Whew! Hope I never have to deal with someone anything remotely like Shalo in real life. My female Orion character in STO is thankfully nothing like Shalo. I'm not sure what I would do if she were.
The morgue turns out to be quite easy to find; we simply aim for the medical facilities, and look for an outbuilding with a very low overall temperature. A couple of Sutton's mercenaries are guarding the doorway, but they flee at the sight of Thirethequ wielding the flamethrower. To be fair, I would, too.
It's easy enough, too, to find the three bodies we're looking for, to cross-check against Shalo's files, and to confirm identification. I look down on one body, the charred corpse of a Ferasan warrior, and I wonder: what role did he play in this? A Starfleet crew would be obliged to refuse an illegal order, but what choice did the KDF lower ranks have? Klur apparently executed two of his officers for speaking out... but the whole crew could have taken him down, mutinies have happened in the KDF before, and even been condoned when the commanding officer's conduct was bad enough. But would the KDF have decided Klur's plan was bad enough?
I look down on the dead Ferasan, and can't help but wonder what choices he had.
"What's our next step, sir?" Anthi asks, recalling me to the here and now.
"Oh," I say. "Right. We'll do a sweep around the perimeter of the port, checking for Nausicaan, Orion or even Klingon lifesigns, and trying to match them against Shalo's biometric data. If we find any of Klur's crew, we go in and pick them up. Otherwise, we circle back to the landing pad and try to link up with Shalo at the dropship. Amiga, see if you can hack me a link-up with the local communications network."
"I'm reading armed units converging on this building," Anthi says. "It must be more of Sutton's group."
"Right." I consult the tactical overlay on my visor. "They're covering the main and the emergency entrances. So, we'll avoid them, go out that way -" I point "- and head for the vehicular thoroughfare about fifty metres south of here. Questions?"
"Your pardon, esteemed commander," says Thirethequ, "but I fear your plan is impracticable, since we have no means of egress in the desired direction." He's right, of course, I'm pointing at a solid wall.
"Oh, yes," I say. "Fix that, will you, Anthi?" Anthi is already aiming the cannon pistol.
We're through the hole in the wall before the dust has started to settle, and heading south, towards that main street. I'm hoping that Sutton's mercenaries won't be free with their fire if there are bystanders about. As for us - Kluthli, Amiga and I have our weapons set to heavy stun. The cannon pistol and the flamethrower, obviously, don't really have stun settings, so Anthi and Thirethequ will be aiming them, as much as possible, at inanimate objects, for the purpose of intimidation.
We may be in a fight, but we're still Starfleet.
Shouts from behind us, and a scattering of disruptor bolts. I turn, and fire a volley back from my autocarbine. Caught in the burst of fire, two of Sutton's men drop; a third, caught by the fringe of one bolt, howls and clutches his leg. Even on stun, the neural shock from the antiproton bolts is... nasty. There are others in that group of thugs, but they turn tail and run, polaron and phased-tet beams whistling after them from Kluthli's and Amiga's pistols.
There is movement from the mouth of another alley, which stops suddenly as Thirethequ unleashes a green-hot cloud of flame. "Venture forth, recreants, and face immolation!" he bellows. I think he's enjoying himself.
"Scanning," Kluthli says. "Nausicaan life signs at bearing one three seven, range about one-fifty."
"Let's take a look," I say.
"I have that comms hookup," says Amiga.
"OK," I say, "put me on public address." And I make my announcement, trying not to sound too out of breath as I run for the next corner. "Attention, please. We are engaged in a legitimate security investigation, and we're being impeded by a group of criminals calling themselves Sutton's Consolidated Unaligned Mercenaries. Non-combatants are advised to stay clear of possible armed conflict zones. Thank you for your attention, and we apologize for the inconvenience."
"Are you planning on saying who 'we' are, sir?" Anthi asks, as we reach the corner and peer down the main street.
"Not really," I say. "I'm not too sure how to explain all this to Admiral Semok anyway."
"I have an Administrator Kendrix calling for you, sir," says Amiga.
"What the hell," I say, "let's talk to them."
"What is going on?" a fussy voice shrills in my ear. "What security investigation? There were explosions! Gunfire! Who's going to pay for the property damage?"
"Take that up with whoever hired a group of criminals to handle your security," I say.
"We hired them!"
"Well, that'll simplify your lines of communication no end, won't it? My advice is, call them off and disarm them. And tell them not to try knocking visitors over the head, in future. Bad for the tourist trade, as well as their health."
There is a cluster of Nausicaan life signs on my tactical display, but they're not close enough for detailed biometric scans. And there is another cluster of icons approaching from the west, showing personal shields and small arms. I cut off the noise of Kendrix sputtering incoherently. "Hostiles inbound, roughly one zero zero. Let's dissuade them, shall we?"
In the wan street lighting and the dim after-sunset glow, Sutton's men are barely visible, just loping shapes in the dusk. One of them fires a phaser, and I hear the beam hiss by me. I return fire, and he falls. Anthi aims the cannon pistol at the packed earth of the roadway, and fires, sending up a shower of dust and dirt. More phasers and disruptors flash; our guns answer them. Thirethequ sends a great spray of burning gases across the roadway, where it ignites the fuel cells of some ground vehicle, parked by the roadside. The resulting explosion sends chunks of hot metal flying in all directions, and several of Sutton's men are knocked down by the concussion. Not fatally injured, I hope. Well, I try to hope.
I spray fire towards the ones who are still upright; one of them falls, the others dive for cover. I turn towards the Nausicaan life signs - they're inside a nearby building. "Scanning," Kluthli says. "None of them's one we want."
"Get me the next nearest," I say, my eyes still on the road where Sutton's troops are moving in the dimness.
"On it," says Kluthli. "Mixed group of life signs... at least one Nausicaan... two-seven-two, about one-fifty metres."
"Let's move," I say, and we move.
"Reading something else," Kluthli calls, as we run. "Weapons and personal shield signatures - could be consistent with the ones we've been fighting."
A phaser beam snaps out of an alleyway towards us; we fire back. Anthi aims deliberately off-target, but the crescent wave from the pistol hits something that explodes in a shower of sparks. The streetlights flicker off, come back after a second at low strength. "Sorry, sir," Anthi says. "Must have hit an EPS substation or something."
"Don't worry about it. Just property damage." We move on.
"I have Commodore Sutton on the comm link," says Amiga.
"Oh, joy. All right, patch him in."
"Listen." Sutton's voice sounds in my ear, high and strained. "Lay off, just lay off, all right?"
"Pull your goons out of here before anyone else gets hurt," I tell him.
"Or what?" He sounds indignant. "You're outnumbered thirty to one!"
"Only thirty? When we're up against the Borg, it's usually hundreds. And the Borg are better equipped than your mercenaries."
"Over there, sir," Kluthli interrupts. She's pointing towards another alleyway. Somebody has made a makeshift barricade across the entrance, out of packing cases, I think - it's hard to tell in the dim light.
"Listen," Sutton says. "I did a deal with the Orion witch, she's on her way to you, now just lay off, will you? Or we'll have to -"
Whatever he says next is lost in the noise as Thirethequ blasts the barricade with the flamethrower. It's blazing merrily when Anthi fires the cannon pistol, breaking it apart and sending burning fragments flying down the alley. I check my scans. A group of Sutton's troops, all right, now retreating slowly in some disorder - and one Nausicaan among them. I run to the mouth of the alley, firing a warning burst over their heads. "Stand still!" I bellow.
In the dim light, I can see them milling around in confusion. One of them raises a gun, thinks better of it, lowers it again.
"- told you, I did a deal! The Orion witch is on her way to you! She'll cut me in half if anything goes wrong!"
"Cut you in half?" I say. "You want to know what I'm going to do to you?"
"Confirmation, sir," says Kluthli. "The Nausicaan - a match for a Warrior Jikkur, in Shalo's files."
I shut Sutton off. "Jikkur!" I shout. My hand is stiff with tension on the stock of my gun. This is our first chance to take one of Klur's crew... one of the people who murdered a world.
Slowly, reluctantly, a tall figure steps out of the shuffling group. The dying flames from some piece of the barricade strike red reflections on Nausicaan bladed armour. He glares at me.
Unexpectedly, a voice comes from behind me. "There you are. I will handle matters from here." Shalo.
She sweeps imperiously past me into the alleyway. "Lieutenant Jikkur," she says. The Nausicaan freezes in his tracks. Shalo turns to me. "Your Federation interrogation techniques will not break a Nausicaan warrior."
"Don't be too sure about that," I say. We've done it before.
"Well, in any case, it is not necessary," says Shalo. "Lieutenant Jikkur! I have purchased your contract from Commodore Sutton." She holds up a datapad. "Inspect this and verify it."
The Nausicaan takes one slow step forward, then another. I glance about. Thirethequ and Amiga are covering the other mercenaries, Anthi is guarding our rear. In any case, there are no other armed groups in the immediate vicinity on my tactical scan. The Nausicaan reaches the mouth of the alley and stands before Shalo, towering over her.
"Verified," he says. "Sir."
"Good," says Shalo. "It cost me fifty-five Lobi crystals, and I see I must confirm your... field promotion. Now, then. Sutton negotiated a full-service contract, which I have purchased. That means any duty of confidentiality you might have had to a former employer has lapsed. Where is Captain Klur?"
Jikkur stiffens. "I did not have navigation functions on the QIb laH'e' or the shuttle," he says.
"A general impression will suffice," says Shalo.
"We took an evasive course through several emission nebulas and other phenomena," says Jikkur. "When we left the carrier, it was waiting under stealth conditions in a gravitational nexus. I believe it is the gravitic anomaly near the star Massidia Alpha."
Shalo nods. "That makes sense," she says. She turns to me. "You see? A Nausicaan mercenary is loyal to his contract - it is a virtue of theirs."
Possibly their only virtue. "What are you going to do with him now?" I ask. "Contract or not, he's a wanted war criminal as far as the Federation is concerned."
"He is, however, a KDF officer under my command," says Shalo. "And a resourceful one - escaping Klur's crew, getting himself a secure position on this world, that was inventive."
Jikkur seems to swell with pride. "Thank you, sir!"
"Getting caught by the Federation, though," Shalo continues, "was less than competent."
Jikkur's eyes flicker, and he goes for his gun, a fraction of a second too late. Shalo draws her bat'leth and strikes with it in one single fluid movement. Black blood geysers up in the dim light, and the Nausicaan's headless body topples to the ground.
"There is only one punishment for incompetence in the KDF," Shalo says calmly.
I find my voice, somehow. "Rather a waste of fifty-five Lobi," I say, shakily.
Shalo shrugs. "Lobi crystals are of no particular worth," she says. "That is why the Crystal Consortium uses them as the base material for its unorthodox currency."
"Wait a minute," I say. "You mean you paid Sutton in ordinary Lobi crystals? Not Consortium ones?"
"Yes." Shalo turns away from Jikkur's corpse. "We should return to the dropship and make our way to Massidia Alpha at the best possible speed. I am anxious to arrive there before Klur can depart... and I should like to leave here before Commodore Sutton runs some basic checks on those crystals."
Tallasa comes storming into my ready room with a face like thunder. She has a bunch of PADDs in her hand; she slams the first one down on my desk. "Casualty reports." Slam, as the next one joins it. "Repairs to ship's systems." A third. "Revisions to lists of spares." That one comes down so hard, the screen goes blank.
"I think you broke it," I say.
"So add it to the list of everything else that's broken around here!" I don't think I've ever seen Tallasa this angry. */*---memory retrieval---commencing comparisons*/* No need, Two of Twelve, no need. "Sir," Tallasa carries on, with icy formality, "as your executive officer, I am confirming to you that the ship is not ready for combat operations without further repairs."
"Ahepkur says we're operational," I protest.
"Ahepkur is a gung-ho Klingon idiot, and she'll tell you whatever you want to hear!" Tallasa blazes at me. So much for Starfleet protocol, then. "We're operational enough to get to Spacedock for proper repairs, and that is it!"
If I were a Betazoid */*species 1599*/*, I'd be sensing hostility right now. "There's a space dock at Nali Caerodi," I say.
"Which is eighty-odd parsecs further away than Earth, and in the middle of Ferengi space. Do you have some sudden compulsion, sir, to pay for our repairs?"
"There's a reciprocal repair agreement in place," I say. "Starfleet repairs and refits free in exchange for similar facilities for the Ferengi at Starbase 105. I do think of these things, Tallasa, honest I do."
"And what's eighty extra parsecs on a set of damaged warp coils, after all?" says Tallasa. It's a very bad sign when she's sarcastic.
I try to marshal my thoughts, which is never easy. Except when people are shooting at me; concentrates the mind wonderfully, that does. Was that Samuel Johnson? Never mind.
"Look," I say. "I've been going back over that stuff we got from Memory Alpha -"
"That you got. And it is not our problem, sir."
"No." Somehow, I find my thoughts coming into clear focus. "No, you're wrong. It is our problem, because this is big enough to be everyone's problem. And we have to do whatever we can, because we're Starfleet, and that's our job."
That gets to her, I can see that. She stands up straight, her eyes widen, her antennae stiffen. "You'd better explain, sir." It's grudging, but it's better than her shouting at me.
"All right. The key to all this lies in a lot of very dry, very boring data about industrial shipping. That's what I've been sifting through. How did Klur get the amount of tricobalt he used at Bercera? Someone provided the stuff, and someone physically transferred it onto his ship. I figure that was when they changed the name. When the plan was set in motion, and they wanted to make it plain. Symbolism, the Klinks are big on symbolism, sometimes. I don't think this was the only symbolic act, either, but -" I'm wandering from the point. I take a deep breath and try to get back on track.
"Two of them were executed when Klur gave his orders. Kysang, the one I think was a Section 31 agent, and Talakh. Talakh had contacts in Ferengi space, his House is a cadet branch of the House of Toros, and they've got clout in the Klingon High Council. But they don't have the manufacturing capacity to produce the tricobalt, their commercial interests are in merchant shipping more than anything. But even merchant shipping has its uses, because a House of Toros transport was in Nali Caerodi when the IKS Shara'nga changed its name to the QIb laH'e'."
"There must have been a thousand ships in Nali Caerodi," says Tallasa. "And where was Klur's ship, whatever it was called?"
"That, I don't know. Missing a link in the chain, there. That's why I want to go to Nali Caerodi. Get some info on the spot. No space battles, nothing to break the ship, just some -"
"Spooky spooky spook stuff," says Tallasa. "I see."
"T'Jeg of the House of Toros has been calling for total war in the High Council," I say. "That's bad. Escalation ladders, we already have one foot on one, Gref nearly brought us up a rung -"
"You're starting to make less sense than usual, sir," says Tallasa.
"Escalation. The theory and practice of total atomic war, as elucidated by my ancestors of mid-to-late twentieth century Earth. Say, conventional warfare is the bottom rung of the ladder, then limited tactical atomic strikes are the next rung up; then counter-value strikes against first military bases, then civilian industry, then civilian population centres. There are subdivisions -" My voice is starting to shake as the old nightmare comes back to me. "Hitting Bercera IV was pretty high up that ladder. Gref's threat at Aznetkur was actually a rung or two lower - and he didn't go through with it, thank heavens for that - but we're still on it, and we could start climbing again any time." I look at Tallasa and my one eye is pleading with her. "There's nothing good at the top of the ladder. Spasm, they call it. The no-win situation where each side empties its arsenal of nukes until there's nothing left - of the arsenal, or of the opposition. Or of the world."
"Klingons aren't stupid." Tallasa's eyes are thoughtful. "Your people didn't get all the way up that ladder, did they? Klingons are certainly not stupider than twentieth-century humans."
"Doesn't matter how clever you are, sometimes, if you are angrier, or prouder, or more scared. The Klingons don't want this, why would they? But someone else might. Maybe the Tholians got tired of having oxygen-breathers around. Or the Undine want to sit pretty in fluidic space and watch this quadrant burn." I clutch the side of my head, feeling metal and plastic under my hair. "Too many possibilities. We need some answers. Because if we don't get them, we might burn."
Tallasa nods. "If you've put some of the pieces together, sir... it's worth a side trip to Nali Caerodi."
I keep myself from sighing with relief. I would far, far rather have Tallasa on my side than against me. "It might turn up something useful for Tylha Shohl, too," I say. "You want to help out a fellow Andorian, right?"
She pulls a face. "Shohl," she says. "Shohl has a family name... I'm none too sure she'd want my help." And she turns to go. I've never really known the whole story of whatever it was that made Tallasa and her sister clanless outcasts. Somehow, I'm thinking this is not the time to ask.
---
Virtue bursts out of subspace, into the chaos of the Ferengi orbital shipyards. The planet, Nali Caerodi, is a class L world, brown and cold and unappealing; the system's population lives mostly on the stations that circle it. A staggering seven hundred and seventy plus Ferengi commercial operations, ranging from O'Neill cylinders, twenty kilometres in length, to prefabricated living modules bolted to a work grid. Shuttles and orbital transports zip between them, space is alive with chatter and signals on every wavelength. In the chaos, it's hard to pick out the one I want - even the Virtue, lean, powerful and battle-scarred as she is, is almost unnoticeable in the confusion.
*/*resource allocation inefficient---unify---centralize controls*/* Shut up, Two of Twelve. The Ferengi */*species 180*/* just don't do things that way.
I follow the beacons to the station I want. Virtue slides into place inside the arms of a docking cradle, a kilometer or so from the graceless orange bulk of a Ferengi Marauder. I can see the relief on Ahepkur's face as our over-stressed engines power down.
"OK," I say. "Engineering, go do spaceship-fixy sort of stuff. I'm on my hols. Tallasa, you're with me." I stand up. "Let's go introduce ourselves to the guy in charge."
"I take it that rest and recreation are not foremost in your thoughts, sir," says Saval.
"Officially, I'm taking a break. What I do on my own time isn't Starfleet's business. Just to make that perfectly clear, on the record, all that sort of guff." I turn to the comms ensign. "You. Face-ache. Make sure I've got a channel open at all times. Just in case I have to come back from my holiday really quick, if you know what I mean."
"Aye, aye, sir," says the ensign.
"Transporter room will stay on round the clock alert," growls Ahepkur. Well, all right, I guess.
The dock's control centre is hot, cramped, humid, and busy, with Ferengi scurrying hither and thither, going about unguessable errands. A big status display tells me the Virtue and the Marauder are the only ships docked just now. I reach out and grab a passing Ferengi by his collar. "I need to talk to the boss," I say. "Where do I find him?"
He scowls at me. "Make an appointment, hew-mon."
I point to my collar. "See these? Starfleet Vice Admiral insignia. Means I'm the one authorizing payment on this shindig, means I'm the customer, and the customer is always right. That's a rule of acquisition where I come from. Now where's your boss?"
The scowl deepens. "Level four, main offices," he says. I let him shake me off.
"Come on," I say to Tallasa. She spears the Ferengi with a disdainful glare, then follows me to the turbolift.
The main offices are just as cluttered and busy, but there's one big desk in one corner, with a top made of some sort of real wood, non-replicated, highly polished. The one behind the expensive desk is usually the one in charge. I saunter up, ignoring the glares of a bodyguard or two, and say, "Daimon Prago? Veronika Grau, call me Ronnie, everyone does."
The Ferengi behind the desk is plump and sullen, wearing an entrepreneur's jacket in sombre hues of black and deep purple. He looks at me with an oddly resigned expression. "Yes?" he says.
"Thought I'd get in touch. You know Starfleet usually uses other yards for refits. But I'd heard so many good things about yours, what with the work you've done for the House of Toros -"
"Yes," Prago interrupts, "I thought it would be that." He glances at the bodyguards. "You can go," he says. They look surprised - at least, the human one does, I can't read the expression on the other's face, if it's got a face. "You can go," Prago repeats, and they do.
I pull up a chair and sit down, facing him across the desk. Tallasa stands at my right shoulder. I can't see her face, but I'm betting she's giving Prago a look that would scare anyone into a virtuous life. "So you were expecting us," I say.
"Someone like you," says Prago. "Ever since -" And he stops.
"We don't have the whole story," I say. "Why don't you give us your side?" I glance sideways at Tallasa. "Better start at the beginning for my sidekick here. She's not well versed in the ways of the real world."
He follows my glance. Tallasa's face is thunderous. All right, Ronnie, time to play good cop, bad cop. "Shall we start with Talakh?" I ask.
Prago nods. "He... was in contact with us before the war even started. We had a deal with him, and through him to the House of Toros, to handle shipping on miscellaneous cargoes -"
"Profiteering off Klingon commerce raiding," says Tallasa sharply. Oh, she is a natural for the bad-cop role.
"If it wasn't you," I say reasonably, "it'd be someone else, right? Most likely the Orion Syndicate. At least this way the Empire and its allies don't keep all the money." I'm really starting to enjoy this. And Two of Twelve has shut up for once, she is out of her depth, she doesn't understand how to get information out of people without sticking wires in their heads.
Prago wants to talk; all I have to do is find the right way to let him.
"We had a shipping deal," Prago says, "and, yes, I guess you're right about the cargoes, but the thing is... I'm pretty sure Talakh was - well, you know how these things work."
"No," says Tallasa firmly.
"I can guess," I say. "Difficult to keep these miscellaneous manifests in order, right? A few errors are bound to creep in, and if some of them were in Talakh's favour, well, who's hurt?"
"Apart from the initial victims of the raids, sir," says Tallasa.
"When the war actually started," Prago continues, "it went on much the same, really. Raids are raids, right? You'll never stop the Klingons doing a little piracy on the side. Part of their culture." He directs a sneer at Tallasa. "You shouldn't interfere with it. General Order Number One, yes?"
"But then something else happened," I say, quickly, before Tallasa can explode.
"About a year ago," says Prago, "a cargo run came through, and it was squeaky clean, everything accounted for down to the last self-sealing stem bolt. So clean it had to be dirty, you know what I mean?"
"Talakh thought someone on the KDF side had rumbled him," I say.
"Yes," Prago says, "yes.... The next run, though, things were back to normal. So I figured, yes, someone had caught Talakh with his hands in the till -"
"And they'd decided to split the take, rather than turn him in," I finish for him.
Prago nods. Actually, I don't think that's what happened at all. My guess is, the person who caught Talakh out was Kysang, the one I've pegged as a Section 31 agent - and Kysang used Talakh's crookery as a hold over him from then on out. But there's no point letting Prago know this.
"Peculation." Tallasa spits the word out. "I have particular reasons to dislike peculation."
"So don't emigrate to Ferenginar," I tell her. To Prago, I say, "That isn't what's worrying you, is it? This is just business as usual, across the lines of the war zone. Sure, it offends my officer here, she is a high-minded person of strict principles, sometimes I wonder why she puts up with me. But the last cargo - it would have to be the last cargo - that was something different, right?"
"I didn't know what it was." Prago's eyes are anguished. A Ferengi with a conscience; some people will tell you that's a contradiction in terms, but Ferengi are people too, and everyone has lines they won't cross. "Talakh came in, his face was like death, I'd never seen him like that... and he wanted clearance and expediting on a special cargo. A Klingon R-class freighter with sealed cargo bays, sealed and with radiological protection. It wasn't until after - after the news broke - that I realised - oh, the ship's name was different, but it was Talakh's ship still, it had to be, and that amount of radioactive material, there's no commercial use for it -"
"It was the cargo of tricobalt munitions Klur used on Bercera IV," says Tallasa, and her voice is like the tolling of a bell.
"I didn't know!" Prago shrieks. Six hundred and fifty million dead. Even a Ferengi can't find profit enough to balance that loss.
"House of Toros ship?" I ask, trying to keep everyone focused on the practicalities.
"Yes. But the House of Toros -" Prago swallows. "No way they could have done it alone."
"No," I say, "no, I don't suppose there is. One other thing I haven't got straight. How and where did the freighter link up with Klur's ship to deliver the stuff? It wasn't here -"
Prago tells us how it was done. When he's finished, Tallasa and I exchange looks.
"Shohl's going to need to know about that," Tallasa says.
Can't wait to read what happens next. This is so good. (wriggles like a happy puppy)
One query:
"Peculation." Tallasa spits the word out. "I have particular reasons to dislike peculation." [is there a specific reason why she says "peculation" twice instead of "speculation"? I'm asking, because you've proven that you never do anything without good reason.]
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
King Estmere shudders as another gravitational eddy sweeps across her path. I check the status lights. Shields and structural integrity are still holding, but the distortion and the energy surges outside are getting fierce.
The central anomaly at Massidia Alpha is a knot in subspace, a multi-dimensional tangle of fields and energies where some unguessable fragment from the Big Bang has died. It emits gravitational and other energies in an irregular pattern of pulses. It is, of course, an impermanent thing - the disruption in subspace will smooth out, the pulses will slacken and cease, sometime in the next billion years or so. Right now, though, it's a problem.
"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," says F'hon Tlaxx.
"On screen."
Shalo's face appears on the viewer, hidden occasionally by bursts of interference. "The warp contrail of the DujHod Chariot is no longer discernible," she says. "Since there are no visible signs of an explosion, it must have veered off somewhere around here - presumably, towards the asteroid field Jikkur spoke of."
Left to the ordinary workings of gravity, matter clumps together, asteroids colliding and coalescing to form planets. Around Massidia Alpha, though, this isn't possible. The anomaly sucks in matter, but keeps it in a constant state of ferment; it is ringed by shoals of asteroids, their orbits continually changing with each gravitational eddy. Between the energy pulses of the anomaly, and the shifting clouds of wandering rocks around it, Massidia Alpha is a very good place to hide.
"Any idea of their heading?" I ask Shalo.
"Not as yet. I recommend that we spiral slowly out from the central zone, and I will direct ship's sensors to search for appropriate warp signatures." Once more, I'm handicapped by the fact that Shalo's data on Klur's ships is more complete than anything I have.
"All right," I say. "We'll follow your lead, then."
"I suggest you stick close. If we find Klur, I would rather confront him with the firepower of both our ships. Garaka out."
On the tactical display, I see Shalo's ship veer off, away from the central anomaly, towards the relative safety of the debris fields. I sigh. We seem to have spent far too long following Shalo's lead....
"Zazaru," I say.
My science officer looks up. "Sir?"
"We're looking for a Kar'fi carrier, right? It feels like we've spent forever looking up the rear end of one of those.... Even if we don't have the detailed technical specs Shalo's working from, surely we've got enough general data on those beasts that we could scan for one?"
Zazaru's soft brown eyes grow thoughtful. "System surveys are always easier when you know what you're looking for, that's true. Still, there's a lot of sensor noise in this place, sir, and -" She holds up her hands in a helpless gesture. "Space is very big."
The classic problem. In theory, it's impossible to hide in space; spaceships are solid, they emit energy and gases, and space is empty, so they have nothing to hide behind. In theory. In practice, there are cloaking devices, phase shifters, and a whole library of dirty tricks you can play with enemies' sensor devices. Klur's ship is huge and hideous, but it's just a tiny chip of metal somewhere out there in the rocks, and if he doesn't want to be found, it's not going to be easy finding him.
I sit back in my command chair and fret, while King Estmere swings slowly out into the rocks, following the plasma wake of the Garaka.
"There's an awful lot of sensor noise," Zazaru says, after a while.
My antennae twitch. "But?" I ask, hopefully.
"I'm not sure, sir," Zazaru says. "I have a reading on something.... I don't think it's just a rock."
"Bearing?"
"Roughly three seven five mark two zero, sir."
"Let's drift on over and check it out," I say. "Inform the Garaka we're moving to check a sensor reading."
King Estmere turns in a shallow arc, onto the new heading. Zazaru is frowning, intent on her readouts.
"There is something there," she says. "Maybe two somethings...."
"The carrier and the shuttle, maybe? If the shuttle was unable to redock, for some reason...."
"No," says Zazaru thoughtfully, "no.... Both of them are high in energy.... can't get a full emissions profile through all the noise. One of them is hugely massive, much bigger than a shuttle... the other one's weird, half the time it looks like it has no mass at all...."
I sit bolt upright in my chair. The Kar'fi carrier is too big, its Fek'lhri engines too noisy, for a conventional cloaking device to work on it - but the Fek'lhri technology enables it to phase and desolidify. If Klur wanted to confuse detector scans - and he most certainly does - he'd be using the phasing technology for all it's worth.
"Go to yellow alert," I order. Can we launch fighters in all this asteroid debris? Probably not yet.
"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," says F'hon Tlaxx. "She wants to know where you're going."
"Tell her we have a sensor contact that might be a phased ship." I find I'm gripping the armrest of the command chair, hard. I have to force myself to relax. It might be nothing, I tell myself. It might be nothing.
"That other thing is huge," Zazaru says. "Certainly bigger than a Kar'fi carrier. The energy readings are...." Her brow is furrowed in thought. "I'm sure I've seen something like this before...."
"Garaka is coming about, onto our heading," Anthi reports from the tac station.
"Shalo must know something," I say. I punch the button on my console. "All stations, red alert. Ready for combat."
"I wonder," says Zazaru. "If we could risk an active sensor pulse, I might be able to get an image of the target area - reflect a neutrino-emission scan off one of the larger asteroids. It wouldn't be very clear, but it might be enough to confirm -"
"Do it."
"Aye, aye, sir." Zazaru's hands fly over her console. "Configured... emitting pulse... data coming in. It'll take a little while to construct the visual." She peers closely at her display. "I'm not reading any changes in energy levels... I don't think they spotted us." A pause, seconds that stretch out like years. "Visual's ready."
"On screen."
The image is hazy, raddled with interference, but it's clear enough to show a black hull, rib-like fins, red plasma clouds spilling from the drive. A Kar'fi carrier, without a doubt. And behind it -
My jaw drops. "What is one of those doing out here?"
Google it. It means "embezzling", more or less. (theft, misappropriation, etc etc)
Thanks for the clarification. I'd never heard of peculation before Shevet used it in his story.
And I'm really serious about this, Shevet: CBS/Paramount need to take a long, hard look at your continuing story and make a TV series based on as much of it as possible (preferably without any changes). This makes even the best parts of ST:V and ST:E seem bland by comparison. I wouldn't want to have to have cable TV to see this kind of series, but I'd definitely buy it when it came out on DVD. As it is, I guess all I can do is dream. And what excellent dreams they are.
Klur's head snapped round. He glared at the science officer. "Report!"
"One - no, two - large vessels," the officer answered. "Details - Sir, there is much interference, I am attempting to resolve it -"
Klur gave an exasperated sigh. "No need," he said. "We know what they must be, the details are unnecessary. Damn that Jikkur to the deepest pits of Gre'thor!" He turned to Tayaira. "What is the status on the gateway?"
"Still in hot standby, sir," Tayaira replied.
"Then we can wait no longer for our allies' signals," said Klur. "We must go, and go now. Activate."
"Yes, sir." Tayaira's hand swept across her console. "Activating... confirmation codes received. Gateway will be live in three minutes."
"Let us hope we have three minutes," Klur muttered.
"I have identifications, sir," the science officer said. "Two ships - one Starfleet, one of our own. Both inbound at high impulse speeds."
"How soon?" Klur demanded.
"In weapons range in no more than five minutes, sir."
"Get us in close to the gateway," Klur ordered. "Two minutes. Close, but it should suffice."
The dull gonging sound of the QIb laH'e''s engines grew louder as the ship surged forwards. Klur paced impatiently up and down the bridge, snarling under his breath. Tayaira watched the console displays, eyes fixed on the energy readings.
"I have signals!" shouted the comms officer. "From both vessels!"
Klur stopped pacing, looked up, laughed. "Let us hear them both!" he ordered. "On screen."
Two faces appeared on the main viewer; one blue, one green, both coldly angry.
"IKS QIb laH'e'," the green one said, "I am Lieutenant General Shalo, personal emissary of Chancellor J'mpok, and I order you now to surrender and submit to questioning."
Tayaira looked up from her console. "Shalo?"
"Captain Klur," said the blue face, "this is Vice Admiral Shohl of the USS King Estmere. You are wanted for war crimes. Surrender now or be destroyed."
"Shalo?" Tayaira repeated, blankly.
Klur laughed uproariously. "Perhaps you two should fight it out between yourselves!" he said. "Let combat decide whether I face living death in a Federation penal colony, or dishonour, discommendation and Rura Penthe from our noble Chancellor! Regrettably, I must decline both your kind invitations. My vessel and I have a pressing engagement elsewhere. Screen off!"
"Shalo," Tayaira whispered.
Klur whirled round to face her. "What is wrong with you?" he demanded.
Tayaira swallowed. "Nothing, sir," she said. "Only - the KDF commander - she is of the House of Sinoom -"
"Have your family reunions on your own time! What is our status?"
"Gateway power building up smoothly. On schedule - ship is on course for intersection."
"Hostiles launching fighters, sir," the tac officer called out.
"Both of them?" Klur demanded.
"The KDF ship is a Kar'fi like ourselves. The Starfleet vessel reads as a modified Tholian Recluse. KDF have deployed standard S'kuls, Starfleet... Romulan Scorpions with a high emissions profile."
"Should we launch our own fighters, sir?" Tayaira asked.
"No," said Klur. "We would not win a fight, here and now... and this is not our day to die."
"Starfleet ship is firing, sir!" the tac officer reported.
"They cannot possibly be in effective range," Klur growled.
"No, sir. I think they may be hoping for a lucky hit on the gateway. High energy disruptor fire and plasma torpedoes."
Klur laughed. "There is too much debris in this system for that stratagem to be effective. Let them burn up as much space dust as they please, they will not touch us."
"Six kilometers to gateway," said Tayaira. "Power levels still building to threshold."
The gateway filled the main viewscreen, now. The Kar'fi carrier was huge, but it was dwarfed by the hollow hexagonal frame of the transwarp gate. To one side, green light flickered in a misty auroral display: the Starfleet ship's disruptors, diffusing to uselessness in the micrometeorite dust that flooded through Massidia Alpha.
"Power levels increasing," said Tayaira. "Three kilometers to gateway. Sir, those ships are closing rapidly -"
"Not rapidly enough." Klur's face was exultant.
"Gateway is ready. Intersecting transwarp field in... twenty seconds." Each one passed like a century before Tayaira's agonized eyes.
"In field. Synchronizing drive relays."
"Go!"
The ship lurched as the transwarp field took hold. Tayaira's stomach flipped in that vertiginous instant when the entire ship passed through the no-place that was the subspace warp, translocating almost instantly across parsecs of space.
On the viewer, the stars changed.
The QIb laH'e' now hung in a black and starry void, empty space, the nearest star some twenty light years distant. After the chaos of Massidia Alpha, it was almost a relief, Tayaira found, to see clear space on her console displays.
Clear, except for a dozen massive hexagonal bodies floating nearby. The other transwarp gates.
"Yes," Klur hissed. "Nearly there. Nearly home.... Send activation codes to all the transwarp gates. Even if those fools manage to break security on that gateway and follow us here - and that will take them many hours, if they can do it at all - they will not know which of the others we have used. Set course for the homeward gateway!"
The carrier swung around, aiming at the mouth of another gateway. Tayaira checked her readouts, and frowned. "Something is amiss," she said.
Klur was at her side in two swift strides. "Tell me."
"Power levels on the gateways are - higher than they should be, if the network has been on cold standby." Tayaira indicated the numbers on her display.
Klur grimaced. "It might mean nothing - except that the Ferengi broke his word, that he let other customers make illicit transits, instead of holding everything in shutdown while we completed our tasks. In which case... I will hang his ears in my trophy room in due course. No need for concern."
"Nonetheless, sir," said Tayaira, "I would recommend engaging the backup capacitance system, in case we need to beat a swift retreat."
Klur nodded. "A worthwhile precaution. Send the command codes to the gateways."
As she tapped in the commands, Tayaira asked, "Sir, since you have refused the order of the Chancellor's representative... what is our status now?"
"Unchanged," said Klur. "The Chancellor's representative - if that Orion truly was his representative - is not the Chancellor. And the Chancellor himself will not be displeased when we make our report to him. It is simply a matter of arranging sufficient backing when we present that report." He laughed. "Despite our hurried exit, I feel sure our backers will be ready and waiting when we return to Klingon space."
"Yes, sir." Tayaira wished, fervently, that she could share the captain's confidence. "That return will not be long delayed now, sir. Power levels already building to threshold in the outbound gateway."
"Good," said Klur, "good. Prepare for maximum warp speed once we emerge from the gateway. It is only a short way, after that, back to Imperial territory... but I would not want anything to slow us down, not at that last stage."
The gateway expanded in the viewer as the QIb laH'e' closed on it. Tayaira could see the glow from its field generators, steadily brightening.
"Power levels at threshold. Intersecting transwarp field in thirty seconds."
Klur settled himself in his command chair. "It will be good to be home," he said. Tayaira made no reply, simply watched the gateway as it drifted ever closer.
"In field," she reported. "Synchronizing drive relays."
"Engage."
Again, that moment of disorientation as the ship jumped across the light years; again, a new starscape on the viewer when Tayaira's eyes settled -
And something else. "Sensor contact!"
"What is it?" Klur demanded.
"Attempting to get a reading now -" Tayaira frowned. "Sir, there is a hail coming in on standard frequency."
"Perhaps our backers have come to welcome us," said Klur. "On screen."
The viewer flickered, and a face appeared: a deathly pale face, sharp-featured to the point of gauntness, with the dead black plastic and flashing red light of a Borg implant covering one eye. The thin lips moved in a manic smile.
"Captain Klur? Veronika Grau, call me Ronnie, everyone does... no, hang on a minute, you get to call me Vice Admiral Grau. Oh, yeah. Surrender, and all that."
Our two ships close on the gate, weapons on standby now, sensors humming. I bite my tongue to keep from cursing freely.
So close. So very, very close. And how, and why, is a transwarp gate here, in this desolate debris field?
Well, the second part of that question is easy enough to answer - planted here for the smuggling of illicit cargoes, or to take fugitives into or out of Federation space. But who built it? And, more importantly, where might it go?
"Command interface isn't responding," Klerupiru reports. The Ferengi computer expert is sending signals, trying to probe the gateway, to establish its parameters of operation. So far, she's not having much luck. Shalo, no doubt, has her own cyber-warfare experts doing the same, aboard the Garaka. I'm pretty sure, though, that if Klerupiru can't crack the interface, the Klingons won't be able to.
Meanwhile, Zazaru is working on the routine stuff - so far as any of this could be described as routine. She is scanning the gate, trying to read its construction, the materials it's made of - the ratios of isotopes in the metal of the structure might give us a lead on the planet where it was made, for instance. And she is scanning the energy traces left by Klur's escape, though I'm pretty sure that's hopeless. If there is any quick way to determine a transwarp gate's destination, based only on the energy signatures of the jump, I haven't heard of it.
"Skipper." F'hon Tlaxx speaks up from the comms console. His pleasant Bolian face is wearing a puzzled frown. "I'm getting a signal...."
"Who from?"
"I don't know. Skipper, it seems to be coming from the gateway itself."
My lips thin in anger. If this is Klur, calling to taunt us - Well, there is only one way to find out. "Let's hear it, then."
"It's got a visual, too. Just a minute."
The image of the gate disappears from the viewer, and a human face takes its place - a human face, and a Starfleet uniform below it, and what looks like a starship bridge behind it. "Signalling to all Starfleet vessels," the ensign says, "but especially the USS King Estmere, please respond. Signalling all Starfleet vessels -"
"USS King Estmere here," I say. "Who are you, and where are you signalling from?"
"We're -" the ensign begins to speak. Then there is a shout from behind him - a voice I think I've heard before.
"Out of the way, face-ache!" The ensign steps aside, and a new face fills the viewer. "Wowie zowie, you're clear. Either this transmission rig is really good, or you're right on top of a transwarp gate."
Veronika Grau. What the hell is she doing here? "We're at a transwarp gate at Massidia Alpha. What's going on?"
"Massidia Alpha? I guess you must have chased Klur out of there, then." Her mouth twists. "We were waiting for him at the exit to Klingon space, but these gates have a sort of bolt-hole capability - backup capacitors - he ducked back to the central interchange, and I don't know which rabbit hole he ran down after that. Well, I sort of do, I know which it has to be, but I don't know which one it is. Does that make sense?"
"Not really," I say. "Vice Admiral Grau. What the hell is going on?"
"Oh, call me Ronnie. I love Andorians, you guys are so good at telling me when I don't make sense. You should meet my exec, she's made it her life's work. Listen. I'm transmitting the command codes for the gateway network along the data channels now, once you get them, you'll have the same level of control as me. Or Klur, damn him. Power up the gate, meet me at the central interchange, and we can go from there. Truth be told, I'm not too sure I can take Klur by myself. The Virtue took a pounding at Aznetkur, we repaired and refitted in a hurry, my status board is looking pretty jaundiced right now. Yellow lights everywhere, know what I mean?"
I glance at F'hon; he's already showing something on his console to Klerupiru. I look back at the screen. "I'm guessing it'll take a short time to power up this gate. Anything you want to tell me while I'm waiting?" Like, maybe, what's going on?
"Right," says Ronnie, "right. Tracked down this Ferengi guy, he has this network of off-the-record transwarp gates, well, they would, wouldn't they? Ferengi. Anyway. Klur used this network, or his backers did, to get the tricobalt he hit Bercera with. And he was going to use it to get back to Klink space in a hurry, only it's not gone according to plan."
"Because you were there to intercept him?"
"That, too. But I think the whole thing is not going according to plan, and that's what's got me worried. Have you not powered up that gate yet?"
I look questioningly at Klerupiru. "It all checks out," she says. "Sir, should we -?"
I sigh. "Transmit the data to the Garaka, yes." Tempting though it might be to cut Shalo out. I explain to Ronnie, "We're accompanied by the IKS Garaka, which is carrying J'mpok's agent under diplomatic credentials - they've been helping us track Klur."
"Right, right. Better transmit their transponder codes, then, so I can sort them out on IFF when the fur starts flying. Cripes, this gets complicated. Are you ready yet?"
"Power still building up. How do we set a destination on this thing?"
"You don't. It's a very cut-price sort of transwarp net, none of your tuneable gates like we have on starbases, each one goes to one specific destination only. Hence the central interchange. Come on, come on, I can't hang around here forever!"
I check the readings on my command console. "Still some way to go. Remember, Klur just used this gateway, it needs time to cycle - unless we can access those backup capacitors you talked about?"
"No, I think Klur must've activated them at the interchange. Damn, damn, damn. Sorry. Getting frustrated, here, I hate hanging around. Should never have gone into the military, really. Hurry up and wait."
"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," F'hon reports. "Shalo says she'll follow our lead on this one."
"OK." The gateway is easily big enough to take our two ships at once. "Then we'll meet aboard the - Virtue? - as soon as we arrive. I'll bring my exec with me, she's Andorian too." I smile. "Plenty of incentive for you to make sense."
---
The interchange point is just empty space, with a dozen hexagonal gateway scattered about. I check our position: way out in Alpha Trianguli space, in a gap between two star clusters... no reason for anyone ever to come looking here, a good place to hide something in plain sight.
Ronnie Grau's Virtue is moving in tight circles, pointing her prow at each gateway in turn. My practised eye can tell that she's right, the Chimera-class destroyer shows every sign of having taken a battering lately. Still... it's a comforting presence. Another Starfleet ship on my side... even if Shalo turns treacherous, we should still be able to win a fight, now.
Anthi and I are met in the Virtue's transporter room by a tired and harrassed-looking shen. "Commander Tallasa," she introduces herself.
Anthi - normally so cool and professional - visibly bristles at that. "Just Tallasa?" I ask, in a neutral voice.
"Just Tallasa." Her voice is equally neutral.
I think for a moment. I can't come up with anything you could do, to get disowned by your family, that wouldn't get you kicked out of Starfleet too. But, of course, it's not just the disowned who suffer, but their children, too. "Family troubles?" I ask, trying to sound sympathetic.
"You could say that."
"Well," I say, "I found out recently that one of my ancestors was an amoral genetic engineer and would-be dictator, so I guess I can't judge." Tallasa looks faintly surprised. A pleasant surprise, I hope.
Behind us, the transporter pad starts to whine. I turn around, to watch Shalo and her alien assistant Foojoy step out of columns of light. "Welcome aboard," says Tallasa, in a tone that's about as welcoming as a glacier.
"Thank you," says Shalo. "For the record, I am Lieutenant General Shalo, here under diplomatic immunity as an agent of Chancellor J'mpok in... this matter. My aide, Lieutenant Commander Foojoy."
"I hope you're not planning to pull any stunts like you did with Sutton," I say.
Shalo favours me with a flicker of a smile. "I realize I am dealing with professionals, here," she says. "In any case... for the present, we are all on the same side." She hesitates a moment, then says, "After we are done with this meeting, I would like to ask a favour of you. I wish to transport over to your ship - to confer with my cousin."
I shrug. "If it's all right with her, it's all right with me."
---
The conference room on the Virtue looks new. Either they don't use it much, or it's just been rebuilt from scratch after the battle - with Ronnie Grau, either one seems likely. She sits at the head of the conference table, grinning at us through a holographic display of the transwarp gate network.
"So here it is," she says. "Five exits into Federation territory, including Massidia Alpha - don't worry, Ronnie's been a good girl, she's sent all this stuff to Starfleet Command, and task forces are on their way to those gates right now. Four exits into Ferengi territory, all a long way from Klingon space, and can Klur afford to bribe his way home safely by those routes? I'm guessing not. Two exits in Romulan space, and both the Republic and the remains of the Empire are keen to earn brownie points with the Federation, so they'd turn Klur in as soon as look at him. And one, count 'em, one exit into the neutral zone, close enough for Klur to make a dash across the border back to his home. If they'll have him."
"The obvious move, then," says Shalo, "is to destroy the outbound gateway, here, to Klingon space."
"Yeah," says Ronnie, "obvious, but I think wrong. Psychology. Mustn't let him think there's no escape, not now, or he might do something drastic."
"What do you mean?" asks Shalo. "What could he possibly do, now?"
Ronnie grimaces. "Sorry. Should explain. Having trouble keeping things straight. Your guy there, Foojoy? His species isn't known to the Borg, and Two of Twelve - my Borg half - is going spare, trying to sort out a species number for him. It's distracting. Sorry."
"Of gratification, there is," says Foojoy, "my race, none of falling to the Borg, to know."
"Yeah, well, don't bet on it," says Ronnie. "Two of Twelve, she's not exactly reliable, you know. Anyway, yes. It all comes down to Talakh, and Kysang, and the House of Toros, and the freighter." She shakes her head. "And the theory and practice of terror."
"Talakh and Kysang were the two who spoke against Klur's action," says Shalo with a frown, "and were executed for it."
"Yeah," says Ronnie. "Sad end, really, for a Federation agent. Kysang."
Shalo's mouth drops open. "Commander Kysang was a highly respected officer!" she protests. "His record was unequalled -"
"Yeah, what a swine, huh? Probably didn't even wear his secret decoder ring or his 'I am a Federation spy' t-shirt. He was one of our agents, and Talakh was an ordinary black-market spiv, and one or other of 'em got caught. And they died noble deaths, didn't they? Klinks do like their deaths to be noble. Protesting an illegal order from their captain, upholding Klingon honour even in the face of his disruptor pistol, oh, I can hear the Klingon opera about 'em right now. Brings tears to the eyes, it does."
There are no tears in Shalo's eyes, only calculation. "Councillor T'Jeg was particularly keen to have those two officers' actions made known in the High Council...."
"Right. Right. Dead heroes, no one asks too many questions about dead heroes. Dead but misguided, possibly, they might say later. See, whoever caught out Talakh and Kysang then had the lever they needed to push the House of Toros, and Klur himself, into this whole business. Might not have needed much pushing, of course, depends what their political views are."
"T'Jeg has been arguing loudly for total war," says Shalo.
Ronnie nods. "Total war is what our guys want. So far, the Federation's not taken them up on it. So far. No actual world-wrecking machinery deployed in retaliation for Bercera, yet. Yet."
"We're certainly considering it, though," I say. "Admiral Semok's been tasked with working out how to do - massive destructive strikes."
"Theory, yes," says Ronnie, "and my CO was threatening the practice, though mercifully he stopped at the threat. Admirals, they're all nuts. I should be an admiral, maybe I'm not nuts enough. Anyway. My good friend Daimon Prago told me how a House of Toros freighter got sent through, with all the tricobalt supplies Klur needed for his act of provocation. If we can find that freighter -"
"Can we track its movements through the gateway network?" Shalo asks. "Does the system keep records of transits?"
Ronnie shakes her head. "It's set up to be discreet," she says. "Selling point. The command codes are hard-wired into the gates, anyone who's got those codes can access them... and they have that nifty all-points communications rig I used to call you up... but any traffic through them is, you know, strictly on the q.t. No records."
"Hold on," I say. "I'm trying to think.... The sort of people who'd use a setup like this - they're also the sort of people who'd realize how valuable a record of its activities would be. For blackmail purposes, if nothing else. Surely someone would be bound to - to bug the gateway systems, somewhere, somehow." My mind is racing. "Thinking about it - you'd have to leave a low profile sensor package, something that would do a passive scan for transponder codes and comms traffic -"
"Have you seen those gateways?" Ronnie says. "They're flippin' enormous."
"But there aren't so many places you could put a package like that," I say, "where it wouldn't either be spotted during routine maintenance, or torn apart by the power surges during a transit. I can think of a few spots - it might not take such a long time to check them out -"
"Then we might be able to get a record of this freighter's travels," says Shalo, "though I am not clear how that helps us."
"Didn't I explain?" says Ronnie. "Dammit, three Andorians in the room, you should be able to keep me on track. The freighter. Prago told me, the freighter, he was expecting it back, but it never came back. Don't you see? Klur stashed it somewhere on the network. Klingon R-class freighter, twice the size of Klur's Kar'fi, could be loaded to the rafters with tricobalt munitions. That's why we need the freighter, that's why I don't want Klur backed into a corner. Because, with that freighter, he's got everything he needs to burn another Federation world."
Can't wait to read what happens next. (gleefully rubs hands together) Especially when that Klingon R-type freighter is found. Like the U-boats in WW2, you need a supply ship (or "milk cow" in the case of U-boats) to keep you supplied and on-station without frequently needing to head back to port, refill, and then turn around and head back to station. Klur and his crew had better watch their backs. One question:
Talakh was an ordinary black-market spiv [what is a "spiv"?]
Spiv - someone who makes a dishonest living. (Old-fashioned British slang... exactly the sort of thing Ronnie's misfiring brain comes up with from time to time.)
I'm reading comments, of course, but I'm suffering from some time constraints, so trying to concentrate first on writing more chunks of story... among other things, I want to get it finished before November, when NaNoWriMo starts consuming all my literary creativity.
The interior of the King Estmere is... confusing. On the one hand, it is drab and utilitarian for the most part; on the other, the internal arrangements and the surprising shifts in the artificial gravity make for an unsettling experience.
Kluthli's quarters are spacious, as is the Federation way. My cousin gives me a minimal nod of acknowledgement as I enter.
"We should not be enemies," I say to her.
"But we are," she replies.
I sigh. "It is... a part of the times we live in, I fear. We are constrained by forces greater than ourselves, and we must make whatever accommodation we can. We have both done... what seems best, to survive."
Another minimal nod, grudging, but there. "I chose not to work with the Klingons."
"That was your choice. Mine, as you see, was otherwise. But you are not Federation, and I am not Klingon. At heart, I am still of the House of Sinoom. And I think you would not feel as you do towards me, if you were not also that. At heart."
"I remember the House of Sinoom," Kluthli says. "I miss it. But I've built a life for myself, now, within Starfleet and the Federation. If everything went back - the way it was - I'm not so sure I would go back."
"Nothing will ever be as it was," I say. "This is true for all life. Should our House undergo a resurgence, I am sure you would be valued, within it. As I would be." I allow myself a wry smile. "I would suggest that I am better placed than you to create such a resurgence."
She shakes her head. "Our House as an ally of the Klingons? It would never be believed, by those who knew us."
"But those who knew us grow scarcer as the years pass. We have lost one, just recently, of course. Cysitra Cira'tenis." I hold up the datapad in my hand. "This contains what remnants I was able to obtain of her communications codes and data stores. I share it with you, freely."
"Why?" she asks, bluntly.
"In part, as a peace offering between us. And, in part, for the most urgent practical reasons. Tayaira."
Kluthli shakes her head. She crosses the room, sits down, indicates another chair to me. I sit. "Tayaira is most definitely our enemy," she says. "And there is nothing to be done about that, now."
"I disagree. Klur is our enemy... and his unknown supporters... but his crew?"
"The Federation's position is that unlawful orders cannot be accepted - and that the crew, therefore, bear criminal responsibility for accepting them. Of course, it could be argued that they were compelled, under threat of death - the matter has been tested in the Federation's courts, I think, with conflicting outcomes. But, to bring our cousin to trial, we would first have to capture her, and I doubt whether that will be possible."
"In any event," I say, "we might at least talk to her."
Kluthli smiles and shakes her head. "And how are we to manage that?"
"With the resonant pulses used for communications through these gateways," I say. "If we are careful - and if we have a thorough understanding of the internal comms network of a Kar'fi carrier - I believe we could generate a resonant pulse that would appear as if it came from within the intercom system."
Kluthli's eyes widen. "It's possible," she says. "And then -?"
"Then we send one of Cysitra's recognition codes," I say, "and wait, and hope."
"You would have to know that intercom network very well," Kluthli says.
"I believe I do. The technology in these carriers is... interesting. I have made a study of it."
"Let's see some technical specs, then," says Kluthli. "This is going to be a challenge...."
---
We work together for close on two hours, addressing ourselves to the problem at hand, absorbed in it, our differences set aside. My cousin has a quick mind and a good understanding of the principles involved; I have the specific technical knowledge to make this work. It feels... good, to work with her. It is almost a comfort.
"Well," Kluthli says, at the end, "this is as good as it's going to get. Let's try it."
I nod. There are many things - very many things - that might still go wrong, but this is our best chance. I upload the code sequence from my datapad. With luck, it will appear only as a random burst of noise, a transient fault on the system, to any eyes but Tayaira's.
"So," says Kluthli, "nothing to do but wait. If it gets through... if she sees and understands it... if she chooses to respond...." She shrugs. "An awful lot of ifs. How long do we give her?"
"How long do we have? Until the situation changes, I suppose... until Klur moves, or your admiral completes her own task, or some other force approaches."
"Starfleet's task forces will have these gateways bottled up within forty-eight hours," Kluthli says. "The ones in Romulan space will require the cooperation of Republic forces - but they'll get it."
"I doubt we will have to wait that long."
"I don't know how long Admiral Shohl is going to take on her search, either." Kluthli stares at me, a hard, direct look. "If there's anything out there, the Admiral will find it. She's... very determined."
"Yes," I say, "she strikes me as the type." I look at Kluthli's data console, a spiky shape with a holographic screen, very Tholian in its design.
And I cannot quite keep myself from jumping when the visual display goes live.
Tayaira looks at us out of the viewer. "Shalo. And Kluthli. Quite a reunion."
"You sound surprisingly unconcerned," I say.
"It comes as something of a relief," Tayaira says, dryly. "The first thing I thought was that Cysitra Cira'tenis was haunting me, via the subsidiary plasma manifold on deck seven. Neat job of infiltration, I congratulate you. That isn't a KDF uniform," she adds, looking at Kluthli.
"We're aboard the King Estmere," Kluthli says. "I'm a science officer there. Tayaira -"
"Say what you have to," Tayaira says.
"If Klur were to be handed over," I say, "either to the Federation or to me, as J'mpok's emissary, there could be forgiveness for his crew, even at this stage. You are the first officer, you serve the captain but you speak for the crew. What would the crew say?"
Tayaira shakes her head. "Captain Klur remains confident," she says. "Even now. His morale is high, and you must know how closely a Klingon crew follows its captain's lead."
"Then he must expect support from elsewhere."
"Yes." Tayaira pulls a face. "I could not tell you, even if I wished. He sent an encrypted data transmission a short while ago, on subspace frequencies... that you can find out for yourself, if you have Cysitra's records."
"Then he must be unconcerned with being discovered."
"Oh, he realizes Federation forces are converging on him. I think he expects his way home to be cleared for him." Another grimace. "If you stand in that path... it might not be the wisest place to be."
"And Klur has other resources," I say. "We know about the freighter." A flash of - something - in Tayaira's face. "We do not know everything about the freighter."
"I don't know everything about the freighter," says Tayaira. "The captain attended to the details of the... cargo transfer... last time, and he took only Talakh with him, and Talakh is dead, now." She adds, with some reluctance, "There seems to be some sort of delay, with regard to the freighter. The captain is taking things very slowly and carefully, with many precautions."
Klur is loading tricobalt munitions. He does not need those, if he only plans to return to Klingon space - a fallback plan, then? To carry out another atrocity, as Grau suspects? "If he tries to use the tricobalt, will you let him?"
Tayaira bites her lower lip. "I don't know -"
"You know how he would use them."
Her face is anguished. "The operations officer - the one who activated the bombs at Bercera - she killed herself, afterwards. It was a terrible thing. But he is the captain -"
"He doesn't have to be," says Kluthli. "Klingon rules -"
"You can challenge him," I say.
"Challenge him, take his command, and survive," Kluthli says. "It could be the only way to survive."
And we both know, we need her to survive. There are so few left of the House of Sinoom.
"He is still the captain," says Tayaira. "No. I owe him my loyalty." Her expression turns firm. "Do not attempt this again." And the screen goes blank.
There is a short, strained silence. Then I say, "Well. It is as I said to J'mpok: loyalty which cannot withstand adversity is not loyalty."
Spiv - someone who makes a dishonest living. (Old-fashioned British slang... exactly the sort of thing Ronnie's misfiring brain comes up with from time to time.)
I'm reading comments, of course, but I'm suffering from some time constraints, so trying to concentrate first on writing more chunks of story... among other things, I want to get it finished before November, when NaNoWriMo starts consuming all my literary creativity.
Thanks for the slang explanation (while watching "Sherlock (BBC)" I've bumped into British slang like "it's in good nick" and had to ask someone from England what it meant). You'd think that people in England spoke understandable English. But I suppose American slang can sometimes seem confusing (even to other Americans).
Sorry if the comments are slowing you down, but I keep feeling that silence is not encouragement to a creative artist; silence is discouragement. If I like something, I tend to say I like it. Especially if it's as good as your and Starswordc's writing.
Thanx for the pic. I hope Klur isn't giving the usual villain's constipated look.
Definitely not looking forward to the end of your story. I guess I was overly hopeful that it would just keep going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny.
Outside the transparent bubble canopy of the Sphinx work pod, the metal of the transwarp gateway stretches on before me for a kilometer or more. The little ship shudders as the RCS thrusters kick in, sending it in a long spiral around the massive tube that makes up one of the gate's six sides. The tube is half a kilometer thick, and inside it are millions of kilometers of warp coils, and it is only one side of the gate, and there are twelve gates....
In all of this, I'm searching for something which might not be there, and which might be no bigger than my little finger if it is there.
It seems hopeless at first glance, but only first glance. There are only so many places where you can put sensitive circuitry on a transwarp gate; the electromagnetic surges produced when those warp coils fire up will fry any unshielded device nearby. There are, to be sure, shielded areas... and those are occupied by the control circuitry for the gate, and they are regularly inspected by maintenance crews, and any unauthorized devices will be found and removed.
But the configuration of the warp fields makes for occasional dead zones, places where the fields overlap out of phase and cancel each other out.... A competent warp theorist, which I am, can work out where those dead zones are. Of course, any illicit sensor device is going to be rigged to self-destruct if it's detected, so an active sensor scan from the King Estmere is out of the question. But against a close-up passive search - or, in simple terms, someone going out and looking for it - a sensor package has no defense.
My only problem is the sheer size of the gateways. Taking an EV suit and covering the areas on foot would take weeks; the Sphinx is an acceptable compromise, its engines capable of covering the distances easily, its passive sensors and its transparent canopy giving me all the detection capability I need. Still, there is a lot of ground to cover -
My only problem? Not quite. There are always the distractions.
"You've been out there for hours," Ronnie Grau's voice says in my ear. "Have you found anything besides micrometeorite scars yet?"
"Don't you ever sleep?" I snap back at her.
"Sleep is for tortoises!" Sounds like yet another of her quotations. I wonder, fleetingly, what a tortoise is. "Face facts, Tylha, this is a wild goose chase. A mare's nest. A mare's nest with wild geese in it."
"Stop wittering, Ronnie." There is an outraged silence from the other end of the link. I smile. I don't think Ronnie's used to people talking to her like that, and I think it might be good for her.
My eyes narrow. There is something up ahead - a faint blemish on the endless shining metal of the gateway. I nudge the Sphinx in that direction.
"If the gates power up while you're that close," Ronnie says over the link, "you're going to be spam in a can. That pod will tear open like cheap cardboard."
"Nice of you to be concerned."
"That'd leave me the senior Starfleet officer on this jaunt! I'd have to do all the paperwork! Don't you know how to delegate, dammit?"
"My idea, my risk." Technically, of course, she's right. Technically, as a Vice Admiral, I should sit calmly on my bridge and let my away teams take all the risks. It's one technicality I've never got the hang of. I doubt Ronnie has, either.
"Anyway," I continue, "we'd have plenty of warning if the gates powered up, right? Even in this pod, I could get clear in time." The mark on the metal is getting closer. I try to fight down a feeling of anticipation. Three times already, I've spotted little marks; three times, they've turned out to be nothing but a dent or a scar left by some passing fragment of cosmic debris.
I lean forwards in my seat and peer intently through the canopy. A faint line... a line of shadow, in the pod's spotlight... and another line, joining it.... "Yes," I say, with satisfaction. The lines meet at a right angle. Something square, sitting on the skin of the gateway, coloured to match the metal. But micrometeorite strikes don't make perfect squares.
"Yes, what?" Ronnie asks.
"Got it." The object is square, and perhaps the size of my hand. My fingers find the controls, extend one of the work pod's manipulator arms. This is one time I'd prefer to be in an EV suit, but I've used the manipulators before, I can handle the fine positioning required.
"You've what? Well, dammit, Tylha, that's - I mean, needle in a haystack's not in it, this is, what, needle in a - a hayfield, maybe. Made of other needles."
I can handle it if I'm not distracted. "Quiet, Ronnie. This is the tricky bit."
Close-up active scanning would be as bad as long-range; I need to work passive, still. The manipulator arm is carrying a sub-quantum induction probe; the minute flexings in spacetime created by the circuitry of this - object - can be read, slowly and imperfectly, through this device. Reading them, though, is one thing; interpreting them is quite another. It's something well outside my range of competence.
But not everyone's. I hit the comms panel for another channel. "Klerupiru? I'm sending a data uplink to you now."
"Ready, sir." The Ferengi cyber-warfare expert sounds fresh, brisk and cheerful. "Receiving.... Might need better, sir, can you bring in the probe to fifteen millimeters and step sensitivity range up to 2.3?"
I hold my breath as my fingers make tiny, tiny touches on the controls. The manipulator arm moves forwards and down with a nightmare slowness.
"That's better," says Klerupiru. "Resolving scan...." A pause, that seems to last several years. Then, I hear her laugh. "I know that one. It's from Quog's Discreet Surveillance and Monitoring Emporium."
"Does that mean -?"
"Every unit is enciphered with an individually tailored fractal key, guaranteed unbreakable, personalized to the customer."
I feel my antennae droop. "Doesn't sound too hopeful."
"What Quog doesn't tell his customers is that each unit also has a master key, accessible to Quog... and anyone who knows Quog, and has a talent for oomox." She laughs again. "Must admit, I scrubbed my hands for hours afterwards. Transmitting the unlock now."
On the comms display, lines suddenly dart upwards, representing an abrupt burst of data transmission across the link. Then, just as suddenly, the square package beneath the probe glows red, then white, then boils away in a puff of vapour and is gone.
"What the hell -?"
"It's all right, sir. It's meant to do that, as soon as the download's finished." There is satisfaction in Klerupiru's voice. "I have a complete image of that unit's memory in my console now. Beginning analysis."
"Good." I pull back the manipulator, and frown. The sub-quantum probe suffered in that sudden flare of energy... at the very least, I need to get back to the ship and replace it. And, with luck, my job here is done anyway. I fire the RCS arrays and bring the pod around.
The comms console flashes an urgent light at me, demanding my attention. I switch channels.
"Tylha." Ronnie's voice is flat and tense. "Get back in. Someone's powering up the Klink-side gateway."
"How long?" I ask.
"Ten minutes at best. Better move."
It's just possible it might be Starfleet, that a task force has reached the gateway in the neutral zone and is coming through to support us. It's just possible, too, that this is some random smuggler on an errand of their own. But these are outside possibilities at best. The safe bet is that whoever's using the gate is Klingon... either regular KDF, or Klur's shadowy backers. Either way, we have to be ready.
"Shohl to King Estmere. Red alert, battle stations. Pick me up when I reach transporter range, abandon the pod."
I fire up the Sphinx's micro-impulse engine, and hurtle back towards my ship.
"Gateway is powering up," K'Gan reports. "No indication as yet who is coming through."
"Have there been any communications from the high command?"
"No, sir."
"Then we must assume the worst. Put me in contact with the Federation ships." I take my seat in the command chair, trying to project a confidence that I cannot feel.
Shohl's face appears on an ancillary display, then Grau's on a screen beside it. "I will say this," I tell them. "The Chancellor did not, does not, condone the act at Bercera IV. If this - visit - comes from those responsible for that... then my ship stands with Starfleet."
Out of the corner of my eye, I see K'Gan stiffen. Well, he is my First Officer, if he wishes to challenge, let it be now.
But he does not. Instead, he says, in almost pained tones, "That is the honourable course."
So, I muse, if we fail, he will share in my disgrace... that would be a pity. We must not fail, then.
"You'd better do the talking," Grau says. "At least, some of it. If there's going to be any talking."
I nod. "In case there is not," I say to K'Gan, "launch wings one and two." The first wave of Shohl's Scorpion fighters is already on the screen, hanging close in tight formation about the carrier. I have no doubt that the rest of her fighters are waiting on their launch rails now.
Our three ships drift at low impulse speed towards the gateway, Shohl in the centre, Grau on her starboard flank, myself on her port. The gateway is pulsating, almost shuddering, as the energy builds up.
It happens quickly. One instant, the mouth of the gate is empty; then, there is a terrific flash of light, and the ships come through.
Five ships. Four K'tinga cruisers, in two pairs, the pairs flanking the slab-sided massive shape of a VoD'Leh carrier. Fighters are already pouring out of its launch bays, taking up station in an arc ahead of it.
"We are being hailed," K'Gan reports.
"On screen. And cut in Starfleet. We need have no secrets."
On the main viewer, a glowering face appears, a face I recognize.
"Lieutenant General Shalo. This is Councillor T'Jeg of the House of Toros. You are ordered to stand down and return to Qo'noS, there to await reassignment to other duties." His eyes flicker; he, too, has ancillary screens showing my companions. "Starfleet. There is nothing for you here. Stand aside."
"I live to serve, Councillor," I say. "Merely transmit the confirmation codes authorizing the High Council's order, and I comply."
"Confirmation codes -?" T'Jeg seems to swell with rage.
"While you're at it," Shohl says, "you'd better transmit your diplomatic clearances. Otherwise, you are an enemy vessel outside Klingon territory, and you will be fired upon."
"I am a member of the High Council!" T'Jeg yells. "I am not to be questioned by - by underlings and Federation weaklings! Obey me now, or I will have your heads!"
On my command console, an image is taking shape: a transmission from the Virtue, sketching the tactical situation, offering a suggested battle plan. I touch the screen, trace lines with my fingertips, making my own suggestions. Shohl is doing likewise....
"With respect, Councillor," I say, almost absent-mindedly, "the Chancellor is also a member of the High Council, and it was from his own lips that I received my orders. You must show the proper authority, if you are to countermand those."
"And Starfleet," says Shohl, "has some questions for the House of Toros. On that basis, I'm ordering you to stand down your fighters, drop your shields, and transport over to the King Estmere. I give you my personal guarantee that you will be treated... appropriately."
"You order me? Your head, Andorian! I will take your head!"
Ronnie Grau laughs wildly. "It shall never be said that I doffed my head for the boast of a heathen line."
"My Starfleet colleague expresses herself poetically," I say. "Nevertheless, the House of Toros stands implicated in this affair, and the Chancellor will require answers, as well as the Federation. You must make ready to provide those answers, Councillor."
"Answers? I will give you my answers now!" T'Jeg turns to face an unseen bridge officer. "Wipe them from the skies!" And the viewer goes blank.
"Launch wings three and four," I say to K'Gan.
T'Jeg's forces are advancing in a traditional Klingon pattern, the fighters sweeping forwards in an imposing curve before the bulk of the carrier, the cruisers threatening on his flanks. It is a formation designed to impress and intimidate; it has served that purpose in many a frontier system, terrorizing many a minor power....
It is not, though, the wisest choice for facing Starfleet.
T'Jeg no doubt expects a straight fight, his carrier versus the King Estmere in the middle, while his cruisers take on the Garaka and the Virtue in pairs. It is not a plan that any of us wishes to cooperate with.
Instead, Virtue and King Estmere both heel over hard to their port sides. Shohl's carrier fires her disruptor cannons at one K'tinga, then turns even more sharply, presenting a rear arc in which a weapons hardpoint glows green, then lashes out with an eye-hurting bolt of light. A Romulan plasma hyperflux beam. It bites through the cruiser's failing screens, sears across the hull, green-white flares of plasma fires bursting out in its wake.
"Designating that cruiser Target One," I say, "and firing."
At the same time, Virtue fires her phaser lotus and forward cannons in a wide-angle spread at T'Jeg's fighters. The imposing arc dissolves at once into chaos, To'Dujs exploding in puffs of flame.
Target One's shields are down, and my disruptor beams will keep them down - at least long enough for my Hargh'peng torpedo to slam into the target's hull, and add its lurid violet radiance to the green of the plasma fires. Meanwhile, Target One's cruiser consort - now Target Two - is receiving the attentions of my S'kul fighters. Their antiproton blasts will keep that cruiser occupied while I finish his wounded consort.
Shohl's Scorpions are busy, too. Three quarters of T'Jeg's fighters are already eliminated, and the remaining To'Dujs - outclassed individually, and outnumbered three to one - last barely seconds against the Scorpions, which then turn their attention to the carrier. Their plasma weapons and torpedoes flare against its shields -
- while I attend to my two targets, and Shohl and Grau go after the cruisers on the other flank. Shohl's disruptor cannons are blazing, and her torpedo tubes are spitting globes of plasma at a frankly alarming rate; Grau is closing on the last cruiser now, her phaser cannons hammering its shields to nothing. T'Jeg's forces are firing back, of course....
"Standard disruptors only," K'Gan reports.
"Of course," I say. "They have never needed better." The House of Toros is a house of merchants, sitting safe and happy behind the lines, never having to deploy its forces for anything more than routine intimidation of minor systems. Naturally, they think themselves warriors - what Klingon does not? But thinking so does not make it so.
Still, it is never wise to underestimate one's enemy.
"Target Two launching torpedoes," K'Gan reports.
I count off, silently, in my head. "And... phase," I order. There is a slight alteration in the tone of the Fek'lhri engines, the faintest shift in the quality of the light on the bridge... and a deep, uneasy feeling inside me, as my ship and my body move out of sync with conventional reality. It is unsettling, on an intuitive and fundamental level, to have a salvo of photon torpedoes pass through us as though we were empty space.
The white light of a warp core breach banishes the spectral green and violet glows around Target One, and my ship snaps back into phase in time to launch an inarguably real Hargh'peng into Target Two. Against all the odds, the cruiser has brought down two of my S'kuls. I check; the flight deck transporters recovered the crews in time, replacement fighters are already on the launch rails. I wonder, fleetingly, how many of T'Jeg's crews have survived. The carrier is using its weapons without discipline, alternating between swatting at Shohl's swarming Scorpions, and firing at King Estmere herself. As a result, T'Jeg has brought down no fighters, and barely succeeded in working up a glow from the Recluse's Reman-designed shields.
A row of plasma torpedoes stretches, like gleaming beads on a string, between King Estmere and the cruiser I've designated Target Three. As I watch, a torpedo strikes through the cruiser's shattered shields, burning deep into its hull. A second strike follows, then a third, then the core breaches and Target Three is gone. Shohl's remaining torpedoes realign themselves, acquiring new targets. Most of them go for Target Four, the cruiser now being cut to pieces by Grau's phasers; three, however, turn in space to aim themselves at the VoD'Leh. I check Target Two; its shields are down to nothing, my S'Kuls have nearly severed one nacelle - it is out of the fight, and will soon be dead.
"Beam arrays," I order. "Target the VoD'Leh's shield emitters."
Disruptor light flashes out from my ship, striking with remorseless precision at spots on the carrier's hull. For an instant, I fear I have failed; then the VoD'Leh's shield wavers and drops. It will be restored in minutes - if T'Jeg's crew is even minimally competent - but, in the meantime, Shohl's Scorpions strike home with their stinging blows, and the approaching plasma torpedoes proceed unimpeded to their mark. A brilliant flare announces the death of Target Four, and both King Estmere and Virtue swing around to bring their forward arcs to bear on the carrier.
The plasma torpedoes strike. Thick slabs of armour boil away, the side of the VoD'Leh's hull becomes a tangled inferno of white-hot broken metal, burning in a dozen atmosphere leaks. For a smaller vessel, that might be a mortal blow, but the VoD'Leh is so huge, its vital parts so well-defended, deep in its interior -
But it prompts a reaction, nonetheless. "Hail from the VoD'Leh!" K'Gan reports.
"Hold fire!" Shohl, Grau and I shout the order as one. Too late, I fear, for Target Two, whose broken, burning hull is drifting powerless away from my fighters... but they hold their fire, obedient, nonetheless.
T'Jeg reappears on my main viewer. There is fire behind him, but it is no more than the sparking of a transient surge along the EPS grid. Such trivia does not even distract an experienced combat commander... but T'Jeg is no combat commander. He has proved that today, that is certain.
"I wish to explain," he says, his words tumbling hastily over each other. "It pains me to admit this, but I am but the tool of others in this matter. Let me describe to you -"
And then he glows with a fiery light, and his words burn away to nothing, as does the mouth that speaks them.
Confusion erupts on T'Jeg's bridge; I hear shouts, weapons fire; I see the flash of disruptors, see people running to and fro - for an instant, there is someone on the screen, a Lethean with a gun in his hand, and I think I recognize him - then he is gone, and there is only the noise of fighting.
A voice screams, from somewhere to the side of the viewer, "No Starfleet prison camps! No dishonour! Ramming speed!" And the comms link goes suddenly dead.
The VoD'Leh springs to life, its impulse engines flaring into maximum overdrive, turning to bear straight down on the King Estmere. As a final gesture, it is a splendid one, a valiant one... a quintessentially Klingon one.
Our guns shred the carrier into white-hot ruins before it gets within three kilometers.
Yes yes yes! I'm more eager than ever before for your next chapter. You know exactly how to give a reader exactly what interests/excites them the most story-wise without sacrificing any quality.
Well, if you ever decide to submit this to CBS/Paramount and they reject it as a TV series, suggest it to them as a book (or two or three). And then let me know when it'll be in the bookstores offline and online. I want a hardback copy of it. This is Star Trek! This is what the movies and TV series should've been and quite honestly weren't. Maybe they didn't have the budgets, maybe they didn't have good enough writers. Whatever. I'm not overpraising you, Shevet. I'm being dead honest. When someone asks me what is Star Trek, I'll tell them to read your story (and if they're ready for more, Starswordc's story). If only I could write half this well, I'd be ecstatic.
Klur stood, a faint smile appearing on his face. He had been in a better mood, Tayaira thought, ever since the signal had come in... the signal, at last, from their unknown backers. Still unknown to her, since the message had been in some private code... but Klur was confident, almost happy, and the mood aboard the ship was lighter because of that. Now, he strode across the bridge to her tactical station, observed the readings on her screen, and nodded approval.
"They will be here soon," he said. "We will hold station here, though, for the present."
"Do you anticipate any... difficulties, sir?" Tayaira asked.
"Difficulties? No. But it may be as well to remind our allies of... certain realities in our relationship."
He could only mean the freighter. Tayaira felt a chill as she considered the freighter. It lay there, silent in space, some four kilometers away.... "Do we continue preparations for loading, sir?"
"For the present. I will decide what is to be done, once our allies and I have conferred." He turned and stalked back to his command chair. "Visual on the gateway."
At this distance, the transwarp gate appeared only as a tiny hexagonal shape; Tayaira moved to step up magnification on the viewer, and then stopped as her readings changed. "Transit complete." The little hexagon on the screen flashed bright for an instant, then dimmed. "Reading... three ships."
"Three?" Klur frowned. "They promised me five.... Well, perhaps they encountered difficulties. Put them on my tactical display. Stand by hailing frequencies."
The view of the gateway vanished, to be replaced by the crisp red schematics of the tactical display. Tayaira watched as the three dots representing the ships separated themselves from the marker for the gateway. For a moment, they were simply dots, and then Tayaira's heart sank as the computer, imperturbably, made its identifications and put them on the screen.
IKS Garaka. USS King Estmere. USS Virtue.
Klur's oath echoed across the bridge. "Those fools!"
"Our allies encountered... more difficulties than they could cope with, then," Tayaira said, with a mouth suddenly dry.
"Fools," Klur spat, again.
"Sir, what are we going to do?"
Outnumbered, three to one, she thought. They could flee at warp speed... and those ships would follow, would track their warp signature to the ends of the universe... and others would come, too, Starfleet forces had to be converging on all the gateways. There was no chance, no hope -
"Wait," said Klur, softly. "Wait...."
His eyes were intent on the screen. She followed his gaze, trying to see what he saw.
"The Orion's ship is at full impulse," Klur said. "Starfleet is following at lesser speed.... There will be a gap. In... perhaps two minutes... perhaps a little more.... Sound red alert! Bring the ship to full impulse, course..." he paused, calculating "... three two seven mark three seven three. Execute!"
"What of the freighter, sir?" Tayaira asked, even as she slammed the commands into her console.
"Forget the freighter! First, we must survive! Send the code to activate the gateway!"
The QIb laH'e' surged forwards, the gonging sound from its drive reaching a deafening pitch. Tayaira saw, now, what Klur hoped to do. Their oblique course would carry them in a curve, around the approaching Garaka, and through the space between her and the Starfleet ships. There was room - just room - for them to pass outside the weapons ranges of both KDF and Starfleet. And if the Starfleet ships were too slow - if they failed to realise the full implications of Klur's maneuver - they could reach the gateway.
She checked the command codes. "Gateway powering. Backup capacitance is not engaged, sir - if we can reach the gate, there will be some time before our pursuers can power it up again."
Klur nodded. "Once we are through, send the command codes for cold shutdown. The Virtue has codes to override that, too, of course - but it will buy us more time." His tone of voice grew reflective. "Time we shall use to reach the gateway to the neutral zone... and that I shall use to compose a message for our allies." He snarled, a deep animal noise in his throat. "In payment for their incompetence, I shall demand nothing less than a seat on the High Council myself!"
Tayaira's eyes widened. "Can they grant that?"
"I think so." Klur laughed. "If our relief force has failed to arrive... then there should be a vacancy to fill!"
More icons appeared on the tactical display. "The enemy carriers have launched fighters," Tayaira said.
"That extends their radius of action," Klur said thoughtfully. "We are likely to come under fire from the fighters, even if we are out of range of the carriers themselves. Ignore it. Our shields can absorb a few hits from fighter weapons." He seemed to be counting down, inside his head. "Time to come about. One eight one mark one four. And give me everything the impulse drive has."
"Garaka is coming about!"
"Yes. She has seen her folly - but too late, my impatient Orion friend, too late." Klur's face was exultant. The QIb laH'e' swung around, her engines throbbing louder still.
An alarm sounded. "Incoming fire," Tayaira said. "Plasma weapons - King Estmere's Scorpion fighters. At extreme range... shields holding."
"Incoming hail on Starfleet frequency," the comms officer reported.
"Ignore it," said Klur. "We have heard all they have to say."
"Picking up antiproton fire from the Garaka's S'kuls," said Tayaira. "Not enough to worry about... shields at ninety-six per cent."
"At full impulse, we will lose them soon enough," said Klur.
"What concerns me," said Tayaira, "is what awaits us on the other side of the gate."
Klur shook his head. "They have committed their full force," he said. "Even at the fastest possible warp speed, no other Starfleet ships could have reached the transwarp nexus yet."
Unless they got lucky, and had ships close by already, Tayaira thought, but she said nothing. Now was not the time to contradict the captain - if there ever was a time for that.
The display changed yet again. "Virtue is turning."
"So I see. Too late." Klur's lips twitched. "I had not expected even that much good sense from the Virtue's commander... that one is unhinged. Time to gateway?"
"Three minutes at current speed and vector. Sir, the Virtue might just make it to weapons range -"
"Stand by to reinforce rear shields if necessary. We do not fight. We go."
"Yes, sir." Tayaira allowed herself to feel a fleeting moment of hope. Was it just possible that they might survive this?
The impacts on the shields stopped; they had outdistanced the fighters. The enemy carriers were turning, but too slowly, now... the more agile Virtue remained the only threat -
"Virtue has stopped! No impulse signature. Coasting on inertia only."
"Battle damage," Klur said. "That ship's emissions profile showed some odd spikes, consistent with damage to her engines... the stress must have overloaded them once again." He smiled in satisfaction. "We are certainly safe now."
"Should we stop and destroy her, sir?"
"Tempting," Klur said; then he shook his head. "Tempting, but no, not now. No delays, take no chances. We cannot risk combat with both those carriers at once. If they come up on us while we are finishing the Virtue - No. Proceed to the gate."
"Yes, sir." The gate, which had been a tiny shape on the screen, now filled it, huge and almost reassuring. "Stepping down from full impulse. Gateway is fully powered and ready for transit. Synchronizing driver coils."
They were there. And the Starfleet ships were too far distant to stop them. They had made it, Tayaira thought. She reached for her console, keyed in the command sequence, engaged it in the instant Klur yelled, "Go!"
Shevet: Either Klur's instincts are right on the money (Klingon Marks, I assume) or he's been outflanked ... if the latter, by whom? I feel like I'm waiting for the next issue of a pulp magazine from the 1930s and 1940s, burning to know what will happen after each cliff-hanger. Don't worry -- I'll keep a fire extinguisher handy and a tarp to jump down onto.
Speaking of which: You're really good at balancing humor and dramatic action, which is something not all authors are good at. (The Harry Potter books, for instance, managed the humor/drama balance quite well in the first three books, but after that it got too dark for me and the humor was fleeting whenever it did manage to pop up.) I confess that I miss the Borg's dryly factual comments, especially on what number each species mentioned is, calculations, etc., and Vice-Admiral Ronnie Grau's (I think she's the one with the Borg as part of her?) not always appreciative reactions to it. I can only hope that those aren't gone for good in the rest of your story.
Qa'pla!
P.S.: Thank you (and Starswordc) for inspiring me to get back to work on my own (so far, nameless) story. First two pages typed up. Not quite sure where it'll go from there, but it's interesting again. Which I guess is what's important. Not sure how to link up any new post to the last one on Sept. 12, though, since it's been over 30 days since then. Any suggestions?
"Why not?" I say. "We made it look good, didn't we?" I stand up. I'm feeling restless, I've had enough of the centre seat for the moment, I want to move around. */*endocrine balance unstable---readjust---switch to regenerative mode*/* No thanks, Two of Twelve - like I said to Tylha, sleep is for tortoises.
"I just hope he buys the rest of it," Tylha says. Her face is dour and pessimistic on my repeater screen. Behind her, the weird bridge of the King Estmere looks busy. And weird. Shalo's face, on another screen, is in close-up, so I can't see anything going on behind her. Typical KDF paranoia.
"It doesn't matter about Klur," I say. "We're never going to get any answers from Klur, are we? And you and big-ears gave us the right way to get the answers."
The freighter. Part of the freighter's job is to act as insurance for Klur - proof, if he needs proof, that he was acting on his backer's instructions; a means to drag them down with him if he's caught, so they have to make sure he doesn't get caught. Typical... not just KDF, but specifically Klingon */*species 5008*/* paranoia. */*inefficient---diverts resources to counterproductive ends---share information freely among the collective*/* - yes, and there are worse things than Klingon paranoia.
"Do you have anything on scan?" I ask Shalo. Our little staged "tactical error" put her further out from the gate than the rest of us... assuming Klur came from roughly the direction of the freighter, then she should be first to spot it. Of course, when you assume, you... oh, forget it, Ronnie.
"I have a contact on sensors," Shalo reports. Funny, really. It should feel weird, working with the enemy - but, so often, the KDF isn't the enemy, anyway. It's like war on alternate days of the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, fight along side them in Orellius, Gamma Orionis and Tau Dewa; Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, blow their brains out in Pi Canis and Eta Eridani. It's a funny way to run a war.
"When you think about it," I find myself musing aloud, "the mere fact that we're having this war means the Klinks have won it. They got what they wanted, honourable combat, an outlet for their warrior classes, a way to obey their martial cultural imperative. But, then, I suppose that means the Federation wins, too, because we're letting them do it, respecting their cultural values within the framework of Federation exploration and expansion. So everyone's a winner. Kind of a shame about all the dead people, but hey, at least the cultural principles win out, and that's what matters." I find a quotation to finish on. "The first thing a principle does is kill somebody."
Tylha stares at me, but - unexpectedly - Shalo says, "Curiously enough, I was thinking the same myself only recently." Then her face changes. "I have the freighter. I -" She stops. Her jade-green complexion turns a much lighter shade of jade. "Tayaira told us," she says, "that Klur and Talakh did something on the freighter. And of course -" she swallows audibly "- they would have needed to make sure it did not get away from them."
"What did they do?" Tylha asks.
"From the readings I have here," Shalo says, "they must have overriden the safeties and turned off the internal radiation shielding."
"But that freighter was loaded to the gunwhales with tricobalt," I say.
"It still is," says Shalo. "The radiation levels - The crew must have died quickly, there is that, at least. But after such a death, Gre'thor must seem welcome."
"All right," says Tylha. "Looks like this is my job, then. Back off to a safe distance and I'll take King Estmere in."
"Hold on," I say. "Since when are Andorians immune to radiation?"
"Since we got all the hazardous environment gear out for the relief mission to Bercera IV," says Tylha, "remember? I'll take a shuttle in close, space-walk the rest of the way in my EV suit. Don't worry, it's Nukara-rated."
*/*hazardous environment---recommendation---send disposable drones to secure beachhead---replace with other disposable assets as needed*/*
No thank you, Two of Twelve. That's the bad sign. When you start thinking of people as... disposable assets... that's when you lose your soul.
Oh, really, Ronnie? another voice in my head says. And how many people did you dispose of at Aznetkur? How many empty berths on the Virtue now, how many died on the Ytsay and the Adderbury and the others? Did they matter to you, Ronnie? Did you say a prayer for each one?
I don't like the sound of that other voice. The worst thing is, unlike Two of Twelve, I can't tell it to shut up. Because I have a terrible feeling that it's the real me.
---
Tricobalt radiation isn't visible. It's only my imagination that's making the freighter glow.
It looms over Tylha's shuttle, a gaunt grey row of massive cargo modules, strung together, engines at one distant end, command module here at the other. "All right," Tylha says over the comms link. "Radiation levels within tolerances. Decon gear ready. Depressurizing shuttle and opening cargo doors. And I'm patching through my helmet camera now." Another screen comes alive, showing Tylha's viewpoint.
"Good luck," I say. The side of the freighter looks even more enormous in this view. Then it expands, suddenly, vertiginously, as Tylha cuts in her suit's thrusters.
"Aiming for the starboard side personnel lock," Tylha says.
"You're on target," Shalo answers. She, of course, is the expert in Klingon freighter designs. Or the best we have to hand, at least.
The airlock door is just another slab of grey metal; the picture bobs and wavers as Tylha finds the external control panel. "Standing by with security code overrides," Shalo says.
"No need." Tylha's voice. "No security lockdown. Klur must have reckoned the radiation was enough of a 'keep out' sign. Opening the lock."
Inside, the personnel lock is large enough to house a regiment. Tylha moves through it with what seems to me a nightmarish carefulness, scanning and checking as she goes. Well, of course, she's the one risking her blue hide in there....
"Cycling lock," she says, finally. I think I hear the air hissing into the chamber - but, of course, that's my imagination again. "Radiation levels... within my suit's tolerances. Nothing on volatiles scan."
"Tricobalt isn't volatile," I say.
"Tricobalt wasn't all they used at Bercera," says Tylha, and I decide to shut up.
The inner airlock door opens, on an interior corridor of blocky metal and exposed pipes and dim reddish light. There is no one in sight. On a comms panel nearby, an alert light is flashing on and off, constant, repetitive, and futile.
"Bridge is two levels up and four bulkheads forward of your current position," Shalo says.
"I don't want the bridge, first," says Tylha. "For what we're looking for, the place to be is the quartermaster's or the supercargo's office."
"I'm not sure I follow," says Shalo. I'm not sure I follow, either, but I'm damned if I'm admitting it.
"Records," says Tylha. "Records of loading, handling, transshipment.... With the sort of stuff they're using, here, you have to know everything about it. Not just what it is - when it was made, how it was made, how it's been handled since. You have to have all the details, or it just isn't safe to touch it. This ship has got to have all the records we need, and they don't dare edit them. That is all the proof you need to take to the High Council - and that I need to take to the Federation."
"I see," says Shalo. "In which case... supercargo office is ahead some fifty meters, one level down, one bulkhead aft."
The view changes as Tylha plods forward. She reaches a door, opens it, goes through and turns... and there is a dark shape lying on the deck before her. The first body. There will be others, probably many others.
"Klingon," Tylha says. "Looks like standard issue uniform... there's some insignia here, I don't recognize it."
"House badge," says Shalo. "House of T'llan.... It may mean nothing, of course."
"Might confirm with biometric ID," says Tylha. The view changes again, as she bends closer to the shrivelled face. "Might not be easy... I'll take a scan." By now, the radiation will have unravelled all that poor devil's DNA, leaving only gross physical characteristics - height, body mass, length of bone - for checking. Inconclusive, yes. Anyone could put a House badge on....
Tylha continues on, down the passageway, clambering down a ladder rather than taking any risks with a turbolift. Once more, she comes to a doorway; once more, she opens it. Beyond is a small, sparse office, with a single Klingon seated behind a desk. Tylha takes one look at his face and turns the camera away.
"Terminal here," she says. "Going to need some override codes now...."
"Downloading to your tricorder," says Shalo.
"Get ready for a data uplink, too," says Tylha. "If I can, I'll capture all this stuff and transfer it for analysis." Red-orange tlhIngan Hol characters glow on a display screen before her; I see her gloved hands at the edge of the frame, tapping in commands with infinite care.
Do your stuff, I say inside my head to Two of Twelve.
*/*working---
prepared for visual data capture---
translation routines online---
datarecord parsing and analysis routines on standby---*/*
And nothing more to do but wait, as Tylha finishes the laborious process of accessing the records - and they scroll up the screen, to be captured instantly by the pitiless implant that covers my left eye - and Two of Twelve reads them, and digests them, and serves up their meaning to me -
I tell the others. Shalo has already had time to gather some of it, to confirm it.
I wish you hadn't said that. Especially after this chapter (your best yet). Couldn't you just stretch it out some more without hurting the quality? I guess not. Will there be a sequel or another non-sequel story from you? Because this group of characters is great to read about.
Btw, thank you for bringing back Two of Twelve's commentary, both the (for a Borg, unintentionally) humorous and the (intentionally) serious. The humorous parts really made me laugh, which I needed this morning.
Also btw, Amazon has a pay-per-printing setup that you could look into for selling copies of your story (which I would buy in a heartbeat, if it's affordable).
The Powers That Be would come down like a ton of bricks on anything that smacked of unauthorized commercial exploitation of the Star Trek intellectual property. (And, let's face it, quite right too, really.) Fan ficcing on a message board, they might wink at, but printing it out and selling it would cross a line!
As regards the ending.... I'd feel a bit presumptuous, offering writing advice, but I have heard some good advice in my time, and there's no harm passing it on. One piece of advice I've taken to heart is know where your story is going. If you're writing with an end in view, you know what decisions you have to make, what twists the plot can take, how the characters have to develop, in order to get to that end. It brings the whole process into a sharper focus.
I don't start a story without a clear view of how it will end. A story has to end, sometime - if it just goes on and on, petering out when writers or readers lose interest in it, it's not a proper story. (In my opinion.) The final scenes are already clear in my mind... though, as a matter of personal discipline, I haven't actually written them yet. I write in order, starting at the beginning and going on until I reach the end. It's not everyone's way of working, but it's best for me - if I wrote out of order, I'd just end up doing all the fun scenes first, and then writing the rest of it would be a chore, and it'd probably never get finished. A better writer, or a better person, might find all the scenes to be fun scenes, but I'm no better than I ought to be.
The atmosphere aboard the QIb laH'e' was one of gloom and despair. Tayaira paced endlessly around the bridge, pausing once in a while to look at the two things no one else dared look at: the viewscreen, and the empty command chair.
A trap. Nothing but a trap. Artfully planned, with one end in view; to get them away from the freighter. By now, Starfleet and the Garaka had to have found it. And the QIb laH'e' was stuck, here... with only one way out, and that blocked by the three enemy ships.
Oh, they could flee at warp speed... and, as before, it would gain them nothing. The transwarp nexus was in clear space, their warp signature would stand out like a neon sign - no way to hide it, even if they did not blunder straight into an approaching Starfleet task force.
And no suggestions from the Captain, and that hurt morale worst of all. He had stormed, raging, off the bridge, once they had emerged from the gateway and seen -
Tayaira looked up at the screen. It made perfect sense in Starfleet terms, she thought. Machines, objects, were cheap, too cheap to be reckoned in the Federation's post-industrial economy. So destroying the transwarp gates was a perfectly logical step to take. She could see, in one corner of the viewer, the regular gleam as one broken section rotated, slowly, the light of the nearest star glinting off it as it turned.
Within hours, she thought, she herself would be wreckage revolving lifelessly in space. Or, perhaps, consigned to some Federation prison camp, to emerge in a few decades as some "rehabilitated" shadow of her former self. No other alternative, no way out. She knew it. So did everyone on the ship. The sense of defeat was overwhelming, palpable.
She resumed her pacing, stopped at her tactical console. It mocks me, she thought. Status displays still showed for the gateway network, registering all the gates at zero power. Well, of course they are, if they are destroyed, she thought.
It took another circuit of the bridge before she stopped, again, at the console, and frowned.
The twelve gates all registered the same. But eleven of them were different, surely? They were destroyed, their control circuits inoperable... how could they transmit a status code, even? All right, perhaps the control circuits remained sufficiently intact, even though the gates themselves were destroyed... but for all of them? Not one of the control computers was sufficiently badly damaged that it did not register?
She shook her head. Federation deception, perhaps? Had they rigged the gateways to register as intact, even after their destruction? It seemed likely -
Tayaira caught her breath. Or the Feds might have tried some other sort of deception -
She strode to the main science console. "Scan," she ordered.
The science officer was some junior whose name she didn't know. He stared up at her with sullen eyes. "What's the use?" he said.
"I gave you an order!" Tayaira snarled. "I want scans of that debris!"
For a moment, she thought he would still disobey; something in her face, though, must have convinced him that she would kill him if he did. He turned to the console, slow and resentful. "Setting up scan. What are we looking for?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't need you. Commence full sensor sweep. Slow and careful."
"Working." She watched over his shoulder, reading the displays. "Fragments. Metals, high durability alloys... ceramic fragments, too, looks like ablative armour from a warship hull...."
Tayaira's eyes narrowed. "Where are the high-density exotics?"
"Sir?"
"From the warp coils of the gateways! There should be hundreds of tonnes of exotic alloys out there!"
The science officer adjusted something on the console. "There are," he said. "I'm reading... twelve large concentrations. It's heavy material, it can't have drifted far from the sites of the destroyed gateways...."
Tayaira swore sulphurously. "Destroyed, hell!" She stabbed her finger down on the displays. "Everything here is consistent with destroyed ships -"
"Yes," said the science officer, "they fought off our backup here, destroyed them... blew the gates, and came after us. We know that."
"They faked us out once. Why couldn't they do it again? Scan for holo-emitter signatures!"
"You think -"
"The gates register as functional on the command network. Our eyes tell us they're gone. One of the two has to be wrong. Why not our eyes?"
The science officer's eyes came alive with sudden hope. "On it," he said.
"Keep at it. I'm going to get the captain," said Tayaira grimly.
She raced off the bridge, down the corridors, into the labyrinth that was the Kar'fi carrier. She passed a number of Klingons, some of them apparently wandering, aimless, under the influence of drink or worse... that was a bad sign. But there was no time now to discipline them. She reached the captain's quarters, hammered on the door.
There was nothing but an incoherent sound from the other side. Tayaira swore again, opened the emergency panel by the side of the door, and cranked the manual override. A few furious turns of the wheel, and the door was open wide enough for her to edge through.
Klur was sitting on his bed, his face lit only by the flame from his souvenir trinket. He turned towards her and spoke, blearily, "'s you."
Drunk, again. Tayaira looked about. There was a bottle, somewhere - round red pills, she had seen him use it before -
"All gone," Klur mumbled. "Did everything they said to, an' it didn' work. Did that T'Jeg his favour -" he hissed the word. "Talakh, Kysang, they had to die clean. No questions. Bad for me too, he said, if there were questions. An' the others, they made sense. Step it up, the war, I mean. Proper victories, real victories, do enough damage to the Feds, Feds 'll run. Made sense. Only, didn' work. We ran, instead. That's wrong. Doesn' that seem wrong to you?"
A bottle of round red pills. Tayaira's hand closed over it gratefully. She shook out two of them, held them out to Klur. "Take these, sir."
"Don' wanna," Klur slurred.
"Sir. Take them."
Klur struck out, a petulant, childish gesture, knocking the pills out of Tayaira's hand. She took a deep breath. Then she slapped Klur across the face, as hard as she could.
The captain subsided onto the bed, his face a mask of astonishment and affront.
"Sir." Tayaira put as much command as she could into her voice. "I serve the captain, but I speak for the crew, and your crew needs you now." She shook another two pills out of the bottle. "Take them."
Staring at her as if hypnotized, Klur reached up, took the pills from her hand, and swallowed them. Tayaira kept her eyes on him, watched him wince as the alcohol antagonist began to work, as his eyes and his expression began to clear.
"Waste of good bloodwine," Klur said in a rasping voice.
"The Feds faked the destruction of the gateways," Tayaira said.
"What?"
"The only real wreckage is from the relief force. I have science, now, trying to pinpoint the holo-emitters -"
Klur sprang up. "Are you sure about this?"
"I -" Tayaira swallowed hard. "I believe so, sir."
"If you're wrong," Klur said, "I will kill you three times over before I die."
"If I'm wrong, sir," said Tayaira, "I'll welcome that."
Klur strode to the door, reactivated the mechanism, and was through it at a run. Tayaira followed.
On the bridge, the science officer was alternately whooping with laughter and working feverishly at his console. "I have them, sir!" he shouted as Klur charged towards him. "I have them! She was right!"
"Show me," Klur demanded.
"Emitter signatures - here, here, here -" the science officer pointed. "Every gateway has them! I've been working it out, we can channel a tetryon pulse through the main deflector and burn them out with a single energy spike -"
"Do it," Klur said.
He stalked to his command chair. Tayaira watched as the science officer's hands flew over his console, programming the sequences. "Ready, sir!" he shouted. "Energizing now!"
A deep muttering grumble came from power sources in the bowels of the QIb laH'e', and the screen cleared. Like magic, Tayaira thought. The drifting debris faded from sight, the gateways reappeared, intact, pristine.
"It's like coming back to life," she whispered, inaudible in all the joyful shouting on the bridge.
"We're not home yet," said Klur. "Bring the ship to alert status! And power up the homeward gateway!"
Tayaira turned to her console, to enter the commands, and stopped. The status display still showed the power levels for all twelve gates. Eleven were powered down, cold, inert.
One was at maximum power already. Ready for transit.
Shevet: Hmm. I'm curious to see how Klur and crew get out of this (if they do) through that one powered-up gateway. Because Klur doesn't just have the Federation after him, he has the Klingon High Council as well. Whoever is backing him had better have enough firepower and clout to keep the overall plan from falling apart. A cornered rat is one thing, a cornered rat that knows it can't fight its way to freedom might act like a Klingon who believes that death (even kamikaze-style) is the only solution. Hopefully Klur is smarter/wiser than that.
Copyright-wise, I can understand. But that's why I suggested submitting to the copyright-holder, in this case CBS Studios. Your story isn't just some fan fic written by a teenager with little or no story-writing experience. Your story quality is far better than that. At worst, CBS Studios will reject it and then I guess it'll have to just stay a fan fic. But what if ... what if they actually accept it ... and what if they not only accept it but pay you for it ... and what they want more from you? Isn't it worth risking that rejection? */*probability of rejection is high, but definitive result unknown unless attempt is made*/* (as Two of Twelve might say)
Story-structure-wise, you think like my late father did when he was composing music. He always had a goal in mind, what he needed to accomplish as a whole. I'm an improviser. I make it up as I go, and try to fix the earlier structural problems once I figure out what their solution is. Sometimes I get lucky and I think of a temporary goal to aim for (such as right now in Chapter 20, where the main character fell through a gateway or wormhole inside an artificial satellite in 2409 and ends up inside a Federation starship in 2152; when I started working on Chapter 21, I didn't know why Chapter 20 happened the way it did until I did some research three days ago on the year 2152 at Memory Alpha's website, and saw a possible reason; of course, this happened after 4 1/2 weeks of brainstorming and several failed attempts). I've learned the hard way with my own creativity that if I know where I'm going to end up too early on I get bored and give up. Outlining stories is even worse; that's killed off more of my ideas than I care to count. I want to be surprised. I want to be interested. I want to stumble onto something at about the same time the reader(s) will. Maybe it's alot harder this way, but it seems to be the only way it works for me right now. Kind of like a rat in a maze, trying to figure it out as it goes. Maybe I should use a "cheese" reward to get me more story-goal-oriented.
I check. Everything is in place; our three ships have come through the gateway... towing the fourth... and our quarry, finally, is right there.
"Switch tractor beams to repulsor, then disengage," I order. Giving the dead freighter a shove away from the battle zone seems the safest bet. Though we've already transmitted our findings, it's still best not to give Klur a chance to destroy the physical evidence.
If that's what's in his mind. The QIb laH'e' is turning, S'kul fighters spilling from its launch bays - just as Shalo's fighters are streaking out from hers, and my Scorpions from the King Estmere.
"Sir -" Kluthli says.
"You don't have to watch this," I say to her. "Stand down."
"I - yes, sir." And she leaves the bridge at a run.
"Launching Charlie. Launching Delta," Anthi reports. Two more flights of Scorpions out there. "Three kilometres to engagement range." Not even a chance, now, for Klur to flee. Power is building up on the gateway to Klingon space, but too slowly, and he will have no time to reach it in any case.
"Try and open a channel," I say to F'hon.
"Already trying, skipper. But he's not responding."
What do I want him to say, in any case? I wonder. Surrender? He won't do that. Bluster, explanations, some attempt at justification? He can't do that. Then why do I want to speak to him? Some atavistic urge, perhaps, to look into my enemy's eyes, as I destroy him? Perhaps it's better this way... that we say what must be said with the fury of energy beams and torpedoes, not with words.
"S'kuls coming for us. Our fighters moving to intercept," Anthi reports.
"Shalo?"
"Her fighters are moving in to cover us. Virtue is heading for the QIb laH'e'." Ronnie can't guarantee her IFF system will distinguish quickly enough between Klur's S'kul fighters and Shalo's... so the Chimera's firepower will be targeted at the mother ship, instead. Both the Virtue and the Garaka are surging forward to engagement range now....
"Incoming fire! Antiprotons, and - tricobalt device!"
Tricobalt. Of course, that would be Klur's choice. "Try and kill that thing before it hits!" I order. "And if we can't - brace for impact!"
The fast-moving spot of light expands on my screen, disruptor fire crackling around it, but failing to reach it -
King Estmere rocks, and damage messages flash on my console.
"Forward shield down to thirty per cent," Anthi reports. "Minor impact damage, forward sections. Rotating shield frequencies and reinforcing forward shield."
Klur has picked us as his priority target. It makes sense; King Estmere is the strongest individual ship in our little group, and there's a lot to be said for taking out the toughest opposition first. But, while Klur sends antiproton bolts and tricobalt missiles at us, our disruptor cannons and plasma torpedoes are firing back at him - and my torpedo officers can send four or five balls of plasma out for each tricobalt warhead he can throw. And that's not counting the firepower of my two consorts, here -
On the viewer, the QIb laH'e' is haloed in multicoloured light, green from my and Shalo's disruptors, orange from Ronnie's phasers, the eldritch violet nimbus of a Hargh'peng torpedo, flashes of red as Shalo's S'kuls join the fray... Klur's first wave of fighters has been overwhelmed already; will he get a chance to launch another?
"Tricobalt warhead inbound!"
This time, a fighter from Delta flight wheels round, picks the device off two kilometers away from our forward screen. The antiproton barrage from the QIb laH'e' is not lessening, though, and that shield is weakening.
"Sir, should we come about and use the plasma hyperflux?" Anthi asks.
Tempting. But my disruptor cannons are the most powerful weapons I have, and I will keep them bearing on Klur as long as I can. "Wait. Keep hitting him. He can't keep this up too long."
"I'm not so sure we can," Anthi mutters. "QIb laH'e' launching fresh fighters."
My Scorpions spin around, sending plasma fire scorching into the new targets. Another salvo of torpedoes shrieks out of my launchers. There is no subtlety to this fight, no clever tactics - just a single immense slugging match, my ship and Klur's pounding at each other with all their titanic weaponry.
"Tricobalt warhead -"
Anthi doesn't have time to finish the warning before King Estmere's deck bucks beneath us; lights flicker, and there is a burst of sparks from some console on the bridge. "Forward shield down to eight per cent!" Anthi yells. "Sir, we can't take another hit like that."
I spit. "Come about," I order, "ready the hyperflux -"
"She's going!" a voice cries - I don't know whose.
It happens suddenly. On the screen, the QIb laH'e' is surrounded by coloured light - and then a white light glows inside her, shining through the roundels and the strange runic markings on that blackened hull, then tearing and burning that hull apart, shattering it into a myriad glowing fragments as the warp core breaches.
The QIb laH'e' burns and bursts asunder, and slowly fades, Klur and his ship and all his villainies turned to ashes and dust, to drift forever between the stars.
Comments
Looking forward, as ever, to more chapters.
The morgue turns out to be quite easy to find; we simply aim for the medical facilities, and look for an outbuilding with a very low overall temperature. A couple of Sutton's mercenaries are guarding the doorway, but they flee at the sight of Thirethequ wielding the flamethrower. To be fair, I would, too.
It's easy enough, too, to find the three bodies we're looking for, to cross-check against Shalo's files, and to confirm identification. I look down on one body, the charred corpse of a Ferasan warrior, and I wonder: what role did he play in this? A Starfleet crew would be obliged to refuse an illegal order, but what choice did the KDF lower ranks have? Klur apparently executed two of his officers for speaking out... but the whole crew could have taken him down, mutinies have happened in the KDF before, and even been condoned when the commanding officer's conduct was bad enough. But would the KDF have decided Klur's plan was bad enough?
I look down on the dead Ferasan, and can't help but wonder what choices he had.
"What's our next step, sir?" Anthi asks, recalling me to the here and now.
"Oh," I say. "Right. We'll do a sweep around the perimeter of the port, checking for Nausicaan, Orion or even Klingon lifesigns, and trying to match them against Shalo's biometric data. If we find any of Klur's crew, we go in and pick them up. Otherwise, we circle back to the landing pad and try to link up with Shalo at the dropship. Amiga, see if you can hack me a link-up with the local communications network."
"I'm reading armed units converging on this building," Anthi says. "It must be more of Sutton's group."
"Right." I consult the tactical overlay on my visor. "They're covering the main and the emergency entrances. So, we'll avoid them, go out that way -" I point "- and head for the vehicular thoroughfare about fifty metres south of here. Questions?"
"Your pardon, esteemed commander," says Thirethequ, "but I fear your plan is impracticable, since we have no means of egress in the desired direction." He's right, of course, I'm pointing at a solid wall.
"Oh, yes," I say. "Fix that, will you, Anthi?" Anthi is already aiming the cannon pistol.
We're through the hole in the wall before the dust has started to settle, and heading south, towards that main street. I'm hoping that Sutton's mercenaries won't be free with their fire if there are bystanders about. As for us - Kluthli, Amiga and I have our weapons set to heavy stun. The cannon pistol and the flamethrower, obviously, don't really have stun settings, so Anthi and Thirethequ will be aiming them, as much as possible, at inanimate objects, for the purpose of intimidation.
We may be in a fight, but we're still Starfleet.
Shouts from behind us, and a scattering of disruptor bolts. I turn, and fire a volley back from my autocarbine. Caught in the burst of fire, two of Sutton's men drop; a third, caught by the fringe of one bolt, howls and clutches his leg. Even on stun, the neural shock from the antiproton bolts is... nasty. There are others in that group of thugs, but they turn tail and run, polaron and phased-tet beams whistling after them from Kluthli's and Amiga's pistols.
There is movement from the mouth of another alley, which stops suddenly as Thirethequ unleashes a green-hot cloud of flame. "Venture forth, recreants, and face immolation!" he bellows. I think he's enjoying himself.
"Scanning," Kluthli says. "Nausicaan life signs at bearing one three seven, range about one-fifty."
"Let's take a look," I say.
"I have that comms hookup," says Amiga.
"OK," I say, "put me on public address." And I make my announcement, trying not to sound too out of breath as I run for the next corner. "Attention, please. We are engaged in a legitimate security investigation, and we're being impeded by a group of criminals calling themselves Sutton's Consolidated Unaligned Mercenaries. Non-combatants are advised to stay clear of possible armed conflict zones. Thank you for your attention, and we apologize for the inconvenience."
"Are you planning on saying who 'we' are, sir?" Anthi asks, as we reach the corner and peer down the main street.
"Not really," I say. "I'm not too sure how to explain all this to Admiral Semok anyway."
"I have an Administrator Kendrix calling for you, sir," says Amiga.
"What the hell," I say, "let's talk to them."
"What is going on?" a fussy voice shrills in my ear. "What security investigation? There were explosions! Gunfire! Who's going to pay for the property damage?"
"Take that up with whoever hired a group of criminals to handle your security," I say.
"We hired them!"
"Well, that'll simplify your lines of communication no end, won't it? My advice is, call them off and disarm them. And tell them not to try knocking visitors over the head, in future. Bad for the tourist trade, as well as their health."
There is a cluster of Nausicaan life signs on my tactical display, but they're not close enough for detailed biometric scans. And there is another cluster of icons approaching from the west, showing personal shields and small arms. I cut off the noise of Kendrix sputtering incoherently. "Hostiles inbound, roughly one zero zero. Let's dissuade them, shall we?"
In the wan street lighting and the dim after-sunset glow, Sutton's men are barely visible, just loping shapes in the dusk. One of them fires a phaser, and I hear the beam hiss by me. I return fire, and he falls. Anthi aims the cannon pistol at the packed earth of the roadway, and fires, sending up a shower of dust and dirt. More phasers and disruptors flash; our guns answer them. Thirethequ sends a great spray of burning gases across the roadway, where it ignites the fuel cells of some ground vehicle, parked by the roadside. The resulting explosion sends chunks of hot metal flying in all directions, and several of Sutton's men are knocked down by the concussion. Not fatally injured, I hope. Well, I try to hope.
I spray fire towards the ones who are still upright; one of them falls, the others dive for cover. I turn towards the Nausicaan life signs - they're inside a nearby building. "Scanning," Kluthli says. "None of them's one we want."
"Get me the next nearest," I say, my eyes still on the road where Sutton's troops are moving in the dimness.
"On it," says Kluthli. "Mixed group of life signs... at least one Nausicaan... two-seven-two, about one-fifty metres."
"Let's move," I say, and we move.
"Reading something else," Kluthli calls, as we run. "Weapons and personal shield signatures - could be consistent with the ones we've been fighting."
A phaser beam snaps out of an alleyway towards us; we fire back. Anthi aims deliberately off-target, but the crescent wave from the pistol hits something that explodes in a shower of sparks. The streetlights flicker off, come back after a second at low strength. "Sorry, sir," Anthi says. "Must have hit an EPS substation or something."
"Don't worry about it. Just property damage." We move on.
"I have Commodore Sutton on the comm link," says Amiga.
"Oh, joy. All right, patch him in."
"Listen." Sutton's voice sounds in my ear, high and strained. "Lay off, just lay off, all right?"
"Pull your goons out of here before anyone else gets hurt," I tell him.
"Or what?" He sounds indignant. "You're outnumbered thirty to one!"
"Only thirty? When we're up against the Borg, it's usually hundreds. And the Borg are better equipped than your mercenaries."
"Over there, sir," Kluthli interrupts. She's pointing towards another alleyway. Somebody has made a makeshift barricade across the entrance, out of packing cases, I think - it's hard to tell in the dim light.
"Listen," Sutton says. "I did a deal with the Orion witch, she's on her way to you, now just lay off, will you? Or we'll have to -"
Whatever he says next is lost in the noise as Thirethequ blasts the barricade with the flamethrower. It's blazing merrily when Anthi fires the cannon pistol, breaking it apart and sending burning fragments flying down the alley. I check my scans. A group of Sutton's troops, all right, now retreating slowly in some disorder - and one Nausicaan among them. I run to the mouth of the alley, firing a warning burst over their heads. "Stand still!" I bellow.
In the dim light, I can see them milling around in confusion. One of them raises a gun, thinks better of it, lowers it again.
"- told you, I did a deal! The Orion witch is on her way to you! She'll cut me in half if anything goes wrong!"
"Cut you in half?" I say. "You want to know what I'm going to do to you?"
"Confirmation, sir," says Kluthli. "The Nausicaan - a match for a Warrior Jikkur, in Shalo's files."
I shut Sutton off. "Jikkur!" I shout. My hand is stiff with tension on the stock of my gun. This is our first chance to take one of Klur's crew... one of the people who murdered a world.
Slowly, reluctantly, a tall figure steps out of the shuffling group. The dying flames from some piece of the barricade strike red reflections on Nausicaan bladed armour. He glares at me.
Unexpectedly, a voice comes from behind me. "There you are. I will handle matters from here." Shalo.
She sweeps imperiously past me into the alleyway. "Lieutenant Jikkur," she says. The Nausicaan freezes in his tracks. Shalo turns to me. "Your Federation interrogation techniques will not break a Nausicaan warrior."
"Don't be too sure about that," I say. We've done it before.
"Well, in any case, it is not necessary," says Shalo. "Lieutenant Jikkur! I have purchased your contract from Commodore Sutton." She holds up a datapad. "Inspect this and verify it."
The Nausicaan takes one slow step forward, then another. I glance about. Thirethequ and Amiga are covering the other mercenaries, Anthi is guarding our rear. In any case, there are no other armed groups in the immediate vicinity on my tactical scan. The Nausicaan reaches the mouth of the alley and stands before Shalo, towering over her.
"Verified," he says. "Sir."
"Good," says Shalo. "It cost me fifty-five Lobi crystals, and I see I must confirm your... field promotion. Now, then. Sutton negotiated a full-service contract, which I have purchased. That means any duty of confidentiality you might have had to a former employer has lapsed. Where is Captain Klur?"
Jikkur stiffens. "I did not have navigation functions on the QIb laH'e' or the shuttle," he says.
"A general impression will suffice," says Shalo.
"We took an evasive course through several emission nebulas and other phenomena," says Jikkur. "When we left the carrier, it was waiting under stealth conditions in a gravitational nexus. I believe it is the gravitic anomaly near the star Massidia Alpha."
Shalo nods. "That makes sense," she says. She turns to me. "You see? A Nausicaan mercenary is loyal to his contract - it is a virtue of theirs."
Possibly their only virtue. "What are you going to do with him now?" I ask. "Contract or not, he's a wanted war criminal as far as the Federation is concerned."
"He is, however, a KDF officer under my command," says Shalo. "And a resourceful one - escaping Klur's crew, getting himself a secure position on this world, that was inventive."
Jikkur seems to swell with pride. "Thank you, sir!"
"Getting caught by the Federation, though," Shalo continues, "was less than competent."
Jikkur's eyes flicker, and he goes for his gun, a fraction of a second too late. Shalo draws her bat'leth and strikes with it in one single fluid movement. Black blood geysers up in the dim light, and the Nausicaan's headless body topples to the ground.
"There is only one punishment for incompetence in the KDF," Shalo says calmly.
I find my voice, somehow. "Rather a waste of fifty-five Lobi," I say, shakily.
Shalo shrugs. "Lobi crystals are of no particular worth," she says. "That is why the Crystal Consortium uses them as the base material for its unorthodox currency."
"Wait a minute," I say. "You mean you paid Sutton in ordinary Lobi crystals? Not Consortium ones?"
"Yes." Shalo turns away from Jikkur's corpse. "We should return to the dropship and make our way to Massidia Alpha at the best possible speed. I am anxious to arrive there before Klur can depart... and I should like to leave here before Commodore Sutton runs some basic checks on those crystals."
Possible typo:
can't help but wonder what choices he had. [since "he" is the dead Feresan, wouldn't "he'd had" or "he had had" be more grammatical?]
Tallasa comes storming into my ready room with a face like thunder. She has a bunch of PADDs in her hand; she slams the first one down on my desk. "Casualty reports." Slam, as the next one joins it. "Repairs to ship's systems." A third. "Revisions to lists of spares." That one comes down so hard, the screen goes blank.
"I think you broke it," I say.
"So add it to the list of everything else that's broken around here!" I don't think I've ever seen Tallasa this angry. */*---memory retrieval---commencing comparisons*/* No need, Two of Twelve, no need. "Sir," Tallasa carries on, with icy formality, "as your executive officer, I am confirming to you that the ship is not ready for combat operations without further repairs."
"Ahepkur says we're operational," I protest.
"Ahepkur is a gung-ho Klingon idiot, and she'll tell you whatever you want to hear!" Tallasa blazes at me. So much for Starfleet protocol, then. "We're operational enough to get to Spacedock for proper repairs, and that is it!"
If I were a Betazoid */*species 1599*/*, I'd be sensing hostility right now. "There's a space dock at Nali Caerodi," I say.
"Which is eighty-odd parsecs further away than Earth, and in the middle of Ferengi space. Do you have some sudden compulsion, sir, to pay for our repairs?"
"There's a reciprocal repair agreement in place," I say. "Starfleet repairs and refits free in exchange for similar facilities for the Ferengi at Starbase 105. I do think of these things, Tallasa, honest I do."
"And what's eighty extra parsecs on a set of damaged warp coils, after all?" says Tallasa. It's a very bad sign when she's sarcastic.
I try to marshal my thoughts, which is never easy. Except when people are shooting at me; concentrates the mind wonderfully, that does. Was that Samuel Johnson? Never mind.
"Look," I say. "I've been going back over that stuff we got from Memory Alpha -"
"That you got. And it is not our problem, sir."
"No." Somehow, I find my thoughts coming into clear focus. "No, you're wrong. It is our problem, because this is big enough to be everyone's problem. And we have to do whatever we can, because we're Starfleet, and that's our job."
That gets to her, I can see that. She stands up straight, her eyes widen, her antennae stiffen. "You'd better explain, sir." It's grudging, but it's better than her shouting at me.
"All right. The key to all this lies in a lot of very dry, very boring data about industrial shipping. That's what I've been sifting through. How did Klur get the amount of tricobalt he used at Bercera? Someone provided the stuff, and someone physically transferred it onto his ship. I figure that was when they changed the name. When the plan was set in motion, and they wanted to make it plain. Symbolism, the Klinks are big on symbolism, sometimes. I don't think this was the only symbolic act, either, but -" I'm wandering from the point. I take a deep breath and try to get back on track.
"Two of them were executed when Klur gave his orders. Kysang, the one I think was a Section 31 agent, and Talakh. Talakh had contacts in Ferengi space, his House is a cadet branch of the House of Toros, and they've got clout in the Klingon High Council. But they don't have the manufacturing capacity to produce the tricobalt, their commercial interests are in merchant shipping more than anything. But even merchant shipping has its uses, because a House of Toros transport was in Nali Caerodi when the IKS Shara'nga changed its name to the QIb laH'e'."
"There must have been a thousand ships in Nali Caerodi," says Tallasa. "And where was Klur's ship, whatever it was called?"
"That, I don't know. Missing a link in the chain, there. That's why I want to go to Nali Caerodi. Get some info on the spot. No space battles, nothing to break the ship, just some -"
"Spooky spooky spook stuff," says Tallasa. "I see."
"T'Jeg of the House of Toros has been calling for total war in the High Council," I say. "That's bad. Escalation ladders, we already have one foot on one, Gref nearly brought us up a rung -"
"You're starting to make less sense than usual, sir," says Tallasa.
"Escalation. The theory and practice of total atomic war, as elucidated by my ancestors of mid-to-late twentieth century Earth. Say, conventional warfare is the bottom rung of the ladder, then limited tactical atomic strikes are the next rung up; then counter-value strikes against first military bases, then civilian industry, then civilian population centres. There are subdivisions -" My voice is starting to shake as the old nightmare comes back to me. "Hitting Bercera IV was pretty high up that ladder. Gref's threat at Aznetkur was actually a rung or two lower - and he didn't go through with it, thank heavens for that - but we're still on it, and we could start climbing again any time." I look at Tallasa and my one eye is pleading with her. "There's nothing good at the top of the ladder. Spasm, they call it. The no-win situation where each side empties its arsenal of nukes until there's nothing left - of the arsenal, or of the opposition. Or of the world."
"Klingons aren't stupid." Tallasa's eyes are thoughtful. "Your people didn't get all the way up that ladder, did they? Klingons are certainly not stupider than twentieth-century humans."
"Doesn't matter how clever you are, sometimes, if you are angrier, or prouder, or more scared. The Klingons don't want this, why would they? But someone else might. Maybe the Tholians got tired of having oxygen-breathers around. Or the Undine want to sit pretty in fluidic space and watch this quadrant burn." I clutch the side of my head, feeling metal and plastic under my hair. "Too many possibilities. We need some answers. Because if we don't get them, we might burn."
Tallasa nods. "If you've put some of the pieces together, sir... it's worth a side trip to Nali Caerodi."
I keep myself from sighing with relief. I would far, far rather have Tallasa on my side than against me. "It might turn up something useful for Tylha Shohl, too," I say. "You want to help out a fellow Andorian, right?"
She pulls a face. "Shohl," she says. "Shohl has a family name... I'm none too sure she'd want my help." And she turns to go. I've never really known the whole story of whatever it was that made Tallasa and her sister clanless outcasts. Somehow, I'm thinking this is not the time to ask.
---
Virtue bursts out of subspace, into the chaos of the Ferengi orbital shipyards. The planet, Nali Caerodi, is a class L world, brown and cold and unappealing; the system's population lives mostly on the stations that circle it. A staggering seven hundred and seventy plus Ferengi commercial operations, ranging from O'Neill cylinders, twenty kilometres in length, to prefabricated living modules bolted to a work grid. Shuttles and orbital transports zip between them, space is alive with chatter and signals on every wavelength. In the chaos, it's hard to pick out the one I want - even the Virtue, lean, powerful and battle-scarred as she is, is almost unnoticeable in the confusion.
*/*resource allocation inefficient---unify---centralize controls*/* Shut up, Two of Twelve. The Ferengi */*species 180*/* just don't do things that way.
I follow the beacons to the station I want. Virtue slides into place inside the arms of a docking cradle, a kilometer or so from the graceless orange bulk of a Ferengi Marauder. I can see the relief on Ahepkur's face as our over-stressed engines power down.
"OK," I say. "Engineering, go do spaceship-fixy sort of stuff. I'm on my hols. Tallasa, you're with me." I stand up. "Let's go introduce ourselves to the guy in charge."
"I take it that rest and recreation are not foremost in your thoughts, sir," says Saval.
"Officially, I'm taking a break. What I do on my own time isn't Starfleet's business. Just to make that perfectly clear, on the record, all that sort of guff." I turn to the comms ensign. "You. Face-ache. Make sure I've got a channel open at all times. Just in case I have to come back from my holiday really quick, if you know what I mean."
"Aye, aye, sir," says the ensign.
"Transporter room will stay on round the clock alert," growls Ahepkur. Well, all right, I guess.
The dock's control centre is hot, cramped, humid, and busy, with Ferengi scurrying hither and thither, going about unguessable errands. A big status display tells me the Virtue and the Marauder are the only ships docked just now. I reach out and grab a passing Ferengi by his collar. "I need to talk to the boss," I say. "Where do I find him?"
He scowls at me. "Make an appointment, hew-mon."
I point to my collar. "See these? Starfleet Vice Admiral insignia. Means I'm the one authorizing payment on this shindig, means I'm the customer, and the customer is always right. That's a rule of acquisition where I come from. Now where's your boss?"
The scowl deepens. "Level four, main offices," he says. I let him shake me off.
"Come on," I say to Tallasa. She spears the Ferengi with a disdainful glare, then follows me to the turbolift.
The main offices are just as cluttered and busy, but there's one big desk in one corner, with a top made of some sort of real wood, non-replicated, highly polished. The one behind the expensive desk is usually the one in charge. I saunter up, ignoring the glares of a bodyguard or two, and say, "Daimon Prago? Veronika Grau, call me Ronnie, everyone does."
The Ferengi behind the desk is plump and sullen, wearing an entrepreneur's jacket in sombre hues of black and deep purple. He looks at me with an oddly resigned expression. "Yes?" he says.
"Thought I'd get in touch. You know Starfleet usually uses other yards for refits. But I'd heard so many good things about yours, what with the work you've done for the House of Toros -"
"Yes," Prago interrupts, "I thought it would be that." He glances at the bodyguards. "You can go," he says. They look surprised - at least, the human one does, I can't read the expression on the other's face, if it's got a face. "You can go," Prago repeats, and they do.
I pull up a chair and sit down, facing him across the desk. Tallasa stands at my right shoulder. I can't see her face, but I'm betting she's giving Prago a look that would scare anyone into a virtuous life. "So you were expecting us," I say.
"Someone like you," says Prago. "Ever since -" And he stops.
"We don't have the whole story," I say. "Why don't you give us your side?" I glance sideways at Tallasa. "Better start at the beginning for my sidekick here. She's not well versed in the ways of the real world."
He follows my glance. Tallasa's face is thunderous. All right, Ronnie, time to play good cop, bad cop. "Shall we start with Talakh?" I ask.
Prago nods. "He... was in contact with us before the war even started. We had a deal with him, and through him to the House of Toros, to handle shipping on miscellaneous cargoes -"
"Profiteering off Klingon commerce raiding," says Tallasa sharply. Oh, she is a natural for the bad-cop role.
"If it wasn't you," I say reasonably, "it'd be someone else, right? Most likely the Orion Syndicate. At least this way the Empire and its allies don't keep all the money." I'm really starting to enjoy this. And Two of Twelve has shut up for once, she is out of her depth, she doesn't understand how to get information out of people without sticking wires in their heads.
Prago wants to talk; all I have to do is find the right way to let him.
"We had a shipping deal," Prago says, "and, yes, I guess you're right about the cargoes, but the thing is... I'm pretty sure Talakh was - well, you know how these things work."
"No," says Tallasa firmly.
"I can guess," I say. "Difficult to keep these miscellaneous manifests in order, right? A few errors are bound to creep in, and if some of them were in Talakh's favour, well, who's hurt?"
"Apart from the initial victims of the raids, sir," says Tallasa.
"When the war actually started," Prago continues, "it went on much the same, really. Raids are raids, right? You'll never stop the Klingons doing a little piracy on the side. Part of their culture." He directs a sneer at Tallasa. "You shouldn't interfere with it. General Order Number One, yes?"
"But then something else happened," I say, quickly, before Tallasa can explode.
"About a year ago," says Prago, "a cargo run came through, and it was squeaky clean, everything accounted for down to the last self-sealing stem bolt. So clean it had to be dirty, you know what I mean?"
"Talakh thought someone on the KDF side had rumbled him," I say.
"Yes," Prago says, "yes.... The next run, though, things were back to normal. So I figured, yes, someone had caught Talakh with his hands in the till -"
"And they'd decided to split the take, rather than turn him in," I finish for him.
Prago nods. Actually, I don't think that's what happened at all. My guess is, the person who caught Talakh out was Kysang, the one I've pegged as a Section 31 agent - and Kysang used Talakh's crookery as a hold over him from then on out. But there's no point letting Prago know this.
"Peculation." Tallasa spits the word out. "I have particular reasons to dislike peculation."
"So don't emigrate to Ferenginar," I tell her. To Prago, I say, "That isn't what's worrying you, is it? This is just business as usual, across the lines of the war zone. Sure, it offends my officer here, she is a high-minded person of strict principles, sometimes I wonder why she puts up with me. But the last cargo - it would have to be the last cargo - that was something different, right?"
"I didn't know what it was." Prago's eyes are anguished. A Ferengi with a conscience; some people will tell you that's a contradiction in terms, but Ferengi are people too, and everyone has lines they won't cross. "Talakh came in, his face was like death, I'd never seen him like that... and he wanted clearance and expediting on a special cargo. A Klingon R-class freighter with sealed cargo bays, sealed and with radiological protection. It wasn't until after - after the news broke - that I realised - oh, the ship's name was different, but it was Talakh's ship still, it had to be, and that amount of radioactive material, there's no commercial use for it -"
"It was the cargo of tricobalt munitions Klur used on Bercera IV," says Tallasa, and her voice is like the tolling of a bell.
"I didn't know!" Prago shrieks. Six hundred and fifty million dead. Even a Ferengi can't find profit enough to balance that loss.
"House of Toros ship?" I ask, trying to keep everyone focused on the practicalities.
"Yes. But the House of Toros -" Prago swallows. "No way they could have done it alone."
"No," I say, "no, I don't suppose there is. One other thing I haven't got straight. How and where did the freighter link up with Klur's ship to deliver the stuff? It wasn't here -"
Prago tells us how it was done. When he's finished, Tallasa and I exchange looks.
"Shohl's going to need to know about that," Tallasa says.
One query:
"Peculation." Tallasa spits the word out. "I have particular reasons to dislike peculation." [is there a specific reason why she says "peculation" twice instead of "speculation"? I'm asking, because you've proven that you never do anything without good reason.]
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=peculation
(But it does deliver on useful info.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
King Estmere shudders as another gravitational eddy sweeps across her path. I check the status lights. Shields and structural integrity are still holding, but the distortion and the energy surges outside are getting fierce.
The central anomaly at Massidia Alpha is a knot in subspace, a multi-dimensional tangle of fields and energies where some unguessable fragment from the Big Bang has died. It emits gravitational and other energies in an irregular pattern of pulses. It is, of course, an impermanent thing - the disruption in subspace will smooth out, the pulses will slacken and cease, sometime in the next billion years or so. Right now, though, it's a problem.
"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," says F'hon Tlaxx.
"On screen."
Shalo's face appears on the viewer, hidden occasionally by bursts of interference. "The warp contrail of the DujHod Chariot is no longer discernible," she says. "Since there are no visible signs of an explosion, it must have veered off somewhere around here - presumably, towards the asteroid field Jikkur spoke of."
Left to the ordinary workings of gravity, matter clumps together, asteroids colliding and coalescing to form planets. Around Massidia Alpha, though, this isn't possible. The anomaly sucks in matter, but keeps it in a constant state of ferment; it is ringed by shoals of asteroids, their orbits continually changing with each gravitational eddy. Between the energy pulses of the anomaly, and the shifting clouds of wandering rocks around it, Massidia Alpha is a very good place to hide.
"Any idea of their heading?" I ask Shalo.
"Not as yet. I recommend that we spiral slowly out from the central zone, and I will direct ship's sensors to search for appropriate warp signatures." Once more, I'm handicapped by the fact that Shalo's data on Klur's ships is more complete than anything I have.
"All right," I say. "We'll follow your lead, then."
"I suggest you stick close. If we find Klur, I would rather confront him with the firepower of both our ships. Garaka out."
On the tactical display, I see Shalo's ship veer off, away from the central anomaly, towards the relative safety of the debris fields. I sigh. We seem to have spent far too long following Shalo's lead....
"Zazaru," I say.
My science officer looks up. "Sir?"
"We're looking for a Kar'fi carrier, right? It feels like we've spent forever looking up the rear end of one of those.... Even if we don't have the detailed technical specs Shalo's working from, surely we've got enough general data on those beasts that we could scan for one?"
Zazaru's soft brown eyes grow thoughtful. "System surveys are always easier when you know what you're looking for, that's true. Still, there's a lot of sensor noise in this place, sir, and -" She holds up her hands in a helpless gesture. "Space is very big."
The classic problem. In theory, it's impossible to hide in space; spaceships are solid, they emit energy and gases, and space is empty, so they have nothing to hide behind. In theory. In practice, there are cloaking devices, phase shifters, and a whole library of dirty tricks you can play with enemies' sensor devices. Klur's ship is huge and hideous, but it's just a tiny chip of metal somewhere out there in the rocks, and if he doesn't want to be found, it's not going to be easy finding him.
I sit back in my command chair and fret, while King Estmere swings slowly out into the rocks, following the plasma wake of the Garaka.
"There's an awful lot of sensor noise," Zazaru says, after a while.
My antennae twitch. "But?" I ask, hopefully.
"I'm not sure, sir," Zazaru says. "I have a reading on something.... I don't think it's just a rock."
"Bearing?"
"Roughly three seven five mark two zero, sir."
"Let's drift on over and check it out," I say. "Inform the Garaka we're moving to check a sensor reading."
King Estmere turns in a shallow arc, onto the new heading. Zazaru is frowning, intent on her readouts.
"There is something there," she says. "Maybe two somethings...."
"The carrier and the shuttle, maybe? If the shuttle was unable to redock, for some reason...."
"No," says Zazaru thoughtfully, "no.... Both of them are high in energy.... can't get a full emissions profile through all the noise. One of them is hugely massive, much bigger than a shuttle... the other one's weird, half the time it looks like it has no mass at all...."
I sit bolt upright in my chair. The Kar'fi carrier is too big, its Fek'lhri engines too noisy, for a conventional cloaking device to work on it - but the Fek'lhri technology enables it to phase and desolidify. If Klur wanted to confuse detector scans - and he most certainly does - he'd be using the phasing technology for all it's worth.
"Go to yellow alert," I order. Can we launch fighters in all this asteroid debris? Probably not yet.
"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," says F'hon Tlaxx. "She wants to know where you're going."
"Tell her we have a sensor contact that might be a phased ship." I find I'm gripping the armrest of the command chair, hard. I have to force myself to relax. It might be nothing, I tell myself. It might be nothing.
"That other thing is huge," Zazaru says. "Certainly bigger than a Kar'fi carrier. The energy readings are...." Her brow is furrowed in thought. "I'm sure I've seen something like this before...."
"Garaka is coming about, onto our heading," Anthi reports from the tac station.
"Shalo must know something," I say. I punch the button on my console. "All stations, red alert. Ready for combat."
"I wonder," says Zazaru. "If we could risk an active sensor pulse, I might be able to get an image of the target area - reflect a neutrino-emission scan off one of the larger asteroids. It wouldn't be very clear, but it might be enough to confirm -"
"Do it."
"Aye, aye, sir." Zazaru's hands fly over her console. "Configured... emitting pulse... data coming in. It'll take a little while to construct the visual." She peers closely at her display. "I'm not reading any changes in energy levels... I don't think they spotted us." A pause, seconds that stretch out like years. "Visual's ready."
"On screen."
The image is hazy, raddled with interference, but it's clear enough to show a black hull, rib-like fins, red plasma clouds spilling from the drive. A Kar'fi carrier, without a doubt. And behind it -
My jaw drops. "What is one of those doing out here?"
Thanks for the clarification. I'd never heard of peculation before Shevet used it in his story.
And I'm really serious about this, Shevet: CBS/Paramount need to take a long, hard look at your continuing story and make a TV series based on as much of it as possible (preferably without any changes). This makes even the best parts of ST:V and ST:E seem bland by comparison. I wouldn't want to have to have cable TV to see this kind of series, but I'd definitely buy it when it came out on DVD. As it is, I guess all I can do is dream. And what excellent dreams they are.
Klur's head snapped round. He glared at the science officer. "Report!"
"One - no, two - large vessels," the officer answered. "Details - Sir, there is much interference, I am attempting to resolve it -"
Klur gave an exasperated sigh. "No need," he said. "We know what they must be, the details are unnecessary. Damn that Jikkur to the deepest pits of Gre'thor!" He turned to Tayaira. "What is the status on the gateway?"
"Still in hot standby, sir," Tayaira replied.
"Then we can wait no longer for our allies' signals," said Klur. "We must go, and go now. Activate."
"Yes, sir." Tayaira's hand swept across her console. "Activating... confirmation codes received. Gateway will be live in three minutes."
"Let us hope we have three minutes," Klur muttered.
"I have identifications, sir," the science officer said. "Two ships - one Starfleet, one of our own. Both inbound at high impulse speeds."
"How soon?" Klur demanded.
"In weapons range in no more than five minutes, sir."
"Get us in close to the gateway," Klur ordered. "Two minutes. Close, but it should suffice."
The dull gonging sound of the QIb laH'e''s engines grew louder as the ship surged forwards. Klur paced impatiently up and down the bridge, snarling under his breath. Tayaira watched the console displays, eyes fixed on the energy readings.
"I have signals!" shouted the comms officer. "From both vessels!"
Klur stopped pacing, looked up, laughed. "Let us hear them both!" he ordered. "On screen."
Two faces appeared on the main viewer; one blue, one green, both coldly angry.
"IKS QIb laH'e'," the green one said, "I am Lieutenant General Shalo, personal emissary of Chancellor J'mpok, and I order you now to surrender and submit to questioning."
Tayaira looked up from her console. "Shalo?"
"Captain Klur," said the blue face, "this is Vice Admiral Shohl of the USS King Estmere. You are wanted for war crimes. Surrender now or be destroyed."
"Shalo?" Tayaira repeated, blankly.
Klur laughed uproariously. "Perhaps you two should fight it out between yourselves!" he said. "Let combat decide whether I face living death in a Federation penal colony, or dishonour, discommendation and Rura Penthe from our noble Chancellor! Regrettably, I must decline both your kind invitations. My vessel and I have a pressing engagement elsewhere. Screen off!"
"Shalo," Tayaira whispered.
Klur whirled round to face her. "What is wrong with you?" he demanded.
Tayaira swallowed. "Nothing, sir," she said. "Only - the KDF commander - she is of the House of Sinoom -"
"Have your family reunions on your own time! What is our status?"
"Gateway power building up smoothly. On schedule - ship is on course for intersection."
"Hostiles launching fighters, sir," the tac officer called out.
"Both of them?" Klur demanded.
"The KDF ship is a Kar'fi like ourselves. The Starfleet vessel reads as a modified Tholian Recluse. KDF have deployed standard S'kuls, Starfleet... Romulan Scorpions with a high emissions profile."
"Should we launch our own fighters, sir?" Tayaira asked.
"No," said Klur. "We would not win a fight, here and now... and this is not our day to die."
"Starfleet ship is firing, sir!" the tac officer reported.
"They cannot possibly be in effective range," Klur growled.
"No, sir. I think they may be hoping for a lucky hit on the gateway. High energy disruptor fire and plasma torpedoes."
Klur laughed. "There is too much debris in this system for that stratagem to be effective. Let them burn up as much space dust as they please, they will not touch us."
"Six kilometers to gateway," said Tayaira. "Power levels still building to threshold."
The gateway filled the main viewscreen, now. The Kar'fi carrier was huge, but it was dwarfed by the hollow hexagonal frame of the transwarp gate. To one side, green light flickered in a misty auroral display: the Starfleet ship's disruptors, diffusing to uselessness in the micrometeorite dust that flooded through Massidia Alpha.
"Power levels increasing," said Tayaira. "Three kilometers to gateway. Sir, those ships are closing rapidly -"
"Not rapidly enough." Klur's face was exultant.
"Gateway is ready. Intersecting transwarp field in... twenty seconds." Each one passed like a century before Tayaira's agonized eyes.
"In field. Synchronizing drive relays."
"Go!"
The ship lurched as the transwarp field took hold. Tayaira's stomach flipped in that vertiginous instant when the entire ship passed through the no-place that was the subspace warp, translocating almost instantly across parsecs of space.
On the viewer, the stars changed.
The QIb laH'e' now hung in a black and starry void, empty space, the nearest star some twenty light years distant. After the chaos of Massidia Alpha, it was almost a relief, Tayaira found, to see clear space on her console displays.
Clear, except for a dozen massive hexagonal bodies floating nearby. The other transwarp gates.
"Yes," Klur hissed. "Nearly there. Nearly home.... Send activation codes to all the transwarp gates. Even if those fools manage to break security on that gateway and follow us here - and that will take them many hours, if they can do it at all - they will not know which of the others we have used. Set course for the homeward gateway!"
The carrier swung around, aiming at the mouth of another gateway. Tayaira checked her readouts, and frowned. "Something is amiss," she said.
Klur was at her side in two swift strides. "Tell me."
"Power levels on the gateways are - higher than they should be, if the network has been on cold standby." Tayaira indicated the numbers on her display.
Klur grimaced. "It might mean nothing - except that the Ferengi broke his word, that he let other customers make illicit transits, instead of holding everything in shutdown while we completed our tasks. In which case... I will hang his ears in my trophy room in due course. No need for concern."
"Nonetheless, sir," said Tayaira, "I would recommend engaging the backup capacitance system, in case we need to beat a swift retreat."
Klur nodded. "A worthwhile precaution. Send the command codes to the gateways."
As she tapped in the commands, Tayaira asked, "Sir, since you have refused the order of the Chancellor's representative... what is our status now?"
"Unchanged," said Klur. "The Chancellor's representative - if that Orion truly was his representative - is not the Chancellor. And the Chancellor himself will not be displeased when we make our report to him. It is simply a matter of arranging sufficient backing when we present that report." He laughed. "Despite our hurried exit, I feel sure our backers will be ready and waiting when we return to Klingon space."
"Yes, sir." Tayaira wished, fervently, that she could share the captain's confidence. "That return will not be long delayed now, sir. Power levels already building to threshold in the outbound gateway."
"Good," said Klur, "good. Prepare for maximum warp speed once we emerge from the gateway. It is only a short way, after that, back to Imperial territory... but I would not want anything to slow us down, not at that last stage."
The gateway expanded in the viewer as the QIb laH'e' closed on it. Tayaira could see the glow from its field generators, steadily brightening.
"Power levels at threshold. Intersecting transwarp field in thirty seconds."
Klur settled himself in his command chair. "It will be good to be home," he said. Tayaira made no reply, simply watched the gateway as it drifted ever closer.
"In field," she reported. "Synchronizing drive relays."
"Engage."
Again, that moment of disorientation as the ship jumped across the light years; again, a new starscape on the viewer when Tayaira's eyes settled -
And something else. "Sensor contact!"
"What is it?" Klur demanded.
"Attempting to get a reading now -" Tayaira frowned. "Sir, there is a hail coming in on standard frequency."
"Perhaps our backers have come to welcome us," said Klur. "On screen."
The viewer flickered, and a face appeared: a deathly pale face, sharp-featured to the point of gauntness, with the dead black plastic and flashing red light of a Borg implant covering one eye. The thin lips moved in a manic smile.
"Captain Klur? Veronika Grau, call me Ronnie, everyone does... no, hang on a minute, you get to call me Vice Admiral Grau. Oh, yeah. Surrender, and all that."
Our two ships close on the gate, weapons on standby now, sensors humming. I bite my tongue to keep from cursing freely.
So close. So very, very close. And how, and why, is a transwarp gate here, in this desolate debris field?
Well, the second part of that question is easy enough to answer - planted here for the smuggling of illicit cargoes, or to take fugitives into or out of Federation space. But who built it? And, more importantly, where might it go?
"Command interface isn't responding," Klerupiru reports. The Ferengi computer expert is sending signals, trying to probe the gateway, to establish its parameters of operation. So far, she's not having much luck. Shalo, no doubt, has her own cyber-warfare experts doing the same, aboard the Garaka. I'm pretty sure, though, that if Klerupiru can't crack the interface, the Klingons won't be able to.
Meanwhile, Zazaru is working on the routine stuff - so far as any of this could be described as routine. She is scanning the gate, trying to read its construction, the materials it's made of - the ratios of isotopes in the metal of the structure might give us a lead on the planet where it was made, for instance. And she is scanning the energy traces left by Klur's escape, though I'm pretty sure that's hopeless. If there is any quick way to determine a transwarp gate's destination, based only on the energy signatures of the jump, I haven't heard of it.
"Skipper." F'hon Tlaxx speaks up from the comms console. His pleasant Bolian face is wearing a puzzled frown. "I'm getting a signal...."
"Who from?"
"I don't know. Skipper, it seems to be coming from the gateway itself."
My lips thin in anger. If this is Klur, calling to taunt us - Well, there is only one way to find out. "Let's hear it, then."
"It's got a visual, too. Just a minute."
The image of the gate disappears from the viewer, and a human face takes its place - a human face, and a Starfleet uniform below it, and what looks like a starship bridge behind it. "Signalling to all Starfleet vessels," the ensign says, "but especially the USS King Estmere, please respond. Signalling all Starfleet vessels -"
"USS King Estmere here," I say. "Who are you, and where are you signalling from?"
"We're -" the ensign begins to speak. Then there is a shout from behind him - a voice I think I've heard before.
"Out of the way, face-ache!" The ensign steps aside, and a new face fills the viewer. "Wowie zowie, you're clear. Either this transmission rig is really good, or you're right on top of a transwarp gate."
Veronika Grau. What the hell is she doing here? "We're at a transwarp gate at Massidia Alpha. What's going on?"
"Massidia Alpha? I guess you must have chased Klur out of there, then." Her mouth twists. "We were waiting for him at the exit to Klingon space, but these gates have a sort of bolt-hole capability - backup capacitors - he ducked back to the central interchange, and I don't know which rabbit hole he ran down after that. Well, I sort of do, I know which it has to be, but I don't know which one it is. Does that make sense?"
"Not really," I say. "Vice Admiral Grau. What the hell is going on?"
"Oh, call me Ronnie. I love Andorians, you guys are so good at telling me when I don't make sense. You should meet my exec, she's made it her life's work. Listen. I'm transmitting the command codes for the gateway network along the data channels now, once you get them, you'll have the same level of control as me. Or Klur, damn him. Power up the gate, meet me at the central interchange, and we can go from there. Truth be told, I'm not too sure I can take Klur by myself. The Virtue took a pounding at Aznetkur, we repaired and refitted in a hurry, my status board is looking pretty jaundiced right now. Yellow lights everywhere, know what I mean?"
I glance at F'hon; he's already showing something on his console to Klerupiru. I look back at the screen. "I'm guessing it'll take a short time to power up this gate. Anything you want to tell me while I'm waiting?" Like, maybe, what's going on?
"Right," says Ronnie, "right. Tracked down this Ferengi guy, he has this network of off-the-record transwarp gates, well, they would, wouldn't they? Ferengi. Anyway. Klur used this network, or his backers did, to get the tricobalt he hit Bercera with. And he was going to use it to get back to Klink space in a hurry, only it's not gone according to plan."
"Because you were there to intercept him?"
"That, too. But I think the whole thing is not going according to plan, and that's what's got me worried. Have you not powered up that gate yet?"
I look questioningly at Klerupiru. "It all checks out," she says. "Sir, should we -?"
I sigh. "Transmit the data to the Garaka, yes." Tempting though it might be to cut Shalo out. I explain to Ronnie, "We're accompanied by the IKS Garaka, which is carrying J'mpok's agent under diplomatic credentials - they've been helping us track Klur."
"Right, right. Better transmit their transponder codes, then, so I can sort them out on IFF when the fur starts flying. Cripes, this gets complicated. Are you ready yet?"
"Power still building up. How do we set a destination on this thing?"
"You don't. It's a very cut-price sort of transwarp net, none of your tuneable gates like we have on starbases, each one goes to one specific destination only. Hence the central interchange. Come on, come on, I can't hang around here forever!"
I check the readings on my command console. "Still some way to go. Remember, Klur just used this gateway, it needs time to cycle - unless we can access those backup capacitors you talked about?"
"No, I think Klur must've activated them at the interchange. Damn, damn, damn. Sorry. Getting frustrated, here, I hate hanging around. Should never have gone into the military, really. Hurry up and wait."
"Signal from the Garaka, skipper," F'hon reports. "Shalo says she'll follow our lead on this one."
"OK." The gateway is easily big enough to take our two ships at once. "Then we'll meet aboard the - Virtue? - as soon as we arrive. I'll bring my exec with me, she's Andorian too." I smile. "Plenty of incentive for you to make sense."
---
The interchange point is just empty space, with a dozen hexagonal gateway scattered about. I check our position: way out in Alpha Trianguli space, in a gap between two star clusters... no reason for anyone ever to come looking here, a good place to hide something in plain sight.
Ronnie Grau's Virtue is moving in tight circles, pointing her prow at each gateway in turn. My practised eye can tell that she's right, the Chimera-class destroyer shows every sign of having taken a battering lately. Still... it's a comforting presence. Another Starfleet ship on my side... even if Shalo turns treacherous, we should still be able to win a fight, now.
Anthi and I are met in the Virtue's transporter room by a tired and harrassed-looking shen. "Commander Tallasa," she introduces herself.
Anthi - normally so cool and professional - visibly bristles at that. "Just Tallasa?" I ask, in a neutral voice.
"Just Tallasa." Her voice is equally neutral.
I think for a moment. I can't come up with anything you could do, to get disowned by your family, that wouldn't get you kicked out of Starfleet too. But, of course, it's not just the disowned who suffer, but their children, too. "Family troubles?" I ask, trying to sound sympathetic.
"You could say that."
"Well," I say, "I found out recently that one of my ancestors was an amoral genetic engineer and would-be dictator, so I guess I can't judge." Tallasa looks faintly surprised. A pleasant surprise, I hope.
Behind us, the transporter pad starts to whine. I turn around, to watch Shalo and her alien assistant Foojoy step out of columns of light. "Welcome aboard," says Tallasa, in a tone that's about as welcoming as a glacier.
"Thank you," says Shalo. "For the record, I am Lieutenant General Shalo, here under diplomatic immunity as an agent of Chancellor J'mpok in... this matter. My aide, Lieutenant Commander Foojoy."
"I hope you're not planning to pull any stunts like you did with Sutton," I say.
Shalo favours me with a flicker of a smile. "I realize I am dealing with professionals, here," she says. "In any case... for the present, we are all on the same side." She hesitates a moment, then says, "After we are done with this meeting, I would like to ask a favour of you. I wish to transport over to your ship - to confer with my cousin."
I shrug. "If it's all right with her, it's all right with me."
---
The conference room on the Virtue looks new. Either they don't use it much, or it's just been rebuilt from scratch after the battle - with Ronnie Grau, either one seems likely. She sits at the head of the conference table, grinning at us through a holographic display of the transwarp gate network.
"So here it is," she says. "Five exits into Federation territory, including Massidia Alpha - don't worry, Ronnie's been a good girl, she's sent all this stuff to Starfleet Command, and task forces are on their way to those gates right now. Four exits into Ferengi territory, all a long way from Klingon space, and can Klur afford to bribe his way home safely by those routes? I'm guessing not. Two exits in Romulan space, and both the Republic and the remains of the Empire are keen to earn brownie points with the Federation, so they'd turn Klur in as soon as look at him. And one, count 'em, one exit into the neutral zone, close enough for Klur to make a dash across the border back to his home. If they'll have him."
"The obvious move, then," says Shalo, "is to destroy the outbound gateway, here, to Klingon space."
"Yeah," says Ronnie, "obvious, but I think wrong. Psychology. Mustn't let him think there's no escape, not now, or he might do something drastic."
"What do you mean?" asks Shalo. "What could he possibly do, now?"
Ronnie grimaces. "Sorry. Should explain. Having trouble keeping things straight. Your guy there, Foojoy? His species isn't known to the Borg, and Two of Twelve - my Borg half - is going spare, trying to sort out a species number for him. It's distracting. Sorry."
"Of gratification, there is," says Foojoy, "my race, none of falling to the Borg, to know."
"Yeah, well, don't bet on it," says Ronnie. "Two of Twelve, she's not exactly reliable, you know. Anyway, yes. It all comes down to Talakh, and Kysang, and the House of Toros, and the freighter." She shakes her head. "And the theory and practice of terror."
"Talakh and Kysang were the two who spoke against Klur's action," says Shalo with a frown, "and were executed for it."
"Yeah," says Ronnie. "Sad end, really, for a Federation agent. Kysang."
Shalo's mouth drops open. "Commander Kysang was a highly respected officer!" she protests. "His record was unequalled -"
"Yeah, what a swine, huh? Probably didn't even wear his secret decoder ring or his 'I am a Federation spy' t-shirt. He was one of our agents, and Talakh was an ordinary black-market spiv, and one or other of 'em got caught. And they died noble deaths, didn't they? Klinks do like their deaths to be noble. Protesting an illegal order from their captain, upholding Klingon honour even in the face of his disruptor pistol, oh, I can hear the Klingon opera about 'em right now. Brings tears to the eyes, it does."
There are no tears in Shalo's eyes, only calculation. "Councillor T'Jeg was particularly keen to have those two officers' actions made known in the High Council...."
"Right. Right. Dead heroes, no one asks too many questions about dead heroes. Dead but misguided, possibly, they might say later. See, whoever caught out Talakh and Kysang then had the lever they needed to push the House of Toros, and Klur himself, into this whole business. Might not have needed much pushing, of course, depends what their political views are."
"T'Jeg has been arguing loudly for total war," says Shalo.
Ronnie nods. "Total war is what our guys want. So far, the Federation's not taken them up on it. So far. No actual world-wrecking machinery deployed in retaliation for Bercera, yet. Yet."
"We're certainly considering it, though," I say. "Admiral Semok's been tasked with working out how to do - massive destructive strikes."
"Theory, yes," says Ronnie, "and my CO was threatening the practice, though mercifully he stopped at the threat. Admirals, they're all nuts. I should be an admiral, maybe I'm not nuts enough. Anyway. My good friend Daimon Prago told me how a House of Toros freighter got sent through, with all the tricobalt supplies Klur needed for his act of provocation. If we can find that freighter -"
"Can we track its movements through the gateway network?" Shalo asks. "Does the system keep records of transits?"
Ronnie shakes her head. "It's set up to be discreet," she says. "Selling point. The command codes are hard-wired into the gates, anyone who's got those codes can access them... and they have that nifty all-points communications rig I used to call you up... but any traffic through them is, you know, strictly on the q.t. No records."
"Hold on," I say. "I'm trying to think.... The sort of people who'd use a setup like this - they're also the sort of people who'd realize how valuable a record of its activities would be. For blackmail purposes, if nothing else. Surely someone would be bound to - to bug the gateway systems, somewhere, somehow." My mind is racing. "Thinking about it - you'd have to leave a low profile sensor package, something that would do a passive scan for transponder codes and comms traffic -"
"Have you seen those gateways?" Ronnie says. "They're flippin' enormous."
"But there aren't so many places you could put a package like that," I say, "where it wouldn't either be spotted during routine maintenance, or torn apart by the power surges during a transit. I can think of a few spots - it might not take such a long time to check them out -"
"Then we might be able to get a record of this freighter's travels," says Shalo, "though I am not clear how that helps us."
"Didn't I explain?" says Ronnie. "Dammit, three Andorians in the room, you should be able to keep me on track. The freighter. Prago told me, the freighter, he was expecting it back, but it never came back. Don't you see? Klur stashed it somewhere on the network. Klingon R-class freighter, twice the size of Klur's Kar'fi, could be loaded to the rafters with tricobalt munitions. That's why we need the freighter, that's why I don't want Klur backed into a corner. Because, with that freighter, he's got everything he needs to burn another Federation world."
One question:
Talakh was an ordinary black-market spiv [what is a "spiv"?]
I'm reading comments, of course, but I'm suffering from some time constraints, so trying to concentrate first on writing more chunks of story... among other things, I want to get it finished before November, when NaNoWriMo starts consuming all my literary creativity.
Next chunk coming up in pronto; in the meantime, here's a shot of the bad guys.
The interior of the King Estmere is... confusing. On the one hand, it is drab and utilitarian for the most part; on the other, the internal arrangements and the surprising shifts in the artificial gravity make for an unsettling experience.
Kluthli's quarters are spacious, as is the Federation way. My cousin gives me a minimal nod of acknowledgement as I enter.
"We should not be enemies," I say to her.
"But we are," she replies.
I sigh. "It is... a part of the times we live in, I fear. We are constrained by forces greater than ourselves, and we must make whatever accommodation we can. We have both done... what seems best, to survive."
Another minimal nod, grudging, but there. "I chose not to work with the Klingons."
"That was your choice. Mine, as you see, was otherwise. But you are not Federation, and I am not Klingon. At heart, I am still of the House of Sinoom. And I think you would not feel as you do towards me, if you were not also that. At heart."
"I remember the House of Sinoom," Kluthli says. "I miss it. But I've built a life for myself, now, within Starfleet and the Federation. If everything went back - the way it was - I'm not so sure I would go back."
"Nothing will ever be as it was," I say. "This is true for all life. Should our House undergo a resurgence, I am sure you would be valued, within it. As I would be." I allow myself a wry smile. "I would suggest that I am better placed than you to create such a resurgence."
She shakes her head. "Our House as an ally of the Klingons? It would never be believed, by those who knew us."
"But those who knew us grow scarcer as the years pass. We have lost one, just recently, of course. Cysitra Cira'tenis." I hold up the datapad in my hand. "This contains what remnants I was able to obtain of her communications codes and data stores. I share it with you, freely."
"Why?" she asks, bluntly.
"In part, as a peace offering between us. And, in part, for the most urgent practical reasons. Tayaira."
Kluthli shakes her head. She crosses the room, sits down, indicates another chair to me. I sit. "Tayaira is most definitely our enemy," she says. "And there is nothing to be done about that, now."
"I disagree. Klur is our enemy... and his unknown supporters... but his crew?"
"The Federation's position is that unlawful orders cannot be accepted - and that the crew, therefore, bear criminal responsibility for accepting them. Of course, it could be argued that they were compelled, under threat of death - the matter has been tested in the Federation's courts, I think, with conflicting outcomes. But, to bring our cousin to trial, we would first have to capture her, and I doubt whether that will be possible."
"In any event," I say, "we might at least talk to her."
Kluthli smiles and shakes her head. "And how are we to manage that?"
"With the resonant pulses used for communications through these gateways," I say. "If we are careful - and if we have a thorough understanding of the internal comms network of a Kar'fi carrier - I believe we could generate a resonant pulse that would appear as if it came from within the intercom system."
Kluthli's eyes widen. "It's possible," she says. "And then -?"
"Then we send one of Cysitra's recognition codes," I say, "and wait, and hope."
"You would have to know that intercom network very well," Kluthli says.
"I believe I do. The technology in these carriers is... interesting. I have made a study of it."
"Let's see some technical specs, then," says Kluthli. "This is going to be a challenge...."
---
We work together for close on two hours, addressing ourselves to the problem at hand, absorbed in it, our differences set aside. My cousin has a quick mind and a good understanding of the principles involved; I have the specific technical knowledge to make this work. It feels... good, to work with her. It is almost a comfort.
"Well," Kluthli says, at the end, "this is as good as it's going to get. Let's try it."
I nod. There are many things - very many things - that might still go wrong, but this is our best chance. I upload the code sequence from my datapad. With luck, it will appear only as a random burst of noise, a transient fault on the system, to any eyes but Tayaira's.
"So," says Kluthli, "nothing to do but wait. If it gets through... if she sees and understands it... if she chooses to respond...." She shrugs. "An awful lot of ifs. How long do we give her?"
"How long do we have? Until the situation changes, I suppose... until Klur moves, or your admiral completes her own task, or some other force approaches."
"Starfleet's task forces will have these gateways bottled up within forty-eight hours," Kluthli says. "The ones in Romulan space will require the cooperation of Republic forces - but they'll get it."
"I doubt we will have to wait that long."
"I don't know how long Admiral Shohl is going to take on her search, either." Kluthli stares at me, a hard, direct look. "If there's anything out there, the Admiral will find it. She's... very determined."
"Yes," I say, "she strikes me as the type." I look at Kluthli's data console, a spiky shape with a holographic screen, very Tholian in its design.
And I cannot quite keep myself from jumping when the visual display goes live.
Tayaira looks at us out of the viewer. "Shalo. And Kluthli. Quite a reunion."
"You sound surprisingly unconcerned," I say.
"It comes as something of a relief," Tayaira says, dryly. "The first thing I thought was that Cysitra Cira'tenis was haunting me, via the subsidiary plasma manifold on deck seven. Neat job of infiltration, I congratulate you. That isn't a KDF uniform," she adds, looking at Kluthli.
"We're aboard the King Estmere," Kluthli says. "I'm a science officer there. Tayaira -"
"Say what you have to," Tayaira says.
"If Klur were to be handed over," I say, "either to the Federation or to me, as J'mpok's emissary, there could be forgiveness for his crew, even at this stage. You are the first officer, you serve the captain but you speak for the crew. What would the crew say?"
Tayaira shakes her head. "Captain Klur remains confident," she says. "Even now. His morale is high, and you must know how closely a Klingon crew follows its captain's lead."
"Then he must expect support from elsewhere."
"Yes." Tayaira pulls a face. "I could not tell you, even if I wished. He sent an encrypted data transmission a short while ago, on subspace frequencies... that you can find out for yourself, if you have Cysitra's records."
"Then he must be unconcerned with being discovered."
"Oh, he realizes Federation forces are converging on him. I think he expects his way home to be cleared for him." Another grimace. "If you stand in that path... it might not be the wisest place to be."
"And Klur has other resources," I say. "We know about the freighter." A flash of - something - in Tayaira's face. "We do not know everything about the freighter."
"I don't know everything about the freighter," says Tayaira. "The captain attended to the details of the... cargo transfer... last time, and he took only Talakh with him, and Talakh is dead, now." She adds, with some reluctance, "There seems to be some sort of delay, with regard to the freighter. The captain is taking things very slowly and carefully, with many precautions."
Klur is loading tricobalt munitions. He does not need those, if he only plans to return to Klingon space - a fallback plan, then? To carry out another atrocity, as Grau suspects? "If he tries to use the tricobalt, will you let him?"
Tayaira bites her lower lip. "I don't know -"
"You know how he would use them."
Her face is anguished. "The operations officer - the one who activated the bombs at Bercera - she killed herself, afterwards. It was a terrible thing. But he is the captain -"
"He doesn't have to be," says Kluthli. "Klingon rules -"
"You can challenge him," I say.
"Challenge him, take his command, and survive," Kluthli says. "It could be the only way to survive."
And we both know, we need her to survive. There are so few left of the House of Sinoom.
"He is still the captain," says Tayaira. "No. I owe him my loyalty." Her expression turns firm. "Do not attempt this again." And the screen goes blank.
There is a short, strained silence. Then I say, "Well. It is as I said to J'mpok: loyalty which cannot withstand adversity is not loyalty."
"We're her adversity," Kluthli says.
She is right. I find I cannot meet her eyes.
Thanks for the slang explanation (while watching "Sherlock (BBC)" I've bumped into British slang like "it's in good nick" and had to ask someone from England what it meant). You'd think that people in England spoke understandable English.
Sorry if the comments are slowing you down, but I keep feeling that silence is not encouragement to a creative artist; silence is discouragement. If I like something, I tend to say I like it. Especially if it's as good as your and Starswordc's writing.
Thanx for the pic. I hope Klur isn't giving the usual villain's constipated look.
Definitely not looking forward to the end of your story. I guess I was overly hopeful that it would just keep going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny.
Outside the transparent bubble canopy of the Sphinx work pod, the metal of the transwarp gateway stretches on before me for a kilometer or more. The little ship shudders as the RCS thrusters kick in, sending it in a long spiral around the massive tube that makes up one of the gate's six sides. The tube is half a kilometer thick, and inside it are millions of kilometers of warp coils, and it is only one side of the gate, and there are twelve gates....
In all of this, I'm searching for something which might not be there, and which might be no bigger than my little finger if it is there.
It seems hopeless at first glance, but only first glance. There are only so many places where you can put sensitive circuitry on a transwarp gate; the electromagnetic surges produced when those warp coils fire up will fry any unshielded device nearby. There are, to be sure, shielded areas... and those are occupied by the control circuitry for the gate, and they are regularly inspected by maintenance crews, and any unauthorized devices will be found and removed.
But the configuration of the warp fields makes for occasional dead zones, places where the fields overlap out of phase and cancel each other out.... A competent warp theorist, which I am, can work out where those dead zones are. Of course, any illicit sensor device is going to be rigged to self-destruct if it's detected, so an active sensor scan from the King Estmere is out of the question. But against a close-up passive search - or, in simple terms, someone going out and looking for it - a sensor package has no defense.
My only problem is the sheer size of the gateways. Taking an EV suit and covering the areas on foot would take weeks; the Sphinx is an acceptable compromise, its engines capable of covering the distances easily, its passive sensors and its transparent canopy giving me all the detection capability I need. Still, there is a lot of ground to cover -
My only problem? Not quite. There are always the distractions.
"You've been out there for hours," Ronnie Grau's voice says in my ear. "Have you found anything besides micrometeorite scars yet?"
"Don't you ever sleep?" I snap back at her.
"Sleep is for tortoises!" Sounds like yet another of her quotations. I wonder, fleetingly, what a tortoise is. "Face facts, Tylha, this is a wild goose chase. A mare's nest. A mare's nest with wild geese in it."
"Stop wittering, Ronnie." There is an outraged silence from the other end of the link. I smile. I don't think Ronnie's used to people talking to her like that, and I think it might be good for her.
My eyes narrow. There is something up ahead - a faint blemish on the endless shining metal of the gateway. I nudge the Sphinx in that direction.
"If the gates power up while you're that close," Ronnie says over the link, "you're going to be spam in a can. That pod will tear open like cheap cardboard."
"Nice of you to be concerned."
"That'd leave me the senior Starfleet officer on this jaunt! I'd have to do all the paperwork! Don't you know how to delegate, dammit?"
"My idea, my risk." Technically, of course, she's right. Technically, as a Vice Admiral, I should sit calmly on my bridge and let my away teams take all the risks. It's one technicality I've never got the hang of. I doubt Ronnie has, either.
"Anyway," I continue, "we'd have plenty of warning if the gates powered up, right? Even in this pod, I could get clear in time." The mark on the metal is getting closer. I try to fight down a feeling of anticipation. Three times already, I've spotted little marks; three times, they've turned out to be nothing but a dent or a scar left by some passing fragment of cosmic debris.
I lean forwards in my seat and peer intently through the canopy. A faint line... a line of shadow, in the pod's spotlight... and another line, joining it.... "Yes," I say, with satisfaction. The lines meet at a right angle. Something square, sitting on the skin of the gateway, coloured to match the metal. But micrometeorite strikes don't make perfect squares.
"Yes, what?" Ronnie asks.
"Got it." The object is square, and perhaps the size of my hand. My fingers find the controls, extend one of the work pod's manipulator arms. This is one time I'd prefer to be in an EV suit, but I've used the manipulators before, I can handle the fine positioning required.
"You've what? Well, dammit, Tylha, that's - I mean, needle in a haystack's not in it, this is, what, needle in a - a hayfield, maybe. Made of other needles."
I can handle it if I'm not distracted. "Quiet, Ronnie. This is the tricky bit."
Close-up active scanning would be as bad as long-range; I need to work passive, still. The manipulator arm is carrying a sub-quantum induction probe; the minute flexings in spacetime created by the circuitry of this - object - can be read, slowly and imperfectly, through this device. Reading them, though, is one thing; interpreting them is quite another. It's something well outside my range of competence.
But not everyone's. I hit the comms panel for another channel. "Klerupiru? I'm sending a data uplink to you now."
"Ready, sir." The Ferengi cyber-warfare expert sounds fresh, brisk and cheerful. "Receiving.... Might need better, sir, can you bring in the probe to fifteen millimeters and step sensitivity range up to 2.3?"
I hold my breath as my fingers make tiny, tiny touches on the controls. The manipulator arm moves forwards and down with a nightmare slowness.
"That's better," says Klerupiru. "Resolving scan...." A pause, that seems to last several years. Then, I hear her laugh. "I know that one. It's from Quog's Discreet Surveillance and Monitoring Emporium."
"Does that mean -?"
"Every unit is enciphered with an individually tailored fractal key, guaranteed unbreakable, personalized to the customer."
I feel my antennae droop. "Doesn't sound too hopeful."
"What Quog doesn't tell his customers is that each unit also has a master key, accessible to Quog... and anyone who knows Quog, and has a talent for oomox." She laughs again. "Must admit, I scrubbed my hands for hours afterwards. Transmitting the unlock now."
On the comms display, lines suddenly dart upwards, representing an abrupt burst of data transmission across the link. Then, just as suddenly, the square package beneath the probe glows red, then white, then boils away in a puff of vapour and is gone.
"What the hell -?"
"It's all right, sir. It's meant to do that, as soon as the download's finished." There is satisfaction in Klerupiru's voice. "I have a complete image of that unit's memory in my console now. Beginning analysis."
"Good." I pull back the manipulator, and frown. The sub-quantum probe suffered in that sudden flare of energy... at the very least, I need to get back to the ship and replace it. And, with luck, my job here is done anyway. I fire the RCS arrays and bring the pod around.
The comms console flashes an urgent light at me, demanding my attention. I switch channels.
"Tylha." Ronnie's voice is flat and tense. "Get back in. Someone's powering up the Klink-side gateway."
"How long?" I ask.
"Ten minutes at best. Better move."
It's just possible it might be Starfleet, that a task force has reached the gateway in the neutral zone and is coming through to support us. It's just possible, too, that this is some random smuggler on an errand of their own. But these are outside possibilities at best. The safe bet is that whoever's using the gate is Klingon... either regular KDF, or Klur's shadowy backers. Either way, we have to be ready.
"Shohl to King Estmere. Red alert, battle stations. Pick me up when I reach transporter range, abandon the pod."
I fire up the Sphinx's micro-impulse engine, and hurtle back towards my ship.
"Status?" I demand, as I stride onto the bridge.
"Gateway is powering up," K'Gan reports. "No indication as yet who is coming through."
"Have there been any communications from the high command?"
"No, sir."
"Then we must assume the worst. Put me in contact with the Federation ships." I take my seat in the command chair, trying to project a confidence that I cannot feel.
Shohl's face appears on an ancillary display, then Grau's on a screen beside it. "I will say this," I tell them. "The Chancellor did not, does not, condone the act at Bercera IV. If this - visit - comes from those responsible for that... then my ship stands with Starfleet."
Out of the corner of my eye, I see K'Gan stiffen. Well, he is my First Officer, if he wishes to challenge, let it be now.
But he does not. Instead, he says, in almost pained tones, "That is the honourable course."
So, I muse, if we fail, he will share in my disgrace... that would be a pity. We must not fail, then.
"You'd better do the talking," Grau says. "At least, some of it. If there's going to be any talking."
I nod. "In case there is not," I say to K'Gan, "launch wings one and two." The first wave of Shohl's Scorpion fighters is already on the screen, hanging close in tight formation about the carrier. I have no doubt that the rest of her fighters are waiting on their launch rails now.
Our three ships drift at low impulse speed towards the gateway, Shohl in the centre, Grau on her starboard flank, myself on her port. The gateway is pulsating, almost shuddering, as the energy builds up.
It happens quickly. One instant, the mouth of the gate is empty; then, there is a terrific flash of light, and the ships come through.
Five ships. Four K'tinga cruisers, in two pairs, the pairs flanking the slab-sided massive shape of a VoD'Leh carrier. Fighters are already pouring out of its launch bays, taking up station in an arc ahead of it.
"We are being hailed," K'Gan reports.
"On screen. And cut in Starfleet. We need have no secrets."
On the main viewer, a glowering face appears, a face I recognize.
"Lieutenant General Shalo. This is Councillor T'Jeg of the House of Toros. You are ordered to stand down and return to Qo'noS, there to await reassignment to other duties." His eyes flicker; he, too, has ancillary screens showing my companions. "Starfleet. There is nothing for you here. Stand aside."
"I live to serve, Councillor," I say. "Merely transmit the confirmation codes authorizing the High Council's order, and I comply."
"Confirmation codes -?" T'Jeg seems to swell with rage.
"While you're at it," Shohl says, "you'd better transmit your diplomatic clearances. Otherwise, you are an enemy vessel outside Klingon territory, and you will be fired upon."
"I am a member of the High Council!" T'Jeg yells. "I am not to be questioned by - by underlings and Federation weaklings! Obey me now, or I will have your heads!"
On my command console, an image is taking shape: a transmission from the Virtue, sketching the tactical situation, offering a suggested battle plan. I touch the screen, trace lines with my fingertips, making my own suggestions. Shohl is doing likewise....
"With respect, Councillor," I say, almost absent-mindedly, "the Chancellor is also a member of the High Council, and it was from his own lips that I received my orders. You must show the proper authority, if you are to countermand those."
"And Starfleet," says Shohl, "has some questions for the House of Toros. On that basis, I'm ordering you to stand down your fighters, drop your shields, and transport over to the King Estmere. I give you my personal guarantee that you will be treated... appropriately."
"You order me? Your head, Andorian! I will take your head!"
Ronnie Grau laughs wildly. "It shall never be said that I doffed my head for the boast of a heathen line."
"My Starfleet colleague expresses herself poetically," I say. "Nevertheless, the House of Toros stands implicated in this affair, and the Chancellor will require answers, as well as the Federation. You must make ready to provide those answers, Councillor."
"Answers? I will give you my answers now!" T'Jeg turns to face an unseen bridge officer. "Wipe them from the skies!" And the viewer goes blank.
"Launch wings three and four," I say to K'Gan.
T'Jeg's forces are advancing in a traditional Klingon pattern, the fighters sweeping forwards in an imposing curve before the bulk of the carrier, the cruisers threatening on his flanks. It is a formation designed to impress and intimidate; it has served that purpose in many a frontier system, terrorizing many a minor power....
It is not, though, the wisest choice for facing Starfleet.
T'Jeg no doubt expects a straight fight, his carrier versus the King Estmere in the middle, while his cruisers take on the Garaka and the Virtue in pairs. It is not a plan that any of us wishes to cooperate with.
Instead, Virtue and King Estmere both heel over hard to their port sides. Shohl's carrier fires her disruptor cannons at one K'tinga, then turns even more sharply, presenting a rear arc in which a weapons hardpoint glows green, then lashes out with an eye-hurting bolt of light. A Romulan plasma hyperflux beam. It bites through the cruiser's failing screens, sears across the hull, green-white flares of plasma fires bursting out in its wake.
"Designating that cruiser Target One," I say, "and firing."
At the same time, Virtue fires her phaser lotus and forward cannons in a wide-angle spread at T'Jeg's fighters. The imposing arc dissolves at once into chaos, To'Dujs exploding in puffs of flame.
Target One's shields are down, and my disruptor beams will keep them down - at least long enough for my Hargh'peng torpedo to slam into the target's hull, and add its lurid violet radiance to the green of the plasma fires. Meanwhile, Target One's cruiser consort - now Target Two - is receiving the attentions of my S'kul fighters. Their antiproton blasts will keep that cruiser occupied while I finish his wounded consort.
Shohl's Scorpions are busy, too. Three quarters of T'Jeg's fighters are already eliminated, and the remaining To'Dujs - outclassed individually, and outnumbered three to one - last barely seconds against the Scorpions, which then turn their attention to the carrier. Their plasma weapons and torpedoes flare against its shields -
- while I attend to my two targets, and Shohl and Grau go after the cruisers on the other flank. Shohl's disruptor cannons are blazing, and her torpedo tubes are spitting globes of plasma at a frankly alarming rate; Grau is closing on the last cruiser now, her phaser cannons hammering its shields to nothing. T'Jeg's forces are firing back, of course....
"Standard disruptors only," K'Gan reports.
"Of course," I say. "They have never needed better." The House of Toros is a house of merchants, sitting safe and happy behind the lines, never having to deploy its forces for anything more than routine intimidation of minor systems. Naturally, they think themselves warriors - what Klingon does not? But thinking so does not make it so.
Still, it is never wise to underestimate one's enemy.
"Target Two launching torpedoes," K'Gan reports.
I count off, silently, in my head. "And... phase," I order. There is a slight alteration in the tone of the Fek'lhri engines, the faintest shift in the quality of the light on the bridge... and a deep, uneasy feeling inside me, as my ship and my body move out of sync with conventional reality. It is unsettling, on an intuitive and fundamental level, to have a salvo of photon torpedoes pass through us as though we were empty space.
The white light of a warp core breach banishes the spectral green and violet glows around Target One, and my ship snaps back into phase in time to launch an inarguably real Hargh'peng into Target Two. Against all the odds, the cruiser has brought down two of my S'kuls. I check; the flight deck transporters recovered the crews in time, replacement fighters are already on the launch rails. I wonder, fleetingly, how many of T'Jeg's crews have survived. The carrier is using its weapons without discipline, alternating between swatting at Shohl's swarming Scorpions, and firing at King Estmere herself. As a result, T'Jeg has brought down no fighters, and barely succeeded in working up a glow from the Recluse's Reman-designed shields.
A row of plasma torpedoes stretches, like gleaming beads on a string, between King Estmere and the cruiser I've designated Target Three. As I watch, a torpedo strikes through the cruiser's shattered shields, burning deep into its hull. A second strike follows, then a third, then the core breaches and Target Three is gone. Shohl's remaining torpedoes realign themselves, acquiring new targets. Most of them go for Target Four, the cruiser now being cut to pieces by Grau's phasers; three, however, turn in space to aim themselves at the VoD'Leh. I check Target Two; its shields are down to nothing, my S'Kuls have nearly severed one nacelle - it is out of the fight, and will soon be dead.
"Beam arrays," I order. "Target the VoD'Leh's shield emitters."
Disruptor light flashes out from my ship, striking with remorseless precision at spots on the carrier's hull. For an instant, I fear I have failed; then the VoD'Leh's shield wavers and drops. It will be restored in minutes - if T'Jeg's crew is even minimally competent - but, in the meantime, Shohl's Scorpions strike home with their stinging blows, and the approaching plasma torpedoes proceed unimpeded to their mark. A brilliant flare announces the death of Target Four, and both King Estmere and Virtue swing around to bring their forward arcs to bear on the carrier.
The plasma torpedoes strike. Thick slabs of armour boil away, the side of the VoD'Leh's hull becomes a tangled inferno of white-hot broken metal, burning in a dozen atmosphere leaks. For a smaller vessel, that might be a mortal blow, but the VoD'Leh is so huge, its vital parts so well-defended, deep in its interior -
But it prompts a reaction, nonetheless. "Hail from the VoD'Leh!" K'Gan reports.
"Hold fire!" Shohl, Grau and I shout the order as one. Too late, I fear, for Target Two, whose broken, burning hull is drifting powerless away from my fighters... but they hold their fire, obedient, nonetheless.
T'Jeg reappears on my main viewer. There is fire behind him, but it is no more than the sparking of a transient surge along the EPS grid. Such trivia does not even distract an experienced combat commander... but T'Jeg is no combat commander. He has proved that today, that is certain.
"I wish to explain," he says, his words tumbling hastily over each other. "It pains me to admit this, but I am but the tool of others in this matter. Let me describe to you -"
And then he glows with a fiery light, and his words burn away to nothing, as does the mouth that speaks them.
Confusion erupts on T'Jeg's bridge; I hear shouts, weapons fire; I see the flash of disruptors, see people running to and fro - for an instant, there is someone on the screen, a Lethean with a gun in his hand, and I think I recognize him - then he is gone, and there is only the noise of fighting.
A voice screams, from somewhere to the side of the viewer, "No Starfleet prison camps! No dishonour! Ramming speed!" And the comms link goes suddenly dead.
The VoD'Leh springs to life, its impulse engines flaring into maximum overdrive, turning to bear straight down on the King Estmere. As a final gesture, it is a splendid one, a valiant one... a quintessentially Klingon one.
Our guns shred the carrier into white-hot ruins before it gets within three kilometers.
Well, if you ever decide to submit this to CBS/Paramount and they reject it as a TV series, suggest it to them as a book (or two or three). And then let me know when it'll be in the bookstores offline and online. I want a hardback copy of it. This is Star Trek! This is what the movies and TV series should've been and quite honestly weren't. Maybe they didn't have the budgets, maybe they didn't have good enough writers. Whatever. I'm not overpraising you, Shevet. I'm being dead honest. When someone asks me what is Star Trek, I'll tell them to read your story (and if they're ready for more, Starswordc's story). If only I could write half this well, I'd be ecstatic.
Klur stood, a faint smile appearing on his face. He had been in a better mood, Tayaira thought, ever since the signal had come in... the signal, at last, from their unknown backers. Still unknown to her, since the message had been in some private code... but Klur was confident, almost happy, and the mood aboard the ship was lighter because of that. Now, he strode across the bridge to her tactical station, observed the readings on her screen, and nodded approval.
"They will be here soon," he said. "We will hold station here, though, for the present."
"Do you anticipate any... difficulties, sir?" Tayaira asked.
"Difficulties? No. But it may be as well to remind our allies of... certain realities in our relationship."
He could only mean the freighter. Tayaira felt a chill as she considered the freighter. It lay there, silent in space, some four kilometers away.... "Do we continue preparations for loading, sir?"
"For the present. I will decide what is to be done, once our allies and I have conferred." He turned and stalked back to his command chair. "Visual on the gateway."
At this distance, the transwarp gate appeared only as a tiny hexagonal shape; Tayaira moved to step up magnification on the viewer, and then stopped as her readings changed. "Transit complete." The little hexagon on the screen flashed bright for an instant, then dimmed. "Reading... three ships."
"Three?" Klur frowned. "They promised me five.... Well, perhaps they encountered difficulties. Put them on my tactical display. Stand by hailing frequencies."
The view of the gateway vanished, to be replaced by the crisp red schematics of the tactical display. Tayaira watched as the three dots representing the ships separated themselves from the marker for the gateway. For a moment, they were simply dots, and then Tayaira's heart sank as the computer, imperturbably, made its identifications and put them on the screen.
IKS Garaka. USS King Estmere. USS Virtue.
Klur's oath echoed across the bridge. "Those fools!"
"Our allies encountered... more difficulties than they could cope with, then," Tayaira said, with a mouth suddenly dry.
"Fools," Klur spat, again.
"Sir, what are we going to do?"
Outnumbered, three to one, she thought. They could flee at warp speed... and those ships would follow, would track their warp signature to the ends of the universe... and others would come, too, Starfleet forces had to be converging on all the gateways. There was no chance, no hope -
"Wait," said Klur, softly. "Wait...."
His eyes were intent on the screen. She followed his gaze, trying to see what he saw.
"The Orion's ship is at full impulse," Klur said. "Starfleet is following at lesser speed.... There will be a gap. In... perhaps two minutes... perhaps a little more.... Sound red alert! Bring the ship to full impulse, course..." he paused, calculating "... three two seven mark three seven three. Execute!"
"What of the freighter, sir?" Tayaira asked, even as she slammed the commands into her console.
"Forget the freighter! First, we must survive! Send the code to activate the gateway!"
The QIb laH'e' surged forwards, the gonging sound from its drive reaching a deafening pitch. Tayaira saw, now, what Klur hoped to do. Their oblique course would carry them in a curve, around the approaching Garaka, and through the space between her and the Starfleet ships. There was room - just room - for them to pass outside the weapons ranges of both KDF and Starfleet. And if the Starfleet ships were too slow - if they failed to realise the full implications of Klur's maneuver - they could reach the gateway.
She checked the command codes. "Gateway powering. Backup capacitance is not engaged, sir - if we can reach the gate, there will be some time before our pursuers can power it up again."
Klur nodded. "Once we are through, send the command codes for cold shutdown. The Virtue has codes to override that, too, of course - but it will buy us more time." His tone of voice grew reflective. "Time we shall use to reach the gateway to the neutral zone... and that I shall use to compose a message for our allies." He snarled, a deep animal noise in his throat. "In payment for their incompetence, I shall demand nothing less than a seat on the High Council myself!"
Tayaira's eyes widened. "Can they grant that?"
"I think so." Klur laughed. "If our relief force has failed to arrive... then there should be a vacancy to fill!"
More icons appeared on the tactical display. "The enemy carriers have launched fighters," Tayaira said.
"That extends their radius of action," Klur said thoughtfully. "We are likely to come under fire from the fighters, even if we are out of range of the carriers themselves. Ignore it. Our shields can absorb a few hits from fighter weapons." He seemed to be counting down, inside his head. "Time to come about. One eight one mark one four. And give me everything the impulse drive has."
"Garaka is coming about!"
"Yes. She has seen her folly - but too late, my impatient Orion friend, too late." Klur's face was exultant. The QIb laH'e' swung around, her engines throbbing louder still.
An alarm sounded. "Incoming fire," Tayaira said. "Plasma weapons - King Estmere's Scorpion fighters. At extreme range... shields holding."
"Incoming hail on Starfleet frequency," the comms officer reported.
"Ignore it," said Klur. "We have heard all they have to say."
"Picking up antiproton fire from the Garaka's S'kuls," said Tayaira. "Not enough to worry about... shields at ninety-six per cent."
"At full impulse, we will lose them soon enough," said Klur.
"What concerns me," said Tayaira, "is what awaits us on the other side of the gate."
Klur shook his head. "They have committed their full force," he said. "Even at the fastest possible warp speed, no other Starfleet ships could have reached the transwarp nexus yet."
Unless they got lucky, and had ships close by already, Tayaira thought, but she said nothing. Now was not the time to contradict the captain - if there ever was a time for that.
The display changed yet again. "Virtue is turning."
"So I see. Too late." Klur's lips twitched. "I had not expected even that much good sense from the Virtue's commander... that one is unhinged. Time to gateway?"
"Three minutes at current speed and vector. Sir, the Virtue might just make it to weapons range -"
"Stand by to reinforce rear shields if necessary. We do not fight. We go."
"Yes, sir." Tayaira allowed herself to feel a fleeting moment of hope. Was it just possible that they might survive this?
The impacts on the shields stopped; they had outdistanced the fighters. The enemy carriers were turning, but too slowly, now... the more agile Virtue remained the only threat -
"Virtue has stopped! No impulse signature. Coasting on inertia only."
"Battle damage," Klur said. "That ship's emissions profile showed some odd spikes, consistent with damage to her engines... the stress must have overloaded them once again." He smiled in satisfaction. "We are certainly safe now."
"Should we stop and destroy her, sir?"
"Tempting," Klur said; then he shook his head. "Tempting, but no, not now. No delays, take no chances. We cannot risk combat with both those carriers at once. If they come up on us while we are finishing the Virtue - No. Proceed to the gate."
"Yes, sir." The gate, which had been a tiny shape on the screen, now filled it, huge and almost reassuring. "Stepping down from full impulse. Gateway is fully powered and ready for transit. Synchronizing driver coils."
They were there. And the Starfleet ships were too far distant to stop them. They had made it, Tayaira thought. She reached for her console, keyed in the command sequence, engaged it in the instant Klur yelled, "Go!"
Speaking of which: You're really good at balancing humor and dramatic action, which is something not all authors are good at. (The Harry Potter books, for instance, managed the humor/drama balance quite well in the first three books, but after that it got too dark for me and the humor was fleeting whenever it did manage to pop up.) I confess that I miss the Borg's dryly factual comments, especially on what number each species mentioned is, calculations, etc., and Vice-Admiral Ronnie Grau's (I think she's the one with the Borg as part of her?) not always appreciative reactions to it. I can only hope that those aren't gone for good in the rest of your story.
Qa'pla!
P.S.: Thank you (and Starswordc) for inspiring me to get back to work on my own (so far, nameless) story. First two pages typed up. Not quite sure where it'll go from there, but it's interesting again. Which I guess is what's important. Not sure how to link up any new post to the last one on Sept. 12, though, since it's been over 30 days since then. Any suggestions?
"Do you think they bought it?" Tylha asks.
"Why not?" I say. "We made it look good, didn't we?" I stand up. I'm feeling restless, I've had enough of the centre seat for the moment, I want to move around. */*endocrine balance unstable---readjust---switch to regenerative mode*/* No thanks, Two of Twelve - like I said to Tylha, sleep is for tortoises.
"I just hope he buys the rest of it," Tylha says. Her face is dour and pessimistic on my repeater screen. Behind her, the weird bridge of the King Estmere looks busy. And weird. Shalo's face, on another screen, is in close-up, so I can't see anything going on behind her. Typical KDF paranoia.
"It doesn't matter about Klur," I say. "We're never going to get any answers from Klur, are we? And you and big-ears gave us the right way to get the answers."
The freighter. Part of the freighter's job is to act as insurance for Klur - proof, if he needs proof, that he was acting on his backer's instructions; a means to drag them down with him if he's caught, so they have to make sure he doesn't get caught. Typical... not just KDF, but specifically Klingon */*species 5008*/* paranoia. */*inefficient---diverts resources to counterproductive ends---share information freely among the collective*/* - yes, and there are worse things than Klingon paranoia.
"Do you have anything on scan?" I ask Shalo. Our little staged "tactical error" put her further out from the gate than the rest of us... assuming Klur came from roughly the direction of the freighter, then she should be first to spot it. Of course, when you assume, you... oh, forget it, Ronnie.
"I have a contact on sensors," Shalo reports. Funny, really. It should feel weird, working with the enemy - but, so often, the KDF isn't the enemy, anyway. It's like war on alternate days of the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, fight along side them in Orellius, Gamma Orionis and Tau Dewa; Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, blow their brains out in Pi Canis and Eta Eridani. It's a funny way to run a war.
"When you think about it," I find myself musing aloud, "the mere fact that we're having this war means the Klinks have won it. They got what they wanted, honourable combat, an outlet for their warrior classes, a way to obey their martial cultural imperative. But, then, I suppose that means the Federation wins, too, because we're letting them do it, respecting their cultural values within the framework of Federation exploration and expansion. So everyone's a winner. Kind of a shame about all the dead people, but hey, at least the cultural principles win out, and that's what matters." I find a quotation to finish on. "The first thing a principle does is kill somebody."
Tylha stares at me, but - unexpectedly - Shalo says, "Curiously enough, I was thinking the same myself only recently." Then her face changes. "I have the freighter. I -" She stops. Her jade-green complexion turns a much lighter shade of jade. "Tayaira told us," she says, "that Klur and Talakh did something on the freighter. And of course -" she swallows audibly "- they would have needed to make sure it did not get away from them."
"What did they do?" Tylha asks.
"From the readings I have here," Shalo says, "they must have overriden the safeties and turned off the internal radiation shielding."
"But that freighter was loaded to the gunwhales with tricobalt," I say.
"It still is," says Shalo. "The radiation levels - The crew must have died quickly, there is that, at least. But after such a death, Gre'thor must seem welcome."
"All right," says Tylha. "Looks like this is my job, then. Back off to a safe distance and I'll take King Estmere in."
"Hold on," I say. "Since when are Andorians immune to radiation?"
"Since we got all the hazardous environment gear out for the relief mission to Bercera IV," says Tylha, "remember? I'll take a shuttle in close, space-walk the rest of the way in my EV suit. Don't worry, it's Nukara-rated."
*/*hazardous environment---recommendation---send disposable drones to secure beachhead---replace with other disposable assets as needed*/*
No thank you, Two of Twelve. That's the bad sign. When you start thinking of people as... disposable assets... that's when you lose your soul.
Oh, really, Ronnie? another voice in my head says. And how many people did you dispose of at Aznetkur? How many empty berths on the Virtue now, how many died on the Ytsay and the Adderbury and the others? Did they matter to you, Ronnie? Did you say a prayer for each one?
I don't like the sound of that other voice. The worst thing is, unlike Two of Twelve, I can't tell it to shut up. Because I have a terrible feeling that it's the real me.
---
Tricobalt radiation isn't visible. It's only my imagination that's making the freighter glow.
It looms over Tylha's shuttle, a gaunt grey row of massive cargo modules, strung together, engines at one distant end, command module here at the other. "All right," Tylha says over the comms link. "Radiation levels within tolerances. Decon gear ready. Depressurizing shuttle and opening cargo doors. And I'm patching through my helmet camera now." Another screen comes alive, showing Tylha's viewpoint.
"Good luck," I say. The side of the freighter looks even more enormous in this view. Then it expands, suddenly, vertiginously, as Tylha cuts in her suit's thrusters.
"Aiming for the starboard side personnel lock," Tylha says.
"You're on target," Shalo answers. She, of course, is the expert in Klingon freighter designs. Or the best we have to hand, at least.
The airlock door is just another slab of grey metal; the picture bobs and wavers as Tylha finds the external control panel. "Standing by with security code overrides," Shalo says.
"No need." Tylha's voice. "No security lockdown. Klur must have reckoned the radiation was enough of a 'keep out' sign. Opening the lock."
Inside, the personnel lock is large enough to house a regiment. Tylha moves through it with what seems to me a nightmarish carefulness, scanning and checking as she goes. Well, of course, she's the one risking her blue hide in there....
"Cycling lock," she says, finally. I think I hear the air hissing into the chamber - but, of course, that's my imagination again. "Radiation levels... within my suit's tolerances. Nothing on volatiles scan."
"Tricobalt isn't volatile," I say.
"Tricobalt wasn't all they used at Bercera," says Tylha, and I decide to shut up.
The inner airlock door opens, on an interior corridor of blocky metal and exposed pipes and dim reddish light. There is no one in sight. On a comms panel nearby, an alert light is flashing on and off, constant, repetitive, and futile.
"Bridge is two levels up and four bulkheads forward of your current position," Shalo says.
"I don't want the bridge, first," says Tylha. "For what we're looking for, the place to be is the quartermaster's or the supercargo's office."
"I'm not sure I follow," says Shalo. I'm not sure I follow, either, but I'm damned if I'm admitting it.
"Records," says Tylha. "Records of loading, handling, transshipment.... With the sort of stuff they're using, here, you have to know everything about it. Not just what it is - when it was made, how it was made, how it's been handled since. You have to have all the details, or it just isn't safe to touch it. This ship has got to have all the records we need, and they don't dare edit them. That is all the proof you need to take to the High Council - and that I need to take to the Federation."
"I see," says Shalo. "In which case... supercargo office is ahead some fifty meters, one level down, one bulkhead aft."
The view changes as Tylha plods forward. She reaches a door, opens it, goes through and turns... and there is a dark shape lying on the deck before her. The first body. There will be others, probably many others.
"Klingon," Tylha says. "Looks like standard issue uniform... there's some insignia here, I don't recognize it."
"House badge," says Shalo. "House of T'llan.... It may mean nothing, of course."
"Might confirm with biometric ID," says Tylha. The view changes again, as she bends closer to the shrivelled face. "Might not be easy... I'll take a scan." By now, the radiation will have unravelled all that poor devil's DNA, leaving only gross physical characteristics - height, body mass, length of bone - for checking. Inconclusive, yes. Anyone could put a House badge on....
Tylha continues on, down the passageway, clambering down a ladder rather than taking any risks with a turbolift. Once more, she comes to a doorway; once more, she opens it. Beyond is a small, sparse office, with a single Klingon seated behind a desk. Tylha takes one look at his face and turns the camera away.
"Terminal here," she says. "Going to need some override codes now...."
"Downloading to your tricorder," says Shalo.
"Get ready for a data uplink, too," says Tylha. "If I can, I'll capture all this stuff and transfer it for analysis." Red-orange tlhIngan Hol characters glow on a display screen before her; I see her gloved hands at the edge of the frame, tapping in commands with infinite care.
Do your stuff, I say inside my head to Two of Twelve.
*/*working---
prepared for visual data capture---
translation routines online---
datarecord parsing and analysis routines on standby---*/*
And nothing more to do but wait, as Tylha finishes the laborious process of accessing the records - and they scroll up the screen, to be captured instantly by the pitiless implant that covers my left eye - and Two of Twelve reads them, and digests them, and serves up their meaning to me -
I tell the others. Shalo has already had time to gather some of it, to confirm it.
"So," she says, "now, we know."
I wish you hadn't said that. Especially after this chapter (your best yet). Couldn't you just stretch it out some more without hurting the quality? I guess not.
Btw, thank you for bringing back Two of Twelve's commentary, both the (for a Borg, unintentionally) humorous and the (intentionally) serious. The humorous parts really made me laugh, which I needed this morning.
Also btw, Amazon has a pay-per-printing setup that you could look into for selling copies of your story (which I would buy in a heartbeat, if it's affordable).
As regards the ending.... I'd feel a bit presumptuous, offering writing advice, but I have heard some good advice in my time, and there's no harm passing it on. One piece of advice I've taken to heart is know where your story is going. If you're writing with an end in view, you know what decisions you have to make, what twists the plot can take, how the characters have to develop, in order to get to that end. It brings the whole process into a sharper focus.
I don't start a story without a clear view of how it will end. A story has to end, sometime - if it just goes on and on, petering out when writers or readers lose interest in it, it's not a proper story. (In my opinion.) The final scenes are already clear in my mind... though, as a matter of personal discipline, I haven't actually written them yet. I write in order, starting at the beginning and going on until I reach the end. It's not everyone's way of working, but it's best for me - if I wrote out of order, I'd just end up doing all the fun scenes first, and then writing the rest of it would be a chore, and it'd probably never get finished. A better writer, or a better person, might find all the scenes to be fun scenes, but I'm no better than I ought to be.
A trap. Nothing but a trap. Artfully planned, with one end in view; to get them away from the freighter. By now, Starfleet and the Garaka had to have found it. And the QIb laH'e' was stuck, here... with only one way out, and that blocked by the three enemy ships.
Oh, they could flee at warp speed... and, as before, it would gain them nothing. The transwarp nexus was in clear space, their warp signature would stand out like a neon sign - no way to hide it, even if they did not blunder straight into an approaching Starfleet task force.
And no suggestions from the Captain, and that hurt morale worst of all. He had stormed, raging, off the bridge, once they had emerged from the gateway and seen -
Tayaira looked up at the screen. It made perfect sense in Starfleet terms, she thought. Machines, objects, were cheap, too cheap to be reckoned in the Federation's post-industrial economy. So destroying the transwarp gates was a perfectly logical step to take. She could see, in one corner of the viewer, the regular gleam as one broken section rotated, slowly, the light of the nearest star glinting off it as it turned.
Within hours, she thought, she herself would be wreckage revolving lifelessly in space. Or, perhaps, consigned to some Federation prison camp, to emerge in a few decades as some "rehabilitated" shadow of her former self. No other alternative, no way out. She knew it. So did everyone on the ship. The sense of defeat was overwhelming, palpable.
She resumed her pacing, stopped at her tactical console. It mocks me, she thought. Status displays still showed for the gateway network, registering all the gates at zero power. Well, of course they are, if they are destroyed, she thought.
It took another circuit of the bridge before she stopped, again, at the console, and frowned.
The twelve gates all registered the same. But eleven of them were different, surely? They were destroyed, their control circuits inoperable... how could they transmit a status code, even? All right, perhaps the control circuits remained sufficiently intact, even though the gates themselves were destroyed... but for all of them? Not one of the control computers was sufficiently badly damaged that it did not register?
She shook her head. Federation deception, perhaps? Had they rigged the gateways to register as intact, even after their destruction? It seemed likely -
Tayaira caught her breath. Or the Feds might have tried some other sort of deception -
She strode to the main science console. "Scan," she ordered.
The science officer was some junior whose name she didn't know. He stared up at her with sullen eyes. "What's the use?" he said.
"I gave you an order!" Tayaira snarled. "I want scans of that debris!"
For a moment, she thought he would still disobey; something in her face, though, must have convinced him that she would kill him if he did. He turned to the console, slow and resentful. "Setting up scan. What are we looking for?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't need you. Commence full sensor sweep. Slow and careful."
"Working." She watched over his shoulder, reading the displays. "Fragments. Metals, high durability alloys... ceramic fragments, too, looks like ablative armour from a warship hull...."
Tayaira's eyes narrowed. "Where are the high-density exotics?"
"Sir?"
"From the warp coils of the gateways! There should be hundreds of tonnes of exotic alloys out there!"
The science officer adjusted something on the console. "There are," he said. "I'm reading... twelve large concentrations. It's heavy material, it can't have drifted far from the sites of the destroyed gateways...."
Tayaira swore sulphurously. "Destroyed, hell!" She stabbed her finger down on the displays. "Everything here is consistent with destroyed ships -"
"Yes," said the science officer, "they fought off our backup here, destroyed them... blew the gates, and came after us. We know that."
"They faked us out once. Why couldn't they do it again? Scan for holo-emitter signatures!"
"You think -"
"The gates register as functional on the command network. Our eyes tell us they're gone. One of the two has to be wrong. Why not our eyes?"
The science officer's eyes came alive with sudden hope. "On it," he said.
"Keep at it. I'm going to get the captain," said Tayaira grimly.
She raced off the bridge, down the corridors, into the labyrinth that was the Kar'fi carrier. She passed a number of Klingons, some of them apparently wandering, aimless, under the influence of drink or worse... that was a bad sign. But there was no time now to discipline them. She reached the captain's quarters, hammered on the door.
There was nothing but an incoherent sound from the other side. Tayaira swore again, opened the emergency panel by the side of the door, and cranked the manual override. A few furious turns of the wheel, and the door was open wide enough for her to edge through.
Klur was sitting on his bed, his face lit only by the flame from his souvenir trinket. He turned towards her and spoke, blearily, "'s you."
Drunk, again. Tayaira looked about. There was a bottle, somewhere - round red pills, she had seen him use it before -
"All gone," Klur mumbled. "Did everything they said to, an' it didn' work. Did that T'Jeg his favour -" he hissed the word. "Talakh, Kysang, they had to die clean. No questions. Bad for me too, he said, if there were questions. An' the others, they made sense. Step it up, the war, I mean. Proper victories, real victories, do enough damage to the Feds, Feds 'll run. Made sense. Only, didn' work. We ran, instead. That's wrong. Doesn' that seem wrong to you?"
A bottle of round red pills. Tayaira's hand closed over it gratefully. She shook out two of them, held them out to Klur. "Take these, sir."
"Don' wanna," Klur slurred.
"Sir. Take them."
Klur struck out, a petulant, childish gesture, knocking the pills out of Tayaira's hand. She took a deep breath. Then she slapped Klur across the face, as hard as she could.
The captain subsided onto the bed, his face a mask of astonishment and affront.
"Sir." Tayaira put as much command as she could into her voice. "I serve the captain, but I speak for the crew, and your crew needs you now." She shook another two pills out of the bottle. "Take them."
Staring at her as if hypnotized, Klur reached up, took the pills from her hand, and swallowed them. Tayaira kept her eyes on him, watched him wince as the alcohol antagonist began to work, as his eyes and his expression began to clear.
"Waste of good bloodwine," Klur said in a rasping voice.
"The Feds faked the destruction of the gateways," Tayaira said.
"What?"
"The only real wreckage is from the relief force. I have science, now, trying to pinpoint the holo-emitters -"
Klur sprang up. "Are you sure about this?"
"I -" Tayaira swallowed hard. "I believe so, sir."
"If you're wrong," Klur said, "I will kill you three times over before I die."
"If I'm wrong, sir," said Tayaira, "I'll welcome that."
Klur strode to the door, reactivated the mechanism, and was through it at a run. Tayaira followed.
On the bridge, the science officer was alternately whooping with laughter and working feverishly at his console. "I have them, sir!" he shouted as Klur charged towards him. "I have them! She was right!"
"Show me," Klur demanded.
"Emitter signatures - here, here, here -" the science officer pointed. "Every gateway has them! I've been working it out, we can channel a tetryon pulse through the main deflector and burn them out with a single energy spike -"
"Do it," Klur said.
He stalked to his command chair. Tayaira watched as the science officer's hands flew over his console, programming the sequences. "Ready, sir!" he shouted. "Energizing now!"
A deep muttering grumble came from power sources in the bowels of the QIb laH'e', and the screen cleared. Like magic, Tayaira thought. The drifting debris faded from sight, the gateways reappeared, intact, pristine.
"It's like coming back to life," she whispered, inaudible in all the joyful shouting on the bridge.
"We're not home yet," said Klur. "Bring the ship to alert status! And power up the homeward gateway!"
Tayaira turned to her console, to enter the commands, and stopped. The status display still showed the power levels for all twelve gates. Eleven were powered down, cold, inert.
One was at maximum power already. Ready for transit.
Copyright-wise, I can understand. But that's why I suggested submitting to the copyright-holder, in this case CBS Studios. Your story isn't just some fan fic written by a teenager with little or no story-writing experience. Your story quality is far better than that. At worst, CBS Studios will reject it and then I guess it'll have to just stay a fan fic. But what if ... what if they actually accept it ... and what if they not only accept it but pay you for it ... and what they want more from you? Isn't it worth risking that rejection? */*probability of rejection is high, but definitive result unknown unless attempt is made*/* (as Two of Twelve might say)
Story-structure-wise, you think like my late father did when he was composing music. He always had a goal in mind, what he needed to accomplish as a whole. I'm an improviser. I make it up as I go, and try to fix the earlier structural problems once I figure out what their solution is. Sometimes I get lucky and I think of a temporary goal to aim for (such as right now in Chapter 20, where the main character fell through a gateway or wormhole inside an artificial satellite in 2409 and ends up inside a Federation starship in 2152; when I started working on Chapter 21, I didn't know why Chapter 20 happened the way it did until I did some research three days ago on the year 2152 at Memory Alpha's website, and saw a possible reason; of course, this happened after 4 1/2 weeks of brainstorming and several failed attempts). I've learned the hard way with my own creativity that if I know where I'm going to end up too early on I get bored and give up. Outlining stories is even worse; that's killed off more of my ideas than I care to count. I want to be surprised. I want to be interested. I want to stumble onto something at about the same time the reader(s) will. Maybe it's alot harder this way, but it seems to be the only way it works for me right now. Kind of like a rat in a maze, trying to figure it out as it goes. Maybe I should use a "cheese" reward to get me more story-goal-oriented.
"Launching Alpha," says Anthi. "Launching Bravo."
I check. Everything is in place; our three ships have come through the gateway... towing the fourth... and our quarry, finally, is right there.
"Switch tractor beams to repulsor, then disengage," I order. Giving the dead freighter a shove away from the battle zone seems the safest bet. Though we've already transmitted our findings, it's still best not to give Klur a chance to destroy the physical evidence.
If that's what's in his mind. The QIb laH'e' is turning, S'kul fighters spilling from its launch bays - just as Shalo's fighters are streaking out from hers, and my Scorpions from the King Estmere.
"Sir -" Kluthli says.
"You don't have to watch this," I say to her. "Stand down."
"I - yes, sir." And she leaves the bridge at a run.
"Launching Charlie. Launching Delta," Anthi reports. Two more flights of Scorpions out there. "Three kilometres to engagement range." Not even a chance, now, for Klur to flee. Power is building up on the gateway to Klingon space, but too slowly, and he will have no time to reach it in any case.
"Try and open a channel," I say to F'hon.
"Already trying, skipper. But he's not responding."
What do I want him to say, in any case? I wonder. Surrender? He won't do that. Bluster, explanations, some attempt at justification? He can't do that. Then why do I want to speak to him? Some atavistic urge, perhaps, to look into my enemy's eyes, as I destroy him? Perhaps it's better this way... that we say what must be said with the fury of energy beams and torpedoes, not with words.
"S'kuls coming for us. Our fighters moving to intercept," Anthi reports.
"Shalo?"
"Her fighters are moving in to cover us. Virtue is heading for the QIb laH'e'." Ronnie can't guarantee her IFF system will distinguish quickly enough between Klur's S'kul fighters and Shalo's... so the Chimera's firepower will be targeted at the mother ship, instead. Both the Virtue and the Garaka are surging forward to engagement range now....
"Incoming fire! Antiprotons, and - tricobalt device!"
Tricobalt. Of course, that would be Klur's choice. "Try and kill that thing before it hits!" I order. "And if we can't - brace for impact!"
The fast-moving spot of light expands on my screen, disruptor fire crackling around it, but failing to reach it -
King Estmere rocks, and damage messages flash on my console.
"Forward shield down to thirty per cent," Anthi reports. "Minor impact damage, forward sections. Rotating shield frequencies and reinforcing forward shield."
Klur has picked us as his priority target. It makes sense; King Estmere is the strongest individual ship in our little group, and there's a lot to be said for taking out the toughest opposition first. But, while Klur sends antiproton bolts and tricobalt missiles at us, our disruptor cannons and plasma torpedoes are firing back at him - and my torpedo officers can send four or five balls of plasma out for each tricobalt warhead he can throw. And that's not counting the firepower of my two consorts, here -
On the viewer, the QIb laH'e' is haloed in multicoloured light, green from my and Shalo's disruptors, orange from Ronnie's phasers, the eldritch violet nimbus of a Hargh'peng torpedo, flashes of red as Shalo's S'kuls join the fray... Klur's first wave of fighters has been overwhelmed already; will he get a chance to launch another?
"Tricobalt warhead inbound!"
This time, a fighter from Delta flight wheels round, picks the device off two kilometers away from our forward screen. The antiproton barrage from the QIb laH'e' is not lessening, though, and that shield is weakening.
"Sir, should we come about and use the plasma hyperflux?" Anthi asks.
Tempting. But my disruptor cannons are the most powerful weapons I have, and I will keep them bearing on Klur as long as I can. "Wait. Keep hitting him. He can't keep this up too long."
"I'm not so sure we can," Anthi mutters. "QIb laH'e' launching fresh fighters."
My Scorpions spin around, sending plasma fire scorching into the new targets. Another salvo of torpedoes shrieks out of my launchers. There is no subtlety to this fight, no clever tactics - just a single immense slugging match, my ship and Klur's pounding at each other with all their titanic weaponry.
"Tricobalt warhead -"
Anthi doesn't have time to finish the warning before King Estmere's deck bucks beneath us; lights flicker, and there is a burst of sparks from some console on the bridge. "Forward shield down to eight per cent!" Anthi yells. "Sir, we can't take another hit like that."
I spit. "Come about," I order, "ready the hyperflux -"
"She's going!" a voice cries - I don't know whose.
It happens suddenly. On the screen, the QIb laH'e' is surrounded by coloured light - and then a white light glows inside her, shining through the roundels and the strange runic markings on that blackened hull, then tearing and burning that hull apart, shattering it into a myriad glowing fragments as the warp core breaches.
The QIb laH'e' burns and bursts asunder, and slowly fades, Klur and his ship and all his villainies turned to ashes and dust, to drift forever between the stars.