The opening lines of Alpha:
<AmorousIntent> Long ago I realized that you could never advance in academia on merit.  You could have three PhDs and be at the forefront of a revolutionary new field, but none of that mattered if you didn't grease the right palms and have the right friends.  The security of the Federation was no match for old men who desired job security.
<AmorousIntent> While they burned billions of credits on grandiose experiments to eek out another few percent on the tried and true, I was doomed to languish in a shipboard lab at the front lines, a perpetual outsider.  I was an outsider to my crew, my race, my homeworld, my society, to Starfleet and to the Federation.  To the establishment, I was untrustworthy, radical, Orion scum, a defector from the...
<AmorousIntent> ...Klingon Empire, a sociopath, a war criminal, an Augment, a freak.  Some even dared to call me mad.
<AmorousIntent> I deny none of that.
<AmorousIntent> If I wanted to show them all, I needed the resources and personnel they denied me, and the only way to get that was to play their game.  Getting off of Hypatia and away from the front lines was a simple matter of sleeping with a visiting admiral--as damning as the stereotype of the Orion seductress sleeping her way to the top is, it's undeniably effective.  All it took was convincing the...
<AmorousIntent> ...admiral to station me closer to her, and I was away from the front lines.
<AmorousIntent> Getting to Memory Alpha, the home of Starfleet Research & Development, took years of manipulation and degrading myself.  Everyone I showed my results to walked away impressed, but not once did it get me anything but empty platitudes.  When incompetents were promoted over my head again and again, I relished exposing them and assuming their place.  I bribed corrupt officials to enter conferences and
<AmorousIntent>  competitions just to get my work seen.  I have spied on my colleagues, destroyed the careers of my enemies, blackmailed superiors, sabotaged experiments, lied, cheated, and stolen materiel, and my work has only just begun.
<AmorousIntent> My name is Valara Deva, and by the gods, I will stop at nothing to save the Federation from itself.