The transparent bubble cockpit of the mining pod was insulated against the heat, but Tharval flinched away from the sight before him; the steaming, smoking basalt surface, turning from black to red to sun-bright yellow-white as the laser drill stabbed into it. Beside him, in the operations seat, Kalevar Thrang stroked the control console with meticulous care.
"Nearly there. There's an updraft coming - hold her steady."
Tharval's hands were on the pod's flight controls; he flicked at a slider, boosting the inertial dampers. The flight stick trembled in his other hand, and he steadied the little ship. Beneath them, smoke belched and billowed from the hole Thrang was cutting.
"Confirmation." Thrang smiled. "Deploying charge now." The pod shivered again as the silvery cylinder detached from its undercarriage, floated down on a tractor beam, and descended into the hole. "Timer set, telemetry is nominal. Heat shields are holding - which is just as well for us!"
"I would prefer, I admit, not to be quite so close to an antimatter explosion," Tharval remarked. He turned his gaze to another readout. "Scans are clear. No local traffic."
"I wasn't expecting any. It's not a terribly interesting volcano, after all. One hundred metres... seventy-five... fifty... twenty-five... slowing, now... ten... five... and down. All done."
Tharval pulled back on the flight stick, and opened the throttle, sending the pod up and out of the volcano's mouth. Around them, on the walls of the crater, he could see the bulky, rounded shapes of the other part of their cargo, the packages now securely attached to the rock face. "Engaging visual camouflage," Thrang said, and touched a control. The packages wavered and blurred, vanishing into the rock walls as their holo-emitters engaged.
"Traffic scan is still clear," Tharval said.
"Well," said Thrang, "the only thing to worry about was some probing overflight from the Grand Imperium, and that wasn't very likely. Set course back to the ship, and engage the autopilot. We can relax for a while."
Tharval grunted. He punched commands into the flight console. "It puzzles me," he said, "where you find the money for all this, Thrang."
"Oh, I have my resources. All perfectly legitimate, too - though under different names, of course. I've got quite a little network of patents, licensed intellectual property - I could live pretty comfortably, if I was inclined to settle for that."
"But you are not."
"Of course not." Thrang eyed his companion carefully. "Problems, Tharval? Regrets? Are you unhappy at the way we're treating your people?"
"They are not my people. They made that quite plain." Bitterness edged the Lethean's voice. "I was one of the architects of the alliance between the Letheans and the Klingons - oh, you will not find my name in any history books, but it is a fact for all that. Enough of my people thought that a betrayal - I had to go to live among the Klingons - and then - well, you know what happened then."
"So. No regrets."
"Only that it is not more of them." Tharval glared towards the eastern horizon, where the Lethean colony buildings made a smudge of grey against the green of vegetation.
"Well, it's enough for the present," said Thrang. "Convenient of them to gather in one bunch like that, of course."
"Standard Imperial colonization doctrine. Begin from a single defensible location. A Federation colony would be different, would operate from multiple, dispersed nodes around terraforming stations or resource-gathering centres -"
"Not all of them. Federation colonies are very diverse. Like our new neighbours, in fact."
Tharval snorted. "The Grand Imperium," he said with contempt.
"The Federation lets them have their self-determination. Even to the extent of letting them out of the Federation altogether. There were dozens of these little protest groups, back in the twenty-third century - remember Doctor Sevrin and his little coterie?"
"I do not." The sky was fading from blue to black, now, as the pod climbed out of the atmosphere and into space. Tharval checked the scanners again. Theirs was still the only craft in the area.
"Well, those idealists wouldn't really have met my needs in any case. But the Grand Imperium, now, that has possibilities."
"One world. One thinly populated colony with a delusional ruler and a social structure notable for its absurdity. I fail to see what you can make of that, Thrang."
"Symbolism, Tharval. Symbols are important. Our main target is the Klingons, after all, and symbols matter to Klingons. The symbolism of the Grand Imperium and its ruler... I can use that."
"Klingons are not so foolish as to confuse the symbol and the reality," said Tharval. Thrang's ship was visible, now - a squat, compact assemblage of curves in a roughly triangular configuration. A Nihydron destroyer, Thrang had said; something from the Delta Quadrant. Like the Kobali....
"Symbols can be manipulated, my friend," said Thrang. "And it can be a neat conjuring trick, to swap the symbol for the reality. You just have to choose the right moment, and be... adroit."
"You will need to be more than adroit to best J'mpok," said Tharval.
"J'mpok needs a fair amount of adroitness to keep his own allies," said Thrang. "The Nausicaans, the Orions, your people... none of them exactly improves on long acquaintance. So, if our friends on the High Council offer more interesting alliances...."
"Alliances with whom?"
"The Grand Imperials are human, Tharval. That's symbolism right there - the old adversary recruited into the Klingon way of life, fighting at the Empire's side. And a solid alliance with a Delta Quadrant power, too - that's important." Thrang looked at a data readout. "And when the prevailing winds are in the right direction, over that crater... and the charges blow... and our little extras get mixed in with the volcanic ash... why, then, we'll have the makings of a Kobali colony, right here. Prevailing winds will be right in six hours and fifty-three minutes. God bless precision weather control."
"You assume much. You assume your tame Kobali general will be able to deliver a practical agreement with his own government. And you assume the Grand Imperium will cooperate with your plans -"
"Jhey'quar will present the Kobali government with a fait accompli, and they'll go along with it. They are nothing if not pragmatists. As for the Grand Imperium -" Thrang grinned. "The clone of Kahless died nobly in battle, right? The Grand Emperor is well aware of that. And the Grand Emperor can spot a job vacancy when he sees one."
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