Star Trek: Articles of the Federation
by Keith R.A. deCandido



p.24-25 "Look at that."
     Esperanza moved to stand next to her. "Look at what?"
     "That." Nan pointed at the Champs Elysées. "You know, until the seventeenth century, it was just fields. Then Marie de Medici made a tree-lined path. It was named after the Elysian Fields in Greek mythology, which was where good people went after they died. By the eighteenth century, that path was a fashionable avenue--Marie Antoinette used to stroll it with her friends all the time."
     Esperanza smiled. "Was that before or after she ate all the cake and got her head cut off?"
     "Not sure, but I'm guessing before."
     "Right, because she wasn't doing much walking after the decapitation."
     "The point is--"
     "There's point?" Esperanza grinned. "Trying something new, are we, ma'am?"
     "Hush, you. The point is that the Champs Elysées has remained Paris's main thoroughfare for seven hundred years. The Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville, the Arc de Triomphe, the Bâtiment Vingt-Troisième Siècle, the Place de Cochrane, they're all here. The Tour de France has been run here for centuries, every parade in Paris comes down here, and it's on this very spot that the Traité d'Unification was signed by all the governments on this planet two hundred and fifty years ago."
     Esperanza was still grinning. "Ma'am, I could've sworn you mentioned a point."
     "Try a little patience, Esperanza, they keep telling me it's a virtue."
     "We're politicians, ma'am--both patience and virtue tend to get in the way of the work."
     Nan chuckled. "The point is--it's all because some rich woman who lived in a monarchy decided she wanted a place to walk. From that came this."

p.44 On the other side of Ozla, Regia spoke up. "Jorel, I have a source that says that a shipload of Reman refugees is heading for Outpost 22 along the Romulan Neutral Zone."
     "Bully for your source," Kant said with an insincere smile. "I can't comment on that."
     Another reporter was about to say something, but Regia didn't give him a chance to speak. "I'm sorry, Jorel, but what does that mean?"
     Kant fixed Regia with a withering gaze. "I should think that'd be obvious, Regia. Either I know all about it but am not allowed to say anything yet, or I know nothing about it and am saying I can't comment by way of covering, or some third possibility I can't say out loud. You people use words for a living, I would think you'd be able to recognize my own choice of words for precisely what it is. Maria?"

58-59 "Now, I want you to change the itinerary so that President Bacco leaves for the noon event at 2050. She will be taking one of the transporters. I don't care if you have to drag Montgomery Scott over from the S.C.E. office in San Francisco, I don't care if you have to animate the statue of Zefram Cochrane in Montana, but make sure one of those damn transporters is working at 2050, clear?"
     "Zefram Cochrane invented warp drive."
     Z4 was thrown off-kilter by Ne'al actually speaking, then again by what it said. "What?"
     "The transporter didn't exist when Cochrane created warp drive. In fact, I don't think it existed until after he retired to Alpha Centauri. If we animated his statue, I don't think he'd know what to--"
     "Just get it done, Ne'al."

p.64-65 "Esperanza, what the hell is this?"
     "It looks like a padd, ma'am."
     "It's what's on the padd that I'm asking about."
     Moving toward the desk, Esperanza said, "Well, ma'am, since I left my psychic powers in my other pants--"
     "Nobody likes a wiseass, Esperanza."

p.71-72 Also seated at the table were Admirals Ross and Akaar, Captain Hostetler Richman, and Secretary Shostakova. Akaar sat ramrod straight in a chair that barely fit his massive form, huge arms folded over his barrel chest. Abrik knew that the Capellan was some kind of royalty in exile or other, and he certainly had the attitude for it; Abrik had always found the admiral to be a pompous ass.

p.94-95 Sivak spoke up. "The Pike City Pioneers A-squad defeated their B-squad by a final result of eleven runs to ten."
     The president looked disappointed. "It was an intrasquad game today?"
     "Yes, ma'am. They will encounter the Palombo Sehlats tomorrow, and the Prairieview Green Sox the day following." Sivak looked up from his screen. "I was unaware that there was any legislation on Cestus III that required all municipalities to begin with the letter P."
     "Keep reading the schedule, you'll find Lakeside, Johnson City, New Chicago, Os--Oh, hell, why am I arguing with you?"
     "A question that torments us all, Madame President."

p.122 "Nice job with the Franklin quote, Matthew--I'm just sorry I didn't get to use it."
     "S'all right. I had plenty of thunder left over."

p.161 "For something that goes without saying, you do feel the need to describe it at length."
     --T'Latrek

p.178 "Why are you late?"
     "I ran into Krim. He'll do the FNS piece. He also says you shouldn't be scared of First Minister Asarem."
     "The man who divorced her thinks I shouldn't be afraid of her?" Jorel stood up from his desk. "That's advice I'm guaranteed to ignore."
     Zhres smiled. "That should put it in good company with every other piece of advice you've ever received."

p.181 Zhres sat down at his desk and started a search through Starfleet records. He soon learned that Wroar had been in Starfleet security for fifty years, that Moody's enlistment period was going to be up in a month, and that Jaron was the first Evoran in Starfleet. And now they're all dead.
     And thanks to his work, everyone in the Federation who read the news would know these things about them--know who they were, not just how they'd died. It might not have been grand work on the scale of what the president and Piñiero and Krim and the rest of the council and the cabinet and the rest of the president's staff did every day, but it was still, to Zhres's way of thinking, work worth doing.

p.197 "The president likes old-fashioned dress clothes for reasons passing understanding. At least mostly old-fashioned. From what I understand, this outfit is properly worn with heeled shoes, but I had to draw the line somewhere."
     "Glad she's not insisting on that for everyone. I'm wearing a dress-wrap." Tiburonian custom called for a sarong-like outfit to be worn at formal occasions.
     "Right now, I'd kill to be a Tiburonian. Or a Vulcan--they just have to wear nice big formal robes."
     "You could've worn your Starfleet dress uniform. I'm sure the president would've understood."
     Esperanza turned herself away from the peculiar reflection she was now casting and looked at her deputy. "There is no circumstance under which I will wear that white monstrosity in public again. I grinned and bore it while I was still in Starfleet, but one of the joys of resigning my commission was that I could happily burn that thing."
     "You burned your dress uniform?"
     "Gleefully and with malice aforethought. I only wish I'd had marshmallows to roast over the flames."
     "I know what those weaves smell like when they burn--the marshmallows would've tasted awful."

p.200 She shook a finger at Esperanza. "You know what your problem is?"
     Esperanza sighed. "No, ma'am, but I have every confidence in your ability to let me know what it is."
     "Actually, using the singular was a mistake. You've got plenty of problems, plural, but we don't have time to go into all of them. On this particular occasion, your problem is the shoes. You're supposed to wear--"
     "--high-heeled shoes with the outfit. I know, ma'am. However, it is my considered opinion--and I'm sure that the entire staff would back me on this one--that it would be extremely embarrassing and detrimental to our attempts to form a relationship with the Trinni/ek if, during the state dinner welcoming them, the chief of staff fell on her face because she couldn't stand upright in those torture devices."
     "Oh come on, they're not that bad."
     "Ma'am, if we'd given a ship full of those shoes to the Jem'Hadar, we'd have won the war in two months."

p.227 "So, what's happening between you and the ambassador?"
     "What do you--? I can't believe you're going to--Look ma'am, what happens in-- Oh, forget it."
     Grinning, Nan said, "That's amazing--you ran the entire gamut from surprised to annoyed to pissed to resigned in about half a second."
     "You bring out the best in me, ma'am."

p.251 "It is better to discuss thing, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction."
     --Mikhail Gorbachev

p.268 As the pair entered, Sivak said, "Madam President, you have only ten minutes before--"
     "I beat you bloody with a large blunt object?"
     "You are, of course, welcome to use Ms. Piñiero to hit me, ma'am, but that does not change the fact that you have the exterior secretary in ten minutes."

p.320 Great, now she's subscribing to conspiracy theories. Jorel had seen several publications that had advanced this theory. Most were of the type that also said that transporters murdered you and replaced you with a soulless duplicate, that replicators were being used to disseminate mind-controlling drugs, that the universe was one big holodeck, and that the citizens of the galaxy were just pawns in a giant chess game among beings of pure energy. All had circulation figures that were at best in five digits.

p.341 "You know, the colors in this room are just soooooooooooo pretty."
     "Ozla, what's the matter with you?"
     Looking over at the viewer that hung on the wall of her apartment on Earth, Ozla Graniv saw the blurry face of her editor. "Sorry, Farik, wuzzat?"
     "I said, what's the matter with you?">
     "Oh." Somehow she had managed to sit up on her couch, but the effort was proving to be too much and she fell back down into a supine position. "I'm drunk."
     "Why are you drunk?"
     "'Cause I've imbibed a substantial 'mount of alcohol."

p.373-374 "It is not a question of what I like, Madam President. You cannot ask me to reverse centuries of--"
     Tal'Aura interrupted: "Klingon bigotry?"
     It took all of Martok's willpower not to unsheathe his d'k tahg and kill Tal'Aura where s he sat.
     Bacco glanced at the Romulan woman. "There's a human cliché, Praetor, that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." At Tal'Aura's confused look, which matched Martok's own, she added, "It means that you don't have any basis to get superior toward Martok regarding bigotry toward other species--or should we get into the treatment of the Remans, the Miridians, the--"
     Tal'Aura held up a hand. "Your point is noted, Madam President."
     "Fine, then shut the hell up."
     Martok couldn't help but smile at that.

 

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