"Security alert!"
Klur's head snapped round. "Disruptor fire... one shot only, so far... officers' quarters, deck six, corridor nine," the security officer reported.
"First Officer. With me. Bring weapons. Ops, you have the conn." And Klur left the bridge at a run. Tayaira paused long enough to draw a disruptor rifle from the rack, then followed.
The dark corridors of the carrier rang with their urgent footsteps. They paused, panting, at the door to the officers' quarters. Tayaira checked the charge on the disruptor rifle as Klur keyed the intercom. "Report. Any more shots?"
"No, sir," the security officer replied.
Klur glanced at Tayaira. "On the count of three," he said, "inside. Weapons ready." His disruptor was in his hand. "One. Two. Three!"
The door slid open and they burst through. Tayaira levelled her rifle - and stopped. There was no one in the room.
But there was something on the floor, by one of the bunk beds - Tayaira's eyes widened.
A severed hand, still oozing Klingon blood, lay on the deck, next to a bloodied d'k tahg blade, and a datapad. Nearby, the deck plates were scorched, as by a sudden energy release. Klur holstered his disruptor. He stepped forward, stooped, picked up the datapad.
"'I go now to Gre'thor'," he read out, "'but I will not take with me the hand that murdered a world. D'Elara, daughter of Skor, operations officer, IKS QIb laH'e''." He shook his head. "Stupid. Stupid."
Tayaira lowered her rifle. "She cut off her own hand," she said, "and then shot herself?"
"So it would appear." Klur touched his communicator. "This is Captain Klur. Stand down security alert."
"She cut off her own hand," Tayaira repeated.
"It took courage, and strength of will," Klur said. He spat. "And these things were wasted. Such foolishness...."
"Sir," said Tayaira, "we need to talk. Morale is bad, sir, and this - this -" She shook her head. She could find no words for what had happened. "Sir, this will worsen things yet further. We are listening on the channels you designated, but there are no transmissions. We must -" She stopped. She had no idea, any more, what they could do.
"We remain concealed and silent," said Klur, "until there is word that we may return to Qo'noS safely. It will come. Starfleet will never find us here."
"What does that matter," Tayaira snapped, "if we start to kill ourselves?"
Klur turned on her with a warning glare. She glared back. "We must do something," she said, "to prove to the crew that there is hope."
"What do you suggest?" Klur demanded.
She thought. "My House had contacts in the Federation. Perhaps we can seek out someone who can provide us with more information.... It is the waiting, sir, for a message that never comes, that weighs most heavily on our minds."
"The message will come," said Klur.
"You have confidence, sir, but the crew must be convinced."
"We cannot break communications silence ourselves, and we cannot safely leave this asteroid field. What, then, do you propose?"
"Perhaps, if we sent out an auxiliary vessel - your Chariot, sir, for instance - it might not be recognized, and might reach a non-aligned world nearby...."
Klur nodded. "It is a possibility. I will consider it." He looked round, as a shadow filled the doorway. "Yes?"
The Nausicaan warrior stood gaping at the scene. "I," he said, and gulped. "These are my quarters, and Lieutenant D'Elara's...."
"Yes," said Klur. "Jikkur, is it not? Lieutenant D'Elara is dead. You are now elevated to her rank and responsibilities. Serve well and bravely."
For one brief instant, the Nausicaan hesitated, and a strange look came into his red eyes. Then he raised his fist in salute. "Yes, sir!"
"Arrange for this place to be cleaned," said Klur. He still held the datapad in his hand; now, he dropped it to the floor. "We shall return to the bridge." He strode off down the corridor, and Tayaira followed.
As soon as they were out of earshot of Jikkur, Tayaira said, "Sir, did you see him? He hesitated when you gave your command."
Klur nodded shortly. "I saw. I cannot currently afford to dispose of any crew members - not while I cannot receive replacements. But watch that one. Watch him closely."
Sunday 24 January 2016
Fallout 9
Ronnie
*/*---audio input above threshold level---consciousness to waking mode---somatic response[y/n]n---audio on*/*
"I think she's still asleep," Tallasa says. "What in the name of the Infinite is this stuff?"
"I do not recognize these file headers." Saval's voice. "The text file, though - a novel, early Earth twentieth century, entitled 'Pale Horse'. Do you recognize it?"
"A horse is an Earth riding animal," Tallasa says doubtfully. "It seems a strange subject, even for the Admiral."
*/*somatic response[y/n]y*/*
My eye opens. "Oh, for crying out loud, you two," I say, "it's relevant. Though this be madness, yet there's method in't."
"Sir," says Saval. "We did not realize you were awake."
"Never realize," I say. "When you realize, you make a real out of... I and zee... hang on, that doesn't work. Never mind." I swing my legs off the ready room couch and stand up. Do I have pants on? Yes, I do. Today will be a good day.
"'Pale Horse'. Know who rode a pale horse? Death. Death, in the Book of Revelations. And Hell followed close behind. Boris Savinkov," I owe them a lecture, "the author of this little drollery, was a political fanatic during the upheavals in the country known as Russia, after Earth's first world war. The winners of that struggle established one of Earth's nastier dictatorships. Savinkov was one of the losers... and, when you learn a little about him, you realize - oops, sorry - that that was actually a good thing."
"How is he relevant, sir?" Tallasa asks.
"Because he was a terrorist. A believer in the theory and practice of terror for the furtherance of political ends. In case you haven't worked it out yet, that's the kind of person we're dealing with. Terrorists are prepared to do unthinkable things, my friends, not for the sake of the things themselves, but for the response they get."
"I believe I understand," says Saval.
"It's the key to understanding what our man's after. We need to work out what response he wants from us - from Starfleet, from the Federation as a whole. Then we need to not give it to him. Does he want us to take revenge? Then we extend olive branches until everyone's sick of olives. Does he want us to run scared? Then we come out fighting."
"Question, sir," says Tallasa.
"Fire away."
"What makes you sure it's us he wants a reaction from? Why not the Klingon Empire? I'm assuming you think this was the work of a rogue operative - why can't he be aiming at the Klingon hierarchy? To cause an upheaval there?"
Damn. There's an actual brain at work under those two blue coathooks. I mean, I hadn't thought of that wrinkle. "Never assume," I say. "When you assume, you make - oh, the heck with it. Yes, you might be right. And there's no way to dictate which way the Klinks will jump... so, if you are right, well, there's not much we can do about it."
Tallasa nods, soberly, thoughtfully.
"So let's do Starfleet stuff," I say. "We all happily linked up with Sixth Fleet now?"
"Holding station at defense grid marker buoy epsilon 473," says Tallasa. "The fleet is almost at full strength, with only the Yukoku and the Warspite to report in. Admiral Gref has ordered you to report aboard the flagship Taras Bulba at 1530 hours, to attend the preliminary strategic briefing."
"Joy of joys," I mutter. "What time is it now?" */*0937*/* "Twenty to ten, never mind. Plenty of time. Oh, hi there, face-ache, what the hell do you want?" This last, to the communications ensign, who's standing at the ready room door with his mouth hanging open. I double-check; yes, I was right, I'm wearing pants.
"Sir," he says, "there's a communication for you - um, it's got a Starfleet priority - but, um, there's no origin code, we don't know who's sending it -"
"Spooky spooky spook stuff!" I carol happily. "Put it through. Let's have a seance, talk to the spook. Stick around, kid, you may learn something. On screen."
The desk console lights up, revealing a human */*species 5618*/* face, with a scar across one cheek that looks like it was done by Dr. Frankenstein, in the dark, while drunk. "Frankie, baby!"
"Vice Admiral Grau," says Franklin Drake. "I think you ought to know that your access rights to some comms channels... lapsed, some time around the year 2300."
"Oh, don't come that tone with me, Frankie. I remember you. I used to dandle you on my knee when you were a kid." He looks sceptical. "All right, it might have been some other kid. There was definitely dandling involved, though."
*/*species 5618---specific unit designated---Franklin Drake---priority for assimilation and memory retrieval due to specialist knowledge---*/*
Put a sock in it, Two of Twelve. "Anyway, yeah, you can help me out. When did the IKS Shara'nga change its name?"
Drake narrows his eyes. "Ronnie," he says, "don't meddle. You won't do any good if you meddle, and you could do a considerable amount of harm."
"Shara'nga," I say, "is a perfectly good Klink name, some Klingon general probably named it after his favourite targ, or mistress, or both. But, five months ago, according to those handy intelligence digests you keep in the dusty corners of Memory Alpha, the name was changed, to the QIb laH'e'. That's a cool name. Translates roughly to 'Heart of Darkness', doesn't it? Very Joseph Conrad."
"I'd prefer 'Heart of Shadow'," says Drake.
"I bet you do. Anyway. It's a Klink thing, isn't it? Ships with appropriate names. My ship doesn't have an appropriate name, but then I'm not a Klink. The IKS Heart of Darkness... as if it's getting ready for a deed of darkness. Am I right? I don't have to be, there's more. Planet wrecking munitions, who carries that much ordnance normally? Again, your intelligence digests have lots of good stuff about movements of industrial technology in the Empire. And who's this Commander Kysang, when he's at home?"
"Kysang is dead."
"Mistah Kysang - he dead. Right." I lean forward and narrow my organic eye at the screen. "There's a terrorist rogue agent at work in the Klink hierarchy, and it's someone a lot higher up than one carrier commander. Right? Look, you don't have to tell me anything, I'm out here on the front lines. But the girl on the spot is that psycho-smurf Shohl, and she probably needs to know about some of this, at least. So are you going to tell her, or shall I? Tylha Shohl, do you know her?"
"I know everybody," says Drake. "And you shouldn't worry about Tylha. She's already reached some of the same conclusions you have, and without breaking in the back door of Memory Alpha. Her preliminary reports make that clear. And she has additional resources that you don't know about... actually, that she doesn't know about. Yet." He smiles, a sly untrustworthy smile. "Don't worry about Tylha," he repeats.
"Frankie says relax, huh? Better be right, Drake. Too many people dead already, and with this much firepower gathering out here, there's gonna be more. When all the shooting's over... I'd hate to think the people who started it got away scot free."
"I wish I could promise that won't happen," Drake says. "But this is the real world, Ronnie, and we have to live with its imperfections. Bear that in mind." And the screen goes dark.
*/*---audio input above threshold level---consciousness to waking mode---somatic response[y/n]n---audio on*/*
"I think she's still asleep," Tallasa says. "What in the name of the Infinite is this stuff?"
"I do not recognize these file headers." Saval's voice. "The text file, though - a novel, early Earth twentieth century, entitled 'Pale Horse'. Do you recognize it?"
"A horse is an Earth riding animal," Tallasa says doubtfully. "It seems a strange subject, even for the Admiral."
*/*somatic response[y/n]y*/*
My eye opens. "Oh, for crying out loud, you two," I say, "it's relevant. Though this be madness, yet there's method in't."
"Sir," says Saval. "We did not realize you were awake."
"Never realize," I say. "When you realize, you make a real out of... I and zee... hang on, that doesn't work. Never mind." I swing my legs off the ready room couch and stand up. Do I have pants on? Yes, I do. Today will be a good day.
"'Pale Horse'. Know who rode a pale horse? Death. Death, in the Book of Revelations. And Hell followed close behind. Boris Savinkov," I owe them a lecture, "the author of this little drollery, was a political fanatic during the upheavals in the country known as Russia, after Earth's first world war. The winners of that struggle established one of Earth's nastier dictatorships. Savinkov was one of the losers... and, when you learn a little about him, you realize - oops, sorry - that that was actually a good thing."
"How is he relevant, sir?" Tallasa asks.
"Because he was a terrorist. A believer in the theory and practice of terror for the furtherance of political ends. In case you haven't worked it out yet, that's the kind of person we're dealing with. Terrorists are prepared to do unthinkable things, my friends, not for the sake of the things themselves, but for the response they get."
"I believe I understand," says Saval.
"It's the key to understanding what our man's after. We need to work out what response he wants from us - from Starfleet, from the Federation as a whole. Then we need to not give it to him. Does he want us to take revenge? Then we extend olive branches until everyone's sick of olives. Does he want us to run scared? Then we come out fighting."
"Question, sir," says Tallasa.
"Fire away."
"What makes you sure it's us he wants a reaction from? Why not the Klingon Empire? I'm assuming you think this was the work of a rogue operative - why can't he be aiming at the Klingon hierarchy? To cause an upheaval there?"
Damn. There's an actual brain at work under those two blue coathooks. I mean, I hadn't thought of that wrinkle. "Never assume," I say. "When you assume, you make - oh, the heck with it. Yes, you might be right. And there's no way to dictate which way the Klinks will jump... so, if you are right, well, there's not much we can do about it."
Tallasa nods, soberly, thoughtfully.
"So let's do Starfleet stuff," I say. "We all happily linked up with Sixth Fleet now?"
"Holding station at defense grid marker buoy epsilon 473," says Tallasa. "The fleet is almost at full strength, with only the Yukoku and the Warspite to report in. Admiral Gref has ordered you to report aboard the flagship Taras Bulba at 1530 hours, to attend the preliminary strategic briefing."
"Joy of joys," I mutter. "What time is it now?" */*0937*/* "Twenty to ten, never mind. Plenty of time. Oh, hi there, face-ache, what the hell do you want?" This last, to the communications ensign, who's standing at the ready room door with his mouth hanging open. I double-check; yes, I was right, I'm wearing pants.
"Sir," he says, "there's a communication for you - um, it's got a Starfleet priority - but, um, there's no origin code, we don't know who's sending it -"
"Spooky spooky spook stuff!" I carol happily. "Put it through. Let's have a seance, talk to the spook. Stick around, kid, you may learn something. On screen."
The desk console lights up, revealing a human */*species 5618*/* face, with a scar across one cheek that looks like it was done by Dr. Frankenstein, in the dark, while drunk. "Frankie, baby!"
"Vice Admiral Grau," says Franklin Drake. "I think you ought to know that your access rights to some comms channels... lapsed, some time around the year 2300."
"Oh, don't come that tone with me, Frankie. I remember you. I used to dandle you on my knee when you were a kid." He looks sceptical. "All right, it might have been some other kid. There was definitely dandling involved, though."
*/*species 5618---specific unit designated---Franklin Drake---priority for assimilation and memory retrieval due to specialist knowledge---*/*
Put a sock in it, Two of Twelve. "Anyway, yeah, you can help me out. When did the IKS Shara'nga change its name?"
Drake narrows his eyes. "Ronnie," he says, "don't meddle. You won't do any good if you meddle, and you could do a considerable amount of harm."
"Shara'nga," I say, "is a perfectly good Klink name, some Klingon general probably named it after his favourite targ, or mistress, or both. But, five months ago, according to those handy intelligence digests you keep in the dusty corners of Memory Alpha, the name was changed, to the QIb laH'e'. That's a cool name. Translates roughly to 'Heart of Darkness', doesn't it? Very Joseph Conrad."
"I'd prefer 'Heart of Shadow'," says Drake.
"I bet you do. Anyway. It's a Klink thing, isn't it? Ships with appropriate names. My ship doesn't have an appropriate name, but then I'm not a Klink. The IKS Heart of Darkness... as if it's getting ready for a deed of darkness. Am I right? I don't have to be, there's more. Planet wrecking munitions, who carries that much ordnance normally? Again, your intelligence digests have lots of good stuff about movements of industrial technology in the Empire. And who's this Commander Kysang, when he's at home?"
"Kysang is dead."
"Mistah Kysang - he dead. Right." I lean forward and narrow my organic eye at the screen. "There's a terrorist rogue agent at work in the Klink hierarchy, and it's someone a lot higher up than one carrier commander. Right? Look, you don't have to tell me anything, I'm out here on the front lines. But the girl on the spot is that psycho-smurf Shohl, and she probably needs to know about some of this, at least. So are you going to tell her, or shall I? Tylha Shohl, do you know her?"
"I know everybody," says Drake. "And you shouldn't worry about Tylha. She's already reached some of the same conclusions you have, and without breaking in the back door of Memory Alpha. Her preliminary reports make that clear. And she has additional resources that you don't know about... actually, that she doesn't know about. Yet." He smiles, a sly untrustworthy smile. "Don't worry about Tylha," he repeats.
"Frankie says relax, huh? Better be right, Drake. Too many people dead already, and with this much firepower gathering out here, there's gonna be more. When all the shooting's over... I'd hate to think the people who started it got away scot free."
"I wish I could promise that won't happen," Drake says. "But this is the real world, Ronnie, and we have to live with its imperfections. Bear that in mind." And the screen goes dark.
Fallout 8
The Yann-Isleth, the Chancellor's personal guard, gleaming in their parade armour, stood rigid at present arms in two ranks all down the length of the Great Hall. Between them walked a slight figure in brown robes, the sound of his footsteps the loudest noise in the hall, as he approached the steps where the Chancellor stood.
Grim-faced, J'mpok descended the steps to greet his visitor.
"Proconsul D'Tan. Welcome."
The Romulan bowed, gravely. "Thank you, Chancellor. You know why I am here."
J'mpok nodded brusquely. "Say what must be said."
"I have been asked, as the representative of a neutral power, to communicate a protest from the Federation Council regarding the destruction of the planet Bercera IV." D'Tan spoke in quiet, measured tones. "President Okeg wishes to condemn, in the most unequivocal terms, this deployment of weapons of mass destruction against civilians. He expresses his gravest concern regarding this new development in the war, he deplores the wanton devastation of a class M environment, and he warns you that Starfleet will now operate without restrictions to counter this form of warfare.
"President Okeg retains, however, even in the face of this enormity, the hope and desire for peace. To this end, he wishes to arrange a summit conference between the highest ranking representatives of both Federation and Empire, to be held at the earliest convenience for both sides. He suggests the planet Khitomer as an appropriate venue.
"President Okeg wishes, however, to have concrete assurances that the Empire has decisively turned away from this path of reckless destruction. These assurances should take the form of strategic military and economic concessions on the Empire's part." A murmuring began to arise among the Klingon notables inside the great hall, packed in behind the ranks of guards. D'Tan tapped at his wrist communicator. "I am now transmitting the Federation's suggestions for concessions along your secure diplomatic channel. In brief, President Okeg requires the release from Imperial governance of the Thidasian, Yll-Torican and Valtothi species, the withdrawal of the Klingon Defense Force from Sigma Capricornii, Tiafa, Zeta Comae and the Dialosa Corridor, the abandonment of military bases at Tol Mogra, Aznetkur and Dasus Prime -"
The murmuring became a roar of disapproval. J'mpok raised his head and raked the audience with a glare of fury. "We will hear the Proconsul!" he shouted. Silence fell, abruptly.
"And a moratorium on unauthorized privateering actions such as commerce raids in the Pi Canis sectors," D'Tan concluded, unruffled. "That completes the message from President Okeg and the Federation Council. I would, however, like to speak on my own behalf. Chancellor - why have you done this thing?"
"Would you believe that I have not? That this was the rogue atrocity of a lone captain, acting far beyond his authorization?"
"The Federation is unlikely to accept that. And you and I both know, Chancellor, that we bear ultimate responsibility for the acts of our subordinates. Command responsibility - a doctrine also familiar to the Federation."
"I know." J'mpok seemed to shrink inside his robes. "We must accept the responsibility. And we know that there must be a price to pay. The Federation demands much, though."
"You know that I will convey your reply back to the Federation Council. Faithfully, as I have brought their words to you."
"The High Council will meet and formulate a response within the next two days. In the meantime, Proconsul... I would speak with you. Privately."
D'Tan bowed. "I would be honoured, Chancellor."
---
The door closed on the Chancellor's private office, an austere room buried deep in the bowels of the Great Hall. J'mpok subsided into a chair behind a desk, his shoulders hunched, his face dour. D'Tan took a seat opposite, and for a time neither man spoke.
D'Tan broke the silence. "What happened?" he asked, almost kindly.
J'mpok snarled. "A plot," he spat, "a conspiracy of some kind. I do not yet know the details, but I am certain there is a plot."
D'Tan nodded. "The act did seem... out of character." He sighed. "We have accomplished so much, on Mol'Rihan, with the aid of both your people and the Federation. And the truce has held - for the most part - across Tau Dewa. I had hoped, personally, that the peace might spread."
J'mpok merely grunted.
"My people are under orders to prevent clashes between Starfleet and KDF units," D'Tan added. "We were only just learning to cooperate and trust you... now we must watch you closely again. The Federation is angry, J'mpok. I wonder if even you realize just how angry."
"I have never underestimated the Federation," J'mpok said. "Let me tell you something, D'Tan. I fear the Federation. I fear the way it spreads, it subsumes -"
"Their non-interference directive -"
"Is window dressing! If they do not interfere with cultural development, how is it that every Federation world looks the same? I fear, one day, we will awaken, and find the Federation has swallowed us all. That our biological and technological distinctiveness has been added to their own... and resistance was futile."
"There," said D'Tan softly, "you touch on a real threat. There are powers out there who would consume all our peoples while we squabble...."
"The Borg," said J'mpok, "and the undeclared war with the Iconians and their tools, and our... difficulties... with the Fek'lhri. Oh, I know, I know, there are worse enemies out there than the Federation... looked at objectively." He snorted. "I am an old warrior and a Klingon. Objectivity I leave to the Vulcans."
"You know that I aspire to reunification with the Vulcans," D'Tan said, "to the healing of the Sundering between their people and mine. If that is ever to happen... it will mean changes, on both sides. Vulcans and Romulans will need to become... something new. We cannot fear change. It is bound to come upon us."
J'mpok remained silent for a minute or so. "Turning to practicalities," he said, eventually.
"Yes?"
"Aennik Okeg is an honourless serpent, but he is not a fool. He knows he asks more than we will give. The High Council will prepare a counter-offer, along less grandiose lines."
D'Tan smiled. "President Okeg expects as much. Your preliminary thoughts?"
"We know the Federation has been funnelling arms to the Valtothi rebels for months. Little harm in surrendering what they will shortly win in any case. The loss of the Thidasians and Yll-Toricans will hurt... but it is perhaps a price we must pay. Of the systems you mention... the Dialosa Corridor is out of the question, it would strangle our trade with a hundred non-aligned systems. And three major military bases? Why not ask for Ganalda also, or Qo'noS itself? Dasus Prime, possibly - the other two, never."
"And the summit conference?"
"The reptile may have his summit. Not Khitomer, though. The place is a magnet for assassins and fanatics, I swear they must breed in its crevices."
"Yes," said D'Tan quietly, "yes, I remember."
"Would you host it yourself? At New Romulus?"
"Gladly. Though security is still an issue, with the Tal Shiar and the Tholians...."
"I do not fear those. I will meet Okeg at your new capital. Perhaps I will have answers for him by then - I have despatched an agent to seek out this Klur and wring the truth from him."
"I would not be in this Klur's shoes for any inducement," said D'Tan wryly. "Hunted both by Federation and Empire.... Your agent should probably contact the Starfleet officer investigating Bercera IV. Vice Admiral Shohl, I know her slightly from her work on Mol'Rihan." He smiled. "At one point, she gave a positive but ill-considered interview to the press, and became known as the Pirate Queen of the Vastam Peaks." His tone turned serious again. "Speaking of piracy -"
"There can be no moratorium on privateering. Too many of the peripheral Houses depend on it for income, now. To enforce the ban, I would have to commit too much of the KDF to internal police work. And to pronounce the ban and fail to enforce it would be fatal to my authority."
"It is a thorn in all our sides, though. Not just the Federation's.... It stifles legitimate trade."
"It cannot be helped, while we are at war. It is the Klingon way."
"And when the war ends?"
J'mpok shook his head. "I am bound up, in the minds of many, with this war," he said, heavily. "It is widely held that, when it ends, I end. And I tell you, I am not ready to end."
"A way might be found. And should."
"We will explore the ways at the summit conference. The reptile and I."
"As you wish." D'Tan paused for a moment, then said, "You may need to reconsider your position in regard to Aznetkur. The Federation Sixth Fleet is operating in that vicinity, under Admiral Gref. The Tellarites do not shrink from conflict even at the best of times, and this is not the best of times."
"We may lose Aznetkur in any case? I will consider that." J'mpok rose to his feet. "A feast has been arranged in your honour, with a traditional Klingon opera to follow. Can you tolerate it?"
D'Tan smiled. "For the sake of diplomacy, I will endure much."
Grim-faced, J'mpok descended the steps to greet his visitor.
"Proconsul D'Tan. Welcome."
The Romulan bowed, gravely. "Thank you, Chancellor. You know why I am here."
J'mpok nodded brusquely. "Say what must be said."
"I have been asked, as the representative of a neutral power, to communicate a protest from the Federation Council regarding the destruction of the planet Bercera IV." D'Tan spoke in quiet, measured tones. "President Okeg wishes to condemn, in the most unequivocal terms, this deployment of weapons of mass destruction against civilians. He expresses his gravest concern regarding this new development in the war, he deplores the wanton devastation of a class M environment, and he warns you that Starfleet will now operate without restrictions to counter this form of warfare.
"President Okeg retains, however, even in the face of this enormity, the hope and desire for peace. To this end, he wishes to arrange a summit conference between the highest ranking representatives of both Federation and Empire, to be held at the earliest convenience for both sides. He suggests the planet Khitomer as an appropriate venue.
"President Okeg wishes, however, to have concrete assurances that the Empire has decisively turned away from this path of reckless destruction. These assurances should take the form of strategic military and economic concessions on the Empire's part." A murmuring began to arise among the Klingon notables inside the great hall, packed in behind the ranks of guards. D'Tan tapped at his wrist communicator. "I am now transmitting the Federation's suggestions for concessions along your secure diplomatic channel. In brief, President Okeg requires the release from Imperial governance of the Thidasian, Yll-Torican and Valtothi species, the withdrawal of the Klingon Defense Force from Sigma Capricornii, Tiafa, Zeta Comae and the Dialosa Corridor, the abandonment of military bases at Tol Mogra, Aznetkur and Dasus Prime -"
The murmuring became a roar of disapproval. J'mpok raised his head and raked the audience with a glare of fury. "We will hear the Proconsul!" he shouted. Silence fell, abruptly.
"And a moratorium on unauthorized privateering actions such as commerce raids in the Pi Canis sectors," D'Tan concluded, unruffled. "That completes the message from President Okeg and the Federation Council. I would, however, like to speak on my own behalf. Chancellor - why have you done this thing?"
"Would you believe that I have not? That this was the rogue atrocity of a lone captain, acting far beyond his authorization?"
"The Federation is unlikely to accept that. And you and I both know, Chancellor, that we bear ultimate responsibility for the acts of our subordinates. Command responsibility - a doctrine also familiar to the Federation."
"I know." J'mpok seemed to shrink inside his robes. "We must accept the responsibility. And we know that there must be a price to pay. The Federation demands much, though."
"You know that I will convey your reply back to the Federation Council. Faithfully, as I have brought their words to you."
"The High Council will meet and formulate a response within the next two days. In the meantime, Proconsul... I would speak with you. Privately."
D'Tan bowed. "I would be honoured, Chancellor."
---
The door closed on the Chancellor's private office, an austere room buried deep in the bowels of the Great Hall. J'mpok subsided into a chair behind a desk, his shoulders hunched, his face dour. D'Tan took a seat opposite, and for a time neither man spoke.
D'Tan broke the silence. "What happened?" he asked, almost kindly.
J'mpok snarled. "A plot," he spat, "a conspiracy of some kind. I do not yet know the details, but I am certain there is a plot."
D'Tan nodded. "The act did seem... out of character." He sighed. "We have accomplished so much, on Mol'Rihan, with the aid of both your people and the Federation. And the truce has held - for the most part - across Tau Dewa. I had hoped, personally, that the peace might spread."
J'mpok merely grunted.
"My people are under orders to prevent clashes between Starfleet and KDF units," D'Tan added. "We were only just learning to cooperate and trust you... now we must watch you closely again. The Federation is angry, J'mpok. I wonder if even you realize just how angry."
"I have never underestimated the Federation," J'mpok said. "Let me tell you something, D'Tan. I fear the Federation. I fear the way it spreads, it subsumes -"
"Their non-interference directive -"
"Is window dressing! If they do not interfere with cultural development, how is it that every Federation world looks the same? I fear, one day, we will awaken, and find the Federation has swallowed us all. That our biological and technological distinctiveness has been added to their own... and resistance was futile."
"There," said D'Tan softly, "you touch on a real threat. There are powers out there who would consume all our peoples while we squabble...."
"The Borg," said J'mpok, "and the undeclared war with the Iconians and their tools, and our... difficulties... with the Fek'lhri. Oh, I know, I know, there are worse enemies out there than the Federation... looked at objectively." He snorted. "I am an old warrior and a Klingon. Objectivity I leave to the Vulcans."
"You know that I aspire to reunification with the Vulcans," D'Tan said, "to the healing of the Sundering between their people and mine. If that is ever to happen... it will mean changes, on both sides. Vulcans and Romulans will need to become... something new. We cannot fear change. It is bound to come upon us."
J'mpok remained silent for a minute or so. "Turning to practicalities," he said, eventually.
"Yes?"
"Aennik Okeg is an honourless serpent, but he is not a fool. He knows he asks more than we will give. The High Council will prepare a counter-offer, along less grandiose lines."
D'Tan smiled. "President Okeg expects as much. Your preliminary thoughts?"
"We know the Federation has been funnelling arms to the Valtothi rebels for months. Little harm in surrendering what they will shortly win in any case. The loss of the Thidasians and Yll-Toricans will hurt... but it is perhaps a price we must pay. Of the systems you mention... the Dialosa Corridor is out of the question, it would strangle our trade with a hundred non-aligned systems. And three major military bases? Why not ask for Ganalda also, or Qo'noS itself? Dasus Prime, possibly - the other two, never."
"And the summit conference?"
"The reptile may have his summit. Not Khitomer, though. The place is a magnet for assassins and fanatics, I swear they must breed in its crevices."
"Yes," said D'Tan quietly, "yes, I remember."
"Would you host it yourself? At New Romulus?"
"Gladly. Though security is still an issue, with the Tal Shiar and the Tholians...."
"I do not fear those. I will meet Okeg at your new capital. Perhaps I will have answers for him by then - I have despatched an agent to seek out this Klur and wring the truth from him."
"I would not be in this Klur's shoes for any inducement," said D'Tan wryly. "Hunted both by Federation and Empire.... Your agent should probably contact the Starfleet officer investigating Bercera IV. Vice Admiral Shohl, I know her slightly from her work on Mol'Rihan." He smiled. "At one point, she gave a positive but ill-considered interview to the press, and became known as the Pirate Queen of the Vastam Peaks." His tone turned serious again. "Speaking of piracy -"
"There can be no moratorium on privateering. Too many of the peripheral Houses depend on it for income, now. To enforce the ban, I would have to commit too much of the KDF to internal police work. And to pronounce the ban and fail to enforce it would be fatal to my authority."
"It is a thorn in all our sides, though. Not just the Federation's.... It stifles legitimate trade."
"It cannot be helped, while we are at war. It is the Klingon way."
"And when the war ends?"
J'mpok shook his head. "I am bound up, in the minds of many, with this war," he said, heavily. "It is widely held that, when it ends, I end. And I tell you, I am not ready to end."
"A way might be found. And should."
"We will explore the ways at the summit conference. The reptile and I."
"As you wish." D'Tan paused for a moment, then said, "You may need to reconsider your position in regard to Aznetkur. The Federation Sixth Fleet is operating in that vicinity, under Admiral Gref. The Tellarites do not shrink from conflict even at the best of times, and this is not the best of times."
"We may lose Aznetkur in any case? I will consider that." J'mpok rose to his feet. "A feast has been arranged in your honour, with a traditional Klingon opera to follow. Can you tolerate it?"
D'Tan smiled. "For the sake of diplomacy, I will endure much."
Fallout 7
Shalo
Above me, in orbit, the Garaka is being readied for departure. Meanwhile, I am preparing for my mission. To the unobservant, it would appear that I am sitting in a First City bar, sipping a hot raktajino. The unobservant do not understand how preparations are made.
The Klingon who approaches me is tall and heavily built, wearing a handsome military-style tunic and carrying fine weapons, with no sign of wear. "Lieutenant General Shalo?" he says. "I am Lukar of the House of D'garl."
"Greetings to you."
"I understand that you have the ear of the Chancellor. My House is engaged in the manufacture of various sensor and recording devices, of the highest quality, suitable for use on the field of battle. We lack only the influence required to see our products taken up by the KDF. Honour and glory would accrue to us, were this to happen."
"Naturally."
"A word in the Chancellor's ear might sway the balance between us and our unworthy competitors. Whoever spoke that word would gain honour and glory in proportion to ours. More material rewards are nothing, of course, but they would follow, nonetheless."
A time waster. "I regret that you misunderstand," I tell him. "I do not have the Chancellor's ear. He has mine, to hear and obey his commands. I am to carry out an investigation on his orders. If the quality of your House's wares becomes relevant to that investigation... it will be mentioned. But I tell you, in all frankness, I do not see how that could reasonably be arranged."
He turns and departs with a snarl. I think I have just earned the enmity of a House of minor electronics manufacturers. Somehow, I cannot find it in me to quail at the prospect.
"May I join you?" The Lethean in nondescript leathers does not wait for my answer, but seats himself at the table beside me. "Depressing, is it not, how some Klingons scrabble for advantage...."
"I am not downcast," I say. This one seems a more likely prospect. "How may I assist you?"
"Perhaps, by disclosing the secret of your enviable poise and calm. Many officers, charged with a mission of importance at a time of crisis, would be engaged in the most frantic of preparations...."
"My crew is competent. I see no reason to fuss and chivvy them. My ship will break orbit at its appointed time."
"To pursue the renegade Captain Klur," the Lethean says. "And what then?"
"I will carry out the Chancellor's instructions," I say, "which you will not expect me to discuss."
"Of course not. Still, any being of even average curiosity must speculate."
"One may speculate freely, but one may not always speak freely. Especially in matters of military security."
"I would expect nothing else," the Lethean says, "from one of your reputation. Still, one must wonder at the events that have taken place - at whose interests are served, whose adversely affected...."
"Whose interests do you serve?" I ask, directly.
"Lethean interests are most ably advocated by the House of Terrath."
An idiot might take that as an answer. Letheans... they are hard to read; their facial expressions are so limited, because they rely on other methods of non-verbal communication. And, of course, they find us easy to read. I reach out, and knock my still-steaming raktajino into his lap.
He jumps to his feet, hissing and cursing. "My apologies for my clumsiness," I say.
He mutters something under his breath. "I was not reading your mind," he says.
"So I see, now. If you had been, you would have saved yourself a scalding. What did you have to say to me?"
He sits down again, somewhat gingerly. "You are to discover the truth behind Captain Klur's action," he says. "I speculate, here, but we both know that I speak correctly."
"Conceivably so."
"And, yet, philosophers down the ages have pondered the question - what is truth?" He leans a little forward. "We speculate as to what truth you will offer the Chancellor in your report. We do not impugn your honour by suggesting that you will speak less than the truth... but you will speak no more, we know that."
"What more is there to speak?" I ask - disingenuously.
"Whatever truths you speak may bring down great houses, blast lives... or exonerate others. You have a kinswoman aboard the renegade's ship, Lieutenant General; this much is known. Will your truth save her from execution, or damn her to Gre'thor with Captain Klur?"
"I do not see how that last can now be avoided," I say. "True... I might wish it were otherwise. But my kinswoman has chosen her allegiance, and must now accept the consequences."
"If matters could be arranged otherwise?"
I shake my head. "There is no way."
"A truth might be found that would permit it."
In the end, I conclude, he is just another time waster. "I am a soldier, not a philosopher," I say, and I rise from the table. "Your multiplicity of truths would complicate my mission."
"You might benefit from the study of philosophy."
"No doubt. Well, I close no doors, Lethean. But so far you have brought me only fresh questions, and I am already over-supplied with those. If you come to me again, bring answers, and we might speak." And I turn to go.
---
I return to the barracks, go to my private quarters, and close the door.
The Garaka departs within the hour. I need that time to think.
I sit cross-legged on the floor and close my eyes. Multiplicity of truths... indeed.
The truth is, Bercera IV has been destroyed. The first of my many questions: who benefits from that?
The loss of one world to the Federation is a blow; it is at least balanced by the swing in public opinion against the Empire. Star systems that would have been our allies might now become our enemies; on the other hand, systems that might have revolted against us may now be cowed into obedience. Too many imponderables to sort through.
But the fundamental outcome is as K'tag suggested. Either the war will intensify, or the backlash will cause it to abate. Who desires which outcome, and how likely is it that they will attain their desires?
Darg spoke for the war hawks: a simple creature, Darg, an armchair patriot who despises enemies he has never seen. There are many of his opinion, who thirst for Federation blood and will happily spill the blood of others to gain their ends. Is this Klur one of that faction?
K'tag's other possibility... that the outrage might end the war... must be considered. Are there pacifists and idealists who would burn a whole world to gain peace? Why, yes; there are idealists who would burn down all creation to gain their ends. An ideal is barely worthy of the name if no one is prepared to kill for it... and pacifism is an ideal.
Who desires an end to the war? Pacifists, idealists... merchants who would prosper through trade with the Federation... militarists who would fight on other fronts... and any mother who has buried her children after a battle. Who desires its prolongation? Other militarists... merchants who grow fat on military contracts... anyone who desires the curbing of Federation influence in the quadrant... and enemies of both empires, who would watch them destroy each other.
Which of these commands the loyalty of Captain Klur? One does not attain command of a starship by being stupid; Klur must have known that his action would have dire consequences. So, he would need either a pressing reason for it, or to be sure he would be shielded from those consequences.
And it would take a great deal of influence to shield him - influence that could only come from a member of the High Council. Someone, I suspect, who was at the meeting - an absence might be seen as suspicious, nor would an absent member be able to guide the discussion away from sensitive topics. It might even have been one of those who spoke there. Darg? His motivations were obvious and unsubtle. K'tag? He presented the alternatives, equivocating nicely between them - his counsel was a hall of mirrors, and who is to say where his real thoughts were concealed? Or one of the others.... The Chancellor himself? But I do not see any way in which J'mpok would gain from this.
How was Klur convinced? Straightforward bribes are possible, but I deem them unlikely. Money is not enough to purchase a Klingon - usually. And yet, a Klingon's honour may be bought very cheaply, if he does not understand that he is selling it....
I open my eyes, and rise to my feet. This speculation is fruitless. Like the Lethean, it brings me no answers, only more questions. I must find this Klur, to discover with what coin he was bought.
---
My footsteps ring on the solid metal deck of the Garaka, as the time for our departure approaches. My First Officer, K'Gan, turns his hawk-featured face to me as I approach. "All is ready, sir," he says with a salute. K'Gan is truly more of a Klingon even than I.
I take my seat in the command chair. Beneath me, the mighty Kar'fi carrier is coming to life, its Fek'lhri engines already emitting that unsettling vibration, the dull notes as of a monstrous gong that accompany us everywhere we travel. "Confirm our departure vector and stand ready."
"Confirmed." K'Gan frowns. "We have priority clearance - but we must adjust our planned trajectory. There is a class one diplomatic convoy entering Qo'noS space."
"Compensate as required. And put that convoy on the screen."
The main viewscreen shimmers, displaying the ships. The design is instantly recognizable. "So," I say, "the Federation is making its representations at the very highest level. Well, it does not concern us now. Engines ahead full, and set course for Federation space."
Above me, in orbit, the Garaka is being readied for departure. Meanwhile, I am preparing for my mission. To the unobservant, it would appear that I am sitting in a First City bar, sipping a hot raktajino. The unobservant do not understand how preparations are made.
The Klingon who approaches me is tall and heavily built, wearing a handsome military-style tunic and carrying fine weapons, with no sign of wear. "Lieutenant General Shalo?" he says. "I am Lukar of the House of D'garl."
"Greetings to you."
"I understand that you have the ear of the Chancellor. My House is engaged in the manufacture of various sensor and recording devices, of the highest quality, suitable for use on the field of battle. We lack only the influence required to see our products taken up by the KDF. Honour and glory would accrue to us, were this to happen."
"Naturally."
"A word in the Chancellor's ear might sway the balance between us and our unworthy competitors. Whoever spoke that word would gain honour and glory in proportion to ours. More material rewards are nothing, of course, but they would follow, nonetheless."
A time waster. "I regret that you misunderstand," I tell him. "I do not have the Chancellor's ear. He has mine, to hear and obey his commands. I am to carry out an investigation on his orders. If the quality of your House's wares becomes relevant to that investigation... it will be mentioned. But I tell you, in all frankness, I do not see how that could reasonably be arranged."
He turns and departs with a snarl. I think I have just earned the enmity of a House of minor electronics manufacturers. Somehow, I cannot find it in me to quail at the prospect.
"May I join you?" The Lethean in nondescript leathers does not wait for my answer, but seats himself at the table beside me. "Depressing, is it not, how some Klingons scrabble for advantage...."
"I am not downcast," I say. This one seems a more likely prospect. "How may I assist you?"
"Perhaps, by disclosing the secret of your enviable poise and calm. Many officers, charged with a mission of importance at a time of crisis, would be engaged in the most frantic of preparations...."
"My crew is competent. I see no reason to fuss and chivvy them. My ship will break orbit at its appointed time."
"To pursue the renegade Captain Klur," the Lethean says. "And what then?"
"I will carry out the Chancellor's instructions," I say, "which you will not expect me to discuss."
"Of course not. Still, any being of even average curiosity must speculate."
"One may speculate freely, but one may not always speak freely. Especially in matters of military security."
"I would expect nothing else," the Lethean says, "from one of your reputation. Still, one must wonder at the events that have taken place - at whose interests are served, whose adversely affected...."
"Whose interests do you serve?" I ask, directly.
"Lethean interests are most ably advocated by the House of Terrath."
An idiot might take that as an answer. Letheans... they are hard to read; their facial expressions are so limited, because they rely on other methods of non-verbal communication. And, of course, they find us easy to read. I reach out, and knock my still-steaming raktajino into his lap.
He jumps to his feet, hissing and cursing. "My apologies for my clumsiness," I say.
He mutters something under his breath. "I was not reading your mind," he says.
"So I see, now. If you had been, you would have saved yourself a scalding. What did you have to say to me?"
He sits down again, somewhat gingerly. "You are to discover the truth behind Captain Klur's action," he says. "I speculate, here, but we both know that I speak correctly."
"Conceivably so."
"And, yet, philosophers down the ages have pondered the question - what is truth?" He leans a little forward. "We speculate as to what truth you will offer the Chancellor in your report. We do not impugn your honour by suggesting that you will speak less than the truth... but you will speak no more, we know that."
"What more is there to speak?" I ask - disingenuously.
"Whatever truths you speak may bring down great houses, blast lives... or exonerate others. You have a kinswoman aboard the renegade's ship, Lieutenant General; this much is known. Will your truth save her from execution, or damn her to Gre'thor with Captain Klur?"
"I do not see how that last can now be avoided," I say. "True... I might wish it were otherwise. But my kinswoman has chosen her allegiance, and must now accept the consequences."
"If matters could be arranged otherwise?"
I shake my head. "There is no way."
"A truth might be found that would permit it."
In the end, I conclude, he is just another time waster. "I am a soldier, not a philosopher," I say, and I rise from the table. "Your multiplicity of truths would complicate my mission."
"You might benefit from the study of philosophy."
"No doubt. Well, I close no doors, Lethean. But so far you have brought me only fresh questions, and I am already over-supplied with those. If you come to me again, bring answers, and we might speak." And I turn to go.
---
I return to the barracks, go to my private quarters, and close the door.
The Garaka departs within the hour. I need that time to think.
I sit cross-legged on the floor and close my eyes. Multiplicity of truths... indeed.
The truth is, Bercera IV has been destroyed. The first of my many questions: who benefits from that?
The loss of one world to the Federation is a blow; it is at least balanced by the swing in public opinion against the Empire. Star systems that would have been our allies might now become our enemies; on the other hand, systems that might have revolted against us may now be cowed into obedience. Too many imponderables to sort through.
But the fundamental outcome is as K'tag suggested. Either the war will intensify, or the backlash will cause it to abate. Who desires which outcome, and how likely is it that they will attain their desires?
Darg spoke for the war hawks: a simple creature, Darg, an armchair patriot who despises enemies he has never seen. There are many of his opinion, who thirst for Federation blood and will happily spill the blood of others to gain their ends. Is this Klur one of that faction?
K'tag's other possibility... that the outrage might end the war... must be considered. Are there pacifists and idealists who would burn a whole world to gain peace? Why, yes; there are idealists who would burn down all creation to gain their ends. An ideal is barely worthy of the name if no one is prepared to kill for it... and pacifism is an ideal.
Who desires an end to the war? Pacifists, idealists... merchants who would prosper through trade with the Federation... militarists who would fight on other fronts... and any mother who has buried her children after a battle. Who desires its prolongation? Other militarists... merchants who grow fat on military contracts... anyone who desires the curbing of Federation influence in the quadrant... and enemies of both empires, who would watch them destroy each other.
Which of these commands the loyalty of Captain Klur? One does not attain command of a starship by being stupid; Klur must have known that his action would have dire consequences. So, he would need either a pressing reason for it, or to be sure he would be shielded from those consequences.
And it would take a great deal of influence to shield him - influence that could only come from a member of the High Council. Someone, I suspect, who was at the meeting - an absence might be seen as suspicious, nor would an absent member be able to guide the discussion away from sensitive topics. It might even have been one of those who spoke there. Darg? His motivations were obvious and unsubtle. K'tag? He presented the alternatives, equivocating nicely between them - his counsel was a hall of mirrors, and who is to say where his real thoughts were concealed? Or one of the others.... The Chancellor himself? But I do not see any way in which J'mpok would gain from this.
How was Klur convinced? Straightforward bribes are possible, but I deem them unlikely. Money is not enough to purchase a Klingon - usually. And yet, a Klingon's honour may be bought very cheaply, if he does not understand that he is selling it....
I open my eyes, and rise to my feet. This speculation is fruitless. Like the Lethean, it brings me no answers, only more questions. I must find this Klur, to discover with what coin he was bought.
---
My footsteps ring on the solid metal deck of the Garaka, as the time for our departure approaches. My First Officer, K'Gan, turns his hawk-featured face to me as I approach. "All is ready, sir," he says with a salute. K'Gan is truly more of a Klingon even than I.
I take my seat in the command chair. Beneath me, the mighty Kar'fi carrier is coming to life, its Fek'lhri engines already emitting that unsettling vibration, the dull notes as of a monstrous gong that accompany us everywhere we travel. "Confirm our departure vector and stand ready."
"Confirmed." K'Gan frowns. "We have priority clearance - but we must adjust our planned trajectory. There is a class one diplomatic convoy entering Qo'noS space."
"Compensate as required. And put that convoy on the screen."
The main viewscreen shimmers, displaying the ships. The design is instantly recognizable. "So," I say, "the Federation is making its representations at the very highest level. Well, it does not concern us now. Engines ahead full, and set course for Federation space."
Fallout 6
Tylha
Cool air blasts into my helmet as the respirator steps up a notch. The suit's readouts are all in the green - which you would expect, since the crystalline nanofiber EV suit is rated for combat on Nukara Prime, and I'm on what used to be a class M world.
"Down here," the civilian disaster relief worker says over my headset. He's an Andorian, a chan named Koneph Phoral, and I can't shake an odd feeling I've met him before, although I can't think where. Now, bulky and ungainly in his hazard suit, he leads the way down a narrow flight of concrete stairs, into the survival bunker on Bercera IV.
The power is gone. The only light in the narrow stairway comes from our helmet lamps. And, although the readings inside my suit are all green, on the outside, it's a different matter. We are thirty kilometres from the centre of Bercera IV's planetary capital - and that's as close as we can get, even in these EV suits. The tricobalt penetrator warhead actually cracked the crust of the planet at its impact point. A hundred years from now, the crater will be a truly impressive shield volcano; right now, it's a raw wound spewing white-hot magma. Heat, toxic gas, and radioactive fallout all combine to make this place uninhabitable. But people should have been safe, in the survival shelters....
"Here," Phoral says. He uses a hydraulic wheel in the wall to open a heavy blast door. I lean forward, let my lamp shine into the room beyond. Lying on the floor are several short, stubby, humanoid forms. Tellarites, and lying very still.
"Some of them made it to the shelters?"
"Yes." Phoral's face is long and humourous, marked at mouth and eyes by laughter lines, but there is no laughter about him now. "They had about two or three minutes' warning, but for the few who were close enough, and fast enough, they should have been safe. But there was something else in the mix."
I kneel down beside one of the bodies. "What was it? Radiation?"
"The tricobalt is fierce enough, but no. This was something else, something I've never seen before. An isotopic gadolinium clathrate. Looks like it was designed to get through micro-fractures in the concrete walls. And the stuff's -" Phoral swallows. "It's strongly hygroscopic, but in contact with a wet surface, it undergoes a rapid chemical change. The gadolinium precipitates out."
I frown. "Gadolinium... is it rapidly toxic?"
"Not especially, in that form. But the precipitate is crystallized, thousands and thousands of microscopic, needle-sharp crystals. You can imagine what it does to the lining of the lungs." He gestures with one gloved hand. "Well, you don't need to imagine. You can see."
I gaze down at the contorted features of one of the victims, at the bloody foam already dried on the nostrils and mouth. "This stuff - how much of it was there?"
"Several hundred tonnes. We figure it was deployed in containers that followed the warheads down, and were ruptured in the initial blast wave... then, it just fell. Sank through the atmosphere, into the ground... and through the walls."
"You have detailed forensic scans?"
"Oh, yes. All fully documented. I just... I just felt you needed to see."
"Yes," I say, softly. "Yes, I think I understand."
We know something of what has happened, by now. While King Estmere was travelling to the Bercera system, the data was already coming in; communications records from satellite buoys, visuals from the few ships that made it off the planet in time. We have a name, a ship's name, some idea of the perpetrator of this monstrous crime. But to - to understand it - you have to see, for yourself. I reach out with one gloved hand and close the Tellarite's eyes. Then I turn to Phoral. "This was planned," I say. "Premeditated. There's no doubt about that."
"Yes," he says. "That carrier came into orbit already loaded with planet-wrecking weaponry. No question about that. They even anticipated the countermeasures, and took advantage of those. Roughly a third of the tricobalt warheads were intercepted on the way down by Bercera's anti-meteor defences. So, now, there are thick clouds of pulverized tricobalt in the upper atmosphere."
"What can we do about that?"
"Very little, even with the resources of your ship. A wide-area tuned disruption field could disintegrate the tricobalt, it's what we'd often do with a fissile material leak - but there is so much of it, so spread out, and so damn energy-dense, that disintegrating it would release enough energy into the atmosphere to trigger another firestorm. The initial bombardment took the oxygen content down from twenty-one to seventeen per cent." The warheads, though devastating in themselves, couldn't do that much damage to a planetary ecosystem... but they were spaced, carefully positioned, so that the shock waves from the blasts united to generate a firestorm, an eruption of burning air that covered most of a continent before it burned itself out. "If we let the stuff settle, though, it will sink deep, and probably permeate down into the deep oceans... and the pelagic depths are the only place that hasn't yet suffered massive devastation. Either way, we're talking another killer blow to the planetary ecology." His eyes are bleak, and I can see his antennae drooping. "We're doing everything we can... but it's not going to be enough. In a couple of centuries, once the worst of the radioisotopes are gone, this planet should be fit for terraforming back to class M status. But for now...."
The oxygen content has been reduced... and it will not be restored, not with half the planet's vegetation already in ashes, and the rest dying as the sun is cut off by choking clouds of volcanic dust. With the oxygen content gone, animal life will perish, everywhere. Some single-celled anaerobic life might survive, in the ocean depths, or beneath the planetary ice caps. But the restoration of Bercera IV will take generations of work, work that can't even begin until I'm dead and gone.
"How much tricobalt did they use?" I ask.
"Hard to say, exactly. Kilotons. I don't mean in explosive yield, I mean actual mass of material. Thousands of tonnes. How many thousands, we don't know yet."
I shake my head. "It's all of a piece," I say. "A single ship, even a big one like that Kar'fi carrier, couldn't manufacture tricobalt in that sort of - industrial - quantity. You need specialist replicators and transmuters even for small amounts of it. I used to use tricobalt torpedoes, aboard the old Sita. It's frightful stuff."
"Isn't it, though?" Phoral says, dryly. "Let's get back to the shuttle." With so much radioactive dust in the tormented atmosphere, we can't use the transporters safely. I let him lead the way, back up the stairs. I turn the handle of the door, though, to seal the Tellarites into their tomb.
"By the way," I say, as we trudge along the ruined, blackened streets, back to the shuttle, "I keep thinking you look familiar - have we met before?"
"Sort of." He turns and shoots a glance at me, and I can see his expression lighten, briefly, behind his faceplate. "We were both a bit out of it, at the time. You'd just donated a lot of blood, and I was coming out of long-term cryostasis."
I stop dead in my tracks. "You're one of Corodrev's augments?"
"Well," he says, "don't hold it against me. I took the same deal as everyone else - immunity, in return for full details of every operation the damn Nausicaans sent us on - and then I decided to do something constructive with my life. Disaster relief seemed... constructive."
"I see your point. Colonizing Gimel Vessaris didn't appeal, then?"
"It did, to most of us.... Blame Big Daddy Corodrev, though. My genetic augmentation runs to an enhanced immune system - I can take most biological agents, and a lot of chemical toxins, in my stride. But it doesn't quite work properly, and I get some fierce allergies as a result. Some of the organic chemical compounds in Gimel Vessaris vegetation fall into my sensitivity range. I could live there, but I'd never be comfortable."
"I'm sorry," I say.
He shrugs, the gesture almost invisible in the hazard suit. "It's like you said to Oz, the genetic augmentation thing never really pans out properly."
"Oz? Osrin Corodrev?"
"My thaan-partner. He's about somewhere; he decided to work with me."
"Oh," I say. Osrin Corodrev, scion of his xenophobic father's genetic experiments, raised as a living weapon and used over many decades by the Nausicaans... I'd never expected him to form part of a normal Andorian quad-marriage. "Well. Tell him his great-grand-niece sends her regards, then. And your wives?"
"We've not found a shen and a zhen who'll put up with us, yet." He smiles. "We've just got an understanding - that the two of us come as a job lot." Binary-gender species never seem to understand that the two "males" in a quad-marriage are every bit as married to each other as they are to the "females". But, thinking about it... I'm rather happy, all told, that these two damaged people have found some love in their lives.
We reach the shuttle, and begin the laborious process of decontamination; the damn suits have plenty of nooks and crannies to carry toxic dust. By the time we're through, the red disk of the sun is descending, half visible through the clouds, dimmer still than the fires on the horizon where the volcano rages.
Aboard the shuttle, I pop my helmet and stretch out my cramped antennae. I have a brief moment of relaxation, and then the comms console chirps. "Shohl here."
Anthi's face forms on the screen. "Some news from the Federation Council, sir," she says. "They've framed their diplomatic protest... and they've found a pretty big gun to deliver it."
Cool air blasts into my helmet as the respirator steps up a notch. The suit's readouts are all in the green - which you would expect, since the crystalline nanofiber EV suit is rated for combat on Nukara Prime, and I'm on what used to be a class M world.
"Down here," the civilian disaster relief worker says over my headset. He's an Andorian, a chan named Koneph Phoral, and I can't shake an odd feeling I've met him before, although I can't think where. Now, bulky and ungainly in his hazard suit, he leads the way down a narrow flight of concrete stairs, into the survival bunker on Bercera IV.
The power is gone. The only light in the narrow stairway comes from our helmet lamps. And, although the readings inside my suit are all green, on the outside, it's a different matter. We are thirty kilometres from the centre of Bercera IV's planetary capital - and that's as close as we can get, even in these EV suits. The tricobalt penetrator warhead actually cracked the crust of the planet at its impact point. A hundred years from now, the crater will be a truly impressive shield volcano; right now, it's a raw wound spewing white-hot magma. Heat, toxic gas, and radioactive fallout all combine to make this place uninhabitable. But people should have been safe, in the survival shelters....
"Here," Phoral says. He uses a hydraulic wheel in the wall to open a heavy blast door. I lean forward, let my lamp shine into the room beyond. Lying on the floor are several short, stubby, humanoid forms. Tellarites, and lying very still.
"Some of them made it to the shelters?"
"Yes." Phoral's face is long and humourous, marked at mouth and eyes by laughter lines, but there is no laughter about him now. "They had about two or three minutes' warning, but for the few who were close enough, and fast enough, they should have been safe. But there was something else in the mix."
I kneel down beside one of the bodies. "What was it? Radiation?"
"The tricobalt is fierce enough, but no. This was something else, something I've never seen before. An isotopic gadolinium clathrate. Looks like it was designed to get through micro-fractures in the concrete walls. And the stuff's -" Phoral swallows. "It's strongly hygroscopic, but in contact with a wet surface, it undergoes a rapid chemical change. The gadolinium precipitates out."
I frown. "Gadolinium... is it rapidly toxic?"
"Not especially, in that form. But the precipitate is crystallized, thousands and thousands of microscopic, needle-sharp crystals. You can imagine what it does to the lining of the lungs." He gestures with one gloved hand. "Well, you don't need to imagine. You can see."
I gaze down at the contorted features of one of the victims, at the bloody foam already dried on the nostrils and mouth. "This stuff - how much of it was there?"
"Several hundred tonnes. We figure it was deployed in containers that followed the warheads down, and were ruptured in the initial blast wave... then, it just fell. Sank through the atmosphere, into the ground... and through the walls."
"You have detailed forensic scans?"
"Oh, yes. All fully documented. I just... I just felt you needed to see."
"Yes," I say, softly. "Yes, I think I understand."
We know something of what has happened, by now. While King Estmere was travelling to the Bercera system, the data was already coming in; communications records from satellite buoys, visuals from the few ships that made it off the planet in time. We have a name, a ship's name, some idea of the perpetrator of this monstrous crime. But to - to understand it - you have to see, for yourself. I reach out with one gloved hand and close the Tellarite's eyes. Then I turn to Phoral. "This was planned," I say. "Premeditated. There's no doubt about that."
"Yes," he says. "That carrier came into orbit already loaded with planet-wrecking weaponry. No question about that. They even anticipated the countermeasures, and took advantage of those. Roughly a third of the tricobalt warheads were intercepted on the way down by Bercera's anti-meteor defences. So, now, there are thick clouds of pulverized tricobalt in the upper atmosphere."
"What can we do about that?"
"Very little, even with the resources of your ship. A wide-area tuned disruption field could disintegrate the tricobalt, it's what we'd often do with a fissile material leak - but there is so much of it, so spread out, and so damn energy-dense, that disintegrating it would release enough energy into the atmosphere to trigger another firestorm. The initial bombardment took the oxygen content down from twenty-one to seventeen per cent." The warheads, though devastating in themselves, couldn't do that much damage to a planetary ecosystem... but they were spaced, carefully positioned, so that the shock waves from the blasts united to generate a firestorm, an eruption of burning air that covered most of a continent before it burned itself out. "If we let the stuff settle, though, it will sink deep, and probably permeate down into the deep oceans... and the pelagic depths are the only place that hasn't yet suffered massive devastation. Either way, we're talking another killer blow to the planetary ecology." His eyes are bleak, and I can see his antennae drooping. "We're doing everything we can... but it's not going to be enough. In a couple of centuries, once the worst of the radioisotopes are gone, this planet should be fit for terraforming back to class M status. But for now...."
The oxygen content has been reduced... and it will not be restored, not with half the planet's vegetation already in ashes, and the rest dying as the sun is cut off by choking clouds of volcanic dust. With the oxygen content gone, animal life will perish, everywhere. Some single-celled anaerobic life might survive, in the ocean depths, or beneath the planetary ice caps. But the restoration of Bercera IV will take generations of work, work that can't even begin until I'm dead and gone.
"How much tricobalt did they use?" I ask.
"Hard to say, exactly. Kilotons. I don't mean in explosive yield, I mean actual mass of material. Thousands of tonnes. How many thousands, we don't know yet."
I shake my head. "It's all of a piece," I say. "A single ship, even a big one like that Kar'fi carrier, couldn't manufacture tricobalt in that sort of - industrial - quantity. You need specialist replicators and transmuters even for small amounts of it. I used to use tricobalt torpedoes, aboard the old Sita. It's frightful stuff."
"Isn't it, though?" Phoral says, dryly. "Let's get back to the shuttle." With so much radioactive dust in the tormented atmosphere, we can't use the transporters safely. I let him lead the way, back up the stairs. I turn the handle of the door, though, to seal the Tellarites into their tomb.
"By the way," I say, as we trudge along the ruined, blackened streets, back to the shuttle, "I keep thinking you look familiar - have we met before?"
"Sort of." He turns and shoots a glance at me, and I can see his expression lighten, briefly, behind his faceplate. "We were both a bit out of it, at the time. You'd just donated a lot of blood, and I was coming out of long-term cryostasis."
I stop dead in my tracks. "You're one of Corodrev's augments?"
"Well," he says, "don't hold it against me. I took the same deal as everyone else - immunity, in return for full details of every operation the damn Nausicaans sent us on - and then I decided to do something constructive with my life. Disaster relief seemed... constructive."
"I see your point. Colonizing Gimel Vessaris didn't appeal, then?"
"It did, to most of us.... Blame Big Daddy Corodrev, though. My genetic augmentation runs to an enhanced immune system - I can take most biological agents, and a lot of chemical toxins, in my stride. But it doesn't quite work properly, and I get some fierce allergies as a result. Some of the organic chemical compounds in Gimel Vessaris vegetation fall into my sensitivity range. I could live there, but I'd never be comfortable."
"I'm sorry," I say.
He shrugs, the gesture almost invisible in the hazard suit. "It's like you said to Oz, the genetic augmentation thing never really pans out properly."
"Oz? Osrin Corodrev?"
"My thaan-partner. He's about somewhere; he decided to work with me."
"Oh," I say. Osrin Corodrev, scion of his xenophobic father's genetic experiments, raised as a living weapon and used over many decades by the Nausicaans... I'd never expected him to form part of a normal Andorian quad-marriage. "Well. Tell him his great-grand-niece sends her regards, then. And your wives?"
"We've not found a shen and a zhen who'll put up with us, yet." He smiles. "We've just got an understanding - that the two of us come as a job lot." Binary-gender species never seem to understand that the two "males" in a quad-marriage are every bit as married to each other as they are to the "females". But, thinking about it... I'm rather happy, all told, that these two damaged people have found some love in their lives.
We reach the shuttle, and begin the laborious process of decontamination; the damn suits have plenty of nooks and crannies to carry toxic dust. By the time we're through, the red disk of the sun is descending, half visible through the clouds, dimmer still than the fires on the horizon where the volcano rages.
Aboard the shuttle, I pop my helmet and stretch out my cramped antennae. I have a brief moment of relaxation, and then the comms console chirps. "Shohl here."
Anthi's face forms on the screen. "Some news from the Federation Council, sir," she says. "They've framed their diplomatic protest... and they've found a pretty big gun to deliver it."
Fallout 5
Personal log: Veronika "Ronnie" Grau, officer commanding USS Virtue NCC-92780
Datarecord: 2/12 2ndry adjunct unimatrix 07 (pending reassimilation/reclassification)
Tallasa has that look again.
I'm sitting comfortably in the centre seat of the Virtue, and my Andorian */*species 4464*/* first officer is being all brisk and efficient */*efficiency 56%---suboptimal---introduce cybersystems, cerebral cortex, visual sensorium---optimize*/*
Oh, do shut up, Two of Twelve.
Anyway. Yes. Brisk and efficient and thoroughly Starfleet like she always is, and she has that look she always gets, the look that says you are my commanding officer and I am your loyal crew and it is not my place to criticize, but, boy, do you need some criticism right now.
"We have eighteen hours before we rendezvous with Admiral Gref and the rest of Sixth Fleet," she says, in her oh-so-reasonable soft Andorian tones. "Sir, shouldn't you get some rest?"
"I'll rest when I'm dead," I snap at her, and then say, "Sorry." But I'm not. Andorians don't even have a fixed sleep cycle, where does she get off criticizing mine? Blue meanies. */*species designation not recognized*/*
In fairness to her, the Virtue does seem to be humming along pretty nicely. She's a good ship, possibly better than I deserve, what with her being an ultra-modern Chimera class heavy destroyer, and me being a time-displaced ex-cyborg with a list of negative psych evaluations that makes War and Peace look like a bus ticket. I'm good in a scrap, though. Don't let anybody ever tell you Ronnie Grau isn't good in a scrap.
Fighting is one thing, though. */*tactical functions offline*/* Spook stuff is another, and this situation is fraught with spook stuff. Spooky, spooky spook stuff.... I see Tallasa and her sister Jhemyl exchange meaningful glances. "Aw, cripes, was that my out-loud voice again?"
"I really think you should rest, sir," says Tallasa.
"Yes," I say. "No. Maybe. I'm fretting, I don't mind admitting it. Fretting. Whole damn situation doesn't add up right. Don't expect me to sleep when I'm fretting, little Ronnie would have bad dreams." Bad dreams is right. Little Ronnie has two heads, one inside the other, and both of them are full of bad wiring, and right now the sparks are flying.
*/*---inaccurate---no electronic/electromechanical failures detected*/*
"There's nothing you can do about it at the moment," says Tallasa in soothing tones. She's right, of course. I'm lucky to have her - her, and Jhemyl, and the rest of my loyal crew, amazes me how loyal they are, sometimes, I'm pretty sure I don't deserve it. Loyal, but on this occasion, wrong.
Tallasa has stopped exchanging glances with Jhemyl, and has started sharing them with Saval, instead, my Vulcan */*species 3259*/* science officer. Last time they exchanged those sorts of glances, I woke up in sickbay twelve hours later. Saval, who is actually no slouch at the science stuff, had rigged up some sort of cortical suppression field, turned me right off like a TV set. It shut Two of Twelve up for days, so I guess I ought to be thankful. Of course, what he doesn't realize is, she adapted. She does that.
I look around the bridge. "You. On comms. Face-ache." It's a new ensign, and he looks flustered. "Get me a subspace channel, band delta, frequency 23861.2." He looks more flustered, but he starts tapping away at the console.
Tallasa is frowning. "I don't recognize that frequency, sir, and band delta hasn't been used by Starfleet in years."
"Decades, probably," I say. I beam at her. It makes my mouth hurt. "Before your time. It's the frequency for the phase two space navigation grid, whole lot of subspace beacons chatting to each other. Obsolete now, but it's still there as a backup in Sirius and Alpha Centauri space. Has a whole lot of spare bandwidth, too, and we used to use it for, you know, back-channel chat. Like ham radio."
"What do you expect to find on it now, sir?" Tallasa asks. You daft old bat, she doesn't add, but her body language speaks volumes.
"Not a lot. But if we're dealing with spooky spooky spook stuff, I want more information. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." Since Tallasa only reads slushy Andorian romances about tragic love pentangles and such, that literary reference flies over her head like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Never mind. "Know what else is obsolete, but still working? The duotronic computer core at Memory Alpha. They still use that for backup, and it's got a subspace linkup we can reach through that back channel." I pull over my armrest console, and start tapping away. "Oh, how it all comes flooding back."
"We can query Memory Alpha through regular channels," Tallasa says.
"Yeah, but this way's more fun," I say. "Besides, queries only get back answers if you know what to ask. This way, I can get in and root around for a bit, follow up links, maybe get a peek at stuff they wouldn't release through regular channels."
"It is illogical to assume," says Saval, politely, "that you will be able actually to access the content of the duotronic core. You would need appropriate user permissions."
"Oh, but inappropriate ones are so much nicer. Did I ever mention I was there when they put that duotronic core in? Did I ever mention I saw the systems admin choose a password for it?"
OK, Two of Twelve, says I to myself... to my other self. Time to earn your keep.
*/*organic memory---local storage---long term---accessing
---building heuristic index
----18%
----34%
----67%
----93%
----complete
---adaptive mnemonic enhancement engaged
----7%
----15%
----26%
----57%
----73%
----95%
----complete ---converting sensory to symbolic memory
-----24%
-----68%
-----complete
---retrieval completed*/*
I type in the access code while Saval is still bleating about biometric ID. "They set up a text-only code to bypass the biometrics," I tell him. "In case they ever needed remote access in a hurry. A back door to the back door, which we reached through another back door. Now, then. I've got root level access to Memory Alpha, shall I format it, or are you going to let me browse in peace?"
They shut up. I start looking at the data structures as they come through on the console screen. The thing about old-fashioned backup devices is, people never expect to have to look at them. So they're perfect for putting stuff on, when you don't want people coming looking for it. You'd be amazed what you can find in archives, sometimes.
"I'll get some rest," I say, and actually I do feel easier in my mind, somehow. "The old lady's going to get her head down, don't you worry. Just want some bedtime stories before I nod off, that's all."
There are intelligence digests, here, that I'm pretty sure will repay closer investigation. Bedtime stories, yes. And maybe a side order of Boris Savinkov to go with it.
Datarecord: 2/12 2ndry adjunct unimatrix 07 (pending reassimilation/reclassification)
Tallasa has that look again.
I'm sitting comfortably in the centre seat of the Virtue, and my Andorian */*species 4464*/* first officer is being all brisk and efficient */*efficiency 56%---suboptimal---introduce cybersystems, cerebral cortex, visual sensorium---optimize*/*
Oh, do shut up, Two of Twelve.
Anyway. Yes. Brisk and efficient and thoroughly Starfleet like she always is, and she has that look she always gets, the look that says you are my commanding officer and I am your loyal crew and it is not my place to criticize, but, boy, do you need some criticism right now.
"We have eighteen hours before we rendezvous with Admiral Gref and the rest of Sixth Fleet," she says, in her oh-so-reasonable soft Andorian tones. "Sir, shouldn't you get some rest?"
"I'll rest when I'm dead," I snap at her, and then say, "Sorry." But I'm not. Andorians don't even have a fixed sleep cycle, where does she get off criticizing mine? Blue meanies. */*species designation not recognized*/*
In fairness to her, the Virtue does seem to be humming along pretty nicely. She's a good ship, possibly better than I deserve, what with her being an ultra-modern Chimera class heavy destroyer, and me being a time-displaced ex-cyborg with a list of negative psych evaluations that makes War and Peace look like a bus ticket. I'm good in a scrap, though. Don't let anybody ever tell you Ronnie Grau isn't good in a scrap.
Fighting is one thing, though. */*tactical functions offline*/* Spook stuff is another, and this situation is fraught with spook stuff. Spooky, spooky spook stuff.... I see Tallasa and her sister Jhemyl exchange meaningful glances. "Aw, cripes, was that my out-loud voice again?"
"I really think you should rest, sir," says Tallasa.
"Yes," I say. "No. Maybe. I'm fretting, I don't mind admitting it. Fretting. Whole damn situation doesn't add up right. Don't expect me to sleep when I'm fretting, little Ronnie would have bad dreams." Bad dreams is right. Little Ronnie has two heads, one inside the other, and both of them are full of bad wiring, and right now the sparks are flying.
*/*---inaccurate---no electronic/electromechanical failures detected*/*
"There's nothing you can do about it at the moment," says Tallasa in soothing tones. She's right, of course. I'm lucky to have her - her, and Jhemyl, and the rest of my loyal crew, amazes me how loyal they are, sometimes, I'm pretty sure I don't deserve it. Loyal, but on this occasion, wrong.
Tallasa has stopped exchanging glances with Jhemyl, and has started sharing them with Saval, instead, my Vulcan */*species 3259*/* science officer. Last time they exchanged those sorts of glances, I woke up in sickbay twelve hours later. Saval, who is actually no slouch at the science stuff, had rigged up some sort of cortical suppression field, turned me right off like a TV set. It shut Two of Twelve up for days, so I guess I ought to be thankful. Of course, what he doesn't realize is, she adapted. She does that.
I look around the bridge. "You. On comms. Face-ache." It's a new ensign, and he looks flustered. "Get me a subspace channel, band delta, frequency 23861.2." He looks more flustered, but he starts tapping away at the console.
Tallasa is frowning. "I don't recognize that frequency, sir, and band delta hasn't been used by Starfleet in years."
"Decades, probably," I say. I beam at her. It makes my mouth hurt. "Before your time. It's the frequency for the phase two space navigation grid, whole lot of subspace beacons chatting to each other. Obsolete now, but it's still there as a backup in Sirius and Alpha Centauri space. Has a whole lot of spare bandwidth, too, and we used to use it for, you know, back-channel chat. Like ham radio."
"What do you expect to find on it now, sir?" Tallasa asks. You daft old bat, she doesn't add, but her body language speaks volumes.
"Not a lot. But if we're dealing with spooky spooky spook stuff, I want more information. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." Since Tallasa only reads slushy Andorian romances about tragic love pentangles and such, that literary reference flies over her head like the daring young man on the flying trapeze. Never mind. "Know what else is obsolete, but still working? The duotronic computer core at Memory Alpha. They still use that for backup, and it's got a subspace linkup we can reach through that back channel." I pull over my armrest console, and start tapping away. "Oh, how it all comes flooding back."
"We can query Memory Alpha through regular channels," Tallasa says.
"Yeah, but this way's more fun," I say. "Besides, queries only get back answers if you know what to ask. This way, I can get in and root around for a bit, follow up links, maybe get a peek at stuff they wouldn't release through regular channels."
"It is illogical to assume," says Saval, politely, "that you will be able actually to access the content of the duotronic core. You would need appropriate user permissions."
"Oh, but inappropriate ones are so much nicer. Did I ever mention I was there when they put that duotronic core in? Did I ever mention I saw the systems admin choose a password for it?"
OK, Two of Twelve, says I to myself... to my other self. Time to earn your keep.
*/*organic memory---local storage---long term---accessing
---building heuristic index
----18%
----34%
----67%
----93%
----complete
---adaptive mnemonic enhancement engaged
----7%
----15%
----26%
----57%
----73%
----95%
----complete ---converting sensory to symbolic memory
-----24%
-----68%
-----complete
---retrieval completed*/*
I type in the access code while Saval is still bleating about biometric ID. "They set up a text-only code to bypass the biometrics," I tell him. "In case they ever needed remote access in a hurry. A back door to the back door, which we reached through another back door. Now, then. I've got root level access to Memory Alpha, shall I format it, or are you going to let me browse in peace?"
They shut up. I start looking at the data structures as they come through on the console screen. The thing about old-fashioned backup devices is, people never expect to have to look at them. So they're perfect for putting stuff on, when you don't want people coming looking for it. You'd be amazed what you can find in archives, sometimes.
"I'll get some rest," I say, and actually I do feel easier in my mind, somehow. "The old lady's going to get her head down, don't you worry. Just want some bedtime stories before I nod off, that's all."
There are intelligence digests, here, that I'm pretty sure will repay closer investigation. Bedtime stories, yes. And maybe a side order of Boris Savinkov to go with it.
Fallout 4
The Orion woman with the close-cropped dark hair strode with military efficiency along the corridors of the QIb laH'e'. They were dark, almost deserted. So many of the crew were... not sulking, exactly, she thought... but withdrawn, sullen, fearful.
She reached the door, took a deep breath, held it for a count of three, exhaled. She touched a panel, and a buzzer sounded.
For a moment, there was no response. Then a muffled voice said, "Who is it?"
"Captain," she answered, "it is First Officer Tayaira." No intercom. He was on the other side of the solid door, and she hoped he could hear her. "We are at the coordinates you ordered. We have been phased and under strict sensor and radio silence for two hours. Your crew awaits your further orders, sir."
The door hissed open. Klur was standing there, just inside the room, his dark hair tangled and unkempt. Behind him, his quarters were in almost total darkness, just one fitful flame burning in an ornate holder - some religious trinket, she remembered, from a conquered world; he had kept it as a memento. He stared at her, and his gaze seemed unsteady.
"Orders," he said, "yes." With a sinking feeling, Tayaira realized that she could smell alcohol on his breath. How drunk was he? And how bad were things -?
"Come in," he said, and turned, blundering his way to a desk console. He hit switches, blinked as the lights came on, rummaged on the desk for a datapad. "Here. We're to proceed to -" his finger came down on the pad "- these coordinates, now, at warp. Nebula, emission nebula - mask our warp signature -" He heaved a sigh. "The Feds will be looking for us, hard."
"They are not alone, sir," Tayaira said. "We are receiving orders, repeatedly, from Fleet Command. They order us to return to Qo'noS. Sir, they are becoming increasingly forceful and urgent."
"Figures," said Klur. "No response. Maintain subspace silence. Can't return to Qo'noS if Starfleet gets us, can we?"
"No, sir. And your plan to mask our warp signature is a sound one. But, sir -"
He scowled at her. "What?"
"Sir." She screwed up her courage. "If I am to be your First Officer, I must know something of what is in your mind. Simply enough to - to be effective. It is necessary, sir."
His scowl faded, slightly. "Necessary, yes." He stumbled towards the bed, sat down on it heavily. "All right, ask."
"Sir... what is to become of us? Are we - are we renegades? Have we acted outside the High Council's wishes?"
He laughed. "Yes and no. Politics. High Council's full of politicians. 'm waiting for a word... to show they've made their minds up. They will. They will back me. I have promises."
"Promises." Her spirits plummeted. Promises. A Klingon's word was inviolable, a promise bound up his honour with his truth... except when it didn't. Was Klur really so foolish as to trust a politician's promises?
"They jus' need time," he said, "time t' get their heads around it. What we've done. They can't take it back, so they have to... to own it. Make it their own. Got t'be the way. Jus' need a little more time t'make the decision... then we go back t' Qo'noS as heroes. Besides. They owe me. Did 'em a favour."
"A favour, sir? Destroying the planet... was a favour to someone on the High Council?"
"That? No." He laughed. "That wasn't the favour."
She reached the door, took a deep breath, held it for a count of three, exhaled. She touched a panel, and a buzzer sounded.
For a moment, there was no response. Then a muffled voice said, "Who is it?"
"Captain," she answered, "it is First Officer Tayaira." No intercom. He was on the other side of the solid door, and she hoped he could hear her. "We are at the coordinates you ordered. We have been phased and under strict sensor and radio silence for two hours. Your crew awaits your further orders, sir."
The door hissed open. Klur was standing there, just inside the room, his dark hair tangled and unkempt. Behind him, his quarters were in almost total darkness, just one fitful flame burning in an ornate holder - some religious trinket, she remembered, from a conquered world; he had kept it as a memento. He stared at her, and his gaze seemed unsteady.
"Orders," he said, "yes." With a sinking feeling, Tayaira realized that she could smell alcohol on his breath. How drunk was he? And how bad were things -?
"Come in," he said, and turned, blundering his way to a desk console. He hit switches, blinked as the lights came on, rummaged on the desk for a datapad. "Here. We're to proceed to -" his finger came down on the pad "- these coordinates, now, at warp. Nebula, emission nebula - mask our warp signature -" He heaved a sigh. "The Feds will be looking for us, hard."
"They are not alone, sir," Tayaira said. "We are receiving orders, repeatedly, from Fleet Command. They order us to return to Qo'noS. Sir, they are becoming increasingly forceful and urgent."
"Figures," said Klur. "No response. Maintain subspace silence. Can't return to Qo'noS if Starfleet gets us, can we?"
"No, sir. And your plan to mask our warp signature is a sound one. But, sir -"
He scowled at her. "What?"
"Sir." She screwed up her courage. "If I am to be your First Officer, I must know something of what is in your mind. Simply enough to - to be effective. It is necessary, sir."
His scowl faded, slightly. "Necessary, yes." He stumbled towards the bed, sat down on it heavily. "All right, ask."
"Sir... what is to become of us? Are we - are we renegades? Have we acted outside the High Council's wishes?"
He laughed. "Yes and no. Politics. High Council's full of politicians. 'm waiting for a word... to show they've made their minds up. They will. They will back me. I have promises."
"Promises." Her spirits plummeted. Promises. A Klingon's word was inviolable, a promise bound up his honour with his truth... except when it didn't. Was Klur really so foolish as to trust a politician's promises?
"They jus' need time," he said, "time t' get their heads around it. What we've done. They can't take it back, so they have to... to own it. Make it their own. Got t'be the way. Jus' need a little more time t'make the decision... then we go back t' Qo'noS as heroes. Besides. They owe me. Did 'em a favour."
"A favour, sir? Destroying the planet... was a favour to someone on the High Council?"
"That? No." He laughed. "That wasn't the favour."
Fallout 3
Personal record: Shalo of the house of Sinoom, commanding officer, IKS Garaka
The knock at the door of my room is... unwelcome. It is only since attaining my current rank that I have had the privilege of private quarters when staying at the First City barracks. The privacy, the seclusion, is still a novelty, and one that I value. I do not care to be disturbed.
"Enter," I say.
The bekk does not cross the threshold. "Forgive the intrusion, Lieutenant General," he says, "but you are commanded to appear at a meeting of the High Council. The Chancellor himself has ordered your presence."
"When?"
"Immediately, sir." There is something in his manner, some stress or nervousness. Klingons do not often show nervousness. I frown.
"I will be there directly. Has the Chancellor stated why he requires me?"
"No, sir." The bekk's nervousness increases. "It may be that it has something to do with the news -"
"What news?" I demand.
"You have not heard, sir?"
"I have been... meditating. In seclusion. What news?"
"A world, sir. A whole habitable world... destroyed."
I stiffen as cold anger grips me. "What? Where has the Federation attacked?"
"No, sir," the bekk says, wretchedly, "I have not made my meaning clear. The Feds have not destroyed a world. We have."
---
Murmurs seem to fill the Great Hall, a tide of hushed conversation that rises even to the stone heads of the great statues of Klingon warriors who tower up towards the roof above us. The Chancellor stands in his usual place on the steps. His face is as stony as the statues'.
One of the Councillors - T'Jeg of the House of Toros - turns as I approach, and asks, "What is this Orion female doing here?"
"I am here at the Chancellor's order," I snap back. One must always assert one's self - one's position, one's rights - when dealing with Klingons. It is fatal to back down, perhaps literally so.
"It is so," J'mpok says, in a voice like stone breaking. He makes a gesture with one hand, and I take the place he indicates, to the side. Near enough to hear all, far enough away that it is clear I am not to be consulted.
More Councillors arrive: I have never yet seen the Great Hall so full. "Are all here?" the Chancellor demands.
An aide replies, "Save for those Councillors who are out-system and unable to respond, yes, Chancellor."
"Then we shall begin," says J'mpok, "with a simple statement of the facts. Forty hours ago, the IKS QIb laH'e', under the command of Captain Klur, son of Durgor, of the house of Mak'teth, was on a deep penetration raiding mission in Federation space. Captain Klur approached the Federation colony world of Bercera IV, demanding its surrender to the Empire. When this was refused, Klur deployed tricobalt devices in a continent-wide strategic pattern, creating a global firestorm -"
"The Jol'qah effect," one of the Councillors says, knowledgeably. "I have never yet heard of it being used in practice."
J'mpok glares at him. "It has been used now," he says, "along with direct strikes at the planet's population centres. Bercera IV is utterly devastated. Casualties exceed half a billion, almost all of them civilians. We now meet in council, to discuss... what must happen next."
The murmuring is stilled, now. Faintly, outside, we can hear the sounds of First City.
Someone speaks: I cannot see who. "Was this... action... authorized?"
"No," the Chancellor says, "it was not. Though whether anyone will believe that... is another matter. Klur submitted his Record of Battle with his after-action report in the normal manner, via subspace radio. In all respects, he acted as if this were a conventional military action."
"Where is Klur now?" asks Councillor Tol'beq of the House of Kador.
"Unknown. His ship did not return to its scheduled patrol pattern." J'mpok glowers. "I have, naturally, ordered the ship back to Qo'noS so that Klur may... answer for his conduct. Equally naturally, he has yet to respond."
"Did none of his crew protest their orders?" asks T'Jeg.
"Two officers spoke against Klur, and were executed in the normal manner."
"Their names?"
"Is it important?" J'mpok turns to an aide, who hands him a datapad. "First Officer Talakh, and Commander Kysang."
"Then those officers bear no responsibility," says T'Jeg. The Chancellor looks at him for a moment, and frowns.
"In any case," he continues, "we are faced, now, with a crisis. The Federation has regaled half the galaxy with fanciful tales of Klingon atrocities since this war began... now, they have an indisputable, real, atrocity they can hold up. The propaganda value alone will be worth a hundred fleets to them. And we must consider their most likely military response, which I anticipate will be soon, and forceful." His expression grows yet bleaker. "There is also the possibility that they will respond to our attack in a similar vein."
"Countervalue strikes on planetary targets?" says Councillor Darg of the House of T'llan. "The Federation has no stomach for such actions. It is run by idealists and pacifists -"
"When have you ever fought them?" J'mpok demands.
"It is true," Ambassador S'taass of the Gorn speaks, for the first time, "that Federation ideals become - tempered with pragmatism - when their lives are at stake. Do not underestimate their will, Councillor, you do so at your peril."
"In any case," Councillor K'tag, an old and experienced warrior, says in a dry, practical tone, "we must consider matters, as the Chancellor says. Do we choose to repudiate this Klur's action?" Shocked eyes turn to him, and he makes an impatient gesture. "Bear in mind, no repudiation we make will be believed. Execute this Klur with dishonour, and the Federation will simply say, 'What great traders these Klingons are! See, they offer the life and honour of a single ship's captain, in exchange for an entire world, and claim it a fair bargain!' So... since we shall have the repercussions of this action to live with, no matter what, shall we not claim it as our own? Our enemies would know fear, to think that we should go so far...."
Incredibly, the Chancellor seems almost to be considering this. "No," he decides, after a worrying pause. "No. The Empire is a defender of the weaker peoples, it is a bulwark against the infiltration of the qa'meH quv, it defends the ancestral rights and the honour of the Klingon people. It does not make war against defenseless civilians. We are warriors, not murderers, and to take this act as our own would... dishonour us. It does not matter what the Federation speaks, if we know the truth in our own hearts."
K'tag nods. "Then I offer another unthinkable thought," he says. "With this act, we have raised the stakes of the war, to a level none would have contemplated. This being so, can we not say that we have gone too far? That it is time to end the war altogether, rather than move into a spiral of retaliation that will leave both empires shattered?"
Again, J'mpok seems to consider. "There is much in that," he says, "but the war cannot end before our territorial rights are... guaranteed. But you show wisdom, K'tag. We must think the unthinkable, now that one of us... has already done it."
"Returning, then, to the merely urgent," K'tag says, "our intelligence analysts must build up a list of likely targets for Federation attack, and ships despatched to those targets without delay. The Federation's military response will not be long in coming, and it will be driven by righteous vengeance and anger. Bercera IV was a Tellarite world, and the Tellarites are not known for pacifism or forgiveness."
"They are traders, not warriors," Darg says with a sneer.
"Again, valued colleague," says K'tag, "you have not fought them. We must also expect a diplomatic and a propaganda attack, and have our answers ready for those."
"And to that end," J'mpok says, "we must fully understand, ourselves, what has been done, and why." He turns his gaze, for the first time, to me. "Lieutenant General Shalo, I will speak with you privately on this matter, afterwards."
---
I enter J'mpok's private office with some trepidation. It is, on occasion, profitable to have the Chancellor's full attention, but it is also, often, perilous.
"Shalo of the House of Sinoom," he says, studying me with those heavy-lidded eyes of his.
"Sir."
"The House of Sinoom is fallen," he says. "Its assets dispersed, its speakers in the councils of the Orions dismissed, its peoples scattered. Yet you cling to that loyalty?"
"I do," I say. "My House's fortunes are currently in eclipse, and yet who can say what the future holds? Besides, loyalty that does not withstand adversity - is not loyalty."
He gives voice to a short, sharp bark of approving laughter. "I like that," he says. "Yes, you speak truly.... When your House... went into eclipse... you, yourself, sought out the KDF, took your place in its ranks. I know your record. You have fought well, and with honour. Like many in your position, you have made yourself more Klingon than the Klingon. And in... certain events, that did not take place... you would have acquitted yourself well, if those events had ever happened."
"Thank you, Chancellor."
"More Klingon than the Klingon," he repeats. "And, yet, not Klingon, and that is important. I doubt Klingon faces will be welcomed in Federation space, and your mission will take you there."
"I live to serve, sir," I reply. "What is my mission?"
J'mpok scowls. "I must know the truth of this matter," he says. "You are to find it. Go to Federation space, if you must - you will be given diplomatic credentials. Find this Klur, and discover the truth. Whatever it may be."
"Am I to bring him back, sir?"
"Bring him back. Or bring back proof of his death. That is important, yes, but it is more important that I must understand. Is he a replicant, one of the qa'meH quv, or worse? Was he perhaps suborned by the Federation themselves, that they might have an atrocity for their propaganda?" Another short, hoarse laugh. "I do not believe that - the Federation is not that pragmatic. But the alternative - that a Klingon warrior is so lost to honour - or that he believes I might think his act an honourable one - I would rather not believe that, either." He looks directly at me. "What I believe does not matter. Find out the truth."
"I will, Chancellor. But - why me? There are other officers -"
He makes a sweeping gesture. "Reasons. You are Orion, which may smooth your path, as I have said. Your ship is a Kar'fi carrier, the equal of his in combat. And - you are of the House of Sinoom."
I frown. "How is that relevant, Chancellor?"
"Others of your House entered service with the KDF. One such is aboard the QIb laH'e'. Her name is Tayaira, and if Klur's transmission can be trusted, she is now his First Officer. It may help you. It may not. For now, go, and be about your business. And may fortune attend you." Yet again, he laughs. "We will require much from fortune, before we are done."
The knock at the door of my room is... unwelcome. It is only since attaining my current rank that I have had the privilege of private quarters when staying at the First City barracks. The privacy, the seclusion, is still a novelty, and one that I value. I do not care to be disturbed.
"Enter," I say.
The bekk does not cross the threshold. "Forgive the intrusion, Lieutenant General," he says, "but you are commanded to appear at a meeting of the High Council. The Chancellor himself has ordered your presence."
"When?"
"Immediately, sir." There is something in his manner, some stress or nervousness. Klingons do not often show nervousness. I frown.
"I will be there directly. Has the Chancellor stated why he requires me?"
"No, sir." The bekk's nervousness increases. "It may be that it has something to do with the news -"
"What news?" I demand.
"You have not heard, sir?"
"I have been... meditating. In seclusion. What news?"
"A world, sir. A whole habitable world... destroyed."
I stiffen as cold anger grips me. "What? Where has the Federation attacked?"
"No, sir," the bekk says, wretchedly, "I have not made my meaning clear. The Feds have not destroyed a world. We have."
---
Murmurs seem to fill the Great Hall, a tide of hushed conversation that rises even to the stone heads of the great statues of Klingon warriors who tower up towards the roof above us. The Chancellor stands in his usual place on the steps. His face is as stony as the statues'.
One of the Councillors - T'Jeg of the House of Toros - turns as I approach, and asks, "What is this Orion female doing here?"
"I am here at the Chancellor's order," I snap back. One must always assert one's self - one's position, one's rights - when dealing with Klingons. It is fatal to back down, perhaps literally so.
"It is so," J'mpok says, in a voice like stone breaking. He makes a gesture with one hand, and I take the place he indicates, to the side. Near enough to hear all, far enough away that it is clear I am not to be consulted.
More Councillors arrive: I have never yet seen the Great Hall so full. "Are all here?" the Chancellor demands.
An aide replies, "Save for those Councillors who are out-system and unable to respond, yes, Chancellor."
"Then we shall begin," says J'mpok, "with a simple statement of the facts. Forty hours ago, the IKS QIb laH'e', under the command of Captain Klur, son of Durgor, of the house of Mak'teth, was on a deep penetration raiding mission in Federation space. Captain Klur approached the Federation colony world of Bercera IV, demanding its surrender to the Empire. When this was refused, Klur deployed tricobalt devices in a continent-wide strategic pattern, creating a global firestorm -"
"The Jol'qah effect," one of the Councillors says, knowledgeably. "I have never yet heard of it being used in practice."
J'mpok glares at him. "It has been used now," he says, "along with direct strikes at the planet's population centres. Bercera IV is utterly devastated. Casualties exceed half a billion, almost all of them civilians. We now meet in council, to discuss... what must happen next."
The murmuring is stilled, now. Faintly, outside, we can hear the sounds of First City.
Someone speaks: I cannot see who. "Was this... action... authorized?"
"No," the Chancellor says, "it was not. Though whether anyone will believe that... is another matter. Klur submitted his Record of Battle with his after-action report in the normal manner, via subspace radio. In all respects, he acted as if this were a conventional military action."
"Where is Klur now?" asks Councillor Tol'beq of the House of Kador.
"Unknown. His ship did not return to its scheduled patrol pattern." J'mpok glowers. "I have, naturally, ordered the ship back to Qo'noS so that Klur may... answer for his conduct. Equally naturally, he has yet to respond."
"Did none of his crew protest their orders?" asks T'Jeg.
"Two officers spoke against Klur, and were executed in the normal manner."
"Their names?"
"Is it important?" J'mpok turns to an aide, who hands him a datapad. "First Officer Talakh, and Commander Kysang."
"Then those officers bear no responsibility," says T'Jeg. The Chancellor looks at him for a moment, and frowns.
"In any case," he continues, "we are faced, now, with a crisis. The Federation has regaled half the galaxy with fanciful tales of Klingon atrocities since this war began... now, they have an indisputable, real, atrocity they can hold up. The propaganda value alone will be worth a hundred fleets to them. And we must consider their most likely military response, which I anticipate will be soon, and forceful." His expression grows yet bleaker. "There is also the possibility that they will respond to our attack in a similar vein."
"Countervalue strikes on planetary targets?" says Councillor Darg of the House of T'llan. "The Federation has no stomach for such actions. It is run by idealists and pacifists -"
"When have you ever fought them?" J'mpok demands.
"It is true," Ambassador S'taass of the Gorn speaks, for the first time, "that Federation ideals become - tempered with pragmatism - when their lives are at stake. Do not underestimate their will, Councillor, you do so at your peril."
"In any case," Councillor K'tag, an old and experienced warrior, says in a dry, practical tone, "we must consider matters, as the Chancellor says. Do we choose to repudiate this Klur's action?" Shocked eyes turn to him, and he makes an impatient gesture. "Bear in mind, no repudiation we make will be believed. Execute this Klur with dishonour, and the Federation will simply say, 'What great traders these Klingons are! See, they offer the life and honour of a single ship's captain, in exchange for an entire world, and claim it a fair bargain!' So... since we shall have the repercussions of this action to live with, no matter what, shall we not claim it as our own? Our enemies would know fear, to think that we should go so far...."
Incredibly, the Chancellor seems almost to be considering this. "No," he decides, after a worrying pause. "No. The Empire is a defender of the weaker peoples, it is a bulwark against the infiltration of the qa'meH quv, it defends the ancestral rights and the honour of the Klingon people. It does not make war against defenseless civilians. We are warriors, not murderers, and to take this act as our own would... dishonour us. It does not matter what the Federation speaks, if we know the truth in our own hearts."
K'tag nods. "Then I offer another unthinkable thought," he says. "With this act, we have raised the stakes of the war, to a level none would have contemplated. This being so, can we not say that we have gone too far? That it is time to end the war altogether, rather than move into a spiral of retaliation that will leave both empires shattered?"
Again, J'mpok seems to consider. "There is much in that," he says, "but the war cannot end before our territorial rights are... guaranteed. But you show wisdom, K'tag. We must think the unthinkable, now that one of us... has already done it."
"Returning, then, to the merely urgent," K'tag says, "our intelligence analysts must build up a list of likely targets for Federation attack, and ships despatched to those targets without delay. The Federation's military response will not be long in coming, and it will be driven by righteous vengeance and anger. Bercera IV was a Tellarite world, and the Tellarites are not known for pacifism or forgiveness."
"They are traders, not warriors," Darg says with a sneer.
"Again, valued colleague," says K'tag, "you have not fought them. We must also expect a diplomatic and a propaganda attack, and have our answers ready for those."
"And to that end," J'mpok says, "we must fully understand, ourselves, what has been done, and why." He turns his gaze, for the first time, to me. "Lieutenant General Shalo, I will speak with you privately on this matter, afterwards."
---
I enter J'mpok's private office with some trepidation. It is, on occasion, profitable to have the Chancellor's full attention, but it is also, often, perilous.
"Shalo of the House of Sinoom," he says, studying me with those heavy-lidded eyes of his.
"Sir."
"The House of Sinoom is fallen," he says. "Its assets dispersed, its speakers in the councils of the Orions dismissed, its peoples scattered. Yet you cling to that loyalty?"
"I do," I say. "My House's fortunes are currently in eclipse, and yet who can say what the future holds? Besides, loyalty that does not withstand adversity - is not loyalty."
He gives voice to a short, sharp bark of approving laughter. "I like that," he says. "Yes, you speak truly.... When your House... went into eclipse... you, yourself, sought out the KDF, took your place in its ranks. I know your record. You have fought well, and with honour. Like many in your position, you have made yourself more Klingon than the Klingon. And in... certain events, that did not take place... you would have acquitted yourself well, if those events had ever happened."
"Thank you, Chancellor."
"More Klingon than the Klingon," he repeats. "And, yet, not Klingon, and that is important. I doubt Klingon faces will be welcomed in Federation space, and your mission will take you there."
"I live to serve, sir," I reply. "What is my mission?"
J'mpok scowls. "I must know the truth of this matter," he says. "You are to find it. Go to Federation space, if you must - you will be given diplomatic credentials. Find this Klur, and discover the truth. Whatever it may be."
"Am I to bring him back, sir?"
"Bring him back. Or bring back proof of his death. That is important, yes, but it is more important that I must understand. Is he a replicant, one of the qa'meH quv, or worse? Was he perhaps suborned by the Federation themselves, that they might have an atrocity for their propaganda?" Another short, hoarse laugh. "I do not believe that - the Federation is not that pragmatic. But the alternative - that a Klingon warrior is so lost to honour - or that he believes I might think his act an honourable one - I would rather not believe that, either." He looks directly at me. "What I believe does not matter. Find out the truth."
"I will, Chancellor. But - why me? There are other officers -"
He makes a sweeping gesture. "Reasons. You are Orion, which may smooth your path, as I have said. Your ship is a Kar'fi carrier, the equal of his in combat. And - you are of the House of Sinoom."
I frown. "How is that relevant, Chancellor?"
"Others of your House entered service with the KDF. One such is aboard the QIb laH'e'. Her name is Tayaira, and if Klur's transmission can be trusted, she is now his First Officer. It may help you. It may not. For now, go, and be about your business. And may fortune attend you." Yet again, he laughs. "We will require much from fortune, before we are done."
Fallout 2
Personal log: Tylha Shohl, officer commanding USS King Estmere, NCC-92984
Six hundred and fifty million.
It takes less than a second to say. I could take the rest of my life, though, and still not reach a clear understanding of what it means. Six hundred and fifty million. On the screen, above the bar, the newscaster is speaking, words that go unheard, even though the room is otherwise completely silent. Behind him, two images: one of the Tellarite colony world, Bercera IV, as it was... the other, of the same world, as it is now. The first, a fertile class M world with a population of six hundred and fifty million; the second -
Impossibly, a bleary voice beside me says, "What th' hell, 's just Tellarites."
I turn. The drunken human to my right continues, oblivious. "Stupid pig-face losers, goin' on an' on about bein' founders of the Federation - all they ever do is run freighters anyway - bet they'll be all, like, 'oo, Starfleet, come an' save us', an' -"
I pivot on my heel, and my fist comes up of its own volition. I barely feel the impact, but all of a sudden, the human is sitting on the floor, burbling stupidly through smashed lips.
There is a group of Tellarites in the corner of the bar, so I may just have saved his life, at that.
A chirp sounds from my pocket. "That," I say, "will be Starfleet, not waiting to be asked." I fish out my combadge. "I only wish we'd been quicker. Shohl here."
"Vice Admiral." I don't recognize the voice. "Starfleet is going to maximum defensive alert, all planetside leave is cancelled, you are asked to report immediately to Earth Spacedock for a briefing."
"I'm in San Francisco now," I say. "I can see a transporter terminal from where I'm standing, I will be on my way right now."
"Clearing you for direct transporter access," the voice says, and clicks off.
I step over the fallen human, and run for the transporter pad.
---
Spacedock is always humming with activity. The hum is louder and more urgent today, though.
Admiral Semok meets me at the transporter room. "Vice Admiral Shohl. I regret the interruption to your well-earned leave."
"It had barely started, sir. I'd just stopped off for a quiet drink in a bar when - What are our orders, sir?"
The portly Vulcan consults a PADD. "Our experimental engineering group has been called upon to consider possible methods of reprisal." His eyes, normally bland and emotionless, look - anguished. "If the Klingons have stepped up their attacks to include wholesale planetary devastation -"
"We might have to fight fire with fire." I don't feel any happier about it than he does.
"Yes. One matter we have been asked to assess is the practicability of a c-fractional strike on Praxis."
"Praxis? Oh, I see...." The broken moon around the Klingon homeworld isn't the first target you'd think of. But it was shattered once, and if its orbit were destabilized again... the whole thing could come crashing down on Qo'noS, an unstoppable battering ram of destruction.
It's hard to control a planet, even with the resources that Starfleet and the Klingons can command. But it's surprisingly easy to destroy one, or at least to render one uninhabitable. C-fractional strikes - missiles moving at relativistic speeds - are the traditional method, if there are any traditions in this thing. But there are other ways. A single starship, even an old Constitution-class cruiser, can devastate a planet past the point of recovery. A ship like King Estmere could do it without breaking a sweat.
But this sort of war - crosses a line. The war is being fought for a mixture of reasons, but prime among them is control; control of territory, of resources, of the populations of the precious habitable planets of the galaxy. That the Klingons have started the wanton destruction of these resources... is a new, and alarming, development.
"Destroying the Klingon homeworld, though," I say, "is a move that might well backfire. Quite apart from any - humanitarian - considerations... it'd leave the Klingon factions leaderless, most of them thirsting for revenge, and out of control."
"This is my assessment also," says Semok. "I hope that it will be the conclusion reached by calmer heads on the Federation Council, too. However, some strong response is clearly necessary in the face of this atrocity."
We make our way to the stateroom. Normally, this is busy only with lecturers and brown-nosing cadets, but today it is crammed with so many senior officers, you could choke on the pips. Mere Vice-Admirals like me have to stand at the back and breathe in. If we want to breathe... because the holographic image of Bercera IV, floating in the air over the podium, is enough to make anyone choke.
Beneath it, the top brass have gathered. Admiral Yanishev looks as though he is graven in stone; Quinn is visibly distressed. As we enter, though, it's Admiral Routledge of Logistics Command who has the floor.
"A relief effort is under way as we speak," the elderly human says. Routledge was only a few months from mandatory retirement, last I heard. "The odds for survivors are... not good. It's possible, though, that some who've sought shelter in isolated rural areas... may survive the toxic and radiation contamination long enough for a pickup to be made. All available transport ships have been diverted. As for the main cities -" he shakes his head. "Our long range probes confirm. Total devastation."
Admiral Yanishev steps forward. "Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Tactical Wings are committed to cover similar possible targets in the immediate vicinity," he says in a voice like death. "We have a preliminary assessment of - possibles. We will act to protect them. As for an immediate response -"
"That's what we're here to discuss," Quinn says.
Yanishev nods. "Obviously, a major retributive strike is necessary," he says. "The Klingons will expect it, of course - in a way, that makes it even more necessary. If we even look like we're backing down, over this, they will be all over us. Plans for assaults on targets in the Archanis sector have been in evaluation for some time." His face turns grimmer still. "We are activating those plans. First, Second and Fourth fleets will hit strategic Klingon systems within the week. The Klingons' response to that - well, it will tell us something. Conventional warfare would be - in a way - good news. More attacks of this kind, though -"
"Hold on, hold on." A querulous female voice breaks in. The speaker is a Vice Admiral, a skinny human female with several very obvious Borg cybernetic implants. "Look, I'm rolling this around in my head," she says, "and none of it fits. We need to figure out what this means before we go off at half-cock, right?"
"Vice Admiral Grau," says Yanishev. He doesn't sound pleased.
"Listen," says Grau. "Bercera. Soft target, well behind our front lines, not that lines mean anything much in space combat. So why is it a target? What's at Bercera? Can't be a terror attack, the Klinks aren't fools, they know we won't back down from a show of force, we can't afford to. So what else could it be? Why is J'mpok raising the stakes by burning off an entire world?"
Yanishev looks like he's about to speak, but Grau carries on regardless. "Could be desperation, end-game bravado, last desperate stroke of a dying man - except the Klinks aren't dying, the war is doing their internal economy no particular good, but they're a long way from being beaten yet. So, 'when I am dead, let fire the Earth consume' - no, it doesn't fit, because J'mpok ain't dead yet. But Bercera is a soft target because it's not a significant part of the war effort, right? So why kill it? Unless it's some sort of spook stuff? Were we using Bercera IV for spook stuff? Oh, right, I mean, did Starfleet Intelligence have any major assets on the planet?"
"No," Quinn says, suddenly. "Nothing of the kind."
"Well, there you are, then," says Grau. "Like I said, I'm turning this over in my head, and I can't fit it in with Klink strategy. Got to know the reason for this one. Know the reason, you know how to respond. Sure, sure, kick 'em back, kick 'em hard and low and dirty, so they know they've been kicked - but we need to work out where best to kick them. So we have to know why this happened. It doesn't make any obvious military sense, so it must be spook stuff. If not ours, then theirs. I'm telling you."
"Thank you for your contribution, Vice Admiral," Yanishev says with finality.
"Still," Routledge says, "we do need to study the situation. Someone should go in to support the rescue operation and salvage... as much data as we can."
"If I might make a suggestion," Semok speaks up. "My group has been tasked with researching planet-killing methods - I will not say we are experts in the field, since we have never needed such - but we are to contribute our resources in this area. Further, we have at our disposal a multi-functional carrier vessel which can support the relief effort, serve as a combat-capable craft if need be, and carry out any investigations in the field, as required. Vice Admiral Shohl can be ready to depart in a matter of hours." He glances at me. "I am correct, Vice Admiral Shohl?"
"Of course, sir." There's really nothing else I can say.
"Very well," says Routledge. "Vice Admiral Shohl will rendezvous with my rescue fleet and begin investigations. Now, as to the logistics of our armed response -"
---
Afterwards, I head for the docking bays with purpose in my eyes. Before I make it, though, a hand grabs my sleeve. I turn, to see the human-Borg woman, Grau.
"Listen," she says. "You're going out there, right? You keep an open mind."
"I intend to," I say. "We need the facts. You're right about that at least."
"Facts, facts," she says, and looks around, before turning her gaze back to me. The Borg targeting laser covering her left eye scans erratically over my face. "We haven't met, have we? Veronika Grau. Call me Ronnie, everyone does."
"Tylha Shohl," I answer. Then I frown, as I recollect something. "There was a Veronika Grau during the Romulan War, wasn't there? She did - hmm, something impressive, I guess. Were you named after her?"
"No, no," she says, "that was me. Roms, they're not as sneaky as they think they are. Oh, right, yeah, it was a while ago. Time warps. Bane of my life, time warps. Listen. There is something wrong about this whole setup. Watch your back out there. There's spook stuff at the bottom of this, you mark my words. And it's spook stuff that's already eaten a planet, so it won't stop at swallowing a Vice Admiral. If you get my drift."
I grin at her, without humour. "It'll choke on this one. I promise you."
---
King Estmere is ready by the time I get to the bridge; everyone is bustling around doing last-minute checks, but I know they're just a formality. I take my seat in the command chair.
"We have priority clearance to depart when ready, sir," Anthi Vihl says. My exec's tone betrays no emotion, but I can tell from the stiffening of her antennae just how angry she is. "Your orders, sir?"
"Put me on ship-wide address," I say to F'hon Tlaxx, who touches his console and nods to me. "Attention, all hands. This is Vice Admiral Shohl. Our orders are to proceed at best speed to the Bercera system, there to render all possible assistance to the relief effort, and to gather evidence relating to this... atrocity." I pause, and take a deep breath. "It's possible - only possible - that we may run into the Klingon war criminals responsible for this. In which case, we will be ready for combat... and may the Infinite have mercy on their souls, because we will show none to their bodies. Shohl out." I turn to Anthi. "Clear all umbilicals, proceed on thrusters to spacedock exit."
"Confirmed."
King Estmere's deck quivers beneath me, and we are on our way.
Six hundred and fifty million.
It takes less than a second to say. I could take the rest of my life, though, and still not reach a clear understanding of what it means. Six hundred and fifty million. On the screen, above the bar, the newscaster is speaking, words that go unheard, even though the room is otherwise completely silent. Behind him, two images: one of the Tellarite colony world, Bercera IV, as it was... the other, of the same world, as it is now. The first, a fertile class M world with a population of six hundred and fifty million; the second -
Impossibly, a bleary voice beside me says, "What th' hell, 's just Tellarites."
I turn. The drunken human to my right continues, oblivious. "Stupid pig-face losers, goin' on an' on about bein' founders of the Federation - all they ever do is run freighters anyway - bet they'll be all, like, 'oo, Starfleet, come an' save us', an' -"
I pivot on my heel, and my fist comes up of its own volition. I barely feel the impact, but all of a sudden, the human is sitting on the floor, burbling stupidly through smashed lips.
There is a group of Tellarites in the corner of the bar, so I may just have saved his life, at that.
A chirp sounds from my pocket. "That," I say, "will be Starfleet, not waiting to be asked." I fish out my combadge. "I only wish we'd been quicker. Shohl here."
"Vice Admiral." I don't recognize the voice. "Starfleet is going to maximum defensive alert, all planetside leave is cancelled, you are asked to report immediately to Earth Spacedock for a briefing."
"I'm in San Francisco now," I say. "I can see a transporter terminal from where I'm standing, I will be on my way right now."
"Clearing you for direct transporter access," the voice says, and clicks off.
I step over the fallen human, and run for the transporter pad.
---
Spacedock is always humming with activity. The hum is louder and more urgent today, though.
Admiral Semok meets me at the transporter room. "Vice Admiral Shohl. I regret the interruption to your well-earned leave."
"It had barely started, sir. I'd just stopped off for a quiet drink in a bar when - What are our orders, sir?"
The portly Vulcan consults a PADD. "Our experimental engineering group has been called upon to consider possible methods of reprisal." His eyes, normally bland and emotionless, look - anguished. "If the Klingons have stepped up their attacks to include wholesale planetary devastation -"
"We might have to fight fire with fire." I don't feel any happier about it than he does.
"Yes. One matter we have been asked to assess is the practicability of a c-fractional strike on Praxis."
"Praxis? Oh, I see...." The broken moon around the Klingon homeworld isn't the first target you'd think of. But it was shattered once, and if its orbit were destabilized again... the whole thing could come crashing down on Qo'noS, an unstoppable battering ram of destruction.
It's hard to control a planet, even with the resources that Starfleet and the Klingons can command. But it's surprisingly easy to destroy one, or at least to render one uninhabitable. C-fractional strikes - missiles moving at relativistic speeds - are the traditional method, if there are any traditions in this thing. But there are other ways. A single starship, even an old Constitution-class cruiser, can devastate a planet past the point of recovery. A ship like King Estmere could do it without breaking a sweat.
But this sort of war - crosses a line. The war is being fought for a mixture of reasons, but prime among them is control; control of territory, of resources, of the populations of the precious habitable planets of the galaxy. That the Klingons have started the wanton destruction of these resources... is a new, and alarming, development.
"Destroying the Klingon homeworld, though," I say, "is a move that might well backfire. Quite apart from any - humanitarian - considerations... it'd leave the Klingon factions leaderless, most of them thirsting for revenge, and out of control."
"This is my assessment also," says Semok. "I hope that it will be the conclusion reached by calmer heads on the Federation Council, too. However, some strong response is clearly necessary in the face of this atrocity."
We make our way to the stateroom. Normally, this is busy only with lecturers and brown-nosing cadets, but today it is crammed with so many senior officers, you could choke on the pips. Mere Vice-Admirals like me have to stand at the back and breathe in. If we want to breathe... because the holographic image of Bercera IV, floating in the air over the podium, is enough to make anyone choke.
Beneath it, the top brass have gathered. Admiral Yanishev looks as though he is graven in stone; Quinn is visibly distressed. As we enter, though, it's Admiral Routledge of Logistics Command who has the floor.
"A relief effort is under way as we speak," the elderly human says. Routledge was only a few months from mandatory retirement, last I heard. "The odds for survivors are... not good. It's possible, though, that some who've sought shelter in isolated rural areas... may survive the toxic and radiation contamination long enough for a pickup to be made. All available transport ships have been diverted. As for the main cities -" he shakes his head. "Our long range probes confirm. Total devastation."
Admiral Yanishev steps forward. "Fifth, Seventh and Tenth Tactical Wings are committed to cover similar possible targets in the immediate vicinity," he says in a voice like death. "We have a preliminary assessment of - possibles. We will act to protect them. As for an immediate response -"
"That's what we're here to discuss," Quinn says.
Yanishev nods. "Obviously, a major retributive strike is necessary," he says. "The Klingons will expect it, of course - in a way, that makes it even more necessary. If we even look like we're backing down, over this, they will be all over us. Plans for assaults on targets in the Archanis sector have been in evaluation for some time." His face turns grimmer still. "We are activating those plans. First, Second and Fourth fleets will hit strategic Klingon systems within the week. The Klingons' response to that - well, it will tell us something. Conventional warfare would be - in a way - good news. More attacks of this kind, though -"
"Hold on, hold on." A querulous female voice breaks in. The speaker is a Vice Admiral, a skinny human female with several very obvious Borg cybernetic implants. "Look, I'm rolling this around in my head," she says, "and none of it fits. We need to figure out what this means before we go off at half-cock, right?"
"Vice Admiral Grau," says Yanishev. He doesn't sound pleased.
"Listen," says Grau. "Bercera. Soft target, well behind our front lines, not that lines mean anything much in space combat. So why is it a target? What's at Bercera? Can't be a terror attack, the Klinks aren't fools, they know we won't back down from a show of force, we can't afford to. So what else could it be? Why is J'mpok raising the stakes by burning off an entire world?"
Yanishev looks like he's about to speak, but Grau carries on regardless. "Could be desperation, end-game bravado, last desperate stroke of a dying man - except the Klinks aren't dying, the war is doing their internal economy no particular good, but they're a long way from being beaten yet. So, 'when I am dead, let fire the Earth consume' - no, it doesn't fit, because J'mpok ain't dead yet. But Bercera is a soft target because it's not a significant part of the war effort, right? So why kill it? Unless it's some sort of spook stuff? Were we using Bercera IV for spook stuff? Oh, right, I mean, did Starfleet Intelligence have any major assets on the planet?"
"No," Quinn says, suddenly. "Nothing of the kind."
"Well, there you are, then," says Grau. "Like I said, I'm turning this over in my head, and I can't fit it in with Klink strategy. Got to know the reason for this one. Know the reason, you know how to respond. Sure, sure, kick 'em back, kick 'em hard and low and dirty, so they know they've been kicked - but we need to work out where best to kick them. So we have to know why this happened. It doesn't make any obvious military sense, so it must be spook stuff. If not ours, then theirs. I'm telling you."
"Thank you for your contribution, Vice Admiral," Yanishev says with finality.
"Still," Routledge says, "we do need to study the situation. Someone should go in to support the rescue operation and salvage... as much data as we can."
"If I might make a suggestion," Semok speaks up. "My group has been tasked with researching planet-killing methods - I will not say we are experts in the field, since we have never needed such - but we are to contribute our resources in this area. Further, we have at our disposal a multi-functional carrier vessel which can support the relief effort, serve as a combat-capable craft if need be, and carry out any investigations in the field, as required. Vice Admiral Shohl can be ready to depart in a matter of hours." He glances at me. "I am correct, Vice Admiral Shohl?"
"Of course, sir." There's really nothing else I can say.
"Very well," says Routledge. "Vice Admiral Shohl will rendezvous with my rescue fleet and begin investigations. Now, as to the logistics of our armed response -"
---
Afterwards, I head for the docking bays with purpose in my eyes. Before I make it, though, a hand grabs my sleeve. I turn, to see the human-Borg woman, Grau.
"Listen," she says. "You're going out there, right? You keep an open mind."
"I intend to," I say. "We need the facts. You're right about that at least."
"Facts, facts," she says, and looks around, before turning her gaze back to me. The Borg targeting laser covering her left eye scans erratically over my face. "We haven't met, have we? Veronika Grau. Call me Ronnie, everyone does."
"Tylha Shohl," I answer. Then I frown, as I recollect something. "There was a Veronika Grau during the Romulan War, wasn't there? She did - hmm, something impressive, I guess. Were you named after her?"
"No, no," she says, "that was me. Roms, they're not as sneaky as they think they are. Oh, right, yeah, it was a while ago. Time warps. Bane of my life, time warps. Listen. There is something wrong about this whole setup. Watch your back out there. There's spook stuff at the bottom of this, you mark my words. And it's spook stuff that's already eaten a planet, so it won't stop at swallowing a Vice Admiral. If you get my drift."
I grin at her, without humour. "It'll choke on this one. I promise you."
---
King Estmere is ready by the time I get to the bridge; everyone is bustling around doing last-minute checks, but I know they're just a formality. I take my seat in the command chair.
"We have priority clearance to depart when ready, sir," Anthi Vihl says. My exec's tone betrays no emotion, but I can tell from the stiffening of her antennae just how angry she is. "Your orders, sir?"
"Put me on ship-wide address," I say to F'hon Tlaxx, who touches his console and nods to me. "Attention, all hands. This is Vice Admiral Shohl. Our orders are to proceed at best speed to the Bercera system, there to render all possible assistance to the relief effort, and to gather evidence relating to this... atrocity." I pause, and take a deep breath. "It's possible - only possible - that we may run into the Klingon war criminals responsible for this. In which case, we will be ready for combat... and may the Infinite have mercy on their souls, because we will show none to their bodies. Shohl out." I turn to Anthi. "Clear all umbilicals, proceed on thrusters to spacedock exit."
"Confirmed."
King Estmere's deck quivers beneath me, and we are on our way.
Fallout 1
"Deployment is complete." There was not even a tremor in the operations officer's voice as she made her report.
Captain Klur nodded, and leaned back in his command chair, his eyes scanning the bridge of the IKS QIb laH'e'. "Bring us to low orbit," he ordered. "Signal the planetary administrator."
A low rumble echoed in the bridge as the carrier's impulse engines sprang to life. With a deep intake of breath, First Officer Talakh rose to his feet.
"Sir," he said, "I formally protest against your orders in this matter. This course of action is -" He took another deep breath. "Sir, you must find an alternative. This action will not be accepted by the Council, it will -"
He got no further. Klur raised his hand, and the disruptor pistol in it spat green light across the bridge. Talakh collapsed on the spot, his chest a smoking ruin.
Klur snarled. "Does anyone else contest my orders?"
Commander Kysang rose from the tactical station. He was the oldest officer on the bridge, and admired by all for his long record of battles in the Empire's service. He spoke, now, with the authority of complete conviction. "This action is without honour."
Klur's disruptor spoke again, the bolt hitting Kysang between the eyes. As the headless body toppled to the deck, Klur shouted, "How many more must die before I am obeyed?"
No one spoke.
Klur holstered his disruptor. "Second Officer Tayaira. You are now First Officer. Have those corpses removed. And where is my comms channel?"
"I have the administrator now!" the comms officer shouted, fear edging his voice.
"On screen," Klur ordered.
The main screen shimmered, and the administrator's image appeared. "I am Administrator Frerv," the Tellarite said. "Say your piece, Klingon, then get off this channel, and haul that wreck of a ship out of my sky."
"I will be brief, then," Klur said. "I demand your immediate surrender, and that your world recognizes the overlordship of the Empire. Resist, and you will be destroyed."
"Empty threats," the Tellarite sneered. "That Fek'lhri carrier of yours might look impressive, but it's one ship, Captain. You can't take on a whole world with one ship. All right, I've heard your ultimatum, now you hear mine. Get out before a Starfleet task force arrives and kicks you out of this system in a million smoking pieces. Clear?"
"Pellucid." Klur smiled. "Very well. I have presented my demands, you have rejected them. The next step is for you to take the inevitable consequences." He turned to the operations officer. "Activate."
The operations officer froze at her post. "Activate what?" Frerv demanded from the screen.
Klur drew his disruptor. "Is your hearing deficient? Activate."
The ops officer swallowed hard. Her hand came down on her console. "Activating," she whispered. She looked down. "Activation... confirmed."
"I offered you the choice of life under Imperial rule," Klur said to the screen. "I do not offer you any alternative, Tellarite. I have seeded the high orbitals with tricobalt cluster munitions, and they are now descending. Some are targeted at your planet's population centres, but the majority will detonate at altitude, creating a coordinated airburst -"
"You're insane!" Frerv interrupted. "An attack like that will irreperably damage the planet's ecosystem!"
"It will sterilize half your planetary surface!" yelled Klur. "And the nuclear winter that follows will finish off all life that remains! That is the death you have chosen, Tellarite, so embrace it! I burn your world as an offering to the Empire!" He turned to the comms officer. "All that is necessary has been said. You may close the channel."
"Wait!" Frerv screamed. "We - we surrender! Call it off! We surrender!"
"I regret," said Klur, "that the mass of the munitions, and my own limited resources - I have only the one ship, as you pointed out yourself - meant that only the most basic command and control interface could be included. The weapons are descending now, and they cannot be recalled or destroyed. You have perhaps three minutes left of life, Administrator Frerv. Enjoy them. Close channel."
Captain Klur nodded, and leaned back in his command chair, his eyes scanning the bridge of the IKS QIb laH'e'. "Bring us to low orbit," he ordered. "Signal the planetary administrator."
A low rumble echoed in the bridge as the carrier's impulse engines sprang to life. With a deep intake of breath, First Officer Talakh rose to his feet.
"Sir," he said, "I formally protest against your orders in this matter. This course of action is -" He took another deep breath. "Sir, you must find an alternative. This action will not be accepted by the Council, it will -"
He got no further. Klur raised his hand, and the disruptor pistol in it spat green light across the bridge. Talakh collapsed on the spot, his chest a smoking ruin.
Klur snarled. "Does anyone else contest my orders?"
Commander Kysang rose from the tactical station. He was the oldest officer on the bridge, and admired by all for his long record of battles in the Empire's service. He spoke, now, with the authority of complete conviction. "This action is without honour."
Klur's disruptor spoke again, the bolt hitting Kysang between the eyes. As the headless body toppled to the deck, Klur shouted, "How many more must die before I am obeyed?"
No one spoke.
Klur holstered his disruptor. "Second Officer Tayaira. You are now First Officer. Have those corpses removed. And where is my comms channel?"
"I have the administrator now!" the comms officer shouted, fear edging his voice.
"On screen," Klur ordered.
The main screen shimmered, and the administrator's image appeared. "I am Administrator Frerv," the Tellarite said. "Say your piece, Klingon, then get off this channel, and haul that wreck of a ship out of my sky."
"I will be brief, then," Klur said. "I demand your immediate surrender, and that your world recognizes the overlordship of the Empire. Resist, and you will be destroyed."
"Empty threats," the Tellarite sneered. "That Fek'lhri carrier of yours might look impressive, but it's one ship, Captain. You can't take on a whole world with one ship. All right, I've heard your ultimatum, now you hear mine. Get out before a Starfleet task force arrives and kicks you out of this system in a million smoking pieces. Clear?"
"Pellucid." Klur smiled. "Very well. I have presented my demands, you have rejected them. The next step is for you to take the inevitable consequences." He turned to the operations officer. "Activate."
The operations officer froze at her post. "Activate what?" Frerv demanded from the screen.
Klur drew his disruptor. "Is your hearing deficient? Activate."
The ops officer swallowed hard. Her hand came down on her console. "Activating," she whispered. She looked down. "Activation... confirmed."
"I offered you the choice of life under Imperial rule," Klur said to the screen. "I do not offer you any alternative, Tellarite. I have seeded the high orbitals with tricobalt cluster munitions, and they are now descending. Some are targeted at your planet's population centres, but the majority will detonate at altitude, creating a coordinated airburst -"
"You're insane!" Frerv interrupted. "An attack like that will irreperably damage the planet's ecosystem!"
"It will sterilize half your planetary surface!" yelled Klur. "And the nuclear winter that follows will finish off all life that remains! That is the death you have chosen, Tellarite, so embrace it! I burn your world as an offering to the Empire!" He turned to the comms officer. "All that is necessary has been said. You may close the channel."
"Wait!" Frerv screamed. "We - we surrender! Call it off! We surrender!"
"I regret," said Klur, "that the mass of the munitions, and my own limited resources - I have only the one ship, as you pointed out yourself - meant that only the most basic command and control interface could be included. The weapons are descending now, and they cannot be recalled or destroyed. You have perhaps three minutes left of life, Administrator Frerv. Enjoy them. Close channel."
Fallout: Introduction
This was where I decided to stretch myself (and my readers' patience) a bit. Although I carried on for a while with the Literary Challenges - and some of those stand-alone posts will crop up later, inserted into roughly the right spots in the overall timeline - I'd had enough positive feedback that it went to my head, and I wrote a long story with multiple points of view.
Perhaps more to the point, I now had two contrasting characters - the solid and serious Tylha, and the manic and scatterbrained Ronnie - who could play off one another in (I hope) an entertaining double act. I needed one more character to represent the Klingon point of view, and I picked Shalo, my Orion engineer, who is fun to write for different reasons from Tylha and Ronnie. The thing about Shalo is, she is not a bad person - by her own lights. She just happens to come from a culture which values honour and artistic vengeance, and isn't too fussed about the value of sentient life.
Of course, virtually nobody's a villain in their own mind, anyway - and that's the spirit in which I approached writing from the Klingon perspective. I tried to make sure they weren't pantomime villains, but serious-minded people, with goals that seem reasonable to them, setting out to achieve those goals in a reasonable way.
Which is why the death toll is horrific.
Perhaps more to the point, I now had two contrasting characters - the solid and serious Tylha, and the manic and scatterbrained Ronnie - who could play off one another in (I hope) an entertaining double act. I needed one more character to represent the Klingon point of view, and I picked Shalo, my Orion engineer, who is fun to write for different reasons from Tylha and Ronnie. The thing about Shalo is, she is not a bad person - by her own lights. She just happens to come from a culture which values honour and artistic vengeance, and isn't too fussed about the value of sentient life.
Of course, virtually nobody's a villain in their own mind, anyway - and that's the spirit in which I approached writing from the Klingon perspective. I tried to make sure they weren't pantomime villains, but serious-minded people, with goals that seem reasonable to them, setting out to achieve those goals in a reasonable way.
Which is why the death toll is horrific.
Lit Challenge 21: Homeward Bound
[He's back and on your ship... but why? Let us know.
((Who is "The Traveler"? Learn more about him here: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Traveler))]
"Scanning now," Zdanruvruk rasped. The Reman science officer's beady eyes were intent on the console display. Aitra glanced at him, briefly, before returning his own attention to the tactical readout. So far, it was blank. The Romulan offered a silent prayer to the Elements that it would stay that way.
"Let me know as soon as you discover anything," T'Laihhae said from the command chair. If she was tense, there was no sign of it in her voice.
"Is there anything there to find?" Retar asked from the engineering station. She did have a knack for asking insubordinate questions, Aitra thought. In an Imperial ship, that might have cost her her rank. But, of course, the Messalina was not an Imperial ship. And T'Laihhae was never one to stand on ceremony.
"My sources suggest there should be," T'Laihhae said, equably enough. And just what are those sources? Aitra wondered, not for the first time. "Nothing is certain... but they have proved reliable in the past."
"I have something." Zdanruvruk's brow was furrowed to start with - still, the Reman looked puzzled. "Particle traces... suggesting, perhaps, a subspace inclusion... or some sort of disruption." He blinked and glanced up from the console. "It's hard to tell. Recording data for analysis."
Aitra turned in his seat to look at his commanding officer. "What do you expect to find?" he asked, directly. T'Laihhae's dark eyes focused on him. She looked at him dispassionately for a fraction of a second, then favoured him with a flicker of a smile.
"Subspace disruption," she said. "There are two possibilities - according to my sources. One is that the Tal Shiar have been carrying out tests, attempting to reconnect to a defunct Borg transwarp hub. The second... is that they are experimenting with more direct means of causing subspace ruptures. They may be creating isolytic weaponry."
"That would put them in violation of... how many treaties, exactly?" asked Retar.
"Quite a number," said T'Laihhae. "Either possibility, of course, would excite interest among our allies. Bringing proof of either one to the Federation or the Klingons would further lower the Tal Shiar's reputation in their eyes... and advance the Republic's cause."
And the Tal Shiar would be keen for the evidence never to be found, Aitra thought, and turned his full attention back to the tactical display. The spiny shape of the Messalina was hanging in empty space, five light years or more from the nearest star system - in a point amid the infinite void that, as far as eyes could tell, was no different from any other. How did she know to come here? Aitra wondered again. He stared at the readouts, checked the visual display, looked at the stars, shining bright and cold, twinkling there....
He blinked. Twinkling?
Starlight twinkled when it passed through a planetary atmosphere. Out here, the stars should be steady and clear. Unless something was interfering with them....
"I think there's something out there," he said. "Possibly a cloaked ship."
"Go to full alert," T'Laihhae ordered. "Tachyon detection on. Zdan, do you have everything you need?"
"Still recording," the Reman answered. "I will need more time."
"I'd be glad to oblige," said T'Laihhae, "but it may not lie entirely in my hands. Keep going as long as you can." She turned back to Aitra. "Do you have confirmation?"
"Nothing on scans, still," Aitra replied. "If there's anyone out there, they're good. I just saw a - a visual discontinuity -"
"Good enough for me," T'Laihhae murmured. She trusts me not to jump at shadows, Aitra thought, and felt a fleeting glow of pride. He scanned the readouts, and the visual displays, tension mounting with each second that passed. There was a nebula within visual range, close enough to show as a filmy pale cloud... and something flitted, briefly, across it: distorting, but not obscuring it.
"Got a glimpse," he reported. "Something - angular. It might have been the wing of a Scimitar...."
T'Laihhae swore under her breath. "Then the only confirmation we will receive is a surprise thalaron barrage. I don't think we should wait to be sure. Raise shields, move out, maximum combat speed."
Readouts shifted before Aitra's eyes as the Messalina began to move. "Singularity core reaching criticality," Retar reported crisply. "Warp speed at your discretion, sir."
"We stay sublight as long as we can -" T'Laihhae began.
"Ships decloaking!" Aitra yelled. The flickering wraiths in the visual displays were suddenly solid, real, and deadly. "Two Scimitars, and an adapted destroyer. Bearing oh-two-nine mark one-four, range twelve."
"Maximum evasive," T'Laihhae ordered. Messalina was an adapted battle cruiser, heavily modified with Reman and Federation technology... but she was outgunned and outmatched by the approaching Tal Shiar ships. Aitra stiffened as more images shimmered into view on the console.
"Two battle cruisers and another Scimitar behind us! They're sitting on our departure vector!"
"Then we change departure vector. Come about," T'Laihhae ordered. Her voice was absolutely calm. "Heading three-two-eight mark four-nine. Maximum warp. Ready quantum slipstream."
"Sir." The android, Ruby, spoke for the first time. Her voice was no steadier than T'Laihhae's own. "That course takes us directly across the region of subspace disturbance."
"Yes. I'm hoping they haven't planned for that." T'Laihhae gave another flash of smile. "At the least, we should get some great close-ups for Zdan."
"Lead Scimitars are powering up thalarons," Aitra reported. His mouth was dry.
"Then we just outstayed our welcome. Punch it," T'Laihhae commanded.
The whole vast bulk of the Messalina shuddered as the warp engines came on line, twisting a hole in spacetime that was smoothed and widened by the energies of the quantum slipstream field. The ship leaped forwards -
---
"What happened?" Aitra heard someone ask. The words seemed to echo oddly in the air of the bridge.
Aitra blinked. The tactical console was still in front of him, glowing steadily... and every light, every luminous display, seemed to have a strange halo about it, an ethereal glimmer filled with nameless colours. The familiar edges of the console itself seemed blurred, wavery, unsteady. He reached out a hand, and that too was blurred, and the motion felt strange, slow, almost as if he were under water -
Head injury? he wondered. But he felt no pain. He turned his head and looked around.
The bridge seemed undamaged - no damage control lights flashing, no sparking and banging of overloaded EPS conduits. But it was all blurred, every light source ringed with that spectral glow, the whole place having that slow, dreamlike quality about it.
"What happened?" It was T'Laihhae who had spoken, and again the words had an odd echo to them. As if they, too, were wrapped in some kind of halo, audible rather than visual.
Aitra turned back to the console, struggled to make sense of the display. "No hostiles on sensors," he said, and his own voice sounded strange. "Can't make out - can't make out anything outside at all." The visual displays were a meaningless riot of shifting coloured shadows.
"Warp drive is offline," Retar reported. "I can't... I can't reestablish a warp field. Not sure why."
"Trying to get sensor readings," said Zdanruvruk. "This - We must have taken damage, sir. These readings don't make any kind of sense."
T'Laihhae put one hand to her forehead. "Is anyone else hearing things... strangely?" she asked.
"Now you mention it...." said Retar.
"Everything seems odd," Aitra said. "Sounds, lights... everything."
"Thank the Elements it's not just me," said T'Laihhae. She turned to Ruby. "What about you?"
"I. I. I," said the android. Her face was expressionless. "I. I. I. Input malfunction. Attempting to correct. I. Attempting to correct."
"That is so not a good sign," said Retar.
"We seem to be in... something of a hole," said T'Laihhae. "Well. The first thing we must know is, how deep? Do we have any sort of positional fix?"
"I can't make out anything on these displays," said Aitra.
"Comms?" asked T'Laihhae. "Do we have nearby subspace chatter? Any beacon signals we can pick up?"
Retar crossed over to Ruby's console, elbowing the android out of the way. Ruby sat there, passively, metal eyes blank, the bare patch on her forehead sparkling as status lights winked on and off in rapid succession. Each one had its own strange halo: it hurt to watch them.
"Nothing," Retar reported. "All channels dead."
"I'm trying to replay our sensor logs," said Zdanruvruk. "Should have details of everything... I had every sensor we've got out."
"Let me guess," said T'Laihhae. "Something happened when we hit the region of disturbed subspace."
"Seems a safe bet," said Retar. Aitra looked at her carefully. The auburn-haired engineer was trying hard not to show any sort of nervousness... but it was there, all the same. He knew it was there. He could feel it himself, deep in his bones.
"Looks like," Zdanruvruk said slowly, "we moved across the subspace rupture and it... synchronized with our warp field, and... and inverted, somehow. Moved us... randomly, across the space-time continuum. I can't work out how, or in what direction. Sir, I think it moved us along directions we don't even have names for."
T'Laihhae nodded, pensively. "So," she said, "the important question: how do we get back?"
"I don't know, sir."
---
The atmosphere in the Messalina's conference room was tense... and strange. I should be growing accustomed to this, Aitra thought, but I'm not. The fuzzy lights, the strange echoes, were... too strange. They were wrong, on some deep and fundamental level, something that he could feel, down in the core of his being. And he knew the others must feel it too... even if, like T'Laihhae, they were hiding it successfully.
T'Laihhae's "in" group, though - the ones Aitra thought of as her particular friends - weren't all hiding it so well. Tovan Khev looked as though he'd aged years; Satra was clearly scared; even the old engineer D'Vek and the big scientist Hiven were plainly worried. Hiven was making his report now.
"Nothing on the scans, and I mean nothing," the big man rumbled. "Can't even establish a metrical frame for reference. It's like - outside the ship, there's nothing at all. Like the rules of the universe just haven't been written yet."
"But we're still alive," Retar said. "That means - power, gravity, chemical reactions in our bodies - all sorts of things must be functioning normally -"
"Force of habit, maybe," said Hiven. "Nothing to stop these things carrying on, either. Or..." He looked doubtful. "There might be something... something mental going on. Sentient minds having an effect on their surroundings.... We know the artificial lifeforms are having trouble, right?"
"Ruby is still out of action," said T'Laihhae. "Are there others in similar difficulties?"
"EMH won't engage," said Hiven. "None of the sophisticated holograms will start up - we can switch on dummies and programmed characters from holonovels and stuff, but nothing with any self-awareness or decision making capacity. They all fail with initialization errors in the holo-matrix."
"Hmm," said T'Laihhae. "I suppose it's good to know that old-fashioned organic brains can cope better with this - whatever it is - than the cybernetic ones." She laughed, shortly and without humour. "Good to know we have any advantages. But it does further reduce our options."
"What options do we have?" asked Retar.
"Two, that I can see," said T'Laihhae. "The first is to explore our surroundings - to see if we can find some recognizable feature, some signpost we can use, in order to get back to normal space. The second - which is not incompatible - is to use our sensor logs and see if we can backtrack, by dead reckoning, along the same route we took to get into this place." Her eyes turned towards Zdanruvruk. "I don't expect it to be easy, of course."
"Sir," said the Reman, "it may - it may not be possible, even. We're dealing with movement across dimensions we've never encountered before - just describing our position might need the invention of a new mathematical notation -"
"As I said," said T'Laihhae, "I don't expect it to be easy." Her gaze swept around the conference table, measuring, appraising each one of them in turn. "I don't need to say this," she said, "but I will. I have every confidence in this crew... in all of you. All of us. We will prevail."
---
The shape of the Messalina made her internal architecture complicated. Aitra's quarters were at one corner of the curved, triangular upper hull, near where one of the forward weapons spines joined on. He was starting to unbutton his uniform jacket when there was a knock at the door.
"Come in."
The door slid open, and Retar stepped through. "I didn't want to be alone," she said, directly. "And I decided I wanted to be... not alone... with you."
Aitra smiled, and stepped forward to take her in his arms. Even in this place of altered sensations, her slim body felt very comfortable -
Then the intercom squawked, "Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Auxiliary control!"
Aitra swore, and ran for the door, grabbing up his disruptor rifle as he went.
"Stay safe!" Retar called after him as he left.
He raced down the corridors, his footsteps echoing like the sounds of alien bells, his heart pounding. More steps sounded as he approached the control room: he glanced warily around. Two familiar figures, coming up the passageway behind him - the other security officers, Sislyklut and Ril'ell. Aitra relaxed a little. The burly Reman was a good friend to have in a tight corner - and as for Ril'ell, she might look like a waif and dress like a cheap Hfihar streetwalker, but Aitra knew she could fight like an armoured hatham in a pinch.
Weapons ready, the three of them burst into the auxiliary control room. "Don't move!" Aitra yelled.
The figure at the navigation console did not move. It simply stood there, a humanoid shape, tall, thin, in a hooded tunic. "Turn around," Aitra commanded, "slowly."
The intruder complied. The face beneath its hood was humanoid, but neither human nor Romulan; a placid, mild-featured face with kindly eyes beneath hairless brow ridges. Cautiously, the intruder raised his hands in a gesture of surrender; the hands had two fingers and a thumb, Aitra noted. He didn't know this creature's species. He decided to take no chances, and kept his rifle aimed squarely at the narrow chest. Sislyklut and Ril'ell sidled around him, careful not to cross his line of fire as they approached the intruder.
"I mean you no harm," the stranger said. His voice was as mild as his face.
"No weapons." Sislyklut had a scanner in his hand. That meant nothing, Aitra thought. Any number of aliens could be dangerous with no visible weapons at all.
"I have no need of weapons," the stranger said. "I am here to help."
T'Laihhae's voice sounded, suddenly, from the doorway. "Who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?" Aitra hoped, devoutly, that he would never hear her speak to him in a tone like that.
"I am called the Traveller," the stranger replied. "I came... because you need my help."
---
The atmosphere in the conference room was tenser than before. Even T'Laihhae's eyes were narrowed, her mouth thin with strain. The only person who wasn't stressed, Aitra thought... was the one with three disruptor rifles pointed at his hairless head.
"I have a capability for travel across multiple axes of reality," the Traveller said. "Innate in this, of course, is an ability to... well, to put it simply, to see where I'm going. The irruption of your ship into this... region... was a very visible event. You must by now have realized that you are alien to this place."
"So you came to see what had happened?" T'Laihhae asked.
"It was clear enough what had happened. I came to render assistance."
"Why?"
The Traveller sighed. "Might it not simply be... because you need it?"
T'Laihhae studied him with a frown. "I must admit, I don't have a lot of experience of your kind. Altruists, I mean."
The Traveller smiled faintly. "There might be some disagreeable repercussions to your presence here, I suppose. Your mere presence creates waves of... change... which may or may not be desirable. And that change can work both ways. You are able to function here, because the living mind can influence its surroundings - to an extent - in this region. But the living mind is adaptable, and malleable, and the influence does not only work one way. If you remain here too long, you may change and adapt in ways that might not be beneficial."
"I've heard case studies of the psychological effects of interspatial rifts," Zdanruvruk spoke up.
"So have I," said T'Laihhae. "Some of them were uncomfortable reading." She turned her gaze back to the Traveller. "So. You say you can help?"
"If you will permit me access to your navigation systems, I can take this ship with me on a course back to normal space."
T'Laihhae's fingers drummed a brief tattoo on the conference table. The taps of her fingers raised strange echoes: she stopped. "We're trying to use dead reckoning to chart our own course back. We may well be able to manage without your help - or are you telling me that's not possible?"
"It is premature to judge anything impossible," the Traveller said, "but the task is a formidable one."
"Could you help with that?"
"My abilities are largely innate, and intuitive," said the Traveller. "Let me present an analogy. Suppose a blind man were to ask you how you saw - could you explain to him in detail, sufficient for him to make eyes for himself? The task before you is... of that order of difficulty."
"So you think we need your help... your way." T'Laihhae seemed to come to a decision. "All right. What must we do?"
"Merely provide me access to your navigation systems - and, of course, you must give me a destination."
"We can do that. The place we left, before we came here - could you reach that?"
The Traveller shook his head. "No. I mentioned, I believe, the effect of living minds on this - region of reality. The destination must be a real place, on which you can focus your will. It must be somewhere in the here and now that means something to you, somewhere you would strongly wish to be. The most common, the simplest, place for you to aim for... is, simply, home. Where is your home?"
T'Laihhae frowned. "We're citizens of the Romulan Republic...."
"Too vast an area. You need to be specific."
T'Laihhae drummed her fingers on the table again, and stopped again. "When I think of home, I think first of Romulus... but Romulus is gone."
"I had heard. A great tragedy."
"Well, then. We're citizens of the Republic. New Romulus."
There was a short pause, and, for the first time, a faintly strained look showed on the Traveller's face. "No," he said, eventually. "It is not... suitable."
"Why not? It's a real place, it's our administrative centre -"
"Yes, but -" The Traveller looked apologetic. "It is - I see the resonance your minds create - it is something you aspire to. It is a goal, an ideal; it is the home you are building for yourselves. And, because of that, it is something from your future, just as the destroyed Romulus is something from your past. I need a point that is real to you, now."
There was a pause, that grew longer, and uglier. "Most of us," T'Laihhae said thoughtfully, "perhaps all of us, are dispossessed. Refugees. Places like Virinat, Crateris - all shattered or swept away by the war. I don't know if any of us has a home - in the sense you seem to need." A wry smile tugged at her mouth for a second. "I'm rather regretting having persuaded Commander Yousest to take some leave." The Federation liaison officer was normally a thorn in her side, Aitra knew; still, a trip to his homeworld of Ysmer Pelagia wouldn't have come amiss just now....
"You will have to give the matter some thought," said the Traveller. "With your permission, I will remain... as long as you need me."
---
Aitra paced nervously up and down the length of his quarters, while Retar, curled up on his single chair, watched him curiously.
"Home," he said aloud. "Such a simple idea - or it should be. Shouldn't it?"
"I never had one," said Retar quietly. Aitra stopped pacing, turned to look at her. "I was born on one of the refugee ships... would have grown up on it, too, if it hadn't been captured by the Orions. Growing up in Orion space, now -" she shuddered. "Let's just say I don't have fond memories."
"I'm sorry." It was the first time she'd spoken about her past. She shrugged.
"It's all over now. And I guess it's the same with you?"
"That's what I'm trying to work out. Hfihar... the damn mines, and the damn arrogant Ferengi...." And the last time he'd seen it, through the porthole of a Starfleet shuttle, the town burning on the horizon, the ground alive with the leprous hairy shapes of the vampires.... "But I still think about it. I even dream about it. Maybe that's enough? He never said it had to be a - a pleasant emotional connection, did he?"
"But if it's somewhere you want to get away from - and why wouldn't you? - then it wouldn't work, would it?"
"Maybe. Maybe not." He gave a short, forced laugh. "Maybe it'd put us at the other pole of the universe, the place that's furthest possible from Hfihar in every way. Now that's got to be worth a try, hasn't it?"
Retar smiled at him, with a slightly rueful look. "You're going to try it, aren't you?"
Aitra squared his shoulders. "I guess so."
"Then good luck," she said. "Only, whatever happens... remember you and I have some unfinished business, all right?"
Aitra was smiling as he left his quarters. The smile faded, though, as he made his way down Messalina's corridors. They were empty, deserted, and he thought he knew why. Every step he took woke plangent, discordant echoes... was it his imagination, or were those echoes becoming steadily stranger and wilder as time went on? It was no wonder that no one else was walking about.
He heard voices as he neared auxiliary control - the echoes, though, made it impossible to make out the words. Now or never, he thought, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room.
Its two occupants looked up: the Traveller, and T'Laihhae. "Subcommander Aitra," T'Laihhae said.
"Sir. I thought - well, my planet of origin is often in my thoughts, and even though I'm glad to have left it -"
"I see," T'Laihhae interrupted. Her dark eyes were thoughtful. "Well, it's worth a try. But we'll try it if our current plan fails - Three hands are steadier than two. Take the helm, I'll handle operations, and the Traveller will be at navigation."
"You have a way out?"
"Potentially. Take the helm."
He did so, automatically, checking the console and the readouts, shooting a glance at the still figure of the enigmatic alien. "Status is nominal," he reported.
"Good. Warp engines are... well, we know their status. Go to full impulse and stand ready for the cross-link from navigation."
As if in a dream, Aitra punched the commands into the console, felt the faint shudder as the ship's engines woke to life.
"I am laying in the initial coordinates," the Traveller said in that mild voice. "Please stand ready to initialize the warp field as discussed."
"Ready," said T'Laihhae.
"Activate."
Before Aitra's eyes, the helm console readouts began to change. The ship was under way. Under way where? he wondered, and how? Hiven had said there was no way to establish a warp field -
- but there it was: the transwarp engines were on line, the ship was coming about, on a course... the coordinates made no sense. There was no way the Messalina was moving in any recognizable direction. But moving she was, and with steadily gathering speed.
"Hold her steady," T'Laihhae commanded.
Aitra's mouth went dry. The numbers on the helm console were insane; the massive ship was moving at ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times the speed her transwarp drive could attain. Hold her steady. Indeed, for the slightest wobble, the least variation in the inertial damping field, at this velocity, would spread Messalina's crew over her decks like so much paint.
The ship gathered speed. The figures on the readouts were a blur, meaningless and terrifying. Aitra sneaked a glance at the navigation console, and what he saw terrified him still further. The Traveller was shimmering and fading, the metal of the wall behind him clearly visible, bands of transparency racing up and down his slender body. His face was absorbed, intent, ultimately unreadable. Aitra forced his own attention back to the helm controls.
When the change came, it was sudden. The lights - the lights snapped back into focus, their coloured haloes winking out. Aitra felt a shock run through him as the weird underwater feeling drained away. The helm display cleared, stabilized, the numbers falling back to sane levels - to normality, as the ship eased out of warp and back to sublight speeds. Aitra let out a huge sigh, and it woke no weird echoes from anywhere. He turned to look at the navigation console.
The Traveller was gone. He had faded away entirely, as if he had never been.
"Check our position," T'Laihhae ordered.
"On it." He crossed over to the nav console, engaged the standard checks, and watched almost in disbelief as the system reported with uneventful normality. "We're in Federation space, near a star system - Priyanapari, I don't know it -"
"I do," said T'Laihhae. "It's where we aimed for. Now, get us back into warp, and steer for Starbase 39-Sierra - from here, the heading should be two-two-seven mark four-five."
"Is this place... dangerous?" Aitra asked, as he set up the course.
"No. But it's inadvisable to remain. All hands," T'Laihhae keyed the intra-ship address. "This is the commander. We have returned to normal space, and are proceeding at best speed to a Federation starbase. I'm sure you're all as relieved as I am. Thank you for your efforts. That is all." She snapped off the speakers and sat back in her chair. "I don't mind admitting just how relieved I am."
"Course confirmed, and we're under way." Aitra turned to face her. "So... is this Priyanapari system your home, then?"
"No."
"Then... I don't understand."
"The Traveller needed a definite point to reach, somewhere he could identify. There are ways in which this star system is unique. I talked it over with him, and we decided it was worth making the attempt."
Aitra looked hard at her. Her dark eyes looked back at him; her face was unreadable.
"You want to know, unique how?" she said.
"And you're not going to say... sir."
She flashed a quick smile at him. "I have my reasons," she said. "I have said before, I don't employ Tal Shiar methods... but some things need to be kept secret."
Aitra said nothing.
"I was a dutiful officer of the Imperial military," T'Laihhae said. "Once, serving on an outpost whose name really doesn't matter, I reported an off-hand remark made by a friend of mine. Our superior officer used that as a pretext to have my friend killed. I escaped that outpost, and made my way to Virinat, hoping to make a new life for myself there. Now, you know everything about me that, say, Tovan does. Before I found my way to Virinat, though, I passed through several systems, one of which was Priyanapari. I made some contacts along the way, who have been very useful to me, and to the Republic." Her smile flashed on and off again. "And now you know more about me than Tovan does."
Footsteps sounded in the passageways outside. "We'd better transfer control back to the regular bridge," T'Laihhae said. "And then I want to get some sleep - I don't think I've slept since this began."
The door of the control room opened, and Ruby stepped inside. "Sir," the android said, "I think I deserve some sort of explanation. I have been deactivated for some time, and regained consciousness on the bridge, with -" her voice became indignant "- a dust sheet thrown over me -"
Aitra laughed. "With your permission, sir," he said, "I'll let you sort this out. Me, I have some unfinished business to attend to."
((Who is "The Traveler"? Learn more about him here: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Traveler))]
"Scanning now," Zdanruvruk rasped. The Reman science officer's beady eyes were intent on the console display. Aitra glanced at him, briefly, before returning his own attention to the tactical readout. So far, it was blank. The Romulan offered a silent prayer to the Elements that it would stay that way.
"Let me know as soon as you discover anything," T'Laihhae said from the command chair. If she was tense, there was no sign of it in her voice.
"Is there anything there to find?" Retar asked from the engineering station. She did have a knack for asking insubordinate questions, Aitra thought. In an Imperial ship, that might have cost her her rank. But, of course, the Messalina was not an Imperial ship. And T'Laihhae was never one to stand on ceremony.
"My sources suggest there should be," T'Laihhae said, equably enough. And just what are those sources? Aitra wondered, not for the first time. "Nothing is certain... but they have proved reliable in the past."
"I have something." Zdanruvruk's brow was furrowed to start with - still, the Reman looked puzzled. "Particle traces... suggesting, perhaps, a subspace inclusion... or some sort of disruption." He blinked and glanced up from the console. "It's hard to tell. Recording data for analysis."
Aitra turned in his seat to look at his commanding officer. "What do you expect to find?" he asked, directly. T'Laihhae's dark eyes focused on him. She looked at him dispassionately for a fraction of a second, then favoured him with a flicker of a smile.
"Subspace disruption," she said. "There are two possibilities - according to my sources. One is that the Tal Shiar have been carrying out tests, attempting to reconnect to a defunct Borg transwarp hub. The second... is that they are experimenting with more direct means of causing subspace ruptures. They may be creating isolytic weaponry."
"That would put them in violation of... how many treaties, exactly?" asked Retar.
"Quite a number," said T'Laihhae. "Either possibility, of course, would excite interest among our allies. Bringing proof of either one to the Federation or the Klingons would further lower the Tal Shiar's reputation in their eyes... and advance the Republic's cause."
And the Tal Shiar would be keen for the evidence never to be found, Aitra thought, and turned his full attention back to the tactical display. The spiny shape of the Messalina was hanging in empty space, five light years or more from the nearest star system - in a point amid the infinite void that, as far as eyes could tell, was no different from any other. How did she know to come here? Aitra wondered again. He stared at the readouts, checked the visual display, looked at the stars, shining bright and cold, twinkling there....
He blinked. Twinkling?
Starlight twinkled when it passed through a planetary atmosphere. Out here, the stars should be steady and clear. Unless something was interfering with them....
"I think there's something out there," he said. "Possibly a cloaked ship."
"Go to full alert," T'Laihhae ordered. "Tachyon detection on. Zdan, do you have everything you need?"
"Still recording," the Reman answered. "I will need more time."
"I'd be glad to oblige," said T'Laihhae, "but it may not lie entirely in my hands. Keep going as long as you can." She turned back to Aitra. "Do you have confirmation?"
"Nothing on scans, still," Aitra replied. "If there's anyone out there, they're good. I just saw a - a visual discontinuity -"
"Good enough for me," T'Laihhae murmured. She trusts me not to jump at shadows, Aitra thought, and felt a fleeting glow of pride. He scanned the readouts, and the visual displays, tension mounting with each second that passed. There was a nebula within visual range, close enough to show as a filmy pale cloud... and something flitted, briefly, across it: distorting, but not obscuring it.
"Got a glimpse," he reported. "Something - angular. It might have been the wing of a Scimitar...."
T'Laihhae swore under her breath. "Then the only confirmation we will receive is a surprise thalaron barrage. I don't think we should wait to be sure. Raise shields, move out, maximum combat speed."
Readouts shifted before Aitra's eyes as the Messalina began to move. "Singularity core reaching criticality," Retar reported crisply. "Warp speed at your discretion, sir."
"We stay sublight as long as we can -" T'Laihhae began.
"Ships decloaking!" Aitra yelled. The flickering wraiths in the visual displays were suddenly solid, real, and deadly. "Two Scimitars, and an adapted destroyer. Bearing oh-two-nine mark one-four, range twelve."
"Maximum evasive," T'Laihhae ordered. Messalina was an adapted battle cruiser, heavily modified with Reman and Federation technology... but she was outgunned and outmatched by the approaching Tal Shiar ships. Aitra stiffened as more images shimmered into view on the console.
"Two battle cruisers and another Scimitar behind us! They're sitting on our departure vector!"
"Then we change departure vector. Come about," T'Laihhae ordered. Her voice was absolutely calm. "Heading three-two-eight mark four-nine. Maximum warp. Ready quantum slipstream."
"Sir." The android, Ruby, spoke for the first time. Her voice was no steadier than T'Laihhae's own. "That course takes us directly across the region of subspace disturbance."
"Yes. I'm hoping they haven't planned for that." T'Laihhae gave another flash of smile. "At the least, we should get some great close-ups for Zdan."
"Lead Scimitars are powering up thalarons," Aitra reported. His mouth was dry.
"Then we just outstayed our welcome. Punch it," T'Laihhae commanded.
The whole vast bulk of the Messalina shuddered as the warp engines came on line, twisting a hole in spacetime that was smoothed and widened by the energies of the quantum slipstream field. The ship leaped forwards -
---
"What happened?" Aitra heard someone ask. The words seemed to echo oddly in the air of the bridge.
Aitra blinked. The tactical console was still in front of him, glowing steadily... and every light, every luminous display, seemed to have a strange halo about it, an ethereal glimmer filled with nameless colours. The familiar edges of the console itself seemed blurred, wavery, unsteady. He reached out a hand, and that too was blurred, and the motion felt strange, slow, almost as if he were under water -
Head injury? he wondered. But he felt no pain. He turned his head and looked around.
The bridge seemed undamaged - no damage control lights flashing, no sparking and banging of overloaded EPS conduits. But it was all blurred, every light source ringed with that spectral glow, the whole place having that slow, dreamlike quality about it.
"What happened?" It was T'Laihhae who had spoken, and again the words had an odd echo to them. As if they, too, were wrapped in some kind of halo, audible rather than visual.
Aitra turned back to the console, struggled to make sense of the display. "No hostiles on sensors," he said, and his own voice sounded strange. "Can't make out - can't make out anything outside at all." The visual displays were a meaningless riot of shifting coloured shadows.
"Warp drive is offline," Retar reported. "I can't... I can't reestablish a warp field. Not sure why."
"Trying to get sensor readings," said Zdanruvruk. "This - We must have taken damage, sir. These readings don't make any kind of sense."
T'Laihhae put one hand to her forehead. "Is anyone else hearing things... strangely?" she asked.
"Now you mention it...." said Retar.
"Everything seems odd," Aitra said. "Sounds, lights... everything."
"Thank the Elements it's not just me," said T'Laihhae. She turned to Ruby. "What about you?"
"I. I. I," said the android. Her face was expressionless. "I. I. I. Input malfunction. Attempting to correct. I. Attempting to correct."
"That is so not a good sign," said Retar.
"We seem to be in... something of a hole," said T'Laihhae. "Well. The first thing we must know is, how deep? Do we have any sort of positional fix?"
"I can't make out anything on these displays," said Aitra.
"Comms?" asked T'Laihhae. "Do we have nearby subspace chatter? Any beacon signals we can pick up?"
Retar crossed over to Ruby's console, elbowing the android out of the way. Ruby sat there, passively, metal eyes blank, the bare patch on her forehead sparkling as status lights winked on and off in rapid succession. Each one had its own strange halo: it hurt to watch them.
"Nothing," Retar reported. "All channels dead."
"I'm trying to replay our sensor logs," said Zdanruvruk. "Should have details of everything... I had every sensor we've got out."
"Let me guess," said T'Laihhae. "Something happened when we hit the region of disturbed subspace."
"Seems a safe bet," said Retar. Aitra looked at her carefully. The auburn-haired engineer was trying hard not to show any sort of nervousness... but it was there, all the same. He knew it was there. He could feel it himself, deep in his bones.
"Looks like," Zdanruvruk said slowly, "we moved across the subspace rupture and it... synchronized with our warp field, and... and inverted, somehow. Moved us... randomly, across the space-time continuum. I can't work out how, or in what direction. Sir, I think it moved us along directions we don't even have names for."
T'Laihhae nodded, pensively. "So," she said, "the important question: how do we get back?"
"I don't know, sir."
---
The atmosphere in the Messalina's conference room was tense... and strange. I should be growing accustomed to this, Aitra thought, but I'm not. The fuzzy lights, the strange echoes, were... too strange. They were wrong, on some deep and fundamental level, something that he could feel, down in the core of his being. And he knew the others must feel it too... even if, like T'Laihhae, they were hiding it successfully.
T'Laihhae's "in" group, though - the ones Aitra thought of as her particular friends - weren't all hiding it so well. Tovan Khev looked as though he'd aged years; Satra was clearly scared; even the old engineer D'Vek and the big scientist Hiven were plainly worried. Hiven was making his report now.
"Nothing on the scans, and I mean nothing," the big man rumbled. "Can't even establish a metrical frame for reference. It's like - outside the ship, there's nothing at all. Like the rules of the universe just haven't been written yet."
"But we're still alive," Retar said. "That means - power, gravity, chemical reactions in our bodies - all sorts of things must be functioning normally -"
"Force of habit, maybe," said Hiven. "Nothing to stop these things carrying on, either. Or..." He looked doubtful. "There might be something... something mental going on. Sentient minds having an effect on their surroundings.... We know the artificial lifeforms are having trouble, right?"
"Ruby is still out of action," said T'Laihhae. "Are there others in similar difficulties?"
"EMH won't engage," said Hiven. "None of the sophisticated holograms will start up - we can switch on dummies and programmed characters from holonovels and stuff, but nothing with any self-awareness or decision making capacity. They all fail with initialization errors in the holo-matrix."
"Hmm," said T'Laihhae. "I suppose it's good to know that old-fashioned organic brains can cope better with this - whatever it is - than the cybernetic ones." She laughed, shortly and without humour. "Good to know we have any advantages. But it does further reduce our options."
"What options do we have?" asked Retar.
"Two, that I can see," said T'Laihhae. "The first is to explore our surroundings - to see if we can find some recognizable feature, some signpost we can use, in order to get back to normal space. The second - which is not incompatible - is to use our sensor logs and see if we can backtrack, by dead reckoning, along the same route we took to get into this place." Her eyes turned towards Zdanruvruk. "I don't expect it to be easy, of course."
"Sir," said the Reman, "it may - it may not be possible, even. We're dealing with movement across dimensions we've never encountered before - just describing our position might need the invention of a new mathematical notation -"
"As I said," said T'Laihhae, "I don't expect it to be easy." Her gaze swept around the conference table, measuring, appraising each one of them in turn. "I don't need to say this," she said, "but I will. I have every confidence in this crew... in all of you. All of us. We will prevail."
---
The shape of the Messalina made her internal architecture complicated. Aitra's quarters were at one corner of the curved, triangular upper hull, near where one of the forward weapons spines joined on. He was starting to unbutton his uniform jacket when there was a knock at the door.
"Come in."
The door slid open, and Retar stepped through. "I didn't want to be alone," she said, directly. "And I decided I wanted to be... not alone... with you."
Aitra smiled, and stepped forward to take her in his arms. Even in this place of altered sensations, her slim body felt very comfortable -
Then the intercom squawked, "Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Auxiliary control!"
Aitra swore, and ran for the door, grabbing up his disruptor rifle as he went.
"Stay safe!" Retar called after him as he left.
He raced down the corridors, his footsteps echoing like the sounds of alien bells, his heart pounding. More steps sounded as he approached the control room: he glanced warily around. Two familiar figures, coming up the passageway behind him - the other security officers, Sislyklut and Ril'ell. Aitra relaxed a little. The burly Reman was a good friend to have in a tight corner - and as for Ril'ell, she might look like a waif and dress like a cheap Hfihar streetwalker, but Aitra knew she could fight like an armoured hatham in a pinch.
Weapons ready, the three of them burst into the auxiliary control room. "Don't move!" Aitra yelled.
The figure at the navigation console did not move. It simply stood there, a humanoid shape, tall, thin, in a hooded tunic. "Turn around," Aitra commanded, "slowly."
The intruder complied. The face beneath its hood was humanoid, but neither human nor Romulan; a placid, mild-featured face with kindly eyes beneath hairless brow ridges. Cautiously, the intruder raised his hands in a gesture of surrender; the hands had two fingers and a thumb, Aitra noted. He didn't know this creature's species. He decided to take no chances, and kept his rifle aimed squarely at the narrow chest. Sislyklut and Ril'ell sidled around him, careful not to cross his line of fire as they approached the intruder.
"I mean you no harm," the stranger said. His voice was as mild as his face.
"No weapons." Sislyklut had a scanner in his hand. That meant nothing, Aitra thought. Any number of aliens could be dangerous with no visible weapons at all.
"I have no need of weapons," the stranger said. "I am here to help."
T'Laihhae's voice sounded, suddenly, from the doorway. "Who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?" Aitra hoped, devoutly, that he would never hear her speak to him in a tone like that.
"I am called the Traveller," the stranger replied. "I came... because you need my help."
---
The atmosphere in the conference room was tenser than before. Even T'Laihhae's eyes were narrowed, her mouth thin with strain. The only person who wasn't stressed, Aitra thought... was the one with three disruptor rifles pointed at his hairless head.
"I have a capability for travel across multiple axes of reality," the Traveller said. "Innate in this, of course, is an ability to... well, to put it simply, to see where I'm going. The irruption of your ship into this... region... was a very visible event. You must by now have realized that you are alien to this place."
"So you came to see what had happened?" T'Laihhae asked.
"It was clear enough what had happened. I came to render assistance."
"Why?"
The Traveller sighed. "Might it not simply be... because you need it?"
T'Laihhae studied him with a frown. "I must admit, I don't have a lot of experience of your kind. Altruists, I mean."
The Traveller smiled faintly. "There might be some disagreeable repercussions to your presence here, I suppose. Your mere presence creates waves of... change... which may or may not be desirable. And that change can work both ways. You are able to function here, because the living mind can influence its surroundings - to an extent - in this region. But the living mind is adaptable, and malleable, and the influence does not only work one way. If you remain here too long, you may change and adapt in ways that might not be beneficial."
"I've heard case studies of the psychological effects of interspatial rifts," Zdanruvruk spoke up.
"So have I," said T'Laihhae. "Some of them were uncomfortable reading." She turned her gaze back to the Traveller. "So. You say you can help?"
"If you will permit me access to your navigation systems, I can take this ship with me on a course back to normal space."
T'Laihhae's fingers drummed a brief tattoo on the conference table. The taps of her fingers raised strange echoes: she stopped. "We're trying to use dead reckoning to chart our own course back. We may well be able to manage without your help - or are you telling me that's not possible?"
"It is premature to judge anything impossible," the Traveller said, "but the task is a formidable one."
"Could you help with that?"
"My abilities are largely innate, and intuitive," said the Traveller. "Let me present an analogy. Suppose a blind man were to ask you how you saw - could you explain to him in detail, sufficient for him to make eyes for himself? The task before you is... of that order of difficulty."
"So you think we need your help... your way." T'Laihhae seemed to come to a decision. "All right. What must we do?"
"Merely provide me access to your navigation systems - and, of course, you must give me a destination."
"We can do that. The place we left, before we came here - could you reach that?"
The Traveller shook his head. "No. I mentioned, I believe, the effect of living minds on this - region of reality. The destination must be a real place, on which you can focus your will. It must be somewhere in the here and now that means something to you, somewhere you would strongly wish to be. The most common, the simplest, place for you to aim for... is, simply, home. Where is your home?"
T'Laihhae frowned. "We're citizens of the Romulan Republic...."
"Too vast an area. You need to be specific."
T'Laihhae drummed her fingers on the table again, and stopped again. "When I think of home, I think first of Romulus... but Romulus is gone."
"I had heard. A great tragedy."
"Well, then. We're citizens of the Republic. New Romulus."
There was a short pause, and, for the first time, a faintly strained look showed on the Traveller's face. "No," he said, eventually. "It is not... suitable."
"Why not? It's a real place, it's our administrative centre -"
"Yes, but -" The Traveller looked apologetic. "It is - I see the resonance your minds create - it is something you aspire to. It is a goal, an ideal; it is the home you are building for yourselves. And, because of that, it is something from your future, just as the destroyed Romulus is something from your past. I need a point that is real to you, now."
There was a pause, that grew longer, and uglier. "Most of us," T'Laihhae said thoughtfully, "perhaps all of us, are dispossessed. Refugees. Places like Virinat, Crateris - all shattered or swept away by the war. I don't know if any of us has a home - in the sense you seem to need." A wry smile tugged at her mouth for a second. "I'm rather regretting having persuaded Commander Yousest to take some leave." The Federation liaison officer was normally a thorn in her side, Aitra knew; still, a trip to his homeworld of Ysmer Pelagia wouldn't have come amiss just now....
"You will have to give the matter some thought," said the Traveller. "With your permission, I will remain... as long as you need me."
---
Aitra paced nervously up and down the length of his quarters, while Retar, curled up on his single chair, watched him curiously.
"Home," he said aloud. "Such a simple idea - or it should be. Shouldn't it?"
"I never had one," said Retar quietly. Aitra stopped pacing, turned to look at her. "I was born on one of the refugee ships... would have grown up on it, too, if it hadn't been captured by the Orions. Growing up in Orion space, now -" she shuddered. "Let's just say I don't have fond memories."
"I'm sorry." It was the first time she'd spoken about her past. She shrugged.
"It's all over now. And I guess it's the same with you?"
"That's what I'm trying to work out. Hfihar... the damn mines, and the damn arrogant Ferengi...." And the last time he'd seen it, through the porthole of a Starfleet shuttle, the town burning on the horizon, the ground alive with the leprous hairy shapes of the vampires.... "But I still think about it. I even dream about it. Maybe that's enough? He never said it had to be a - a pleasant emotional connection, did he?"
"But if it's somewhere you want to get away from - and why wouldn't you? - then it wouldn't work, would it?"
"Maybe. Maybe not." He gave a short, forced laugh. "Maybe it'd put us at the other pole of the universe, the place that's furthest possible from Hfihar in every way. Now that's got to be worth a try, hasn't it?"
Retar smiled at him, with a slightly rueful look. "You're going to try it, aren't you?"
Aitra squared his shoulders. "I guess so."
"Then good luck," she said. "Only, whatever happens... remember you and I have some unfinished business, all right?"
Aitra was smiling as he left his quarters. The smile faded, though, as he made his way down Messalina's corridors. They were empty, deserted, and he thought he knew why. Every step he took woke plangent, discordant echoes... was it his imagination, or were those echoes becoming steadily stranger and wilder as time went on? It was no wonder that no one else was walking about.
He heard voices as he neared auxiliary control - the echoes, though, made it impossible to make out the words. Now or never, he thought, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room.
Its two occupants looked up: the Traveller, and T'Laihhae. "Subcommander Aitra," T'Laihhae said.
"Sir. I thought - well, my planet of origin is often in my thoughts, and even though I'm glad to have left it -"
"I see," T'Laihhae interrupted. Her dark eyes were thoughtful. "Well, it's worth a try. But we'll try it if our current plan fails - Three hands are steadier than two. Take the helm, I'll handle operations, and the Traveller will be at navigation."
"You have a way out?"
"Potentially. Take the helm."
He did so, automatically, checking the console and the readouts, shooting a glance at the still figure of the enigmatic alien. "Status is nominal," he reported.
"Good. Warp engines are... well, we know their status. Go to full impulse and stand ready for the cross-link from navigation."
As if in a dream, Aitra punched the commands into the console, felt the faint shudder as the ship's engines woke to life.
"I am laying in the initial coordinates," the Traveller said in that mild voice. "Please stand ready to initialize the warp field as discussed."
"Ready," said T'Laihhae.
"Activate."
Before Aitra's eyes, the helm console readouts began to change. The ship was under way. Under way where? he wondered, and how? Hiven had said there was no way to establish a warp field -
- but there it was: the transwarp engines were on line, the ship was coming about, on a course... the coordinates made no sense. There was no way the Messalina was moving in any recognizable direction. But moving she was, and with steadily gathering speed.
"Hold her steady," T'Laihhae commanded.
Aitra's mouth went dry. The numbers on the helm console were insane; the massive ship was moving at ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times the speed her transwarp drive could attain. Hold her steady. Indeed, for the slightest wobble, the least variation in the inertial damping field, at this velocity, would spread Messalina's crew over her decks like so much paint.
The ship gathered speed. The figures on the readouts were a blur, meaningless and terrifying. Aitra sneaked a glance at the navigation console, and what he saw terrified him still further. The Traveller was shimmering and fading, the metal of the wall behind him clearly visible, bands of transparency racing up and down his slender body. His face was absorbed, intent, ultimately unreadable. Aitra forced his own attention back to the helm controls.
When the change came, it was sudden. The lights - the lights snapped back into focus, their coloured haloes winking out. Aitra felt a shock run through him as the weird underwater feeling drained away. The helm display cleared, stabilized, the numbers falling back to sane levels - to normality, as the ship eased out of warp and back to sublight speeds. Aitra let out a huge sigh, and it woke no weird echoes from anywhere. He turned to look at the navigation console.
The Traveller was gone. He had faded away entirely, as if he had never been.
"Check our position," T'Laihhae ordered.
"On it." He crossed over to the nav console, engaged the standard checks, and watched almost in disbelief as the system reported with uneventful normality. "We're in Federation space, near a star system - Priyanapari, I don't know it -"
"I do," said T'Laihhae. "It's where we aimed for. Now, get us back into warp, and steer for Starbase 39-Sierra - from here, the heading should be two-two-seven mark four-five."
"Is this place... dangerous?" Aitra asked, as he set up the course.
"No. But it's inadvisable to remain. All hands," T'Laihhae keyed the intra-ship address. "This is the commander. We have returned to normal space, and are proceeding at best speed to a Federation starbase. I'm sure you're all as relieved as I am. Thank you for your efforts. That is all." She snapped off the speakers and sat back in her chair. "I don't mind admitting just how relieved I am."
"Course confirmed, and we're under way." Aitra turned to face her. "So... is this Priyanapari system your home, then?"
"No."
"Then... I don't understand."
"The Traveller needed a definite point to reach, somewhere he could identify. There are ways in which this star system is unique. I talked it over with him, and we decided it was worth making the attempt."
Aitra looked hard at her. Her dark eyes looked back at him; her face was unreadable.
"You want to know, unique how?" she said.
"And you're not going to say... sir."
She flashed a quick smile at him. "I have my reasons," she said. "I have said before, I don't employ Tal Shiar methods... but some things need to be kept secret."
Aitra said nothing.
"I was a dutiful officer of the Imperial military," T'Laihhae said. "Once, serving on an outpost whose name really doesn't matter, I reported an off-hand remark made by a friend of mine. Our superior officer used that as a pretext to have my friend killed. I escaped that outpost, and made my way to Virinat, hoping to make a new life for myself there. Now, you know everything about me that, say, Tovan does. Before I found my way to Virinat, though, I passed through several systems, one of which was Priyanapari. I made some contacts along the way, who have been very useful to me, and to the Republic." Her smile flashed on and off again. "And now you know more about me than Tovan does."
Footsteps sounded in the passageways outside. "We'd better transfer control back to the regular bridge," T'Laihhae said. "And then I want to get some sleep - I don't think I've slept since this began."
The door of the control room opened, and Ruby stepped inside. "Sir," the android said, "I think I deserve some sort of explanation. I have been deactivated for some time, and regained consciousness on the bridge, with -" her voice became indignant "- a dust sheet thrown over me -"
Aitra laughed. "With your permission, sir," he said, "I'll let you sort this out. Me, I have some unfinished business to attend to."
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