The State of the Union & I Told You So

The lounge was your standard-issue Starfleet lounge area: Fairly dark; for the most part quiet.  Dante had sat in dozens upon dozens across the galaxy.  They had little differences... memorabilia here, a different color scheme there.  But in general, you saw one, you'd seen them all.

He was in his usual seat.  Back of the bar.  Facing the door.  "A gun never sits with his back to the door."  He had heard that once somewhere... couldn't remember where right now.  But that was irrelevant.  The part that mattered right now was who he was meeting.  The person who was now... twenty minutes late and counting.  Dante took a sip from the water he had been nursing steadily for the better part of half an hour.

His father.  That was who had told him the gun line.  Harlan Winters... one of the most recognized names in Starfleet... for all the wrong reasons.  He had been the captain aboard the USS Samuel Adams.  During the infamous battle at Wolf-359 against the Borg, Winters had been ordered by Starfleet Command to engage the enemy in battle.  In an act of ultimate defiance, Winters had refused the order.  He saved his ship and over three hundred lives by not entering the battle.  Unfortunately, it cost him his career, his reputation, his very existence.

Battle.  Dante snorted at the thought.  That hadn't been a battle.  Battle suggests a semblance of a contest.  Wolf-359 was a slaughter.  The Borg went through the ships assembled as if they weren't even there.  It had been like a small child with a bunch of model ships, tossed about and crushed like so much trash.  So what if Harlan Winters had taken his ship in?  Another ship destroyed.  Another crew murdered or assimilated.  Starfleet couldn't see the forest for the trees.

It had been Harlan Winters who first began voicing his concerns about alien races permeating Starfleet.  Of course, no one listened.  After all, consider the source, they said.  Harlan Winters.  The traitor.  The stubborn old fool.  Just running his big mouth for attention.  Maybe it was true.  Maybe he was a stubborn old fool.  Maybe he was just running his mouth for attention.  Maybe he was just an old coot.  It didn't change the fact that he was absolutely right.  Dante remembered reading somewhere (again... he couldn't place where... his memory wasn't what it used to be) that Earth was now 59% alien.  The number sent a chill down his spine.  Over half of Earth was populated by alien races.  And the rumor mill claimed that number would be in the eighty percent range in less than a decade.

Harlan Winters was no longer alive.  He had died in his sleep.  Goldstein's syndrome.  The irony was, it was a disease nearly impossible to catch under ordinary circumstances.  And yet, he managed to catch it.  Coincidence?  Dante didn't believe in them.  He knew what some suspected.  His father knew more than he was letting on.  And somebody, somewhere, knew it.  And they couldn't chance that somebody, somewhere, might actually start listening to Winters.  Too risky.

Which was partially what led Dante here.  He had been in touch with someone from inside the Starfleet community; a sympathizer to the Humanist cause.  He had given Dante good information in the past.  This time, it was more personal.