Star Trek(2)
“Your arguments are all well and good,” Jofirek was saying to Harrad-Sar, “but I’m too important to deal with middlemen. When do I get to meet your employers?”
Zankor scoffed. “Restrain your lust, old man. Just the sight of them would probably give you a heart attack.”
Navaar smiled, both at the compliment and the irony. While the Sisters’ existence and importance were known to the higher-ups in other syndicates, few knew them on sight. Thus, Zankor and Jofirek were unaware that Maras was in the room with them, posing as one of the junior attendants who played a menial and generally decorative role in the proceedings—while a massive, nearly nude male slave tended to Zankor’s needs. Although Maras’s skills, to put it kindly, were far more in the physical sphere than the mental, she knew enough to avoid getting too close to Zankor, aware that pheromones as potent as the Sisters’ could have an irritant effect on humanoid females. Zankor was confrontational enough without such a hormonal boost. But Maras sat near enough to Jofirek to make him aroused and suggestible, ensuring that he would do whatever Harrad-Sar asked in the Sisters’ name.
Right now, Sar was assuring the old man that he was fully empowered to speak for the Syndicate. But Navaar was distracted by a grunt of displeasure from the being who stood to her left, also watching through the mirror. “Something troubles you, Garos?” she asked.
Dular Garos turned his broad, gray-scaled face to hers. “I share Zankor’s skepticism about Jofirek’s usefulness,” the Malurian intoned in his deep, resonant voice. “In fact, negotiating with either is a waste of time. Both their organizations are in ruins, struggling for relevance. What can they possibly provide you that the Raldul alignment cannot?”
Behind them, D’Nesh laughed. “You’re just jealous.”
“I’m surprised at you, Garos,” Navaar said with a gentler smile. “You understand our long-term objectives as well as anyone. To beat the Federation at their own game, we need to enlarge our alliance, draw on every resource we can. We need to be able to strike at them from all sides.”
“Right,” D’Nesh added. “And it can’t hurt to have a couple of sacrificial beasts to throw their way if we need to.”
Garos threw her a skeptical look. “Just so long as Maluria doesn’t turn out to be the sacrifice.”
“Garos, Garos,” Navaar said, stroking his arm. “Do you really think we would have revealed ourselves to you so openly if we didn’t value you as our closest ally?”
“You only revealed yourselves to me because you know Malurians respond to dominant females.” As always, he was frustratingly unmoved by her instinctive efforts at seduction. Not only did his reptilian origins make him immune to Orion pheromones, but Malurian males were irrevocably bonded to the large, polyandrous females who generally remained on their homeworld, Malur. Garos was an exile from Maluria—the system containing Malur and its three colony planets—and every action he took was driven by the hope of returning home in glory one day.
“But you have seen us do the same with others of sufficient importance. The Basileus from Sauria, for example.”
“Only when he failed to accept me as your representative,” Garos said with irritation, still stung by the humiliation of Maltuvis’s dismissal.
Navaar faced him squarely. “What would reassure you of our commitment to our partnership with Raldul?”
“Perhaps your attention to a matter of higher priority,” he replied.
D’Nesh gave him a cute pout with steel behind it. “Such as?”
“Such as the situation with the Rigelian Trade Commission. The Lorillians and Axanar have been pressuring Rigel to enact more aggressive security and anti-piracy patrols in the Kandari Sector—even to join the Federation so they can have Starfleet protection! The Commission has already invited the Federation in for talks. And if Rigel joins them, then others will be quick to follow.” He gestured at the negotiators on the other side of the mirror. “What good will it do to bring these minor players into our circle if the Federation nearly doubles its own size while our attention is elsewhere?”
“Come, Garos,” Navaar said. “You worry too much about short-term concerns. We’re playing a long game here.”
“You may be. The Syndicate’s territory is large enough that you can easily afford the loss if Rigel cracks down on crime and piracy in Kandari. But my alignment depends far more heavily on those revenues.”
Navaar smiled. “And that is the benefit of our partnership! It lets us direct our attentions toward several goals at once. You are more than welcome to address the Rigel situation yourself if it troubles you so. We trust Raldul to have the skill and resources to carry out such a venture.”