Fallout 16

Ronnie

I stamp irritably up and down the bridge, turning things over in my head.

So far, everything is going pretty smoothly. The cynic in me keeps saying that's due for a change. But Sixth Fleet has not even seen combat yet - the situation at Valtoth Alpha was as close as it got - and, despite all the zooming around at high warp speeds, the Virtue is holding up pretty well. Chief Engineer Ahepkur isn't happy, though. But she's a Klingon */*species 5008*/*, and a discommendated Klingon at that, so she's never happy.

Perhaps it's simply that things are going too smoothly. I don't have enough to occupy my mind, it gives me time to brood and worry at ideas. Playing with phantoms, mostly. Still, some of them are worrying phantoms.

"I'm restless," I say aloud.

"Get some sleep, sir," says Tallasa.

"Can't sleep when I'm restless, can I? I've got too little to do and too much to think about. Energies bombinating in a vacuum breed chimeras."

I've been waiting for ages to work that quote in somewhere, but Tallasa just says, "And what about Admirals bombinating in a Chimera, sir?" I shoot her a dirty look.

"I'm working it all out in my head," I say, "and some of the possible answers I come up with - I don't like at all. Look. Taking it that this Kysang was a Federation agent -"

"For which you have no proof," says Tallasa.

"Well, if I had proof, he'd have been a lousy agent, wouldn't he? But anyway. Federation agents don't operate in a vacuum." Tallasa doesn't even speak, just glances meaningfully at the ocean of stars on the viewscreen. "Oh, shut up, you know what I mean. They have networks, contacts, all that good stuff. The stuff I got from Memory Alpha suggests he had links to one of the big commercial concerns in the Empire."

"So?" says Tallasa. "Starfleet Intelligence is undoubtedly trying to track the movement of resources within the Empire. It's exactly the sort of low-level statistical information that it's vital to know."

"Quite. But Kysang's contacts must have enabled him to get stuff. Not just information, actual goods and services. Like, for instance, the huge amounts of tricobalt and other nastiness Klur used on Bercera IV."

"Hence your suspicion that Klur acted on orders from some individual or group in the High Council," says Tallasa. "The owner of the shipping concerns?"

"That's one possibility. The other, much nastier one... well, we've just taken a huge chunk out of the Klink front line, mostly without firing a shot. The High Council is almost falling over itself to make concessions and reparations - and, even so, the Klinks' name is still mud with half the frontier systems. We've benefited from Bercera IV. So, bearing that in mind, can you see why I might be a bit worried that there was a Federation agent involved in the attack?"

It makes Tallasa's jaw drop, which is something. "You think Section 31 arranged the destruction of Bercera IV?"

"They're the ones who defend the Federation 'by any means necessary'. Would you put something like that past Franklin Drake?"

"I -" Tallasa closes her mouth. She's thinking. That's good.

"I don't want to believe it," I say. "It just worries me. And now I guess it's worrying you. Sorry about that." I really don't want to believe it. But Franklin Drake and Boris Savinkov are brothers under the skin, and that bothers me.

Anyway, there's nothing I can do about any of it just now. The Virtue is following the leader, Admiral Gref's massive Jupiter-class battleship Taras Bulba, as the fleet hurtles deeper into Klingon territory, away from the newly-liberated Valtothi */*species 191*/* -

Hold on a minute. How did a minor Alpha Quadrant species like the Valtothi get a designation number as low as 191?

*/*retrieving data
---data not in local storage
---connection to main data archives not functional
---reconnect---priority---reconnect---reconnect---reconnect*/*

- OK, I don't need to know that badly. Anyway. Away from Valtoth Alpha, and towards the Klingons.

"Incoming message from the flagship," says the comms ensign.

"OK, let's have it," I say.

"Uh," says the ensign, "it says all commanding officers to report to ready rooms for a conference briefing."

"Oh, joy," I say. "All right, tell them I'm on my way, then pipe it through."

---

Admiral Gref doesn't look happy. He has sound reasons not to, and anyway he never did. He is short and squat even by Tellarite */*species 4897*/* standards, and he glowers out of the screen now, clearly in a more than usually dyspeptic mood.

"We have reports from the Yll-Torican homeworld," he says. "Three hours ago, a squadron of Klingon raptors crossed the system at high impulse speeds, destroyed two civil defence corvettes, and carried out a series of orbital strikes on ground targets. So far, we have no firm figures on casualties. First word is that they aren't heavy - but it doesn't matter how light they are, there should not have been any."

"Were the raiders identified?" asks Rear Admiral Stuvek from the USS Niobe.

"Not as far as I know," says Gref. His mouth works. "This shows the kind of people we're dealing with. They're not even serious about their own reparations - as soon as they agree to pull out of Yll-Torica, they attack the place!"

"Well," I say, "the reparations have got a lot of the Klingons pretty worked up - my guess is, this is an isolated privateering raid, by some hotheads out to make a point."

"I concur with Vice Admiral Grau's analysis," says Stuvek. Gref looks even more unhappy.

"Hotheads," he says. "Every time the Klingons perpetrate some kind of atrocity, their High Council jumps up to say it's hotheads, rogue elements, captains exceeding their authority. Well, it's more than time we stopped letting them get away with that. I know these - Viking expeditions - of theirs are part of Klingon culture, and you know what? I don't care. Let them express their cultural values on their own people. They can leave us, and the neutral worlds, strictly alone."

"So what do you suggest, sir?" asks Captain Weymouth of the USS Warspite.

"I suggest nothing," snaps Gref. "I am going to carry out my orders, which are to take Sixth Fleet into Klingon space and carry out retributive action against the KDF. So far we've not seen combat. That is about to change." He takes a deep breath. "The Klingon High Council rejected the Federation's demand for the removal of their military station at Aznetkur. So, we're going to take it away from them anyway. The Fleet will proceed at maximum safe warp to that system, and we don't stop until that planetary fortress is reduced." Another deep breath. "We will now begin reviewing the system assault plans."