The day Iden graduated from the Academy, she celebrated by giving her entire fortune away – well, at least what she had left in her bank account. It was a symbolic gesture, really – she still has her trust fund, and if even if she was able to spend it all at once, she’d still have unlimited credit at the Bank of Bolarus. Such is life for the daughter of Acten Nix, Vice President of Interstellar Affairs for the largest financial institution in the entire known galaxy.
For Iden, it may have been symbolic, but for the people she helped that day, it was far from it. Iden has a reputation for frivolity, but she’s smart and resourceful, and she did her research before deciding how to spend nearly seventy-five million credits in a single day.
The nice thing about having access to more resources than some civilized worlds is being able to work outside official channels. The Federation is great about helping people, but it’s huge and inefficient, with too many moving parts, some of which squeak louder than others. In Iden’s opinion, the squeaky parts of the Federation get plenty of grease already. That’s why she listened for the quiet ones instead. She was always good at listening.
The day Iden graduated, a struggling colony of leftover Bajoran refugees fighting a disease for which they had no cure received a top medical research team from Vulcan, their expenses fully funded by an anonymous grantor. Within eighteen standard months, the plague was cured, and the researchers had developed a vaccine. Children no longer die in their beds by the dozens on that tiny world, and their future looks bright.
That same day, ten different groups received a few million credits each, deposited directly into their accounts at the Bank of Bolarus from an untraceable source. Among them were two newly rebuilt hospitals on Betazed, four different scholarship funds for children outside the Federation to study within its borders, a Cardassian peace group, and nature preserves on Earth, Bolarus IX and Andoria. Iden estimates her money purchased four cutting-edge surgical suites, Federation educations for at least a hundred kids, a perpetual thorn in the side of the xenophobic majority on Cardassia Prime, and roughly 7,300 square kilometers of pristine wilderness on three of the most densely populated planets in the Federation.
The day Iden graduated, a black market weapons broker on Bolarus IX accepted a bribe to turn in the Andorian supplier of a lethal nerve toxin for which the authorities had no antidote. The money was more than he would have made in three years of sales, and he was able to secure legal immunity for his own crimes in exchange for ratting the Andorian out. Even better, he no longer has to look over his shoulder wondering when the package he opens will be full of the very toxin he’s been selling, because once the ‘Fleeters got their hands on the stash, they wasted no time in creating an antidote. To this day, he has no idea who bribed him, but he’s not taking any chances. The deal was go straight and retire rich, or get turned in to the authorities – the ones on Kronos, not Earth. Rura Penthe wasn’t his idea of a retirement resort, so he took the offer. Sure enough, the next day, his bank account was larger, with all flags removed. Sometimes when he drinks too much in certain company, he tells the story and wonders which government was behind it all. So far, no one has any theories that make sense.
Iden never told a soul. She knew her dad would find out about the donations, though. (The bribery was another story – she covered her tracks better on that one, it being technically illegal and all.) She expected him to yell at her the way he had when she first chose Starfleet over finance, and that’s partly why she did it – a final act of rebellion, her way of declaring once and for all that she was choosing service over selfish gain, whether her family liked it or not. But her father had a surprise for her, too. The day Iden graduated, he told her he was proud of her. Then he pulled her close and whispered five words into her ear that made her cry: “Sweetheart, I matched it all.”