Star Trek: Enterprise: Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code

Author:Christopher L. Bennett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Star Trek
ISBN: 9781476779140
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2016-03-29T07:00:00+00:00

11

September 16, 2165

Zytheel, Avathox

SAMUEL KIRK WAS GLAD that Endeavour had joined the task force. Its crew and Pioneer’s had worked well together during the Rigel mission last year. Not to mention that Captain T’Pol and Ambassador Jahlet were both accomplished diplomats, bettering the task force’s chances of reaching some sort of accord with the Partnership and securing the Vol’Rala crew’s freedom.

He was also glad to have the assistance of such a legendary linguist and first contact veteran as Hoshi Sato. It was no affront to his friend Grev to think so; while the amiable young Tellarite was a language prodigy in his own right, even he was in awe of Commander Sato and her uncanny intuitions into alien mindsets and methods of communication. Some of the Partnership’s members, such as the Monsof and Sris’si, had very different ways of thinking and communicating than most humanoids. The Sris’si, for instance, not only perceived the world through echolocation rather than sight, but were a largely solitary predator species. With less social interaction than most sophonts, their intelligence was not filtered through language as strongly as most, their communication more through action. And the Monsof were at a far more basic level of linguistic processing than Federation humanoids, for all their intelligence in other respects. It was only through the shared benefits of the Ware that these races had been able to interact with the other Partnership species at all.

And yet Kirk was not ready to dismiss either species as having nothing to say. Both had experience with attacks by anti-Ware factions like the Silver Armada and the Manochai. The Monsof, like the Nierl, had lost their homeworld to a Manochai assault, leaving them as refugees that the Hurraait had taken in. It was Kirk’s suspicion that those races’ vehement hostility toward the Ware was due to prior experience. The Partnership scholars that Kirk had spoken to had insisted they knew nothing of the Ware’s beginnings, but maybe there was some clue hidden in the accounts of the invasions. Conquering armies often left tales and records of their own behind in the lands they overran, if only to attempt to justify their conquests to their victims.

But drawing out the clues from one species’ documentation of another species’ accounting of itself was a tricky linguistic challenge, especially when the mediating cultures were as exotic as the Partners. Kirk hoped that Sato and Grev together could make a breakthrough that Grev alone could not.

When he returned to the two communications officers’ study kiosk after going to get them coffee (for the Partnership’s Ware had scanned Pioneer’s nutritional database weeks ago), Kirk found them laughing and gossiping instead. “Oh, Val hasn’t given up,” Grev was saying. “And she’s not the type to try to make him jealous by pretending interest in someone else. She’s just being his friend, same as always—though maybe a little more pointedly.”

Kirk made himself known. “Aw, Grev, I’ve asked you not to gossip about me. Val and I aren’t your personal soap opera.

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