of your time."

"It wasn't that long ago I quit Starfleet, Ma'am."  He sat down.  "If an admiral wants to come all the way out to hear my side of the story... Well, to be honest, you're the first.  So I guess I should oblige."

"I'm curious what happened.  You resigned your commission.  From what I've read, you worked hard to make lieutenant.  You say 'your' side of the story.  Is there another side?"

"Well...."  He paused.  "The side you've been getting until now... and then there's mine."

"Tell me about it."

He did.  But it wasn't what she was expecting.

Humanity was the ship's name.  It was supposed to represent humanity, to epitomize what it meant to be human, and humane, at humanity's most glorious height.

Somehow, the fact that aliens, non-humans, crewed the ship along with humans, cheapened the symbolic meaning.  At least Connor Ezra thought so.

He was not particularly anti-alien, let alone Humanist, that fateful day when the attack came.  Nor had he been, before that.  But being on the ship, named Humanity, with those who weren't human... The contrast was unignorable.  After the thought hit, unbidden, he started seeing and thinking about everything differently.  Especially after the attack.

The effluvium of that particular atmosphere hit home, when alien error... stupid, bumbling, inefficient aliens... got the ship destroyed.  Sensors detected it, that strange energy reading out of nowhere.  It matched the signature in Starfleet bulletins, manifesting before a ship's destruction with all hands.  It happened to the Dream, Vision and Hesperia.  Connor was willing to bet that alien ineptitude contributed to those ships' demise.

The ship's tactical officer saw it first, and stared at it, struck dumb, unfazed.  If not for Connor, who happened to be walking by that very moment, they might have all died.  Humanity would have been doomed, thanks to the Benzite.  Connor did what the Benzite should have done (humans = always picking up the slack, he said) and alerted the captain.  The energy used by the hostile force, who or whatever was behind it, somehow didn't trigger shields and defensive systems.  Thanks to Connor (and his all-too-human compassion, in those days), they were able to get shields up, and hold out long enough to launch lifeboats, before the ship fell.

The Benzite got a medal for saving a crewman stuck in a door.  A medal.  Connor effectively saved the crew (those who escaped, which included most of them, thanks to his quick thinking, though not everyone made it).  He was one of the last ones out.  He stayed longer than the captain.  And what did he get?  Not a thing.  Not even a commendation.

It wasn't about recognition.  He didn't want to be recognized.  He didn't want special treatment (the kind aliens got).  Equal treatment.  That was all he wanted.  Wasn't that what life in the great, glorious Federation (he said) was supposed to be about?  Equality through diversity, and all that?  He did his job, like any Starfleet officer should.  They didn't get special awards for doing their job or doing it well.  They were expected to do it well, and help those in trouble.  That was why the Benzite's saving of a single crewman (whom anyone could have saved, passing that door) was, in itself, nothing special.  The Benzite simply happened to be there.

Connor's eyes started opening, that day.  He started realizing, this was how it always was in the Federation.  Aliens did nothing more special than humans.  Humans did great things every day, expecting nothing in return.  They did great things because those things they did were great.  The greatness, the grand glorious majesty of Earthly creations and achievements, was its own reward.  It was entirely owed to the fact of human compassion that aliens had a Federation to benefit them, that they had the comfort and wonders of modern science, medicine and technology; why they had jobs on human ships.  Humans didn't instigate the Federation, according to Connor Esara, but they sure as hell built it, and Starfleet.  Without humans, neither of those once great institutions would have ever existed.

And when aliens did something trite, entirely owed to chance, everyone fell over themselves, worshiping them, yammering how great that was.  Even humans.  Recently, a human and a Wrnlaxi had mated, producing twins.  Big sensation in the news.  Big deal, Connor said.  More pollution of the gene pool.  More mediocrity, to water down the world of human greatness... according to Connor Esara.

Looking around the sidewalk café, Brenda noticed: Everyone was human.  No aliens.  She understood now why he lived here.  Unlike Earth, and a lot of other so-called human colonies, Arion had a 99% human population.  "You hate aliens," she said, trying not to sound aghast.

"I'm angry," Connor said.  "I'm sick of the double standard; you know?  It's not fair.  We've done great things.  Humans, I mean.  And we still do.  All the time.  But all anyone talks about is aliens, aliens, aliens!  What aliens do; everyone's in love with aliens.  Like they do these great things, and our contributions don't mean squat.  Think about it, and then look at the record of their accomplishments.  I mean, look at it, really.  The awesome things they do?"  He shook his head.  "They aren't great at all.  Here.  Look at this."  He set his book on the table, the cover facing Brenda.  The title was Exodus: Humanity's Ancient Migrations.  "It's a real eye-opener," Connor said.  "Did you know humans were traveling space ages before Cochrane discovered warp drive?  A lot of the impressive structures on alien planets... They didn't build them.  Humans did.  They couldn't do it without us.  Where would they be without us?  They depend on us to make it happen.  And when it does, it's the exception rather than the norm.  A fluke.  Like Losyl."  Losyl: The Benzite tactical officer's name, on the Humanity.  "But if we as human beings express pride in the accomplishments of our people, what happens?  We're suddenly the R word: Racists.  Guilty of hate and prejudice.  Loving our own kind is evil, but loving those who are different, or inferior, is good.  It's their way of tearing us down, trying to bring us down to their level."

The word racist didn't bother Brenda.  It was a buzz-word.  She had a bit of a "racist" reaction herself the first time she ever saw an alien, back home in Kansas.  Still, she was doubtful.  "What are you saying, Mr. Ezra?  They're jealous?"

"Esara," he corrected.

"Sorry."

He smiled, and shrugged.  "They certainly want we've got, don't they?  But they try to twist it around, make it look like it was their doing, and we're supposed to thank them for bringing us the light of civilization.  Like they civilized us!  Take Vulcans for instance.  They claim we wouldn't have warp drive if not for them.  Others swear the Borg had something to do with it, or it was the Klingons, or the Suliban.  But look around, and tell me who's more civilized.  Who built the Federation?  We did.  We're not supposed to be as good as we are, and we're supposed to feel bad because we are?  We're supposed to elevate those inferior to us and treat them as equals and pretend they're better, when the simple hard fact is, they aren't?  They're not as fortunate or as gifted, so we should feel sorry for them and give them everything we have?

"Well I say no way, and no more.  I wasted my life supporting that kind of thinking.  Since the attack–"  He lifted both hands and mimed quotation marks with his fingers.  "–my eyes are open.  The world is upside down.  We're still under attack.  We're under siege every day by these aliens, crowding in around us.  It's a war.  A race war.  And regardless of what anyone tries to tell you, they are not like us.  We're supposed to love these aliens while they're sticking guns in our faces, stealing from us, poisoning and destroying our society?  They don't want to coexist with us.  They don't want to live among us peacefully, with respect.  They want to kick us out of our homes.  Out of our own lands, off our own planets.  It's already started.  Some want to kill us.  You want to talk about hate?  There's hate for you.  They hate us and want to kill us because we're human.  That's racist.  You don't hear about the people getting mugged and harassed and raped and maimed by these inhumans every day, because we're human, like we did something to deserve it.  They don't stop to realize that it's our very humanity, the humanity they spit on, which made us feel compassion for them; which made us think if we let them in, we'd get along.  But that's not the case.  That's not reality.  We let them in and they shit on us.  Our compassion, our basic love for life in all forms, has been our undoing.  Now we're getting the rude awakening.  Some of us are waking up and seeing the folly of our ways.  And what's really so bizarre: Some of our own people still think we're in the wrong, and they're in the right!  They still want to bow down and worship the scum.  So maybe love isn't the answer.  Maybe there's a time and place for hate.  If love is our undoing, then maybe a little hate and prejudice will save us.  So yeah, I do hate them for that, and I'm angry.  I feel betrayed.  I hate my own people who've betrayed us."

Brenda looked at the book still sitting before her and thought, Wow.  What a speech.  "So that's why you resigned."

"After the reaction to my protest, I knew I was wasting my time.  Like Starfleet.  It's a waste of time.  I'd probably never escape investigation, and get subjected to re-education.  I don't need anyone to tell me what I should think, least of all our perfect, holier-than-thou government.  So I quit."

He was surprisingly outspoken, and passionate about his statements.

Brenda didn't know what shocked her more: That, or after some time, realizing that she was starting to see things from Esara's point of view... agreeing, even sharing the same views, even if he did sound half-baked at first.  She didn't take the man's book, but procured her own copy.  It was full of half-truths, ramblings of a crackpot, like theories of ancient astronauts who built the pyramids or Stonehenge, but every theory had a kernel of truth.  There seemed ample proof of ancient starfarers, the Preservers, who took interest in preserving human cultures, millennia ago.  Others said it was the Iconians, or that the Iconians and Preservers were the same race.  The author of Exodus, Milo Johnson, claimed that all these theories of an ancient super-race pointed to humans from the future.  His evidence was scant, but it was an interesting idea.  With the ability to travel through time a known fact, who could say that ancient (or future) humans didn't build many of the impressive structures around the galaxy?

She didn't want to say that was interesting, afraid it might encourage him.  So she said, "Tell me about the attack."

"There was no attack."

"What?"

"Something was off about those readings.  I knew it.  It took me a while to figure out: It was a war game condition.  I've seen those kinds of simulations.  I served on the Republic; all we did was practice war games, in case we ever kicked boots with the Romulans.  Computers are sophisticated, but they can be fooled.  Essentially the ship believed it was under attack.  And we're at their mercy, so we couldn't tell the difference, unless we went to a window and looked out.  This whole story of the Lavir, a mysterious powerful enemy who wants to keep us in our own galaxy.... It's a sham.  A hoax.  I mean, look at the name.  'Lavir'?  That's 'rival', backwards.  An invisible rival.  What more proof do you need?  Starfleet destroyed their own ships, and tried to kill us.  I don't know why, but... there it is."

As outlandish as it seemed, it was not the first time Brenda heard such claims.  Members of her crew aboard the Liberty cited similar concerns after the ship's loss.  The tone of the incident reminded her of her finale as Liberty's CO.  Most people who knew of the Liberty disaster knew the official story.  There had been a wormhole mishap, confirming rising suspicions that the Kahn network posed a danger.  That was true.  But few bothered to ask why Liberty tried to open a wormhole under those conditions.

The Klingons on the warbirds claimed they thought Liberty was a Romulan ship.  Brenda knew better.  The attack was intentional, unprovoked, and premeditated.  Those murderous bastards knew exactly who and what they were shooting at.  The orders came from Kronos itself.  The alliance with the Federation meant nothing.  Critics publicly denied it.  Starfleet Command, directed by the Federation Council, ordered Brenda to lie in official statements, saying the attack was a mistake.  Afraid of losing her career (and spending time in re-education herself), she capitulated.  It was a sign of growing unrest in the Klingon hemisphere, a sign of things to come.  The border patrols had gotten ballsier and more aggressive ever since.

Ironically, Brenda understood their motivations.  On Kronos, in the center of the Klingon Empire, a different storm brewed.  The Klingon High Council had been in talks for years of uniting with the Federation.  They were practically part of the Federation already; why not make it official?  It looked like it might happen, in the near future.  But some Klingons didn't like that idea.  After they attacked her ship, killed three members of her crew, nearly her along with them, Brenda couldn't disagree.  Not Kronos alone: Romulus was on the road to Federation membership.  One big Federation, covering the Alpha and Beta quadrants: welcomed in the Federation, because it would mean peace had won.

But as she was finding out, peace was not always a good thing.  It was turning out to be one of the most tumultuous years in Federation history.  Unrest, brewing for decades, maybe centuries, was heating up.  The next few years looked to be the most uncertain, and frightening, in history.  Peace did not necessarily usher a better and brighter future; not if it was the peace of surrender.  She had surrendered once.  She did not consider herself highly principled, but she knew right from wrong.

Weeks ago, an order came through her office, signed by the president, members of the Federation Council, and Starfleet's top brass.  In three months' time, a mysterious force called the Lavir had wiped out seven Quantum-class ships, on long-range assignments, in different corners of the cosmos, leading to the Quantum Fleet's recall.  Then came the order, after the fleet was grounded, to forget the Lavir; refrain from discussion or investigation of the mysterious force or threat they posed.  Brenda, 'only' an admiral, was not exempt.  She was in charge of the Quantum Fleet.  Destroying seven ships in that fleet concerned her.  And she was not to discuss or investigate what destroyed them.  The Lavir matter had been removed from direct investigation, and placed under the auspice of Division Five.

Brenda wasn't born yesterday.  She recognized hanky-pank when she saw it.

To her shock, Cristo Pacicco made a formal request to come work for her, days later.  He had been cold and distant since their relationship ended.  How long ago was that?... God: Twenty-three years.  She should have been the one acting cold and distant: He broke it off.  Except for a brief lapse, in '23, where they ended up in bed together... (She told herself, at the time, there was nothing wrong with open relationships; she could love and be married to Stephen, and still have a little fun on the side, it didn't change her feelings... but felt so guilty afterwards, she knew it had been wrong, and would've pretended it never happened, if not for Cadie, that bitch, blowing it open...)  Except for that one time, she'd never let herself get close to Cris Pacicco again.  Ever since, they behaved as friends, at least on the surface.  She knew he never totally got over it.  He didn't like it when she fell for Stephen and got married.  But he was the one who broke it off.  That was '21, when she got promoted to captain.  Cris claimed he knew Captain Tribune was retiring and an intimate relationship wasn't possible if she was captain.  Cris Pacicco's problem was, he wanted to be the quintessential 'Italian lover'.  Didn't want to tie himself down.  Might miss opportunities with other women.

Pacicco had been one of Liberty's tactical officers.  She'd gotten him his posting.  She knew him at l'Università di Bologna; he had impressive insights: Two reasons she'd brought him aboard.  She wondered why he wanted to get out of Tac Analysis.

As part of the team at Starfleet Headquarters, he knew of the Lavir.  The public didn't know what those in command did.  That included knowledge of the Lavir, but Starfleet's tactical analysts were all over it.  She could have asked, but decided to check for herself.  Maybe he had trouble getting along with someone in his department, or maybe it was another reason.  (She hoped it wasn't because he was getting older, and pining for old times.)

To her (second) surprise, he'd gotten married, three years earlier.

Not surprisingly, the analysis team was also ordered to silence.  Cris filed no protests.  But if he was the Cris Pacicco Brenda remembered, he probably wasn't okay with it.  He'd voiced suspicions over the Liberty destruction, suspicions Brenda echoed in her own mind but kept to herself.  He'd been happy as a tactical officer.  To request a transfer to her office, where no tactical openings existed, something had to be bothering him.

When she contacted him, he said he wanted a change of scenery.  He'd been in tactical for decades.  He wanted to do something different.  That was all.  No other reason, he insisted – and while Brenda was certain he was alluding to their failed romance, she also felt certain, by intuition, that the allusion was a cover for what he didn't or dare not say.  Privacy was, contrary to public opinion, an illusion.  Computers mapped every conversational discourse: Facial expressions, vocal nuances, body language, complant frequencies if present (and no one could prove complants didn't allow telepathic eavesdropping).  Only she would understand, she reasoned, and he was counting on it.

She was smart enough to know, discussing the Lavir openly might be unwise, now that it was under Division Five's oversight.  This might have been his only way to bring it up with her, without going outside open channels.

She granted his transfer, making him her personal adjutant.  Flag officers favoring those they worked beside in the past was not unheard-of.  She didn't like the idea of him being that close, working together, but the past was the past, they agreed, and it was a good way, maybe the only way, to find privacy, where they might share information without raising suspicion.

Cris Pacicco turned her world upside down.

Privacy was an illusion.  A dream.  A thing of the past.  Even as it was being taken away, everyone told themselves, It's not that bad; They still respect our privacy; They wouldn't violate personal privacy, not in the Federation; It's paranoid, that's what it is.  The Federation didn't spy on its citizens.  They wouldn't.  They couldn't.  Right?

Anything could be learned, with the advanced state of science and technology.  Federation security had means of surveillance beyond some people's imaginations.  Anything, and everything, could be learned.  Anyone, and everyone, could be watched.  Anyone, and everyone, was watched.  Sensors, invisible holorecorders, complants... Privacy was a prized commodity.  Few could buy it.  The cost was impossibly high.

Commoners, the common public, had nothing worth hiding.  Some vainly thought otherwise, but what they ate, when they ate, what they did at work, those "secret" business documents that never stayed secret, who they had sex with, what they looked like when they relieved themselves... Most meant little in threat value comparison.  Everything was scaled in threat value.  Did it pose a threat to the Federation, or to those in control?

This encouraged a dual atmosphere: One of openness, exhibition, those who knew they had nothing to hide or did not care, and bared themselves for all to see... and another, of secretiveness, as those robbed of their dignity fought in private, personal ways for what the system denied.

Threat assessment: The only reason for such control.  Those who truly had something to hide worried about such scrutiny, and rightly so.

Finding a private place to meet was next to impossible.  Arranging it without making anyone aware was impossible.  Imagine trying to tell someone, Let's meet in private, when the word private was instantly flagged in surveillance computers.  Those wishing to meet would be tracked and followed.  Information exchanged would be thrown into stark contrast, high relief, to the watchers watching them.  Every iota of their lives on record entered into the equation for analysis.

And when those wishing to meet were Starfleet officers, the hoped-for secrecy did not exist.

Since grounding the Quantum Fleet, there had been talks of retooling Quantum-class ships, returning them to service on standard assignments within Galaxy Alpha, the sort of work they did before being sent through transgalactic wormholes to distant parts of the universe.  There was a feeling that the Federation was stretching itself too far, too soon; overreaching, as the Lavir attacks proved.  Knowledge was not worth lives, it was said.  Brenda took an inspection tour of the recalled ships, towing Cris along: Normal procedure.

The briefing room of the UFS Mystery, docked at Starbase 65 for upgrade, was bare, devoid of furniture.  Sensor feeds awaited reconnection.  They could not be monitored, or at least, not monitored easily.  Isolated in the heart of the vessel, the two of them, Cris unfastened his uniform jacket and pulled out a sheet of white paper: Hard-copy.  Not a PADD, not holo, either of which could be usurped by computer.  Hand-written notes detailed what he had learned of the Lavir, before his team was called off.

Brenda read it, read it again, then crumpled the sheet into a wad, pressing the black trim along the edges between her fingers and let go.  The synthetic paper vanished, incinerated before it could touch the floor.  She stared at a blank wall, speechless.

"I know," Cris said.  "It's..."  He shook his head.  "I didn't want to believe it.  I thought I was wrong.  I thought it had to be wrong.  It had to be.  Why would Starfleet do this, or help to cover, let alone make up, such a bald-faced lie?  Entire ships... my God... all those people..."

"He was right."

"Who?"

She told him about Connor Esara.

A hoax.  Brenda had wondered, like every officer on her command-level: Who or what were the mysterious Lavir?  Who could destroy seven Starfleet vessels, scattered across the known universe?  Who would need to, if that advanced?  Who had that kind of reach, that kind of power; what were their motives?

A cover-up.  Starfleet... someone in Starfleet... destroyed those ships.  They falsified logs and sensor readings, making it appear as sudden attacks from nowhere, by unknowns.  It was what they wanted investigators to find.  Delving deeper would have revealed more, in time: Hence, stopping the official analysis.  They destroyed those ships, from within.  Twelve-hundred lives.  Cris had continued studying data privately after his team was dismissed, rote memorization his only aid, aggregating information, based on his own suspicions, developed over weeks of study.  In doing so, he defied orders from another admiral, higher up the chain: Hartwell.  Lisa Lauren Hartwell.  And in so doing, he discovered why they were ordered off the investigation.

Everyone behind these incidents was guilty of treason.  And no one was held accountable.

"Cris."  Brenda looked at him.  "If you told anyone else..."

"No.  No one.  I just... What does this remind you of?"

Their eyes met.  Brenda looked away.  Cris was there, when the Liberty was attacked without warning.  Attacked, and destroyed.  The attack nearly cost Brenda her life.

When they returned home, Brenda knew they were being watched.  Casual inquiries indicated an increase in activity surrounding her office.

She tried not to go back.  She owned her family's home in Kansas; she went there, working in the living room where she had grown up.  Cris came over occasionally.  They kept everything professional, rarely discussing their mutual past.  It might have made more sense if they did.  Trying to evade suspicion often aroused suspicion.

The times they had to be in the office, adopting a poker face was imperative.  They never discussed the Lavir, or anything beyond visible, present business.  Computers analyzed body language.  The slightest reaction or gesture would trigger a silent alarm.  The computer would focus internal sensors on everything in her office.  Was it enough?  Did it make a difference?  If Federation security wanted to know what they were thinking, computers were only one method of finding out.

Cris never talked about her, and him, all those years ago.

He was a widower.  A gang raped and murdered his wife on Risa.  It was their honeymoon.  Some got sentenced; others walked free, on circumstantial evidence, or lack thereof: An all-too-sad and familiar story, reported with increasing frequency in the Federation.  Cris had gone out, and his wife visited the shops and bazaars.  She never came back.  They found her days later, in a ravine.  Genetic analysis revealed traces of the assailants' DNA on her body – Klingon, Ferengi and Bolian – enough to identify and detain the attackers, and still there was somehow not enough to convict them.  There would have been no harsh punishment: They would have been subjected to re-education, perhaps community service.  Prisons had been abolished as wasteful and anti-productive.  Virtual prisons, social re-education, were the preferred forms of legal punishment.  But even that would have been too extreme for them, apparently.  As it was, only those convicted received the tame sentence.

It reminded Brenda of the protests.  The protests were circuses, fodder for the media, excuses for counter-protests, like those Bajorans staged after the Cardassians had their turn: Bajoran protests, which the media and the Federation Council took very seriously, gaining more attention, more favor, for Bajor: In all, a diversionary tactic.  Cris, the tactician, pointed that out, but Brenda was already seeing for herself.  Bread for the mob.  Bread and circuses.

Cris pointed out something, once, after seeing a span of protest coverage: When humans staged protests against their treatment by non-humans, the reaction was very different.  The media rolled out stereotypes of human racists, hate groups, violent extremists who were somehow pure evil, to be shunned, feared, scorned and ridiculed.  Anti-human racism.  It raged in every major city, across Earth and the Federation, anywhere humans and non-humans mingled.

Brenda felt horrified, guilty, and ashamed: She had brought Stephanie into this world.  Was this the future that awaited her?

Cris was powerless to do anything.  He filed legal protests.  They got swept under the rug.  He was a Starfleet officer, so he couldn't file a lawsuit.  If he retaliated out of revenge, he'd earn a harsher sentence than the criminals.  This was what the Federation had come to.  Bread and circuses.  No justice.  No penance, no accountability.  Ignorant leaders, ignorant populace.  Those who protested (if they were human) were slapped with labels, discredited, and, of course, ignored.  Cris told Brenda about times aliens harassed his wife.  Her name was Catherine; a fashion designer.  She was stunningly beautiful, he said; from Bordeaux, in western Eurasia, of French, Spanish and Italian ancestry.  Once, in Paris, she was walking down the street in a striking outfit of her own craftsmanship, minding her own business.  Cardassian teenagers threw fish juice at her.  She never got the oily smell out of her clothes.

Cris broke down and cried, as much for his wife as the injustice of it all.  Brenda took him in her arms and cradled him, thinking of Stephen.  She missed him.  Before she knew it, she was crying too.  She and Cris held each other.  It was the only time they got close, since they reconnected.

She had been blind.  Her eyes were closed.  She didn't see what was happening.  The incidents seemed isolated, the reactions of extremists; they could not represent the whole Federation.  But they did represent a growing danger, one too many people turned away from and didn't want or refused to see – especially in Starfleet, which concerned itself with events in space, not on the planets they came from.  Being on Earth, with a front-row seat to current affairs, she was getting a different picture from what the media or Starfleet news bulletins portrayed.

The Federation was being systematically eroded from within.  It was slowly, steadily, falling apart.  The world she had known was gone.  What was left, was going to hell.

All of this, combined, awoke something.  She could not go on walking blindly through life, ignorant of the danger.  In Starfleet, they worried about what went on among the stars.  They weren't supposed to get involved in planetary politics.  Was it that way by design?  Starfleet constituted the Federation's military.  As the military, they posed the greatest conceivable threat to Federation control.  But the government kept them diverted, making them part of that absolute control, focused outwards, instead of inwards.

Somehow, her renewed association with Cris aroused suspicion anyway.  He was reassigned again, without her consent.  When she contacted him, he acted as if nothing was wrong.  Nothing at all.  A little digging uncovered an L-21 procedure.

Brenda knew what L-21 meant.  Stephen had wanted an L-21 performed on Chromus, a Romulan envoy who attacked one of his officers.  L-21 essentially reprogrammed personalities.  It could erase undesired knowledge from one's brain, if that knowledge connected to unpleasant memories or certain tendencies.

Mind control.  The Federation used mind control.

Around the last time she spoke to Cris Pacicco, she was due for a physical.  Would they subject her to an L-21 treatment?  Would they force it on her, maybe sooner than that?  Make her a good, little, loyal Starfleet officer, one who never questioned or challenged this era of crime and corruption, dubious agendas and mind control and social meltdown?

Reading was self-education.  Exercising the muscle of the mind.  Like too many Starfleet officers, she didn't do enough of it.  Once she started, the more she read and adjusted her views, the more she saw: Connor Esara was right.  Starfleet, the Federation, everything she had ever known, was built by humanity, but forged on double standards... on lies.

Lots of things began to make sense, a different kind of sense from what she had known, or thought she knew.  Things fell into place, which led her to re-examine the destruction of her ship and brush with death.

There had been another ship named Liberty, a United States ocean vessel.  The state of Israel attacked it, killing dozens of naval personnel, injuring hundreds more.  Like so often happened in the Federation, that fact got swept under the carpet.  The media didn't concentrate on such events.  Why?  Because the same enemies of mankind who ruled Israel owned the media in those days, and controlled the most powerful nations in the world: The United States.  The European countries.  Western civilization.  They controlled them through money, politicians, and people, people who allowed themselves to be distracted with entertainment, growing lethargic as the future was stolen from them.  They posed the greatest threat to mankind, in those days.

That same paradigm was playing out again, history repeating, in the Federation.  Maybe the same men were in control in those days, centuries ago.  Maybe they always had been.

After the Lavir, when she learned the truth, she was essentially asked to surrender again.  No, not asked: Ordered... by the same people who shut her up before.  The Federation Council, now Starfleet, was guilty of killing their own, their loyal servants.  And for what?  Better relations with alien races?  The good of the Federation?  The classic excuse of the corrupt.  She began to see the real inner workings of Federation politics.  The Council, entrusted to represent and respect the interests of the people, had become self-serving, foul, corrupt: A bunch of corrupt politicians, in charge of the most powerful nation in the galaxy.  Eventually they would destroy it, if unchecked.

She had looked the other way for years.  Taken it lying down.  She couldn't stop the machine; she couldn't oppose the bureaucracy, so she had went on with her life.

Since meeting Connor Esara, tracking his activities, she learned that he was beaten to death at some sporting event.  The killers were human, according to reports.  But her own investigation yielded another telling truth: The 'humans' were Bajorans, the kind who surgically altered their noses and took Earth-human names to blend in.  Many Humanists saw these as the greatest threat to Federation society.

The killers went free.  Claimed he started a fight.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but they murdered him and went free.  In an era where no crime went unpunished, an era of liberty and justice for all, few liberties existed, and justice was a mockery.  Liberty.  Her Liberty had been destroyed, sacrificed on the altar of a lie.  Liberty was now a political term to cover the truth, that there was no liberty.  No freedom, no truth, no honesty.

As a Starfleet officer, she never saw it.  There were two worlds: The world of the fast, sleek and shiny, of starships, holodecks and adventure, far from planets and streets and lives where different races from different walks of life collided... and then there was that world.  People who spent their lives in Starfleet, with their heads in the clouds, among the stars, never really saw it.  Brenda never saw, until she met Connor Esara.  The killers escaped, and were not made to answer for their crimes.  She wished she knew who did it... who killed him.  Connor Esara's memory demanded justice.  So did Cristo and Catherine Pacicco.  So did many other victims, injusticed or murdered because they were human.

It was not long before she joined the Humanists.  As quickly as Connor Ezra changed from a meek, polite Starfleet officer, a relative nobody, into Connor Esara, a raging spokesman for the Humanist credo, Brenda went from Starfleet admiral to a rebel, an underground resistance leader, fighting the organizations she once served.

Connor Esara was a martyr for the Humanists.  She wondered if he would be proud of the status.  Would she end up a martyr for the cause as well?

She had her aircar pick her up on the roof.  As the sleek automated vehicle hovered a few feet from the edge, she heard noise from the city streets below.  It was the third day of the protest, an annual event around President's Day, and they were out in full force.

Walking to her vehicle, Brenda Shoemaker paused, drawn by an angry cry, and went over.  At the rail, she peered down, along Starfleet Headquarters' sloping high-rise, into the hordes of people, picking out homemade signs past barriers surrounding the grounds, amidst gray splotches, faces and writhing limbs.  Cardassians.  Unlike their military, who had displayed a detached calm – when Cardassia had a military – they could be quite vocal, and animated.

Some saw her.  Bodies surged in her direction, against forcefields erected to keep them out, fueled by her attention, yelling louder, shaking and thrusting signs.

She didn't need comtact magnification to read the signs.  They looped visual logs of recent activity.  For the last quarter-century, there had been protests, marches, demonstrations, in San Francisco, outside Starfleet Headquarters, the Federation Council building, Starfleet Academy, and elsewhere.  It extended to the historic office of the president in Paris.  (Federation presidents used different offices; the one in Paris was a museum and landmark.)  A lot of aliens in the Federation had a grudge, apparently.  Cardassians, resentful of Federation membership, waved signs with slogans in their native writing: The Federation was an imperialist oppressor, in league with Bajor (their mortal enemy); humans and Bajorans were evil; the wraiths were "the answer" (the pah wraith cult was popular among Cardassians, thanks to Dukat, their "messiah" promised to return from the dead).  There would be a holy war of retribution; all humans and Bajorans would die.

This was a "peaceful" protest.  Police would break it up if it got violent, or too violent.  What was too violent?  Each day the protest claimed lives.  Humans and Bajorans caught up in it did die.  It was okay.  They could be cloned.  And so it went.  She wondered how.  Why.  Starfleet personnel rarely entered on foot during the protests, beaming in and out or landing/exiting by shuttle, as she did, distanced from the unrest.  Maybe it was the smart thing to do.  But it also displayed a Starfleet tendency, to not get too close: Keep a distance, don't get involved, go on about your business, ignore it, for your own sake.

Too many people ignored society's problems.  Ignoring problems didn't make them go away.  No one was addressing the real problems that needed to be addressed.  The public lived in a state of denial, of even the most basic truths, things nature instilled, but leaders told them to ignore.  And who was to blame?

Everyone.

Including her.

No more.  Not after that day.  Not from that moment on.  That day, she was taking responsibility.

Connor Esara was right.  Aliens constituted a visible threat to the future of the Federation; maybe the future of humanity.  It was true.  It was the only real truth which mattered.  Everything else was ignorance.  Race was not a social construct, as schools taught.  Race, as a definition, was the center-most concept in society.  The ones who didn't see it were blind, liberal fools.

Brenda climbed into the waiting aircar.  As it lifted off, over the San Francisco skyline, she took one last look at the city, and behind, at the skyscraper housing many of Starfleet Command's offices.  Her office was one of those.

The last time she had left her office, she knew she was being followed.  It was too obvious: A scare tactic.  Sensors could track her anywhere on Earth.  It was to keep her in line.  But it was too late.  She had put her affairs in order, as subtly, safely, privately as possible.  She did not formally submit her resignation: That would tip them off.  Nor would she transmit it after she was gone: They could track any transmission to its point of origin.  Where she was going, they could not be allowed to follow.  They would add being AWOL, absent without leave, to the list of charges against her, but that was the least of her concerns, and the least of the charges.

She wondered if L-21s could be reversed.  If a mind was rewritten, could it be restored to its original state?  Could Cris Pacicco be saved... or was he better off without the painful memories?  Would that be justice?

People like Connor Esara, Cristo and Catherine Pacicco, and George Moussakis, who had his own horror stories of Cardassian atrocities, changed everything.  Together, alive or dead, they would change the world.  Brenda did what she should have done sooner.  Before she resigned, she used her position to make connections, gathering as much intelligence on the Humanists as she could, covering her tracks.  Be prepared: That was what Stephen always said.  When she departed, she had her own branch of the movement already at work.