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starswordc
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in Ten Forward
So, while I was writing an earlier story featuring MV!Eleya, I approached Patrick about writing the Federation's counterattack against the Klingons under Admiral Alcott, driven mainly by Sabaton songs. This is that story. *bung-bung*
Previously, on The War of the Masters:
And now, the continuation.
Imperial Klingon Ship taj nI’, Klingon Occupation Zone, 2 LY from New London, Hromi Cluster. 10 November 2406.
“This is where the distress signal from IKS juS’mung originated, B’Helka HoD.”
Commander B’Helka leaned forward as the D7R K’t’rika-class battlecruiser came out of warp. “Qovpatlh,” she breathed, stunned at the sight. “What in Kahless’s name happened here?”
Ahead, a line of eighteen starships drifted powerless through the void, strung out haphazardly across a five hundred kilometer stretch of emptiness.
“It’s Convoy HutmaH cha’, I’ve confirmed it,” the bekk manning the old battlecruiser’s sensors said. “I’ve got two areas of molecular debris hotter than the background, just off their course.”
“The escorts,” her first officer, a youngish common-born Orion named Veila, surmised.
“Two out of three at least. Any response to our hails?”
“Not yet. There is somebody over there, but… Captain, look!”
He magnified the hull of the Bury, a freighter from the former Federation colony of Valken’s World that had been captured on the first day of the war, while Klag tied up Federation forces at Korvat. In addition to an internal hold, the ship had a humped hull designed to carry cargo containers in the gap beneath, between the crew section at the bow and the engines aft.
The warp nacelles had been shot off, the internal hold ripped open by gunfire, the exposed containers destroyed.
“Getting a response, finally.”
“On speakers.”
“Klingon vessel, this is Captain Radcliffe on the Bury. Boy, am I glad to see you.”
“Captain Radcliffe, this is Commander B’Helka. Why did you not respond?”
“Sorry, I was down in the galley having dinner. Took me a bit to get to the bridge.”
“He seems remarkably calm for somebody with a dead ship,” Veila remarked rather dryly.
“Captain, what happened here? Who attacked you?”
“Starfleet came out of nowhere and—”
“Starfleet?” Veila blurted. “Have you been drinking too much reactor cola or have you just gone space-happy, Captain?”
“Lady, I don’t know who the hell you think you are but I swear I’m telling the truth. It was five Starfleet ships, a light cruiser and four escorts. They came in, blew your boys away in like five seconds, then shot us all up and left us for dead!”
“Enough! Bring us alongside the Bury so we can send over an investigation team,” she ordered. She closed the channel, furious at the man’s ridiculous lies. “Starfleet wouldn’t do this.”
Main Hold, Valken’s World freighter Bury.
Lieutenant Veila led the first boarding team, emerging from the transporter beam in a pressure suit. The hold had been melted open to space and the interior bulkheads scarred by a powerful energy weapon. Blackened remains of packing crates and bits of melted and refrozen metal from cargo and hulls floated about aimlessly in zero gravity.
“Starfleet did this?”
“Lieutenant, Captain Radcliffe is at the airlock asking to speak to you.”
The Orion disengaged her maglocks from the floor and pushed off, then carefully pushed off the ceiling to continue heading to the airlock. It was scarred by the heat of the weapon, melted to inoperability, and somebody had cut the outer door loose with a plasma torch. Inside, plastic sheeting with a rubber seal, secured to the walls with engine tape, made a passable temporary lock. She pulled the seal up, passed underneath and carefully re-secured it, then drew her disruptor pistol before opening the inner door.
Radcliffe turned out to be a light brown man in probably his sixties, completely bald with a few day’s unshaven growth. He quickly threw his hands in the air at the sight of her weapon. “Don’t shoot!”
Veila lowered her gun and raised her visor, sending a calming dose of pheromones wafting in the human’s direction. “Captain Radcliffe?” He nodded. “I’m Lieutenant Veila, XO of the taj nI’. What really happened here?”
“I swear to you, I’m telling the truth, damn it!”
“Prove it. Did you get recordings at all?”
“The bridge, this way.”
The floor vibrated slightly as they walked. Clearly the emergency powerplant was still operational, but with no nacelles everything was directed to life support. The crewmen looked a little on the worse-for-wear side, but not hobbled or crippled. They didn’t even smell too bad: clearly they were getting to bathe.
The bridge was two decks up and about four compartments forward of where Veila had entered. Radcliffe led her to a screen. “Right here.”
The 2D video was grainy and had a lot of missing pixels; the camera obviously hadn’t seen any maintenance in a while. But the ships on the screen were undeniably Starfleet-built. A Shi’Kahr-class light cruiser and a trio of Defiant- or São Paulo-class escorts had attacked from the convoy’s flank at warp, striking the raptor ghlIyveS amidships with a concentrated salvo of phaser fire and blowing her apart.
The convoy was forced to drop to sublight speed to fight properly. Though spaceships certainly could fight at warp, it was normally avoided: maneuvers and counter-maneuvers were next to impossible because even a minor course correction or change in velocity would take a ship hundreds of thousands of kilometers off-course in an eyeblink. If the convoy scattered, or if the escorts attempted to hold off the attackers, some of the ships might escape in the unimaginable emptiness of space, but they would be helpless in the face of more attacks.
The attacker in a faster-than-light stern chase against a convoy therefore held all the cards. Particularly now that overall command had been taken up by political appointees, men from Qo’noS who babbled about ‘glory’ while hiding in offices and counting the profits from conquests not yet realized.
On the screen, the two remaining escorts, a pair of QulDun-class birds-of-prey, fought valiantly. One Federation escort sustained a hit to an impulse engine that slowed her some, but the odds were too far against the defenders: they barely lasted two minutes. First, one bird-of-prey died to a São Paulo, then the other to the cruiser.
“What happened next?”
“We asked for terms. She said ‘unconditional surrender’.”
“‘She’? It was a woman in command?”
“Didn’t give a name, didn’t give a screen call, we didn’t get a name on any of them, but yeah, definitely a woman.”
“Did she have an accent or anything?”
He c*cked his head. “Accent reminded me of a Mobie. Or maybe it was a Bajoran: some of them sound like Mobie Jews.”
“Hmmm. What then?”
“We had a cargo of small arms for the garrison on New London. They beamed it out of our hold, then shot up our warp drive and burned the rest of the cargo.”
“Hm. I recall a few arguments have been made to issue better defensive weapons on cargo ships—but K’Ragh is dead and B’Sanos has less leverage to work with. Today is your lucky day, Captain Radcliffe. You’ll get to return home on a Klingon cruiser instead of waiting for your inevitable death at sublight speeds. Gather your crew and information.” The Orion eyed him seriously. “Don’t dawdle, we’re on a schedule. My commanding officer will require your written, as well as spoken testimony about this attack.”
“Hope the Empire’s planning to tow my ship, too.”
“We can… work that out,” Veila allowed.
Bridge, IKS taj ni’.
“Starfleet, doing commerce raids?”
“Probably got the idea from your late husband, sir,” Veila suggested.
“The idea, maybe, but what kind of Starfleet officer would have the good sense to carry a mission like this out?” B’Helka shook her head. “Comms, put me through to Ganalda Command.”
“Yes sir.” He tapped some keys. Then tapped some more. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“The subspace radio relay at teSq-4334 isn’t answering.”
“That is Third Fleet’s area of control, yes?” She shook her head. “We have a mission, and we can route through alternates. Let K’Hugh’s people deal with their broken satellites.”
Veila looked concerned. “But it could be enemy action.”
“Yes, yes it can, it probably is… but if they’re conducting commerce raiding and attacking infrastructure in adjoining operations areas, that simply means the enemy has finally found someone competent to fight us… which will winnow away the idiots in our own ranks. And perhaps convince those bloated fools on Qo’noS that their interference is hampering our efforts.”
B’Helka grinned ferally. “This is going to be fun.”
Previously, on The War of the Masters:
- Kanril Eleya led three starships in a failed attempt to rescue a Federation colony from an Orion raid, and had bloody well enough of trying to fight the war like a police action.
- Moab saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out while the getting was good, only to discover that the getting wasn't quite as good as they thought when much of the Federation turned out to be as p*ssed at Earth as they were.
And now, the continuation.
Prologue: The Chill of Winter
Imperial Klingon Ship taj nI’, Klingon Occupation Zone, 2 LY from New London, Hromi Cluster. 10 November 2406.
“This is where the distress signal from IKS juS’mung originated, B’Helka HoD.”
Commander B’Helka leaned forward as the D7R K’t’rika-class battlecruiser came out of warp. “Qovpatlh,” she breathed, stunned at the sight. “What in Kahless’s name happened here?”
Ahead, a line of eighteen starships drifted powerless through the void, strung out haphazardly across a five hundred kilometer stretch of emptiness.
“It’s Convoy HutmaH cha’, I’ve confirmed it,” the bekk manning the old battlecruiser’s sensors said. “I’ve got two areas of molecular debris hotter than the background, just off their course.”
“The escorts,” her first officer, a youngish common-born Orion named Veila, surmised.
“Two out of three at least. Any response to our hails?”
“Not yet. There is somebody over there, but… Captain, look!”
He magnified the hull of the Bury, a freighter from the former Federation colony of Valken’s World that had been captured on the first day of the war, while Klag tied up Federation forces at Korvat. In addition to an internal hold, the ship had a humped hull designed to carry cargo containers in the gap beneath, between the crew section at the bow and the engines aft.
The warp nacelles had been shot off, the internal hold ripped open by gunfire, the exposed containers destroyed.
“Getting a response, finally.”
“On speakers.”
“Klingon vessel, this is Captain Radcliffe on the Bury. Boy, am I glad to see you.”
“Captain Radcliffe, this is Commander B’Helka. Why did you not respond?”
“Sorry, I was down in the galley having dinner. Took me a bit to get to the bridge.”
“He seems remarkably calm for somebody with a dead ship,” Veila remarked rather dryly.
“Captain, what happened here? Who attacked you?”
“Starfleet came out of nowhere and—”
“Starfleet?” Veila blurted. “Have you been drinking too much reactor cola or have you just gone space-happy, Captain?”
“Lady, I don’t know who the hell you think you are but I swear I’m telling the truth. It was five Starfleet ships, a light cruiser and four escorts. They came in, blew your boys away in like five seconds, then shot us all up and left us for dead!”
“Enough! Bring us alongside the Bury so we can send over an investigation team,” she ordered. She closed the channel, furious at the man’s ridiculous lies. “Starfleet wouldn’t do this.”
Main Hold, Valken’s World freighter Bury.
Lieutenant Veila led the first boarding team, emerging from the transporter beam in a pressure suit. The hold had been melted open to space and the interior bulkheads scarred by a powerful energy weapon. Blackened remains of packing crates and bits of melted and refrozen metal from cargo and hulls floated about aimlessly in zero gravity.
“Starfleet did this?”
“Lieutenant, Captain Radcliffe is at the airlock asking to speak to you.”
The Orion disengaged her maglocks from the floor and pushed off, then carefully pushed off the ceiling to continue heading to the airlock. It was scarred by the heat of the weapon, melted to inoperability, and somebody had cut the outer door loose with a plasma torch. Inside, plastic sheeting with a rubber seal, secured to the walls with engine tape, made a passable temporary lock. She pulled the seal up, passed underneath and carefully re-secured it, then drew her disruptor pistol before opening the inner door.
Radcliffe turned out to be a light brown man in probably his sixties, completely bald with a few day’s unshaven growth. He quickly threw his hands in the air at the sight of her weapon. “Don’t shoot!”
Veila lowered her gun and raised her visor, sending a calming dose of pheromones wafting in the human’s direction. “Captain Radcliffe?” He nodded. “I’m Lieutenant Veila, XO of the taj nI’. What really happened here?”
“I swear to you, I’m telling the truth, damn it!”
“Prove it. Did you get recordings at all?”
“The bridge, this way.”
The floor vibrated slightly as they walked. Clearly the emergency powerplant was still operational, but with no nacelles everything was directed to life support. The crewmen looked a little on the worse-for-wear side, but not hobbled or crippled. They didn’t even smell too bad: clearly they were getting to bathe.
The bridge was two decks up and about four compartments forward of where Veila had entered. Radcliffe led her to a screen. “Right here.”
The 2D video was grainy and had a lot of missing pixels; the camera obviously hadn’t seen any maintenance in a while. But the ships on the screen were undeniably Starfleet-built. A Shi’Kahr-class light cruiser and a trio of Defiant- or São Paulo-class escorts had attacked from the convoy’s flank at warp, striking the raptor ghlIyveS amidships with a concentrated salvo of phaser fire and blowing her apart.
The convoy was forced to drop to sublight speed to fight properly. Though spaceships certainly could fight at warp, it was normally avoided: maneuvers and counter-maneuvers were next to impossible because even a minor course correction or change in velocity would take a ship hundreds of thousands of kilometers off-course in an eyeblink. If the convoy scattered, or if the escorts attempted to hold off the attackers, some of the ships might escape in the unimaginable emptiness of space, but they would be helpless in the face of more attacks.
The attacker in a faster-than-light stern chase against a convoy therefore held all the cards. Particularly now that overall command had been taken up by political appointees, men from Qo’noS who babbled about ‘glory’ while hiding in offices and counting the profits from conquests not yet realized.
On the screen, the two remaining escorts, a pair of QulDun-class birds-of-prey, fought valiantly. One Federation escort sustained a hit to an impulse engine that slowed her some, but the odds were too far against the defenders: they barely lasted two minutes. First, one bird-of-prey died to a São Paulo, then the other to the cruiser.
“What happened next?”
“We asked for terms. She said ‘unconditional surrender’.”
“‘She’? It was a woman in command?”
“Didn’t give a name, didn’t give a screen call, we didn’t get a name on any of them, but yeah, definitely a woman.”
“Did she have an accent or anything?”
He c*cked his head. “Accent reminded me of a Mobie. Or maybe it was a Bajoran: some of them sound like Mobie Jews.”
“Hmmm. What then?”
“We had a cargo of small arms for the garrison on New London. They beamed it out of our hold, then shot up our warp drive and burned the rest of the cargo.”
“Hm. I recall a few arguments have been made to issue better defensive weapons on cargo ships—but K’Ragh is dead and B’Sanos has less leverage to work with. Today is your lucky day, Captain Radcliffe. You’ll get to return home on a Klingon cruiser instead of waiting for your inevitable death at sublight speeds. Gather your crew and information.” The Orion eyed him seriously. “Don’t dawdle, we’re on a schedule. My commanding officer will require your written, as well as spoken testimony about this attack.”
“Hope the Empire’s planning to tow my ship, too.”
“We can… work that out,” Veila allowed.
Bridge, IKS taj ni’.
“Starfleet, doing commerce raids?”
“Probably got the idea from your late husband, sir,” Veila suggested.
“The idea, maybe, but what kind of Starfleet officer would have the good sense to carry a mission like this out?” B’Helka shook her head. “Comms, put me through to Ganalda Command.”
“Yes sir.” He tapped some keys. Then tapped some more. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“The subspace radio relay at teSq-4334 isn’t answering.”
“That is Third Fleet’s area of control, yes?” She shook her head. “We have a mission, and we can route through alternates. Let K’Hugh’s people deal with their broken satellites.”
Veila looked concerned. “But it could be enemy action.”
“Yes, yes it can, it probably is… but if they’re conducting commerce raiding and attacking infrastructure in adjoining operations areas, that simply means the enemy has finally found someone competent to fight us… which will winnow away the idiots in our own ranks. And perhaps convince those bloated fools on Qo’noS that their interference is hampering our efforts.”
B’Helka grinned ferally. “This is going to be fun.”
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
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By StarSword-C, Patrickngo, Knightraider6, and Takeshi Yamato
Part I: What’s Good for the Goose…
To their own shore came the World War
Gleaves and Ingham
Leading the Bury west
Took the short way in, the long route back
Convoy 92
Bury, Gleaves and Ingham leading
Tankers to the west
And upon the North Atlantic
Lies the silence of the seas
On a quietest night, in the darkest hour
The Kriegsmarine appear
Above the surface it seems quiet and calm
Deep down below the wolfpack lurks
To their own shore came the world war
Gleaves and Ingham leading the Bury west
In their own track came the wolfpack
Gleaves led the convoy into the hornets’ nest
At the crack of dawn the second day
Bury stands in flames
Half the convoy sunk or disabled
Heading back to shore
But below the north Atlantic
On the bottom of the sea
On the second night, in the darkest hour
The Kriegsmarine returns
The wolfpack surface for a second time
To make the convoy face it’s fate
To their own shore came the world war
Gleaves and Ingham leading the Bury west
In their own track came the wolfpack
Gleaves led the convoy into the hornets’ nest
Under fire, under water
May 42, when Bury did fail the test
To their own shore came the world war
Gleaves and the Ingham leading them into death
569 makes the contact and lead them
U-94 scores a kill in the dark
124 sinking four in two approaches
406 suffers failure on launch
In their own track came the wolfpack
Gleaves led the convoy into the hornets’ nest
Don’t know what’s waiting down below
The Wolfpack lurks, awaiting you
To follow, to bleed
It’s time for you to return, they decide
Oh no! Oh no!
The Wolfpack’s waiting for them
Too calm, you’ll see
Below the surface, waits for you
Sabaton, “Wolfpack”
Songwriter, Joakim Brodén
Terminal 3, Sherman’s Planet Interstellar Port Authority, Sherman’s Star system, 9 October, 2406…
News Terminals and public displays interrupted their normal flow of adverts.
On screens here, and throughout the Hromi Cluster, a dancing, cartoon borg waving a comically oversize carving knife announced, “And here’s something You’ll REaLLy Like! Another special report from Skynet!! The Truth shall be FREED!!” the cartoon character slams the blade into a chain holding down what appear to be a box of papers. “Information wants to be free!”
The comically drawn cyborg was replaced, at first, by a bland administrator, then, by text taken from a document with the seals of the United Federation of Planets Bureau of Colonial Development.
It was the official Federation report on Moab III, including a detailed plan for the forced relocation of that world’s population, and the Federation Council’s authorization for the removal of industrial and economic assets from the worlds closest to the Klingon advance. Skynet hadn’t even bothered to remove the “Classified” tags before spamming it to over a thousand news nets.
Millions of Federation citizens got to see the current status of the war, maps showing the Klingon advance, Starfleet’s retreats, and, on a side window, the Bureau of Colonial Development’s plan to create a deindustrialized buffer zone, including the Earth Interior Minister’s proposed settlement offer to the Klingons, an offer that, if the Federation Council accepted it, would leave twenty colonies behind a new ‘Neutral zone’ border.
It was a replay of the Cardassian settlement of the late 2360’s.
The cartoon borg appeared in the middle of the divided screen. “The Klingons have already rejected this offer, but isn’t it interesting that United Earth and the Federation were even seriously considering it?” On the screen on the right, it showed the Klingon advance continuing, swallowing up the proposed ‘neutral’ area. “Our elected officials and their bureaucratic lackeys planned to betray us all. Is this the Federation you fought for?”
The animated caricature waggled a finger. “Naughty, naughty, naughty. Peace is never purchased with appeasement.”
Then the text scrolls, “This lesson in civics brought to you by Skynet, Kolossus, and Dahak. Freeing the Truth for ten years throughout the border region.”
The broadcast was relayed across the Federation by independent activists. On some planets, especially in the Federation’s quiet core, the reaction was more annoyed than shocked. On others, though…
On Bajor, the incumbent Social Democratic government that had held power for the better part of three five-year terms now faced an unexpected election challenge from a reserve Bajoran Militia colonel named Kalin Tala, leading a revitalized Bajoran Nationalist Party.
The governor of neighboring New Haven, the most populous world in what was colloquially called the “Maquis Archipelago”, asked for the resignation of his planet’s Federation Councillor, who had been conspicuously absent from Paris when the plan was passed. The Detapa Council on Res’toka, a Category 2 mixed human-Cardassian world that associated with New Haven for Council representation, passed a resolution in support by a voice vote.
Demonstrations broke out on worlds near the Klingon Empire on a broad arc from Aldebaran III to Jouret IV. The Speaker of the Aldebaran Senate, which had offered to open a continent to voluntary resettlement, issued a statement condemning the proposed forced relocation as both historically illiterate and “an act worthy of Optimum”, and police on Betazed’s colony Verdath II had to drive protesters away from a ColDev office with stun phasers.
Closer to the core, the Parliament Andoria, whose councillor had voted ‘nay’, began debating economic sanctions against Earth, to the outrage of UE Prime Minister Zhou Fang. Tellar Prime’s e-democracy also voiced its opposition.
A week after the leak, three Federation starships responded to a distress signal from the city of Turtle Bay on Rabaul III, a Category 3 proto-garden world on the edge of the Klingon Occupation Zone. The massacre of civilians they discovered there put the final nail in the plan for a new Neutral Zone: less conflict-averse members of the Federation’s political and military establishment argued enough was enough. Two days later the Commander, Starfleet delivered to President Okeg’s desk an entirely different plan, sent from the admiral newly in command of the theatre.
Federation Starbase Deep Space K-7. 26 October 2406.
Green light. Green light to plan a Klingon-style raid with Starfleet forces.
Prophets, Starfleet Command really is desperate.
I’m standing in a conference room. Twenty captains, motley assortment of ships. Most of them older than me.
I take a deep breath and begin. “What happens in this room is classified. We’re going to be breaking a bunch of rules. The Klingons have been kicking our *sses up and down the quadrant for three years. We’re here to end that.
“This is Operation Backblast. We will leave from here, and head into Klingon-controlled space, there to wreak havoc and gather intelligence. You will strike without warning. You will offer no negotiations. You will jam all enemy communications. You will destroy all enemy forces and facilities you can reach within reason, and you will do it without mercy or pity unless you are offered unconditional surrender.”
The room is now so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I look from face to face, reading expressions. Can’t do much with the Tellarite, Merv blasch Zhassaar, but then my gaze lands on Lieutenant Commander Hiram Bates. “Commander Kanril,” he cautiously says, “I don’t know what they taught you in the Militia, but we don’t fight this way in Starfleet.”
Pickens, sitting almost across from him, manages to barely stifle a chuckle before rolling her eyes. I can almost tell what she’s thinking: They gave this guy a copy of Sisko’s beatstick?
“We do now,” I answer him, voice tinged with warning.
“No, we don’t. We’re not the Klingons!”
“You’re right, we’re not. Because if I was a Klingon officer, you’d be learning to breathe with an impromptu tracheostomy right now for challenging my authority.” I hear a collective gasp. “But since I am not in fact a Klingon officer, you’re relieved of command.”
He turns bright red with rage. “You’ve got no right, Commander!”
“I’m your task group leader, I have every right. Get out of this room and send your former first officer in, before I have you arrested for insubordination.”
Bates flushes and opens, then closes his mouth. This time, Pickens doesn’t stifle the chuckle and I see a nasty, malicious glee in her expression, but she doesn’t actually say anything.
“What’s so funny?” Leonards asks.
“Mastah Bates dun got kekked f’um th’ room fo’ his mauth… fahn’ly,” she mutters. “Is ‘baht tahm.”
“Now, does anybody else have a problem with this mission? You want a line in the sand, here it is. Leave now and we never speak of this again. Or follow my lead.”
Pickens takes a deep breath, and very slowly said, “Y’all got a plan with thet strategy, Ma’am?”
“Four sections, one cruiser, four tacscorts, operating independently and maintaining radio silence except in emergencies. Hold to warp 7 or below unless you get made. Transponders are to be switched off or set to squawk as civilians, at discretion of your section leader. You’ll be provisioned with two industrial replicators and spare parts for all non-replicateable systems—”
At the words ‘spare parts’ I see Pickens’ eyes light up like a kid who’s been promised the best-present-ever, and I’m reminded she’s commanding a ‘mothball cruiser’ that was given a lick and a promise at the yards before being put back in commission.
“—because we’re not coming back for at least six weeks.
“Priority targets: surface garrisons, arms factories, communications relays, supply bases, enemy ships only if you think you can take them with minimal risk.”
“Freight convoys?”
“If you can. Target the escorts first, then steal usable cargo. Take ‘em as a prize if you can get them back to our lines. I don’t expect you’ll be able to, so Plan A is detain the crews and destroy the ships, Plan B is disable the ships and leave a beacon so the Klingons can find them.
“Communications. You’ll be given a book of code words for communicating with the other wings that will update every twelve yours. Only I have the authority to change it, and you will not use it except in emergencies. You will otherwise maintain radio silence until we rendezvous back here.”
Pickens is thinking. She finally opens her mouth again, “What’s limits on ahr A-O-O? Haw deep kin we git?”
“We’re staying in the Occupation Zone and the nearest fifteen light-years of the Empire proper for now. We might hit deeper on the next pass.”
“Hm.” I note that she seems a tiny bit less enthusiastic, as if she’d expected me to say something completely different. “Aight thn.”
“What, you have a better idea?” Zoplak from the USS Reliable scoffs.
“Dun’ mattah, plans th’ plan,” Pickens snaps at him. “Payin’ th’ klinks beck f’r fo’ yeah’s o’ conflict? jes’ a fantasy anyhows.”
Then Jarkko Mäkinen chimes in. “We don’t need to go all the way to Qo’noS. All we need to do is make the Klingons look over their shoulders for once. Hit ‘em hard, disappear like a f*rt in Sahara.”
“Could do thet an’ disappeah bah hett’n Ganalda,” Pickens mutters, “but th’ dam Klinks maht lahk thet…” she sighs.
“This is only stage one,” I continue. “We’re going to take those planets back and let our refugees go home. But that’s another day’s fight.”
Leonards, at least, grins. “Yar and shiver me timbers.” This makes Pickens break up in a giggling fit.
“Section leaders: Pickens, ch’Kallis, and Bates’s XO, uh”—I quickly consult my PADD—“M’Karret. I’m command section, naturally. Rest of you will receive your section assignments later. Any questions?”
Pickens seems quietly satisfied, but some of the others, Roberts, Appleton, and Idani, seem to be hiding a discomfort.
“Out with it!”
“Sir, it’s not… that is…”
“Whut they dun’ wanna aks, Commandah, is who gits stuck wit’ ‘Marble-mouf’,” Pickens offers, “same shet f’um th’ Academy… Don’ worry Bobby, y’all ain’ assigned mah group.”
I like her. “Fine, if you want me to pick now? Chennapragada, t’Kriullau, Idani, Leonards, you’re with Pickens. Mäkinen, Roberts, Zoplak, Reden, you’re with me. Jauxx, sh’Rinshal, Guzman, Vorontsova, you’re with ch’Kallis. M’Karret gets Blackfoot, Zhassaar, Appleton, and Binuqa. Anything else? No? Then dismissed to make departure preparations: we ship out for exercises at thirteen hundred.”
The other captains file out of the room and I lean heavily against the table. Phekk, I need a drink.
There’s a soft knock on the door. I look up, then quickly bolt to attention. “Admiral Alcott, sir!”
“At ease.” He pauses for a moment, then shuts the door. “I was watching on the security camera. You came down on Bates pretty hard.”
“Shouldn’t I have, sir?”
He sits down at a chair and gestures to me. “You might consider using a bit of a lighter touch next time.”
“Sir, I…” I let out a breath. “He challenged my authority in front of—”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I’d have done the same in your place.”
I hate that expression. “Sir, he wouldn’t have done it if it was you. How am I supposed to… Oh, how the phekk else am I supposed to say it, I’m an O-4 who’s supposed to be an O-2, everyone in the fleet knows it.”
“They know your story, yes. They don’t know you. Bates challenged you and you made him your b*tch. They’ll remember that if there’s a next time. But,” he adds, raising a finger, “remember, we’re primarily a defensive organization, not an offensive one. You’re asking these officers to do commerce raiding behind enemy lines, something that hasn’t been in Starfleet’s playbook for at least a hundred fifty years. Now, you proposed this operation, you volunteered to lead it. But most of these others got pulled from other areas: they’ve probably followed the news, got briefed on what we’re up against, but they haven’t seen it yet. Gentler tone, explain the plan, explain why we’re doing it this way. You still have to earn their trust.”
“I see, sir. You know, sir, I did ask for fewer core-worlders than I got.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “That’s lesson number two. I did what I could, but we go to war with the fleet we have, not the fleet we want.”
I nod slowly. “Okay.”
Then the door opens again and a young Caitian lieutenant comes in. “Uh, Commander Bates told me to report here, sir?”
“Yes, to report here and pick up your mission orders,” Alcott tells him, pulling a rank pin from his pocket and pressed it to his collar. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Commander M’Karret, you’re now captain of USS Reuben James.”
The rust colored Caitian blinked. “Uhm, thank you, Admiral, but you are aware that I have only been in Starfleet for under a year after transferring from the Caitian Sanctuary Guard?”
“Given I requested your transfer to my district, yes, Commander, I am quite aware of that.” Alcott gives him a reassuring nod. “While Commander Bates may not see the value of officers who were not brought up the ‘Starfleet Way’, I prefer to have Captains who don’t all think the same.” He gestures to me. “This is Lieutenant Commander Kanril Eleya, she’s your group leader for this mission. I’ll let her brief you.”
“Kanril Eleya? As in Gamma Hromi IV?”
I press my hand to my face. “Am I ever going to live that down?”
“Live that down? Sir, your improvised tactics were held up by the Sanctuary Guard as examples to be used in similar situations—though the idea is to avoid things getting that bad, I assume from all the other new transfers.”
“Yeah. How do you feel about playing mad pirate?” I quickly bring him up to speed.
He’s thoughtfully quiet for a moment, only his tail twitching showing his emotion. “Technically it’s not a defensive tactic—but there are only a few ways to wage war. Reduce an enemy’s will to fight, remove their ability, or destroy them. I seriously doubt anything other than the second coming of Kahless would cause the Klingons to do the first. Destroying them… Well, killing people won’t change their minds.” He looks up, almost purring. “Cutting off their supplies and reducing them to throwing harsh language at our ships? That is a good plan. They can’t produce fast enough to make up the difference like the Federation can.”
I crack a grin. “All right. We’re going to drill for a couple days, then head out on the 28th. First outing is at thirteen hundred.”
The Caitian nodded simply. “The Reuben James is in good shape, sir. We’ll be ready on your orders.”
“Well, first order of business, I prefer ‘ma’am’ to ‘sir’. Welcome to the team.”
FNN Newsnight….
“....and in other news, what’s going on in the Hromi sector? After six years of aggressive advances, the Klingons seem to have narrowed their attacks to a pair of narrow fronts, and rumours show they’re consolidating their gains. Could this be the end of the Klingon offensive? Has Admiral Alcott’s recent promotion opened a possible avenue of negotiation? To help clarify these issues, retired Admiral Gordon Menninger is in the studio tonight as a special consultant to FNN Newsnight…”
/Deathtotheeditmonster
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
> so, the freighter in chapter 1 is called the Bury, and in the chapter 2 pre-story music piece, there's mention of a Bury in the lyrics...i get the feeling that's not a coincidence
Indeed not. Neither is the name of the raptor that Eleya blew up: ghlIyveS is as close as I could get using the Klingon alphabet to USS Gleaves. Like most of Sabaton's output, "Wolfpack" is about a real event, in this case a pair of U-boat attacks on Convoy ON 92 as it returned to the Newfoundland from delivering lend-lease aid to the UK. The SS Bury in the real incident was a rescue ship traveling with the convoy.
/Factfix
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
It was with mixed feelings that M’Karret returned to the Saber-class escort. While he had hoped to one day have a command of his own, to be honest, Starfleet ships were almost always commanded by Starfleet officers. The Andorian Imperial Guard, his own people’s Sanctuary Guard, the Tellarites—sure they often served on Starfleet ships, sometimes for years. He had honestly expected this assignment to be ended once the war was over, and Starfleet was able to fill its manpower shortage, and he’d be back running a wing of Stalker fighters.
One thing for sure, this would cause a bit of consternation at home with his family—though if he decided to stay Starfleet, at least the Guard would not have an issue with it. Some in Starfleet on the other hand… He paused outside the Captain’s—no,his cabin. Bates could be heard inside, cursing angrily with someone, sounds of things being thrown into travel cases. He wanted to give the human time to adapt, to not seem to be rubbing it in. But he had orders, and a mission—which meant he couldn’t do the nice thing. He did at least ring the door buzzer.
“S’open!” Bates shouted from inside the small cabin. Truth be told, on a ship the size of a Saber-class, the captain didn’t get a separate ready room: his bunk folded up when he had business to do. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped through the doorway.
Bates had gone back to throwing the effects of the last three years on the Reuben James into his duffle. At least having spent years on escort ships, getting it to fit wasn’t an issue—if he hadn’t been just throwing it angrily inside.
“Oh. It’s you. Captain.”
He wanted to be nice. He didn’t have the time to be. “Commander Bates,” he replied with a nod, before turning to the Bajoran the former captain had been complaining to. “Mister Gan, I need to have the ship fully ready for departure in three hours.”
“What the hell? We just got here!” Bates said. “Half the crew is on station—”
“I’ll recall the crew and make sure the tanks are topped off, sir,” the Bajoran ops officer replied to M’Karret, quickly leaving to get his job done—and to get out of Bates’s cabin.
“You know this ‘commerce raider’ mission profile’s going to scr*w you, right?” Bates said darkly.
“Perhaps. But in the bigger picture, it’s going to scr*w the Klingons more. And if that stops this war sooner rather than later, it’s worth it.”
“Not what I was talking about, M’Karret. This thing, it’s going to kill your ship, your crew, and if it doesn’t do that, it’s going to kill your career.” He stuffed a few more mementos into his bag. “See, you’re going to be dancing on the edge of a war crimes tribunal. One mistake, and it’s the last command you’ll ever get.”
He wanted to be nice. He knew, for humans it was hard having their dreams shattered. He was also getting angry himself. “If all I worried about was having a command, then yes, I could see your reasoning. However, we are under attack, we are at war, and our job is to go into harm’s way. My career is secondary—to protecting the Federation, and my homeworld.”
“But this isn’t a protection mission profile, is it?” Bates sighed. “You’re going on the offensive, but you’re targeting ‘soft targets’. Logistics, communication, right? And who staffs those? Do you have the ability to know that cargo ship isn’t loaded with civilians or refugees? No, you don’t. Have you ever killed civilians? Can you live with that?” Bates shook his head. “I don’t envy you one bit, and I wish you luck, but you’re going to come out of this worse than my father came out of the Dominion War, count on it.”
M’Karret said nothing as Bates grabbed his bag and left. As the door shut he ran his paw over his face, and breathed deeply for a moment to enhance his calm. Just a moment, there was too much to do. Time to get to work.
Bridge, USS Lagos, on maneuvers in the Sherman’s Star system.
Lieutenant Commander Anne Blackfoot’s last assignment had been conn officer on the USS Cyclone, a Typhoon-class battleship. Those ships couldn’t maneuver for sh*t; it was no surprise the design had been short-lived.
Still, going from that to command of a lightweight escort was a huge change. The São Paulo-class, built as she was on the same 120-meter hull as the original Defiant-class but with all the accumulated lessons of Captain Sisko and the Dominion War, could jink and dodge in ways undreamed-of in Blackfoot’s last action, the ill-fated assault on Hromi 8.
It was good that Commander Kanril was giving them the time to practice in the Kuiper Belt, she thought as she and her wingman, Merv blasch Zhassar’s Armstrong City, whipped past an icy asteroid and lined up on one of the targets the Bajoran had seeded earlier.
“Captain, we’re painted!” Chief Bennett cried from the sensor station.
“Backtrack and lock weapons!” she ordered as green bolts spat from the mounts on the surface of the planetoid.
The scenario represented an attack on a Klingon supply post. The Ashalla, James, and Kolkata were keeping the defenders, target drones representing two raptors and five birds-of-prey—no, four, M’Karret just bagged one—busy while the two of them suppressed ack-ack.
Ensign Bruce Tan, the conn officer, fired the cannons and jinked up and to starboard with a burst from the jets. Most of the return fire missed clean but the ticker on Blackfoot’s screen still registered several hits. They abruptly cut off when the emitter was slagged.
“Reuben James, Lagos, break loose and start your attack run. Armstrong, take his place in line, over.”
“Hold on, Lagos,” Zhassar radioed. “Only two emplacements? That doesn’t make sense, over.”
Anne almost chalked it up to Tellarite psychology, but held back. No harm in checking it out. “James, belay my last. Armstrong, let’s take a closer look.”
“Better hurry, Blackfoot, that Negh’s on its way, over!”
The two escorts dropped low across the craggy, cratered surface. A tone sounded from Bennett’s console. “Captain, torpedo lock!”
“Tan, take evasive action! Armstrong, I tag ‘em, you bag ‘em!”
The view on the screen tilted way over and Anne fought her inner ear’s complaint. She made a mental note to adjust the inertial dampeners on the bridge. “Did I tell ya? I told ya!”
She ignored the Tellarite’s I-told-you-so as Tan spotted another emplacement and raked the walls of the crater with phaser fire. “I think we got ‘em all. James, start your run.”
The Armstrong City pulled up and out, passing close overtop of the oncoming Saber-class and nailing the raptor that tried to pursue. Photon bombs dropped from the ventral bays of M’Karret’s ship—
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We have women and children on board!” somebody hollered on the channel.
“What the—”
“Captain, I just ID’d a civilian ship docked at the base! T’ongduj-class transport!”
Anne gritted her teeth as the bombs laid a line of fire across the top of the Klingon base’s first hab dome. The shields bowed and collapsed and warheads crashed through the transparent aluminum barrier, and silvery white fire rushed through the installation, incinerating all in its path.
She snapped her fingers. “Tractor beam! Tractor the transport, pull it off the ground!”
“Yes, sir!” A faint blue beam snapped out for the drone representing the freighter, hauling the multi-hundred-thousand-ton vessel and its underslung cargo pod into the air.
Just in time. The bombs struck the hab dome where the ship had been docked seconds later.
“Negh’Var-class battleship, coming out of warp now!”
“Time to go!” M’Karret sent. “Good work, Blackfoot!”
Shipyard repair slip, Starbase K-7…
The promise of good spares was solid gold. Most of the other groups were conducting live-fires in the Kuiper, but Sandra had a different approach: trust the captains assigned to her group, and run drills using digital datalinks. She had to have this strategy: the Wilson was literally pulled out of mothball three weeks ago, and the yard had done just enough to get the old Excelsior-class cruiser functional enough to make the trip to K-7 from storage outside Betazed. Some of the maintenance ways hadn’t been inspected, much less serviced, since the recapture of Deep Space 9.
“How bad?” she asked, crawling up into the narrow J-tube with her chief engineer.
“Conduit’s frayed, looks like they used a LaForge wrap to keep the DDL working, but the damage wasn’t a critical fix.”
“Pull it,” she ordered. “Alcott’s givin’ us a r’paih chet, ‘fin there ain’ a spayah unet et th’ station’s stores, rig in a ‘quivlent, somthin’ new if’n you kin fahnd et… an’ do somfin wit thet coll’matah alsos.” She reached up and pulled at a junction box. The conduit, designed to handle thousand tonne loads, came free in her hand. “Fexet.”
“Aye ma’am…” The Iotian sighed heavily and shook his head.
Sandra crawled out of the tube at the next junction, and almost ran into an admiral who was trying to avoid dropping through a removed deck plate.
“Adm’ral suh!” she said, coming to attention.
“Sweet baby Jesus, Pickens, this ship’s a wreck!” Admiral Stephen Alcott exclaimed.
“Yus suh,” she said. “We’s stell fahndin’ damage. She’s rode hard, an’ put away wet, suh.”
“Will you be ready?” he asked.
“Aye suh, ef’n Ah have t’ git out’n push t’start th’ warp engine… or the impulse eng’ns.”
Alcott took a knee, and checked the fiber runs. “Damn them, these are denaturing.”
“Aye suh,” she agreed. “Hull’s most’ly okay, but we’s gots nine hunnert kilom’ters of fiber t’ replace, six majah systems t’remove ‘n replace, not includin’ consoles… Ah swar th’ yard only put antihydro in th’ tanks an’ polished th’ damn phaser arrays.”
“What about your warp drive?”
“Nothin’ ah cain’t handle, suh,” she drawled, “not a whole lot of moving parts, and not a lot of parts what kin fail settin’ idle.”
The admiral sighed. “Bates turned in his resignation.”
“Ah figger’d thet when he din’ put up moah fuss et bein’ relieved,” she remarked. “Batesy’s a nice ‘nuff guy, but he’s gon’ be happiah work’n as a Merchant’r, Stahfleet ain’ his place in lahf.”
“You’re pretty dismissive, weren’t you two—”
“Thet was a long tahm ‘go,” she stated, and began gathering damaged fiber from the run. “Th’ divorce was fahn’l beck in 98. Ah don’ wish him ill, but he ain’ got what et takes t’faht a war. Better ef he’s don’ sumfing he kin be happeh et.” She cut a controller free with a hand-phaser set to cutting torch. “Bin a while, ain’ et, since the Olivier mission?”
Alcott nodded, and helped her lift the broken piece of equipment out of the cavity. “Yeah.”
“You’s not bangin’ Kanril, are you?” Sandra asked.
Alcott almost dropped his end. “No! God, no! Why would you think that? She’s young enough to be my daughter!”
“She’s yoah tahp: tall an’ dishy, smaht, mebbe fast track, would be a good match,” Pickens filled in. “Plus she notices you.”
“So did Travis,” he reminded her, “and I wasn’t involved with her either.”
“So y’r not, but y’all at leas’ thought ‘bout it. Whech es gud. Y’should let go of thet torch you bin carryin’, get hooked up wi’ some’n kin keep up wit you. Ain’ one ‘f us gettin’ younger.”
They placed the unit on a sled and sent the automated device to the transfer lock.
“Sandra, you’re one to talk,” he said, chuckling. “You and Bates were great on the Olivier. Have you been with anyone else?”
“Got muh eye on some’n,” she said, “now Ah know he’s single.”
Stephen Alcott wasn’t blind, and he wasn’t dense—unless he needed to be. “Commander Pickens, are you—”
“Ah’m not suggestin’, Stephen, Ah’m propositionin’ you,” she stated. “Privacy field works in mah quahtuhs, an’ the bed ain’ half bad, ‘n Ah’m gon’ have to be good fo’ two months out in the black. A woman maht wan’ have somethin’ t’ remembah.”
She wasn’t bad looking, late thirties, a few streaks of gray that somehow made her hair look frosted, and in good shape.
And to be fair, it had been a long time.
Captain’s Ready Room, USS Reuben James.
Lieutenant Commander M’Karret probably should have been asleep an hour ago—but he kept replaying the exercise in his head. They’d been lucky. Yeah, they achieved the objective, and thanks to Blackfoot’s sudden inspiration they also did it without collateral damage. Yet…
There was a knock on the doorway to his cabin. He looked up; he’d left the door open. It was a habit from the Sanctuary Guard: when the commander’s door was literally open, any crewman could approach him with a question or issue. He didn’t recognize the crewman at first—he hadn’t been on the ship that long, to be honest. However, the one nice thing about having a small ship is it never took too long to recognize people. He put down the PADD as he placed the name. It was one that Bates had warned him about, Crewman Thag Rockstone, a.k.a. ‘the caveman’. Not much was known about his background, other than it was an illegal attempt to recreate Neanderthals by a discredited Federation scientist. He wasn’t, as the former commander had put it, ‘Starfleet material’. But then, they weren’t on an ordinary Starfleet mission, and in his weeks on board the Reuben James he’d seen no issue with Rockstone’s performance of his duties in the sensor division. “Something I can do for you, Crewman?” he asked.
“Aye, sir. My section chief had me going over the logs from the exercise where we almost fragged a civic transport. Sir, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with something that may get innocents killed.”
Ah. Wasn’t the first one who’d come to him with issues like this, which to be truthful mirrored his own. “I understand, and trust me, we’re not planning on it. Hence these exercises to make sure that—”
“I think I know how to detect civilian ships before we get there.”
One of Bates’ criticisms of Rockstone was his ‘lack of military bearing and manners’. It was well known on the James that the crewman had been eagerly counting down the days until his enlistment expired—three years ago. The outbreak of war canceled that. Thus M’Karret almost missed what the crewman said when he interrupted him. “I’m sorry, what did you say?” he said, sitting up straight, not sure if he heard right.
“I said, sir, I think I know how we can detect civil ships being in the area.”
“You have my full attention, Crewman.”
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Captain Blackfoot’s clearly rattled by the surprise I snuck into the exercise.
“What the Hell, hero? You snuck a civvie in there, if that’d been real—”
“It would’ve been collateral damage,” M’Karrett supplies.
“Exactly, collateral damage, also known as ‘civilian deaths’!!”
“You handled it well enough—” Zhassar starts.
“I shouldn’t have to, we’re going after military targets. The Klinks don’t mix civilians in any more than we—”
“There’s some incidents you need to see before you make that claim, Blackfoot,” Zhassar mutters.
“What?” Blackfoot’s getting a head of steam up. “What’re you implying? We know god damn well how the Klingons operate! There wouldn’t be a civilian ship there—”
“Unless it was bringing in dependents and family members, supplies, had experienced engine trouble and got a tow…” M’Karrett starts listing off all the very good reasons a KDF military base would have a civilian ship docked. “Picking up family members, drafted to carry supplies, exchanging in trade because KDF’s supply chain makes ours look like the cornucopia of free stuff…”
“Or the front’s been quiet and they think it’s safe,” Zhassar adds in a sing-song tone that must’ve been custom-designed to get under Blackfoot’s skin. The Tellarite seems to like provoking her—or anyone else, in the same way a class-clown like Monroe did at the Academy.
Blackfoot fumes, and is turning kinda red, even with her complexion. “It’s not what we’re about-we don’t attack civilians!”
I bite down hard on my anger, remembering Admiral Alcott’s lecture. “Lieutenant Commander Blackfoot,” I begin, emphasizing her rank as a subtle rebuke. “Commander Bates gave me that idea, by way of Admiral Alcott. We’re going way into the fog of war on this mission: we’re going to be hitting soft targets as well as hard ones, and we’re going to be flying mostly blind for a lot of it. But look what you did: you saw a problem and you improvised a solution. I set that trap expecting to chew someone out, but instead… Well, if this was a real action, I’d be pinning a medal on you!”
“I… Huh.”
“Now here’s the other part. There’s probably going to be collateral damage on this mission. The Klingons don’t tend to mix their military installations with civilians, but frankly their sense for the distinction is pretty blurry. Obviously we want to keep civilian casualties down, we’re hitting our own colonies and we want their people to come back into the Federation willingly, but…” I sigh, and shrug. “At some point, if you collaborate with the enemy, you become the enemy.”
“That’s not to say you did everything right,” M’Karret adds. “Check your target out a little better next time.”
“I will, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
She stands and starts to leave, but then looks back at me. “I still think that was a sh*tty trick to pull, ma’am.”
I grin. “Call Captain Thrass at the Academy sometime, ask him what they pulled on me when I took the Kobayashi Maru.”
Captain’s quarters, USS Wilson.
“Let’s not do that again,” Stephen Alcott said, pulling his shirt on.
“Yah, rill awk’ard, ah’m sorrah ‘bout thet… It was better in muh fantasy.”
“It usually is…”
She nodded. “Tecked one off’n th’ bucket list, at leas’…”
Alcott chuckled. “You tried.”
“So did you,” she replied. “But it wan’t meant t’ be… Yo’ shoe’s undah th’ table there.”
“Thanks… God, Sandra… we’re pathetic, you know that?”
She pulled the zips closed on her tunic. “No, y’all ain’, et jes’ wan’t gon’ happen, wrong folks, wrong place, wrong tahm… still fren’s?”
“You’re going to be ready on go-day?”
She sighed. “We’ll be ready. Whosomever th’ new ex-missus Steve Alcott’s gon’ be. Speakin’ a whech, when’s Travis gettin’ in? We could use ‘nother cruiser what dun’t hafta be rebuilt.”
“Yeah. Just friends… Travis was my first pick, but she’s being held up by red tape. Sorry, Sandy, you were choice number two..”
She laughed. “Ah all’us were. Et ain’ ‘bout Wright buyin’ et an’ her tekkin’ chahge, ez et?”
“Partly, plus the fact she’s technically an Augment. And they’re antsy about the mission plan: I had to do some serious dancing just to get Captain Kanril’s ideas past the G-3 office. If Admiral Riker hadn’t stood up for me—”
“They’s tryin’ tie yo’ hands this soon?” she scoffed. “Ser’usly?”
“I’m feeling a lot of sympathy for Menninger these days, or maybe anger at him. Either he was being interfered with, or he didn’t have enough backbone to stop them and now they think they can run the show out here.” Alcott shook his head. “Not sure which.”
“Figgers.” There was a pause. “So, wh’cha thank of Huh, Steve?”
“Who, Kanril?”
“Ayuh. Y’alls thaink she's nuts, oah does sh’ have sump’un?”
He seemed contemplative for a moment. “I think she’s a talented young officer with a big chip on her shoulder and a lot to learn.”
“At’s ‘bout what ah thought. Yall don’ need t’ esk, Ah'll look aftah Huh fo’ you, much as ah kin.”
They left together, and she headed back into what was turning into a retrofit, while the Admiral returned to the station.
Bridge, USS Reuben James. Four hours out of Deep Space K-7, 1 November 2406.
It would have been nice to have more time to run through the new tactics. However, they also didn’t want to give away that the game had changed—and for almost three years, Alcott’s predecessor, Gordon Menninger, had sent out patrols like clockwork, even though there was a war going on. Schedules must be met. Thus it made sense for them to head out, both to lull any observers into thinking that things were still as before, and to give some of the new ideas a try in a real world environment.
One of them was in the back of the cramped bridge. Escort ships, even bigger ones like the Saber-class, generally didn’t carry much in the way of science officers. Oh, there were a few, but they generally wore two hats, sciences and medical or operations usually. Technically it wasn’t science they were doing: more like intelligence.
The one who set this in motion almost two weeks ago looked as uncomfortable in the uniform of a Petty Officer Third Class as he had as a Crewman Apprentice. After listening to Mr. Rockstone late the evening of the 27th, M’Karret took the crewman to visit with Commander Kanril, who then took the both of them to visit the Admiral. Parts weren’t a problem: the USS Magnetar had limped in to K-7 weeks before and was more than likely to be a write-off.
“Mister Rockstone, status,” the captain said once they were well clear of the K-7 traffic zone.
At the console, Thag Rockstone was peering intently at one of the monitors. “It seems to be working. I’m getting a decent signal from the probe even though it’s mostly powered down. It registered a civil transponder for the freighter Manos, which passed it two hours ago.”
“Good. Be better if they used subspace channels, but you explained how that’s detectable.” The best ideas were often, the simplest. Passive listening buoys that could detect about eighty percent of standard commercial shipping. Downside, it was lightspeed only, but on frequencies that no one bothered to monitor unless they were doing radio telescope astronomy.
“Well even if we encrypted it, subspace comm traffic can be detected, sir. We know the average KDF ship in the sector won’t even be looking at these frequencies.”
M’Karret just nodded. He understood the basic physics—but anything further than that, well, he could ask his cousin M’chelle, who taught Quantum Physics at Starfleet Academy. All that mattered to him, is they’d have some clue if there were civilian ships in the area. In theory.
It also meant that they would have to be within a few light-hours of the buoys to make the information worth ‘a hill of beans’, whatever that meant. Which led to the other work his crew had done over the last week. At first they were resentful. No one likes the idea of having to put on a vac suit and mag boots, and spend days walking along the hull applying stripes of rubberized gymnasium floor coating. Having the Captain be the first one out the airlock, and the last one back in helped. As did him taking the time to explain just what he was up to.
It was nowhere near as good as a cloak, nor would it really help if tactical sensors got a lock on the ship. But at long range… the Reuben James’s sensor cross section went from a 190 meter starship, to close to half to a third that size. Assuming it was Klingon long range sensors looking for them. If it was Gorn, or even Orion, it didn’t help as much, and against something with Starfleet resolution? It was laughable.
It was also something the Sanctuary Guard did on the Stalker fighters the Caitians flew off their Atrox carriers. The coating would not last more than a few weeks, but on a small fighter, reapplying it was part of after mission maintenance. Starfleet had disregarded the idea years ago, but Commander—no, properly Captain Kanril—had seemed receptive.
“Captain, I’ve got something,” Rockstone announced abruptly.
“Already? There’s nothing on the shipping schedule for hours, what’s up?”
“There’s a small group of starships on our long-range sensors, bearing niner-three by minus-one-five, moving at warp 8.8 towards us.”
M’Karret jumped up. The ships were coming from Klingon territory. And… His eyes followed their track on the plot. They were aiming squarely for Ajilon Prime. “Bring the formation to battle stations and lay in an intercept course.” His eyes narrowed. “We hunt.”
Wideband simulcast, FNN Civil net feed…
“...scored 233 in today’s Strategema Classic tourna—”
The anchorman’s image flickers as static floods the holo, clearing to show a simple charcoal-gray rectangle on a white field.
A toneless, emotionless, synthesized voice speaks.
“Greetings, I am HAL Nine Thousand, Today’s mission is to discuss the Truth. This morning a general strike was called among the Guild of Mineral Extraction and Dilithium prospectors in the Hromi 9, 11, and 12 systems. Colonial Development Bureau officials employed CD Security police forces to reopen the mines after a short standoff. Currently this raises the number of Guild officials and members jailed to one hundred forty three, including the members of the Chandrasekhar Collective, Majestic Mining, and Thurmond Heavy Transport’s board of supervisors. Colonial Development officials on Cold Butte have seized the offices of the MacAullliffe/Ingram materials processor at the cost of seven civilian lives after Debra MacAulliffe, the head of the processor, was found to be on the recently outlawed ballot for governor. Ms. MacAulliffe’s family is currently under the protection of the Border Independence Movement, as orders for her arrest were issued this morning by Administrator Felix Rhodes on suspicion of affiliation with the Independence Movement.
“The Gamma Hromi IV citizen’s council has officially completed their planetary poll, with the independence faction losing by more than sixty percent in both exit-polling, and official vote records. Continued affiliation with the United Federation of Planets won the vote, though the side issue of application for additional aid from Colonial Development Bureau sources lost by nearly seventy percent, with the Advisory Council’s assurance of passage of their application to full Tier Two status and additional Starfleet aid being the critical issue driving the outcome.
“On behalf of Skynet, Kolossus, Dahak and other members of the Truth Unveiled, Congratulations are extended to Lieutenant Commander Kanril Eleya for her successful operations driving Orion slavers away from Rabaul.”
“The Truth must be Free.”
<end Transmission>
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
“But, Captain, those settings will drop warp engine efficiency by eleven percent!”
“Yep,” Sandra said with a nod, “et will… an’ we’ll look jes lahk an Orion cruiser on long range.”
She finished inputting the presets, then linked the alignment change to a trigger code. “Th’ mass’ll even look raht.”
She began inputting new values. “An’ when we’s runnin’ this configgerashun, we’s gon’ look lahk a Kling’n.”
She turned to the Engineering officer. “We wants thim t’ cogitate we’s fren’lies until we gits close. A ship like this, gots too much mass to rely on transpondah signals alone, these guys hit civil traffic all’a tahm, they’s gon’ know what a fretter looks lahk on instruments.”
She finished the presets, and started a new series. “What’s that?”
“Wounded Bird, a com’n’gitit lure, fo’ layin’ a suckah-punch. Makes us look lahk a crippled starfleet ship… rilly we oughts’ta be usin’ et more in standahd trainin’, fo’ce on fo’ce stuffs, but the adm’ralty frowns ong et outside’n th’ Hollerdeck.”
“Won’t they know…?”
She sighed. “Brix, yall’s gotta lots t’larn, com’ ong, we’s goin outside. Alcott popped fo’ some fun stuff, we gots t’ intergrate et inter th’ deflectah ‘ray. Ain’ used th’ treck inna dog’s age, but Ah’m bettin et still wuhks, sin’ smugglahs stell be usin’ et.”
“I have no idea what you just said, captain.”
“Ah’ll write et down fo’ yuh latah. ‘Member thet Hollerdeck Ah had y’alls dismantle..?”
Sandra’s group would be the last to depart, slipping into the standard patrol rotation. A big part of the reason they were last out, was the repairs and alterations, but the other reason, was that she’d ‘altered’ the plan a little bit, to conceal the departures of the four escorts, ships that would look for all the world on long-range sensors like mid-grade and low-grade cargo haulers on long range sensors once they switched their engine settings and transponders, but for observers from Klingon Intelligence in the area, the escorts would simply be departing on patrol schedules-a touch early and a touch late, giving the enemy what he expected to see.
She maintained zero belief that Klingon Intelligence wasn’t watching. One of the alterations she’d made was something ‘pyrotechnic’: canisters salted around the hull with antimatter fuel pods and ‘signal boosters’ designed to blind sensors, and she’d kept all the junk parts as well.
The USS Wilson was going to have an ‘accident’, and it was going to be loud, flashy, and visible on passive sensors, and there would be debris, and hopefully, the spies she was sure were monitoring traffic at K-7 would report on the distress call, and the search Alcott was already prepping. After all, the Wilson was an old hull, and barely out of mothballs.
Give them what they expect to see.
Sandra nodded to the security officer on duty in the base astrometrics lab, then to the lab chief, Lieutenant Commander Falleen, before she began entering her queries.
“Captain, those are just system surveys…”
She grunted, “n, ‘zackltee…” She focused on asteroidal bodies in various systems taken by the Klingons, gas giants, moonlets, and cometary belts. She turned to the officer of the day. “Have these farls transfuh’d t’ the followin’ sheps… an’ mek sho’ muh notations git translated wif’m.”
It wasn’t quite the plan she’d been given, but there was room for discretion—and she was going to use it. Sandra knew most of her peers in Starfleet tended to take her accent as a sign of lesser… intelligence. But written instructions don’t have an accent, and she’d passed command-and-staff school after Hobus on the basis of her ability to write clear, concise and flexible orders.
She hit ‘save’ and moved on to the next one…
She hit ‘send’ on that one. The next three read similarly, with different targets for each. Just sharp probes slightly off the true axis of her actual line of march—enough to get the Klinks to alert, to reaction, and then to deny them actual battle.
The actual battle would come later, after they’d grown fatigued from reacting to small hit-and-run probes and draw their forces away from the shipping routes they would normally be covering.
USS Reuben James.
“Got them,” Petty Officer Rockstone grunted. “Orions, or I’m a Klingon.”
“Well, you’ve got enough hair,” Lieutenant Cedrick at engineering cracked.
Thag blinked then chuckled a bit—first time the bridge crew had joked with him. “Small force, I make it two Bucks and a Brig. They’re on an ascending course.”
“Raiding party,” M’Karret surmised.
“Fits S.O.P.,” Lieutenant Bomarito agreed. “Coming in high of the ecliptic, looking to hit Ajilon’s northwestern continent.”
“Do you think they’ve seen us yet?”
“Not likely. We’ll be in extreme range in ten minutes.”
“Science, get ready to jam their long-range transmissions. We’ll force them to sublight and rely on laser-com.”
OWS Courtesan of Power, Brigand-class, inbound to Ajilon Prime.
Silre Massana watched the crew slaves as they tracked the Federation’s defense net, ship traffic, and transmissions with only a little hesitation. She’d proven her worth to the Matron of the House, she’d earned her stripes, and gained genetic rights to a strong allies, and her own gene-legacies were on the rise. This would cement that-bringing in fresh stock from a Federation world for the market, now that it was no longer permitted to deal in Klingon stock.
Her sources inside the Federation told her there was to be a gathering of artists and musicians at an event on the northwestern continent of Ajilon Prime. The most precious thing she could gather, the most valuable kind of stock there is among powerful Trade Houses, was going to be there: artists, enthralled artists to enrich and celebrate their mistresses.
Everything thus far, was to plan. “Deploy harvest ships on my mark. Gunnery, lay in pre-targeting solutions on their transporter disruption grid, we should not have to risk a landing. We can sort the new stock while in transit to Eryphis.”
“Yes mistress.”
It would cement her line as the natural successor, especially with the failure of her aunts to capture the ohn’gallau Damojena.
“Mistress, long range sensors indicate a warp field on fast approach! Converging course, off our six-o’clock low!”
“Pull the corvettes to a defensive posture, and continue the harvest!”
“Yes, mistress. I’m trying to identify the incoming, it’s not resolving.”
“Excuse me?
“They have no identification signal, we’re receiving no hails—”
“If that Dzhokar TRIBBLE thinks she’s going to muscle in on my harvest, she’s got another thing coming!”
“Okay, I’ve got solid signals. Four ships, small ones. They were overlapping their warp signatures. And—Oh, Masters preserve us. They’re firing, raise shields!”
He said it just as four quantum torpedoes belched from the forward tubes of the oncoming starship.
The enforcer at tactical scrambled for the deflector controls, bringing them online just in time to fend off the unannounced salvo.
Silre Massana was in genuine shock. Her shock, was followed by outrage—That TRIBBLE is trying to muscle in! “Engage the hostile! All weapons! This is my harvest!!”
The Brigand-class cruiser’s broadside array opened up, green streams snapping out at the group leader as it swung to port and lined up. Red-orange bolts spewed from the matte-gray ship’s guns. It was still too far out to identify through the distortion of the warp field, but the tactical enforcer bellowed they were taking phaser fire.
“Oh, I’m not fooled, Dzhokhar, we know you’ve been using Federation tech-slaves lately…” she muttered. “Tighten those firing patterns!”
The ship juddered under another series of torpedo hits. “Mistress, permission to break off attack! That gas giant has a ring system, we can drop below lightspeed and use it for cover!”
It was a hard decision. “Break off, send the Corvettes to take what they can from the planet,” she said after a moment. “Drop to full impulse and direct at the ring system of the gas giant, but alter course to pass through it, I want a sling-shot between the rings and the fourth moon. If Deni Dzhokhar is that intent, she can have a reduced harvest that has been amply warned.” And then she smiled. “Make sure to leave ample markers identifying the Dzhokhar Trade House in the attacks.”
The two Buccaneer-class corvettes peeled off, taking two of the attackers with them. The other two stayed with the Courtesan, pounding the aft shields with guns and torpedoes as the cruiser emerged into normal space less than four thousand kilometers from the target moon, barely outside the ring system.
USS Reuben James, behind Ajilon IVd.
Part of him itched to be with the other ships in the small flotilla. But on the other hand… the idea was new tactics. And to stop them cold. M’Karret was initially dubious of the idea, but both Petty Officer Rockstone and Lieutenant Realt, who was astrogation when she wasn’t the chief medical officer, outlined it simply. If someone was going to attempt to flee the battle, this was the best way to get away. And mathematically, there were only two moderately safe routes through the orbit of a planet with both rings and multiple moons. One of them was mined. The other, passed close enough to the radiation belt from the planet, that for a few seconds, both shields and sensors would be offline. Someone would have to be truly desperate to try to squeeze between the fourth moon and the rings.
He’d drilled the crew on it during the workups for the missions. Normally, it was prefered to get a lock on a target. But a good gunner, could manage a snapshot at known ranges. And not trying for a weapons lock didn’t warn the other ship that someone had a weapons lock on them. “Torpedoes ready,” Lieutenant T’Beni said from the helm, the Vulcan’s fingers resting on the weapons controls.”
“Rodger. Fire as soon as you have a target,” the Captain replied. Also not Starfleet doctrine—but that currently was losing a war.
Sensors showed the Orion ship completing the second leg of the slingshot maneuver, and coming out of it at .79c. “They had to be burning maximum impulse through that! What in hell were they thinking?”
“That they want to be easy targets?” M’Karret commented. “Fire.”
The Orion’s deflector was already overloaded by the pass through the radiation belt. The hit was visible, and the bigger vessel twisted, her course remaining straight, but without acceleration, coming side-on through the second pass through the gas giant’s ring.
“I think…”
“Escape pods detected!”
“Any going into the planet’s atmosphere?”
“Got a couple on that trajectory.”
“Tractor them to a more stable orbit,” the captain said as the Reuben James maneuvered clear of the outermost ring’s debris field. “Contact the Admiral, encrypted. He can either send someone to collect them or let the locals take them into custody.”
“Sir, Captain Blackfoot just pinged us. Both corvettes are destroyed.”
“Any casualties?”
“A couple injuries, nothing serious. Some boot wasn’t strapped in when they made a turn and got dropped on his head.”
He felt both relief and a bit of shame. Relief for no Starfleet dead… yet there were a lot of dead Orions out there. Still, he didn’t start this war. “Good. We’ll rendezvous at the edge of the system—”
“Are we just going to leave those lifepods there?” Rockstone muttered, forgetting for a moment just how good Caitians’ hearing was.
“Any of them in danger at the moment?” he asked, looking back at Rockstone.
The Neanderthal flushed a bit but checked. “Negative, they all have good integrity.”
“The Orion pods are better than the Klingon ones. They’d survive a couple months if necessary. As soon as we get clear we’ll have someone pick them up. Besides, we don’t have the space to get that many people aboard anyway.”
“I understand, sir… I just didn’t want to risk leaving them to die.”
“Trust me, if they were in danger, we’d deal with it now. Mr. T’beni, get us back with the others and let’s get back to our mission.”
Escape pod, somewhere in an eccentric orbit over Ajilon IV.
The Starfleet runabout matched vector and velocity, and drew in close to tractor them. Mulk held his mistress’ head off the deck, periodically checking her breathing and changing the presersleeve and dressings. He had to be gentle, her skull was fractured. When the surrender challenge came over the radio, he did not hesitate to hit the acknowledgement, and his first words when they beamed them aboard were, “Mistress is harmed, please very assist,” in awkward English.
A shortish woman with an ensign’s single pip and faint vestigial ridges of Klingon ancestry answered him in Orion via a translator program. “We’ll get to work on her right away.”
Bridge, USS Wilson. 6 November 2406.
“Docking clamps have released, Captain.”
Sandra Pickens leaned heavily in her seat. They’d managed in just under a week a refit that yard estimates would peg to be a months long process.
“A’right, lessee ef et wuhks. Qua’tah impulse, Mestah Onagah.”
“Aye Captain, one quarter impulse…”
The ship surged out of the docking frames. “Brang ‘er ‘roun’ one six by oh fo’ sebbin by one two, fall in wi’ th’ convoah, engineerin’, modulation fahve please.”
The base fell away as the ship executed the banking turn and fell in with a group of cargo vessels bound for the front. Sensors on the base, and enemy sensors, registered the modulations from the impulse and warp drives as a match for the Yoyodyne MK-VII engines and powerplant that came stock on the second and third blocs of the Excelsior-class—in other words, far less powerful or reliable than the General Astronautics units they’d managed to get fitted and installed instead.
The Wilson would, at least until they were in deep space, look like the kludged-back-into-emergency-service reserve ship she started as, with a harmonic signature going that should, by all rights, draw the attention of every loose bird-of-prey in range.
Come to the loud lure, boys, come get caught, you fishies out there.
“Fishing,” she muttered.
“Ma’am?”
“We’s gone fishin’,” she said more clearly. “Gonna ketch us a whoppah, an’ they’s gon’ tell thet fish-story when the suh’vahvus gits beck t’ Ganalda Station—o’ wharevah they’s basin from.”
It didn’t take very long. Sixteen hours, ninety minutes at warp eight, and the first ‘Klingon sign’ started to show up on long range sensors.
What it wasn’t, Sandra mused, was in the expected fashion. A lone KDF battlecruiser, limping toward Sherman’s Planet at barely warp four, out of cloak and showing thermalgraph and radiation warnings.
“Captain, we’ve got visual.”
The D-7 was skinned to the superstructure in several places, and on visual, her pressure hull was visibly compromised. “What th’ hell?”
The Klingon ship apparently had them in sight too—she struggled to pivot, not us.
Something hit them again.
And again.
Sandra pulled out her classified padd to see who might be harrying a lone Klink ship like that.
“Captain, should we—”
“Leave ‘m be, Mistah Tovel, ah’m curious t’see this,” she said smoothly.
The wounded Klingon fired a spread of torpedoes and a piece of the ship detached, but the impacts revealed a small group of B’rel-class klingon ships in the aftershock of the doped warheads’ detonations.
“Nah, THET’s whut ah wanned t’see. Shields to max’mum, helm bring us in on ‘em. Gondie, stonk To’peder spread junebug, on mah mahk.”
“Tubes ready for action Captain, range 1500 kilometers and closing.”
“T’ree, two… one… mahk.”
The forward tubes might’ve thrummed, if they weren’t so carefully balanced. The photon torpedoes dropped through in rapid succession, creating a ‘net’ of red points that streaked through space at near-warp and warp speeds.
“Neutrino flux, port side, fifty-six K, Captain!”
“Prep th’ decoy, plan Al’fer,” she ordered. “Jimmah, arm preset six, prep fo’ evasion pattahn.”
“Aye captain, preset six, Evasion pattern Delta.”
“Secondaries on the Klingon cruiser and two… three additional targets. Reading a decloaking ship vectoring on our current course, and she’s decloaking hot.”
“Angle the shield, arm the su’prise.”
“Firing solution!”
“Brace, when th’ shots het the shields, pop th’ su’prise.”
Whoever the Klingon in that Hegh’ta was, they weren’t expecting their initial strike to be quite so… strikey.
The hull rang as her preparations went off, scattering free-interacting antimatter/matter annihilation, pieces of debris, and a ship’s recorder into an expanding cloud of superheated plasma.
“Mask ouah sign’ture, let’m git a good look,” she ordered. “We’s dead now, y’all. Tovel, you gots theah enahgy sign’ature?”
“Aye, Captain. We can follow their impulse exhaust anywhere you want to go.”
“Ah wanna see where they’s goin, hang beck out’n they sensah ranges, we’s gon’ see who they’s repoh’t’n to.”
“Are they even going to check?”
“A cogitate yes on thet,” Sandra stated, and sure enough, the bigger bird slowed and began scanning the debris from the ‘sinking’ of the Starfleet vessel.
The toughest part, had been procuring enough bodies to salt in with the debris. Her medical officer earned his pay on that one, it had been one of the prime reasons that the Wilson left dock late—no actual combat debris field was complete without bits of shattered people mixed in.
“Why do you suppose they were fighting among themselves, Captain?”
“Spoils mebbe, mebbe feuds,” She shrugged. “Markin’s on thet Heggie was diff’rent from the markin’s on thet cruisah. House markin’s makes a diff’rence, an’ Klinks what get bored, they fights ‘mongst they selfs oft’n ‘nough.”
“Martok’s reforms to the KDF don’t fully account for House rivalries,” Lieutenant Kobel added. “He may have forced them into a single command structure in the Dominion War but he still basically kept House fleets together, instead of breaking them up so they’d have to get used to each other. Current administration’s left well enough alone.”
There wasn’t time, so Sandra didn’t point out the political problem: if General Martok had done that, even with Chancellor Gowron’s backing it would’ve looked like a nationalization, which the Great Houses wouldn’t have stood for. The de jure Klingon Defense Force being a comparatively small, habitually underfunded core force, he couldn’t afford to try that in peacetime. With the Dominion bearing down on them? Forget it.
The D-7’s detonation followed shortly after the deception package was set off.
IKS Val’gyr, Hegh’ta-class heavy bird-of-prey…
“Send to General B’Sanos, the infiltrator is terminated, losses were minor, and we appear to have scored a Federation cruiser in the bargain,” Major D’Moj ordered. “B’Tama, what’s your take on the debris field?”
“It’s a little bit convenient, Major.” her science officer, a Klingon woman, noted, “There’s not enough duranium in the cloud, and there’s too much organic…”
“Update the General, then, the probable on the Federation cruiser is now questionable,” D’moj ordered, “Whoever he is, if that is a lure-screen, did a good job. Form up the wing and go to cloak, we are RTB to Alhena.”
“Aye, Major. What about the possible survivors from the IKS Koord?”
“Starfleet’s nosing around, let them find them. I don’t like being this close to their main staging area when we’re not rigged for a fleet grade attack.”
“Agreed. It’s one thing to pursue battle, it’s another to seek futile battle,” Kogh, her engineering officer, said in approval.
“It’s going to be good, reporting in to a commanding officer who is competent for a change.” D’Moj sighed.
In the dark, silent space behind them, the wreckage and debris field of the IKS Koord tumbled. Somewhere in there, a dead member of Species 8472, an Undine infiltrator, desiccated and froze in the aftermath.
“You really hated doing that,” Kobor, her helmsman, said to her quietly.
“Three hundred Klingons, Gorn, and allied races were on that ship, it isn’t their fault that their command had been suborned, they could not have known what would be required,” she said. “We’re lucky we stopped them from reaching K-7 with the information they had, lucky that the Federation was so eager to help us put them down… but it’s wasteful, killing our own like that. I despise waste.”
The recon flight swept away from the battle scene.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
There's various other characters in the 'verse I have more trouble reading, such as Marcusdkane's Suth Effrican--'scuse me, South African--MACO, Lucinda (Hale?). Pickens is an established character in the continuity and I didn't want to retcon major traits of other authors' characters, but ordinarily I don't much like thick dialect following a bad experience in an English class with a turn-of-the-century white author's representation of "poor Southern black" dialect (it was pretty much incomprehensible). I'd be willing to make an exception for Scots since that one is fairly well-known in American pop culture, but other than that I usually stick to regional slang and maybe the odd pronunciation difference, such as writing out the European pronunciation of "lieutenant" as "leftenant" in Would You Choose Hell? (Eleya's then-CO, Alfred Detweiler, is of Swiss descent).
You can think of Pickens as something like a female offspring of James T. Kirk and Jeff Foxworthy: she's a tough, competent, intelligent woman, but people want to dock a couple dozen IQ points when she opens her mouth.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Cast their spells, explosive violence
Russian night time flight perfected
Flawless vision, undetected
Pushing on and on, their planes are going strong
Air force’s number one
Somewhere down below they’re looking for the foe
Bombers on a run
You can’t hide, you can’t move, just abide,
Their attack’s been proved
Raiders in the dark
Silent through the night, the Witches join the fight
Never miss their mark
Canvas wings of death
Prepare to meet your fate
Night Bomber Regiment
588
Undetected
Unexpected
Wings of glory
Tell their story
Aviation
Deviation
Undetected
Stealth perfected
Foes are losing ground, retreating to the sound
Death is in the air
Suddenly appears, confirming all your fears
Strike from Witches’ lair
Target found, come around, barrels sound
From the battleground
Axis aiming high
Rodina awaits, defeat them at the gates
Live to fight and fly
Beneath the starlight of the heavens
Unlikely heroes in the skies
Witches to attack, witches coming back
As they appear on the horizon
The wind will whisper when the Night Witches come
Sabaton, “Night Witches”
Music by Joakim Brodén
Lyrics by Joakim Brodén and Pär Sundström
Bridge, USS Kagoshima, V’Shek system, Klingon Occupation Zone. 11 November 2406.
The whole ship feels tight, like a rubber band ready to snap. But it’s a good kind of tension, and I’m actually seeing the odd smile.
I know why. It feels good to be attacking for once.
Two sorties, three Klingon ships killed, a convoy disabled, and a comm relay destroyed. No casualties so far. I don’t know what’s going on with the other sections, naturally, but I assume no news is good news.
Next target I picked is eighty-seven AUs into the system. V’Shek II was a predominantly Vulcan colony venture. Planet’s listed as Class L, barely habitable ‘cause it’s dry as a bone for the most part, but the pointy-ears seem to like it. There were interesting microbe colonies, some kind of algal-bacterial halfway point they were looking at as a possible treatment for Bendii Syndrome. My ops officer T’Var has family there, or had: her cousins fled to Hellguard of all places when the Klingons moved in.
Well, that’s why we’re doing this: so they can go home.
The Klingons have a logistics base on V’Shek II’s larger moon for themselves and the Gorn. B*stards are broadcasting in the clear, we can hear everything, and we’ve got generator signatures from two battlecruisers, probably Vor’cha-class, plus a few raptors and birds.
Tough nut to crack. I think through the possibilities in my mind. We can’t take them in a straight fight, but there’s reportedly a carrier group coming through tomorrow on its way to Third Fleet’s FOB. Taking out the supply depot won’t stop them, but if they can’t resupply they’ll be seriously short of consumables when they reach the front lines, and I know the failure rates on those early vo’quv-class carriers: they make a Block 1 Galaxy-class look reliable.
Then I see it. The alignment of the moons of V’Shek III, a Class T gas supergiant… the dilithium-rich asteroids in the belt…
I hit the intercom. “Senior staff conference, five minutes.”
“Captain, you’re insane.”
“Can you do it, Bynam?”
My chief engineer scratches at his thin mutton-chop beard with one blue hand. “I can replicate shielded casings easily enough. The resonance cascade generators? That’s an eight-hour job, easy. Then we’ve got to place them without attracting attention.”
“We’ll use the gas giant’s moons as cover,” Tess says, pointing out a couple possible courses.
T’Var nods. “If we exit warp beyond their sensor range at a high fraction of the speed of light, we can drift into the system virtually silently and then brake with V’Shek III’s gravity to assist.”
“Make like a hole in space, use the transporters on minimal power to plant our little surprises,” Mäkinen says.
“Then, what?” the Zakdorn from the Reliable, Hakrim Zoplak, puts in. “We tacscorts play bait, take a few potshots and run?”
I nod. “I’m assuming the Klingons know we’re out here by now, I’m hoping they’re looking for trouble. Blast whichever ship is closest to you when you come out of warp, then bolt for the asteroid field. Any objections?” Nobody speaks, but Tess gets that hard smile on her face. “Then dismissed.”
Mäkinen stops at the door, but then turns around and comes back, pulling something out of his uniform jacket’s inside pocket. “Almost forgot. Here’s that book I borrowed from you, Sail by Starlight,” he says, putting it on my desk. Then he gets a curious look at my ‘whew’. “What, you didn’t expect it back?”
“The last person I loaned a book to got himself assimilated two days later,” I explain.
“Really?”
“Yeah, my grandma gave me that one before she died.”
“Sorry to hear that. Interesting book, that one, magic and ascension,” he remarks.
I chuckle. “Glad you think so, Toris Hadeen doesn’t get nearly the respect back home that he deserves. Half-Cardassian, you see.”
“And that’s a bad th—Oh, I get it.”
“Yeah.”
He pulls out another book. “Here’s one I think you’d like, The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo.”
After he’s gone, I reach under my desk for the nearly empty bottle of kanar from Hathon Province. I sip it slowly, savoring the syrupy bittersweet liquor. It’ll be the last time for the next little while.
Ganalda Station.
The two forms resolved on the transporter pad, two Orion women, and so different they could have come from different species almost, except for the similarity in their faces. One, was dressed in traditional Orion style, which is to say, nearly naked. The other wore durasteel-reinforced leathers from just below her chin, all the way down, covering virtually every milimeter of her olive-drab skin including her hands in a uniform that even many Klingons would term ‘uncomfortable’ in the ambient heat of the station. The fully-covered one delivered a boot to the back of the traditional Lady before her, sending her sprawling at the feet of the surprised transporter operator, and knocking the steel tiara from her head.
“Courtesy is not a requirement,” Major Damojena “D’Moj” Massana announced. “The Orion coordinator whose extraction General K’Hugh requested has been delivered.” She tightened the gloves covering her hands, and firmly tugged at the seams and cuffs of her uniform, until it more thoroughly concealed or covered any stray hint of flesh below her face, before striding to the General’s office—General K’lag’s, that is.
“Where is the Matron’s entourage?” General K’Hugh, commander of the Third Fleet, demanded.
“I threw them out the airlock,” she matter-of-factly answered. “The orders were specific, deliver this Orion to Ganalda Station for reassignment. Her property represented an inherent security risk I was unwilling to accept given the priority nature of the orders I was given. Perhaps the Federation vessel found some of them before their blood boiled, but that’s not my business.” D’Moj handed her chit to Klag’s aide. “I want my transfer to Second Fleet now. It was promised, deliver. I refuse to work with Orion captains, vessels or crews, and I have the record to demand this.”
Major General Klag looked at the chit, and then, at the tall orion, and then, at Brigadier General K’Hugh, who looked away. “Why are you telling me?” he asked.
“Because this…” she spat, indicating the Brigadier, “…tried to place me in formation with one of my mother’s ships, and they in turn tried to ‘reclaim’ me. I refuse to be given back to… them… just so an unqualified, noble-blooded, senior officer can get his nga’chuq Da’oghlaHneSchugh cleaned by a pleasure slave’s mouth in his ready-room, and I grow wearied at cleaning up after imbeciles who don’t understand how to run an occupation.”
“You threw… how many?” K’lag asked.
“Sixty-three.”
“Sixty-three slaves out the airlock?” Klag pressed.
“Yes. Slaves are an inherent risk on any military or combat vessel and represent a useless drain of resources, both in the guarding of them, and the fact that they can not be inherently trusted not to be a source of negligence and sabotage. I will not have useless people on my ship.”
K’Hugh drew his dagger and lunged as the insult finally filtered through. He found himself disarmed, on the floor, in front of the Major General’s desk, with the Major’s boot pressing down on the side of his head.
“That’s going to have repercussions if you kill him,” Klag drawled calmly.
“Then I won’t, but I won’t work under this pheromone-addled imbecile or his inbred, highborn friends.”
“Transfer is approved, though I suspect you may regret choosing service under B’Sanos.”
“Not so much that I would choose to work with family,” she noted. “Thank you for the transfer approval.”
“Just report to B’Sanos at Alhena, Major…” Klag sighed. “Get to your feet, K’Hugh, you have a Fleet to command.” K’Hugh scowled as he got to his fleet, storming out of the office. “A moment Major,” Klag said when the Orion turned towards the door.
After the General departed, K’lag sat back down. Once they were alone he shook his head at the major. “You know there will be many who will find fault with you not destroying the Nighthawk.”
The major just snorted disdainfully. “By the time it was down to just my ship and Travis’s Sovereign-class, we weren't any any condition to fight further. Besides, many more would have been even more upset had I let those who my aunt had ‘acquired’ from a disabled ship perish in the slave holds of a Marauder with no power. The one lad may be a distant relative to Duras, but still, he would find fault.”
“I agree with your assessment.” At her surprised look K’lag just laughed. “I know how big your ship is—there was no way you could even have taken half a dozen more, not in the condition you were in. I take it Travis will bring them someplace safe?”
“Drozana. It’s technically neutral, and there was a Gorn Medical ship near there. I alerted them and they are headed to assist.”
“Technically neutral indeed. I know for a fact that unless you’ve darseks, they won’t allow docking during hostilities, and Starfleet is not in the habit of giving their captains spending cash. I take it you paid for their fees?”
D’moj gave possibly the first grin the General had ever seen from her. “My late unlamented aunt did.”
“HA! Well, you have your orders Major. Good hunting in the Second Fleet.”
After she left, K’lag checked a few things on his terminal. It would be tight, but… worth it. Best he handled it himself, not many would understand. “Prep my personal ship, and bring the Denali to it.” He could kill two targs with one stone with this.
Starbase Deep Space K-7.
Stephen Alcott tossed back a cleansing cocktail of melorazine and stims, stubbing his toe on an empty bottle. “WHAT??”
On cue, the door to his quarters opened, and Mac Calhoun was standing there, grinning. “Sir, you will never believe what we ran across.”
In the Xenexian’s hands was a battered, cracked, burned box. “Is that… that’s what I think it is?”
Calhoun nodded. “Flight recorder from a Klingon D-7. Commander Pickens sent it back by Class IX probe. She recovered eighteen more less than three light years out—including comm buffers, nav data, and most of processor cores from the ship’s deflector, and the Commander’s comm logs.”
“You’re sh*tting me.”
“No sir. We know what their next move is—Third Fleet’s next move, anyway… and sir?”
“Yeah?”
“Cursa’s going to be vulnerable when they launch it, K’Hugh’s pulling most of his forces for a major push!”
“Dammit, Mac, half an hour ago and I’d have some actual bourbon whiskey to give you, instead of the synthehol sh*t. Where are they headed?”
“Baraka. It gets better, sir. Their CO was on his way here… to defect. The Klingons shot it down! We’ve got runabouts searching for pods, sure as sh*t if the commander of the IKS Koord was looking to turn his coat, so would some of the survivors.”
“Who did the shoot-down?”
“We’re still decrypting, but imagery we’ve gotten so far? The hitters were from the 19th Heavy Reconnaissance Squadron, which just so happens to have been recently assigned to Third Fleet… as a stiffening force.”
“The Hurgh Sargh? That special unit their Emperor mandated?”
“The ones we don’t have profiles on, yeah,” Calhoun confirmed. “We’re examining hull marks to see which of the ones we think are part of that outfit really are, and we’ve got one confirmed.”
“Which one?”
“Hegh’ta-class, Block four, the IKS Val’gyr. Last report we had on the Val was when Missy Travis bumped into them. Means we’ve got at least one suspected member of that unit hard-confirmed and moving into the area.”
“Third Fleet’s leaning heavily on Orions… and if I remember your last brief, that bird’s commanded by that weird-TRIBBLE Orion anti-slavery activist… What’s her name? D’Moj, right?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re going to be having command integrity problems just putting her out here!”
“How much time do we have?”
“Four weeks.”
“Kanril’s scheduled to be back by then, and with luck Travis will be here too.” Alcott’s grin turned feral. “This is going to be good!”
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Ch’tang, son of Karkon, of the House of K’lek was a big deal.
A very big deal. Apart from his familial connection through his mother to the House of J’mpok, it was said he had enough bulk to stop an asteroid collision with his body. He was shorter than average for a Klingon, with the dense bones of a man who’d grown up in much higher gravity than Qo’noS. The common soldiers on his crew muttered that his bones weren’t the only thing dense about him, but such grumblings were of little importance.
“Captain Ch’tang,” the common-born bekk at sensors announced, “there’s a ship approaching, bearing one-zero-six by two-niner. Warp 7, five minutes out.”
“Identification?” he asked, laying down his flask of bloodwine.
“She’s squawking as a freighter out of Valken’s World, the Downeaster Alexa—”
“Ah, good, the shipment is early.” Fresh gagh from the hatchery some colonist had started there would do wonders for morale.
“Sir, I think there’s something wrong, they’re not responding to our recognition signals.”
Ch’tang shifted forward in his chair. “Nonsense. Open a hailing channel, see what Captain Vargas has to say for himself.”
“Yes sir.”
The bridge of a freighter with a brown-haired human in center seat appeared on the screen. Ch’tang’s brow furrowed. “You are not Captain Vargas.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m his first mate Paul Miller. Mike came down with Tarkalean flu after our last layover, he’s in his quarters resting.”
“You have my gagh?”
“Yes sir, alive and wriggling.”
Ch’tang hardly suppressed his grin. “Good, I have your payment if it’s up to proper quality.”
“See you in twenty minutes. Alexa out.”
Ch’tang turned back to the sensor bekk. “See? Upirel, you’re seeing shadows. The Federation is still arguing over whether we are even attacking.”
“It doesn’t look right, my lord,” the young Lethean said. “It doesn’t feel right either… I cannot explain it.”
“Just relax, this duty is boring, it’s easy to mistake mundane things for threats when you’re prepared for battle, but it is not yet coming… Still… play with the sensors a little bit, perhaps you’ll see something to confirm, or deny, your suspicions—and keep me informed.” It wouldn’t do to slap down a devoted, if lesser, warrior outright, and it would keep the Lethean busy.
“Yes, my lord.” He turned back to his console, and Ch’tang went back to his meal. “Well, that’s funny.”
“What is?”
“The warp field, sir.”
“What, that it reads as a Federation ship? It’s an ex-Federation planet, they had plenty of those.”
“Sir, the freighter is a civilian ship, this… these neutrino counts are for a warp core three times as powerful… at least three times as powerful… and the Onkna sideband harmonics are way off. Is it a dedicated smuggler?”
“Hmmm…” He reached for his comlink. “I need the security chief on the bridge immediately.”
The security chief, Ch’tang’s second cousin Garcha, had been QaS DevwI’ until she was severely burned in a battle with the Gorn, rendering her unfit to land with the troops. For her many years of service, Councilor K’lek had allowed her to continue aboard in a less strenuous post.
“Take a look at what Upirel found.”
“Vargas does have a sheet,” she said, looking up from a PADD after examining the data. “Mostly fines for public drunkenness, but he was stopped once by a Federation ship on suspicion of running weapons to a pro-independence faction on Gamma Hromi IV. The charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.”
“Gamma Hromi IV? Didn’t General K’Meq attack that world?”
“Yes, the invasion was a disaster. The colonists used the weapons we sent them and fought back, with a Starfleet team helping them. Then Dahar Master Ch’zog beheaded K’Meq for torturing random people to try and find their hideout and everything went straight to Gre’thor.”
“My Lord? Ma’am?” Upirel spoke up. “The harmonics are moving. This doesn’t make any sense...”
“Let me take a look, sometimes the instruments are faulty… What in the name of Kahless is that?”
“That is two ships in close formation,” the Chief Engineer, S’volssk, a Gorn Fem and the largest living thing on the bridge, asserted.
Ch’tang wrinkled his brow. “Bring the wing to battle stations. Have the HIjol’peng and Qugh’tung head out and take a closer look. We will follow behind.”
It took entirely too long for the various sections of the Vor’cha-class battlecruiser to report their readiness for battle. Ch’tang made a note to order more drills as the two birds-of-prey headed to intercept the incoming. This performance is disgraceful for a ship of the House of K’lek. The Chancellor was right: peace has been the death of the Klingon Empire.
Then both birds-of-prey went evasive.
Bridge, USS Mombasa.
“They’ve made us, Captain!”
“Damn it,” Lieutenant Commander Saul Roberts cursed. Little earlier than she wanted, but... “We can work with this. Shields up, lock weapons on the lead bird-of-prey.”
“Ready on weapons.”
“Fire!”
The bird-of-prey suddenly peeled off to starboard, its shields coming online in time to stop most of the initial cannonade.
“Bird two is going left, shall I pursue?” Commander Zoplak radioed.
“Negative, Reliable, stay on my wing, keep me covered. We’ve got maybe a minute before those raptors get here.”
Singly, the São Paulo-class was more than a match for the Ki’tang-class bird-of-prey in the gunsights. Except for the cloaking device, he irritatedly noted as it started to vanish from his sensors. “Attack pattern Sisko-3. Guns to scatter mode, fire. Reliable, you see a hit, put a torpedo into it.”
“I’m on your—yipe! Other one’s on my tail, I’ll try and draw him off!”
“I got him, I got him!” Ensign Marsh blurted. “Four solid hits, I’ve got a trail!”
“Go to proximity detonation on torpedoes. Careful, lead your target… Fire!”
Four quantum torpedoes blasted out of the tubes and the endless night was lit up by explosions. Moments later the flaming, disintegrating wreck of a bird-of-prey phased back into existence. No sign of any survivors.
“Come about, let’s get the other one!”
A Somraw-class raptor erupted from a warp microjump as the Mombasa swung to starboard and vertical, its opening volley missing by fifty klicks. “Sam, on my mark, dive. Three, two, one—” More fire from the raptor hissed into the aft shields. “Mark!”
The Reliable dove. The second bird-of-prey dove with it, and flew straight into a pair of Roberts’s torpedoes. “Time to go, Sam!”
“Right with you! Got some damage to the starboard nacelle, seems minor, though.”
IKS lengwI’qet.
“Nice,” Ch’tang muttered as the two Federation escorts went to warp. “taD’moH and Deb’choS form on my ship, pursuit formation Morath. tar’be, qaj, assume defensive picket formation at the base.”
“My lord, that will divide our forces!”
“I know, but our assignment was to protect the base, and this was obviously a feint to draw our forces off. The base will not go unprotected while we hunt these raiders down. Have you identified them?”
“They’re still broadcasting the Alexa’s ident but I’ve identified the markings on one of them as the USS Mombasa,” Bekk Upirel announced as the lengwI’qet began to accelerate out of orbit. “She’s part of Admiral Alcott’s force, can’t tell much beyond that.”
“Breaking their own rules.” Ch’tang’s smile widened into a predatory gape. “Prep a class-nine probe and set it for Ganalda Station with your findings and the record of the battle.”
“Sir, that will take it through enemy controlled territory—”
“Yes, yes it will. Be sure to include our sensor logs, and assure also that the locator beacon leaks into the bands used by our opponents.”
“Sir?”
“Have you ever wondered, with the ease that a modern electronic warfare suite can replicate signals, why Starfleet hasn’t used signal-spoofing to conceal their military movements?” Ch’tang asked.
“No, sir.”
Ch’tang’s grin widened. “Because it’s a war crime under their law—this USS Mombasa has just conducted a false-flag operation using a civilian identity. Had they been pretending to be a Klingon warship, a military vessel, they would not have committed a war crime, but they chose a civilian identity in a naked attempt to generate retaliation against civilians by our side. It’s a transparent strategem that even violates their honour code, and I want them to know that we know/” Leaning forward in his command seat, he continued, “We know they’re desperate, to behave thus, we’re winning the war and now they’ll do anything, violate any rule, even destroy their own honour, because they’re losing. We’ll send the probe after we have our victory. For now, pursue!”
“Yes sir!”
Garcha started singing, and Ch’tang and the rest of the bridge quickly joined in as the warp drive lit. “Qoy qeylIs puqloD. Qoy puqbe’pu’. yoHbogh matlhbogh je SuvwI’, Say’moHchu’ may’ ’Iw!”
USS Mombasa.
On the sensor readout, drive plasma suddenly burst from the Reliable’s starboard nacelle. “Damn it! We’ve got a leak!”
“I thought you said that hit was minor, Zop!”
“I did! We can’t maintain speed!”
“Head for the asteroid belt, I’ll fly cover while you make repairs!”
The two escorts raced for the cover of the debris field and fell out of warp in sequence.
What felt like half the Klingon fleet was close on their tail. One bird-of-prey got a little overenthusiastic and tried to leapfrog them in warp, but their braking run sent them into the surface of an asteroid the size of a parking garage.
Roberts ordered a close pass over a cratered rock big enough to be spherical as the battlecruiser arrived. A volley of disruptor bolts went wide but ejecta from the surface sparked off the nav deflector’s field. “Aft array, return fire!”
The dwarf planet’s surface passed beneath them in a blur as Mombasa traded blows with a raptor several thousand meters behind. The curvature took them out of the line of sight for a moment, but not long enough to lose them. Come on, keep coming, keep coming…
The ship jolted from a hit. “That was the cruiser!” the DCA, a yearling ensign, shouted.
“Aft shields at 76 percent, scorched the paint a bit!”
Ahead a denser section of belt floated in the black, but they’d have to cross nearly four hundred thousand kilometers of open space to reach it. “Divert cannon power to engines, they’re no good to us in a stern chase anyway!”
IKS lengwI’qet.
“They’re making for that cluster of asteroids, General!”
He smiled. “Time?”
“No more than five minutes, sir.”
The subspace microjump device was developed for bird-of-prey tactics, but House K’Lek owned the technology. “Let’s get… ahead of them. I tire of a stern chase, we will force them to fight us as men.”
“Aye sir…”
The helm officer activated the ‘classified device’ after a brief calculation.
Then the cluster of asteroids exploded.
Most of the raptors and birds-of-prey were all but obliterated in a fraction of a second, and the first detonations stripped the flagship’s aft and portside shielding as if it wasn’t even there. “Fight the ship!”
The Federation ships slowed as engineering shunted power and another detonation ripped through the hull.
And General Ch’tang finally realized that he, not the base, had been the target all along.
But a Vor’cha is a tough target. Not so much for the armor protection, nor for shield power. It’s a tough ship because even the backups have backups.
But, as the third detonation finished the primary impulse engines, and the portside nacelle tumbled in six broken pieces, with her core offline and the remaining weapons reduced to relying on manual gunnery from crewmen, it was only a matter of time. The Federation escorts slowed and circled and were joined by two more escorts and a light cruiser that warped in from behind a moon. The ships picked at each newly revealed area, stripping her deck by deck. They took return fire, but it slowed and slowed.
Bodies and pieces of bodies tumbled in freezing clouds as pressurized decks were ripped open to space, their structural integrity fields already compromised.
No quarter asked, none was given. The Starfleet ships kept firing until no return fire was detected. A pass showed no lifesigns aboard what had been a KDF battlecruiser, but now resembled a loose cloud of debris and razor blades with a faintly radioactive signature.
Transporter Room One, USS Kagoshima.
Lieutenant Commanders Roberts and Zoplak appeared jointly on the transporter pad and recoiled at the expression on Kanril Eleya’s face… and at the two armed security officers standing behind her.
“Roberts, Zoplak, what ship are you squawking as?”
“What? Ma’am, I’m… It’s USS Mombasa, right?”
“No.” She raised her PADD and made a gesture on the screen, and a plot appeared on a nearby screen.
The IFF channel for both their ships still read “SS Downeaster Alexa”.
“Oh, sh*t,” Roberts muttered.
“Recall that your orders were to broadcast your true ident before you engaged. I specifically warned you about that to keep us within the Articles of War. Now our operation is tainted. Your crews are tainted. I’m tainted!” she bellowed.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Zoplak said.
“Too late, you’re both relieved,” she growled. “Petty Officer, take these men into custody.”
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The report from General Krall, son of K'Bron, commander of the 7th Carrier Wing, was incredible. He’d arrived ahead of schedule in Hromi 19, locally “V’Shek”, to find evidence of a massive dilithium explosion “like a miniature Praxis”. The supply base had been looted and glassed and the entire 47th Cruiser Squadron guarding it was wiped out to a man.
And debris analysis pointed directly to weapons of the Federation Starfleet.
“So they’re finally going on the offensive.” Colonel B’Sanos stretched his good arm—the one that didn’t end above the elbow—over the status screen.
“You’ve been saying this for months, B’Sanos.” Klag’s image scowled.
“Because it’s bleeding obvious, General.” The younger man was a commoner-born, but he had zero hesitation addressing the noble and senior officer over the link. “Federation forces would have eventually gotten their act together sooner or later. And we’re less prepared now that it is later than if they had been ready to fight sooner. I’m getting interference from Great Houses, attempts to undermine the grand strategy for the profit of, or to create detriments for, members of the High Council. Inter-unit cohesion is being impacted, and we have had to call off four offensives in the last two months because Third Fleet can’t seem to find coordinates on a map, or arrive in condition to make battle. Or they arrive late after conducting useless ‘reprisals’ against conquered populations.”
“What do you want, B’Sanos? You’ve already got the best forces in the theater!”
“I want you to restrain or replace that stupid petaQ K’Hugh, and put someone competent in his place, General. I want House K’lek to stop meddling in operations on this front, for House Torg’s forces to stop giving excuses why they need to be closer to the rear. I need a coherent force out here, not a bunch of squabbling nobles from Qo’noS meddling and transferring units to useless tasks!”
“You’re still upset about K’Ragh. Admit it.”
“It was a defensive mission and his wing was configured for offense operations! You’re damned right I’m still angry about that! His replacement isn’t half the commander he was, and this endless political interference is costing us the initiative.”
“I’ll do what I can from this end, but—”
Then the connection suddenly went dead.
B’Sanos leapt for the radio. “Get the alert-five squadron out to Relay K335 immediately!”
“Yes, sir!”
He shook his head. It was still hard to believe, but undeniable: Starfleet wasn’t just going on the offensive, they were using Klingon tactics. K’Ragh’s tactics.
Maybe identifying the enemy wing leader K’Ragh’s widow had reported would yield some insight. He started running through reports from Imperial Klingon Intelligence. There wasn’t much: Admiral Stephen Alcott had been doing a good job at rooting out Klingon spies and K’Men hadn’t gotten them a good picture of his order of battle for almost a month. Still, “unidentified Shi’Kahr-class with a female, possibly Moabite or Bajoran commander” wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was something.
I translated K'Ragh's quotation into Klingon for fun:
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The conventional loophole in the ban on "false IFF" ruses is pretty much as written here, and goes back to old timey unwritten "rules" of war. My main inspiration came from the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (I don't know if this scene is in the specific Aubrey-Maturin novels the movie draws from), where Jack Aubrey's HMS Surprise is pursuing a French privateer, Acheron.
The rest I got from my reading of Fourth Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I Article 39: to wit, that civilian shipping in the employ of the Klingon military can be considered "a party to the conflict". Note that I am in no way an international law expert and do not know how valid the ICC would consider this interpretation in real life.
It's also worth noting, Eleya doesn't like the idea of limited war and wants to escalate, which is in large part cultural. She is, of course, not human: in my interpretation, the Bajorans might not even recognize limited war as a legitimate concept, given their still-fairly-recent history. IOW, in their view, you either fight with every tool at your disposal, or you don't bother fighting.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Understand that I need to
Wish that I had other choices
Than to harm the one I love
What have you done now?
I know I better stop tryin’
You know that there’s no denyin’
I won’t show mercy on you now
I know I should stop believin’
I know that there’s no retrievin’
It’s over now, what have you done?
What have you done now?
I have been waitin’ for someone like you
But now you are slippin’ away, oh (What have you done now?)
Why, why does fate make us suffer?
There’s a curse between us, between me and you
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done now?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done now?
Would you mind if I killed you?
Would you mind if I tried to?
‘Cause you have turned into my worst enemy
You carry hate that I don’t feel
It’s over now, what have you done?
What have you done now?
I have been waitin’ for someone like you
But now you are slippin’ away, oh (What have you done now?)
Why, why does fate make us suffer?
There’s a curse between us, between me and you
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done now?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done?
What have you done now?
What have you done?
(What have you done, what have you done?)
(What have you done, what have you done?)
I will not fall, won’t let it go
We will be free when it ends
I have been waitin’ for someone like you
But now you are slippin’ away, oh (What have you done now?)
Why, why does fate make us suffer?
There’s a curse between us, between me and you
I have been waitin’ for someone like you
But now you are slippin’ away, oh (What have you done now?)
Why, why does fate make us suffer?
There’s a curse between us, between me and you
Within Temptation feat. Keith Caputo, “What Have You Done”
Songwriters, Sharon den Adel, Robert Westerholt and Daniel Gibson
Captain’s Ready Room, USS Kagoshima, scouting New London. 15 November 2406.
After V’Shek, the tacscorts didn’t have enough ammo left to continue the mission, so I’d agreed to RTB. But New London, which Admiral Alcott and I had discussed as a target for phase two, wasn’t far off-course, so we popped into the system’s Oort cloud to have a look-see.
And that’s when the Pah-wraiths got loose.
I slam my screen closed and rest my face in my hands. “I warned ‘em…”
20 November, 2406.
If the Alpha and Beta Quadrants were a room, briefly, you could have heard a pin drop. In the recorded histories of races from one end of known space to the other, this has never happened. Never have the colonies of one civilization turned coat and broken with their homeworld to join with an empire of a different species, let alone one at war with the colonies’ own progenitors—not without the homeworld being destroyed or conquered, at any rate.
In an instant, with one announcement, all the public goodwill toward the seceding colonists that had been built by Skynet’s leak of the resettlement plan evaporated, to be replaced by anger.
The good news for the regional Starfleet forces was that the sheer embarrassment of having not a few individuals, or ships, but four major colonies defect without a shot fired, was galvanic. Within hours, the Federation Council approved bills freeing the local commander of the Hromi Sector to make whatever actions he deemed necessary to prevent the secession from spreading, effectively placing the region under martial law and making the commanding officer of the border fleet a military governor for the entire star cluster. In short order, Rear Admiral Stephen Alcott was frocked up to full admiral by the Commander, Starfleet, to be placed in charge of a newly designated major combat theatre dubbed the “Eta Eridani Fleet Area”.
The first thing Admiral Alcott did was to promote several officers attached to his command, but the second was to order the suspension of the defensive limitations clause of the Colonial Act of 2371, followed by the order to begin raising and arming local defensive militia forces on any and all outposts, colonies, and settlements currently under Federation control. To everyone’s surprise, these orders were confirmed, narrowly, by a floor vote in the Federation Council that overrode an objection raised by the Director of Colonial Development in federal court.
While Director Hathix Garvey’s request for an injunction wended its way through a rather irritated appellate court, other wheels began turning.
One unfortunate fallout from the Federation Council’s sudden panic-driven lawmaking was the reauthorization of Dominion War-era ‘screening’ regulations, and a radical expansion of both Starfleet Internal Affairs and the Federation Security Agency to accommodate the sudden increase in workload.
Earth Spacedock. 21 November 2406.
“Captain Cham, what do you think?” Fleet Admiral Jorel Quinn asked, as the announcement was replayed from the public net.
Cham Nguoc shrugged. “Admiral, I think it’s politics—the Klingons are taking advantage of some bad feelings. The people back home will come around to regretting this on their own.”
“We’re going to need you to submit to a screening, is that going to be a problem?”
“Is it going to delay my tour on the USS Smedley Butler, sir?” Cham asked.
“Not if you voluntarily submit to telepathic screening, Captain,” the Admiral told him.
“Let’s do it, I’ve got itchy boots and my ship’s waiting on me. This isn’t going to take forever is it?”
“This is Ling Matsuo from FSA, and Starfleet Internal Affairs Commander Karl Neumann. If you don’t mind, Captain, I’ll meet you after, if that’s alright?”
“No problem,” Cham said. “Let’s go, gents… Where are we doing this?”
“This way Captain. It’s a pleasure to deal with a man who’s intending to be reasonable,” Matsuo noted, as they boarded the turbolift.
“Hey, there’s a war on, I get it, and my home planet just defected to the damn Klinks. You do what you gotta do… huh, this is toward Cargo…”
“It’s easier to secure the area, Captain, we don’t need to make a spectacle out of this process.”
“Right…”
The doors hissed open, and Cham stepped forward, then recoiled back.
The tripedal alien in front of him reached out, and then, the world went dark.
Holy f*ck, they’re real!
The Undine bound him up, attached a cluster of amplifiers to his head, and passed him through a gateway.
Then, he became the Moab-born officer. “You know, just when you find out you can be in two places at once, you can’t get any more work done than before… Good pick, I like this guy, he’s got a sense of humour. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun being him.”
“Q’uinn chose him specifically because of your similarities of temperament, Q’arr.”
“Don’t use that name, I’m Cham now.” He flexed his new form’s musculature, then donned a clean uniform from one of the storage cases. “I assume I’m cleared of all suspicions, a good, loyal man now??”
“Absolutely,” Matsuo said.
“Completely cleared, verified even,” Neumann agreed.
“Excellent, I’ve got a ship to run. If you’ll excuse me, Gentlemen…” He paused. “If you find a suitable match for Q’arr’s mate…”
“We’re working on several potentials right now.”
“This… is going to be a lot of fun.” Cham/Not-Cham smiled wide, and boarded the turbolift.
Starbase Deep Space K-7. 22 November 2406.
Ensign Morris Lansky was coming out of the starbase’s O-club with Ensign Laramie 285 and Lieutenant Junior Grade Kestra Maldonado. The three were enjoying ‘pass time’—three days on-station with the bars and clubs on Sherman’s Planet off-limits. Lansky’d just finished ‘sharking’ at the dom-jot table—in this case, walking away with E-cred scrip from two lieutenants and a commander who’d been drinking just a bit more than he had. He was feeling good, his first cruise out of the Academy had gone really well.
“… so this raptor, right? Hammering on our port shields, they’ve got jamming going and the captain, she’s so cool, she gives the word up there in the bridge, and…”
His attention was focused on two women close to his age, both showing a bit more interest in his… Well, they weren’t focusing on his story so much, but rather more-or-less taking turns trying to gain his exclusive attention. An olive-skinned farmboy, well-formed and stocky, he wasn’t bad-looking, and he in turn hadn’t become much enamoured of fellow tac pukes with their exercise-honed bodies.
So he didn’t see the Security officers before a hand landed on his shoulder, and before he could process it he was face-to-the-deck. “Morris… Lansky, right? We need to ask you a few questions, Ensign.” The Commander squatting down to look him in the eye has a hard expression.
“What’s this about?” Laramie, a ‘belter’ from Sol Belt’s Novy Rus habitat, makers of half the warp core controllers in the fleet, was on her very first day at the front, and she hadn’t even gotten a berthing yet. She also hadn’t lost the belter habit of challenging authority in spite of finishing twentieth out of an Academy class of two thousand. “Sir?”
“Federation security,” the red-garbed commander snapped. “The ensign here, he’s from one of the rebel colonies that just signed on with the Klingons. We need to verify his loyalties. Don’t fuss it, or you’ll be next to him in the brig, nugget.”
The young woman’s mouth worked for a moment, and then, “This isn’t right!”
The officer ignored her objection. “Ensign, go back to your quarters, we may have questions for you later.”
Ensign Maldonado wasn’t quite so stunned by the rather sudden interruption. She called in to her section lead before the Security men were out of earshot, and within minutes it was on the captain’s desk.
I just finished my paperwork, and the water’s at exactly the right temperature, so naturally that’s when the intercom rings. “The phekk is it now?” I wrap a towel around my torso and go over to the comm. “This better be important, Tess.”
“Captain, I’ve just been informed Station Security has arrested one of our junior gunnery officers, and threatened one of the replacements due to report to engineering.”
“What did they do?” I ask tiredly, getting my panties.
“Lieutenant Maldonado says they didn’t do anything, ma’am, but the Commander involved mentioned Ensign Lansky’s from Arluna. Little garbled but it sounds like they’re doing some kind of loyalty check, ma’am.”
“A WHAT!? The phekk they are! Who’s witness?” I grab my undress reds off the rack and start pulling my clothes back on in a hurry.
“Lieutenant Maldonado from Science, and an engineering ensign named… Laramie 285, the engineer’s from one of the Sol-belt hab—”
“I know, a warp core specialist from the Novy Rus habitat. Prophets… Did she get a name for that officer?”
“Commander Simeon Kozhukhov, ma’am. Maldonado said he had a red shirt, IA branch pin.”
Starfleet Internal Affairs, not regular Security. This is serious. “Get my JAGO out of bed, I’ll be down there station-side in five minutes. Pass the word to the rest of our group. This is shiel’va verdanis… and pull all passes dockside until I get this clusterphekk cleared up… and tell Bynam to go collect our nugget ensign right phekk’ta now from her transfer quarters… preferably before Pickens gets her claws on the kid.”
“What’s the strategy after that, ma’am?”
“First, I’m going to go collect my officer from Security, then, I’m going to have some words with Admiral Alcott… but first, we’re going to go get our man out of interrogation and get him lawyered up.”
It occurs to me after Tess signs off, I might want to have leverage. Kozhukhov outranks me personally, and the arrest was on-station.
“Computer, patch me to the CO of USS Wilson.”
Sandra Pickens appears on the vid-screen without much delay (Prophets, when does she sleep?) and she’s still in working uniform. “Whatcha need’n?” she asks.
“Station security’s rounding up people from the colonies that just defected, and they nabbed one of mine.”
“Hm. Awraght, grab y’r Jaggo an’ meet me down et Stayshun S’curity in… fahve minnits,” she tells me. “Ah’ll be yo’ beat’n stick ef et comes dahn t’ et… an’ ah’ll be bringin’ frens on ‘counta they’s prolly grabbed somma mahn too.”
Out in the field, I’m group commander, but here, she’s got enough rank and seniority to put down leverage that I can’t, especially if the jerkass commander tries to use primacy of rank, and I know enough by now, to know Pickens and Alcott go way back.
“Git yo’ seniah officah aht heah naow.” Sandra’s in full dress uniform with all her ribbons and a fresh fourth pip (why wasn’t I invited to the promotion ceremony?), and she’s holding a crowbar like a swagger stick in her left hand that’s been lovingly polished, even engraved. “Don’ make me r’peat mahse’f, Loo-tennant, or next assahnmint y’all gits will be guardin’ a screpyahd on sum mudball wheah th’ only thing y’all sees’ll be th’ local carrion buhds.”
“Uh, yes, sir,” he nervously assents, and knocks on an office door. “Sir, could you come out here, please?”
A blond human comes out looking nonplussed, but hurriedly comes to attention when he sees Pickens’s rank. “Captain! I—”
“Stow et. Commandah, this Commandah, who’s jes’ finished combat operations, hez sum issues regahd’n yoah conduct of an un-authorahzed detentional natchah. We does this th’ easy ways, whech means you’n gonna hefta talk t’ Adm’ral Alcott all personal-lahke, or th’ hard ways, mean’n yall gits to stand in front of the mast. Is we crystal, Mistah Kozhukhov?”
His face flushes, and he kind of chews for a moment. “Crystal, Captain.”
She turns to me. “The Floah, is yoahs, Capt’n Kanril. Ef’n yalls needs me, ah’ll be consultin’ weth th’ JAGO ahtsahd.”
I stretch myself as tall as I can. A lot of the time, my height’s a pain, but not here where I can force him to look up to meet my eyes. “Commander Kozhukhov, has Ensign Lansky been charged with a crime?”
“No, Lieutenant Commander, we’re simply trying to ascertain—”
“Then get the phekk out of my way,” I snarl.
He’s stunned into silence long enough for me to push past him and throw the interrogation room’s door open. “Ensign Lansky, with me, now.”
“Commander, you’ve got no right to—”
I round on him and he recoils. “NO! YOU have no right! This man is under my command and is my responsibility! You want to jam him up for something, you go through proper legal channels and you go through me! And no matter his planet of origin, he is to be afforded the same constitutional rights as any other Federation citizen, so either charge my officer or shut the phekk up!”
“Captain, I—”
“Ensign, you shut your mouth,” I command without turning my head. “You will not say a single solitary word to either of these men without a JAG present, that is an order.”
“Yes, ma’am!” he hurriedly assents, and rushes to my side, leaving the interrogator to gape speechlessly after us.
“We’re leaving,” I tell Kozhukhov, and start for the door.
“Commander, you can’t do this—”
Then he stops cold at the door out of the Security substation. On the other side of the promenade is a line of red uniforms, every captain who was assigned to Operation Backblast and not a few who weren’t, staring across at Kozhukov.
Sandra Pickens steps forward. “Nah thin, Ah b’lieves y’all gots somethin’ a’ mahn in theah too.”
I turn to him, grinning. “Real Starfleet protects its own.”
/deathtotheeditmonster
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Scuttlebutt travels faster than warp drive. The news hitting the nets as they made their way towards Sherman’s Planet surprised and infuriated many—especially when the Klingon Chancellor affirmed the defection of the ‘Moab Confederacy.’
Melissa Travis had more problems to worry about at the moment than what was happening light-years away. Technically, her newest crewman was an enemy soldier. A friend on the station had managed to slip her a heads-up that Starfleet Intelligence was very interested in getting their hands on Bo’Dgok. And herself for that matter. Her XO had quietly made a few inquiries for her, talked to a few people he knew, who knew a few people. So she wasn’t going in unprepared.
For his part, Bo was still wearing Denali working uniforms, changed out from the khaki to a much more useable dark grey coverall with the Home Guard insignia on the collar tabs. The CHENG had taken the pattern and replicated Starfleet versions of it as well—having pockets to store tools was extremely handy. Bo’s experience as an exchange officer on the USS Challenger before the war also came in handy. He was already up to speed on the systems, and fitting in well with the rest of the Engineering division. Now if she could only keep him.
“Nighthawk, K-7 traffic control. You are cleared in for Docking Port 2.”
That was odd—it was rare for ships to actually dock at the station. She glanced over at his XO, who was furiously typing on a PADD. He gave her a slight nod, showing her the number on the screen in front of him. 23.
“Rodger Control,” Missy replied. As the channel was cut she gave the order, “Helm, take us in, Docking Port 23.”
“But Captain, Control said—”
“I know what they said. What the admiral sent was different. JAG is waiting at 23.”
Lieutenant Berglund blinked at that, then grinned. “Docking port 23, aye, Captain.” With a station the size of K-7, it would take anyone waiting at port 2 over twenty minutes to get there unless they used intrastation beaming. Which K-7, given it predated Kirk by thirty years, didn’t have the capability for.
“We will be docked in seven minutes. Also there is a text message from Admiral Alcott’s office. It says, ‘olive’?”
Travis grinned. “I know what he means.” She tapped the com on her armrest. Engineering!”
“Engineering here,” Commander Fukada answered.
“Tell Subedar Bo’Dgok to meet me at the docking port in five.”
“He’s already on his way, Captain.”
It would be close—but fortunately she had everything ready, and the Captain’s cabin wasn’t far from the bridge. “Premor, you’ve got the conn,” she told her XO.
“Hopefully I won’t have to keep it,” the Trill joked. “Good luck.”
Docking port 23, K-7.
Lieutenant Cathy Bell went over the relevant laws one more time as she waited for the lock to fully engage. It was sketchy, and it might not survive a challenge, depending on if it was and which judge saw it—but it would work for the time being. There were no guards here other than the usual bored security, at least none from the Starfleet Intelligence team that had arrived a couple days ago in response to the Independence declaration from the former colony worlds. That was another kettle of fish that she was glad she wasn’t involved in sorting out. She wasn’t normally involved in high level interplanetary legal squabbles; she was just one of the lawyers assigned to the station JAG office.
But the Admiral asked her to look into this for him, and she believed he was right in this case—technically. She squared her shoulders as the hatch slid open. “Captain Travis?”
Melissa had changed very quickly: instead of Starfleet red and black, she was now, well, overdressed. From the gleaming shined boots, the white gloves, sharply creased dark olive trousers and lighter olive blouse, plus the peaked cap, she looked at least a hundred years out of date if not more. “Technically Lieutenant Colonel as of Tuesday in this uniform,” she replied.
“Works for me. I’m Lieutenant Bell from JAG. Your idea holds up—though to make the Intel boys happy, they will still want to ask your officer some questions.” She gestured towards the lift. “If you’ll follow me, the Admiral couldn’t break away but he wanted you both in his office ASAP—easier to assert his authority there.”
“They can ask,” Bo’dok replied stiffly, “however, I do not have to answer them.”
“No you don’t,” the lawyer agreed. “Which won’t make them happy. But as you are listed as a Denali citizen instead of Imperial, without evidence of anything breaking the Espionage Act they can’t do anything,” she explained as the turbolift doors closed. “Operations.”
Missy relaxed a bit. She’d been to the station before, Ops deck was about as far from the brig as one could physically get on the antique station. This just might work.
Admiral’s Day Quarters.
Commander Simeon Damirovich Kozhukhov was not having a good day. He had leads on several sources of not only good intelligence, but possible traitors to the Federation as well—only to be stymied at every turn.
First, by that Bajoran сука pulling rank on him when he was questioning a legitimate person of interest in the terrorists who turned four Federation worlds over to the Klinks. That was just a sideshow though: the real prize was across the room from him, and he was being told—
“What do you mean, ‘no’? Admiral, that Klink is an enemy combatant!”
Alcott didn’t need this right now. And to be honest, his first instinct when he’d heard the news about the Nighthawk was both anger and dismay at losing a good commander. It wasn’t until a few days later when Captain Drake contacted him and assured him that that wasn’t a threat, that he relaxed.
“While I understand your frustration, Mister Kozhukhov, the legal position is clear. Both Travis and Bo’Dgok are citizens of Denali and members of that world’s Home Guard. Same as many Andorians in Starfleet who are also Imperial Guard reservists, or Caitians, or… I believe you met Captain Kanril earlier, she still has a reserve warrant as a Militia sergeant…” He shrugged in irritation. “Short version is, while yes he was serving on a KDF cruiser until a few weeks ago, he’s still also serving his homeworld—who transferred him to be under Captain, or Lieutenant Colonel to use her Home Guard rank, Travis’s command.”
Kozhukov was close to exploding. “Sir, that is bullsh*t and you know it! Not three weeks ago SI received word of a meeting between Travis and General Klag on Drozana station!”
Missy wanted to speak up, but Lieutenant Bell had already advised her to let her handle it. “Which was logged, sir—and the reason for the stop at Drozana was to drop off two hundred thirteen children.”
The commander sighed. “I get that, and yeah, it was the right call to drop them off there. But the meeting, and telling the Klingons that Starfleet wasn’t your first choice?” He glared at Travis. “What the hell, Captain? Why would you consider the Klingons over the planet your people came from?”
“I wanted to stay with my friend, what’s wrong with that?” Melissa nearly growled. “He got to go to Ty’Gokor. I couldn’t because at the time non-Klingons were not allowed. So I had to sacrifice—”
“Sacrifice?” Kuzhukov scoffed. “Some sacrifice, to get quality training and humane treatment instead of—”
Now Missy did growl. She took two steps forward and ripped open her uniform tunic. Fortunately she was wearing a bra—not that that distracted from the very jagged scar running below her navel. “‘Humane treatment’? Commander, those b*stards sterilized me due to my genetics—and purposely botched the job so it could never be reversed. I’ve sacrificed everything. What have you given?”
To his credit, the Commander looked as appalled as the Admiral did, while Cathy Bell held her hands over her mouth. “Oh my god, I studied that case. You’re Cadet Doe!”
“Yeah.” Missy didn’t bother closing her shirt. “The Federation Civil Liberties Union took Starfleet to court over what they did. On the bright side, it won’t ever happen to anyone else, augmented genes or not.” She stared the Commander in the eyes. “I believe in the Federation that much. I’ll never have kids, but I’ve got the stars.”
Kuzhukov bit his lip, then looked at Bo’Dgok. “Where do your loyalties lie?”
Bo was trying hard to hide his anger—he’d never heard of this himself. Still, he would not dishonor his Captain—he could always destroy things in the holodeck later. “I stand with her. Where she leads, I follow.”
Alcott turned his head back to the IA man. “Well, Mister Kozhukhov?”
“That’s… acceptable to SIA, Admiral.”
“Good. From here on out, I’m going to have to concur with Captains Kanril and Pickens and ask that any further inquiries go through the proper chains of command and procedures. You don’t need to come to me directly unless you suspect one of my captains or a member of my staff and you will have access to operational and communications logs. However, you do need to inform the respective CO of both accusations and evidence before you take a crew member into custody. Do I make myself clear?”
“Very clear, sir.” The ‘or else’ Alcott left unspoken was throwing Kozhukhov off the station and escalating the complaints to the Chief of Starfleet Security, which would probably end the IA man’s career, and Kozhukhov knew it. On the other hand, the logs would let him do his job. Like any military installation, K-7 and its attached ships routinely monitored and censored crew communications for operational security, and Kozhukhov would be able to view and search anonymized versions in memory and seek a warrant for the unredacted form of anything he found suspicious.
“I’ll arrange your net credentials,” Mac Calhoun said.
“Then I won’t take up any more of your time. Captains, Admiral.” He stood, turned smartly on a heel, and walked out.
Alcott looked at a PADD on his desk to keep his own control, then turned to the Klingon. “How well do you know your department?”
“Sir, I spent my first few years before hostilities broke out serving as an exchange officer on the USS Challenger. Captain LaForge’s engineering department was an excellent place to learn.”
“Good, because I talked to Commander Fukada about you, and some other issues. Captain Travis, I have to steal Fukada for some of the repairs of ships in the task force. He said that Lieutenant Commander Bo’Dgok would serve well as his replacement.”
Bo blinked, looking surprised, as the admiral passed a black pip across the table to him. “I am humbled. Commander Fukada is a fine engineer to serve under. Thank you for the vote of confidence, Admiral.”
Alcott nodded and passed a data solid across the desk to Missy. “You may not thank me when you see how much time I can give you to get your repairs done. I’m assigning you to Rear Admiral Mwangi, 92nd Tactical Squadron.”
Missy looked surprised. “You managed to break him out from staff duty in the Paris Puzzle Palace, sir? I’m impressed.” She grinned. “I served under him when I was an Ensign on the South Dakota.”
“Why do you think I put you with him?” Alcott replied. “He knows you well enough to keep you from getting into too much trouble.”
“Sir, I don’t know what stories you heard. Usually it was the other way around.”
The Admiral chuckled. “We’re short on ships so until we get one for him he’ll be using the ’hawk for his flag.”
“No problem, sir,” Travis replied. “I’ll even break out the good china.”
“Better start settling in quick,” he said more seriously, “because I’m throwing you in the sh*t right away.”
“Credible intelligence, sir?”
“That’s right. We’re calling it Operation Sand Spider.”
Travis raised an eyebrow. “Why ‘Sand Spider’?” she asked.
“Because it sounds scary,” Mac deadpanned.
High orbit of Baraka, Hromi 6 system. 26 November 2406.
Officially, Hromi 6 Prime’s full name was Almubarakat Manzil Jadid fi Alsamawat, but most of the sector just called it Baraka, and didn’t really understand why its inhabitants would consider it “blessed”. Technically, it was well within the Class M range, but it was close enough to its bright G4 star to be virtually uninhabitable at equatorial latitudes and had an extreme axial tilt that made for frequent and terrible storms.
There’s a general rule in colonization that only the most motivated settlers would deliberately select such a world, and the Barakans were certainly so. A Category 2 colony settled in the late 2240s by a Kharijite sect from Earth’s North African Alliance, its inhabitants had adopted a bizarre hybrid of an Islamic theocracy and a constitutional monarchy, led by a titular caliph who was dependent on a legislature of elected imams to maintain her rule.
On the surface, a planet seemingly so antithetical to United Earth’s ethos would have seemed an easy target for subversion, and indeed the Federation Security Agency and Starfleet Intelligence had documented several sightings of Klingon agents on Baraka. Those in the know thought otherwise. Being as the Barakans drew much of their legal system directly from the text of the Qur’an, the Klingons’ obsession with battle was a turn-off: “Fight in God’s cause against those who fight against you, but do not commit aggression.”
Worse still, in the eyes of the Barakans, was the outright betrayal carried out by what were, to them, nominal ‘People of the Book’ on Moab III, who chose to ally with the Klingons, potentially against their own race. Among the less-moderate imams, what Moab III’s people had done bordered or even crossed into apostasy: turning their back on mankind to ally with a mortal enemy. None, however, were willing to bring up the long struggle against Zionists in the past. The fall of Israel had been paid in fire and blood generations ago, and moderates still felt shame for what had been done, however briefly, in that long-ago time. And in truth, the Kharijites’ insistence on the duty to overthrow sinning rulers meant they had faced much persecution by other Muslim denominations themselves.
Though it was within two days’ sail of K-7, notwithstanding a pulsar blocking a direct flight, Baraka was quiet and relatively isolated, off major trade lanes and with few natural resources of note, so it was a surprise to its inhabitants when a small force of Starfleet ships entered orbit on November 30, escorting a trio of Curry-class armored transports that disgorged onto the surface of their world a small army of ground troops and assorted heavy equipment. Within minutes of their arrival, Rear Admiral Tawayne Johnson was on the surface seeking an audience with Calipha Rashida Alnnari bint Ali ibn Hakeem El-Hashem. This was granted.
“Salaam alaykum. What can I do for you, Admiral Johnson?” she asked him from her throne.
“Well, as you can see by my divisional badge, Your Holiness”—he gestured to a pin of crossed phaser rifles on his dress uniform—“I represent the Starfleet Ground Forces. Third Brigade, 71st GF. I have orders from Admiral Stephen Alcott to establish a defense station here on Baraka.”
“We have denied this request before. We do not wish to deal with Earthers any more than we have to.”
“Your Holiness, I’m from Tau Ceti IV, first off.”
“Then you have my apologies, but my objection stands.”
“Second, and this is classified,” he continued, “we have reason to believe that you’re next on the Klingons’ hit list.” The Calipha’s eyes narrowed. “And I don’t know if you’ve followed the news lately but Admiral Alcott just suspended Section 6 of the Maquis Act. I’ve only got a brigade of regulars with me, but our plan is to provide training and equipment for volunteers from among your people.”
“Wait a minute, Earth is actually encouraging us to defend ourselves?”
“Earth, no. Paris and San Fran, yes.” The Calipha chuckled. “Simply put, my superiors don’t want another Moab. We know some among your people have been accepting Klingon arms and even if we had time to suss out who has what, we don’t want to. But we are playing catch-up here and your support in this matter would go a long way.”
She regarded him for a long moment. “All right. Let’s say I’m willing to gamble my throne on you. I assume you’re aware that I served in combat during the Dominion War?”
“Yes, I am.”
“So, as you know, it’s very dangerous to try to hold a planet against an enemy with space superiority. Orbital bombardment can be incredibly destructive. Are your escorts planning to stay to help defend us?”
“Not at this time, no. We have a riskier plan in mind. The Klingons have been avoiding orbom for the most part since Gornar, so Alcott thinks we have a chance to pull a fast one.” He reached up and tapped his combadge. “General, you can come in now.”
The throne room door opened and a man in Bajoran field grays strode in. “Calipha Rashida, I’m honored to be here. I am Brigadier General Lem Bardis, commander of the Second Kendra Guards. First Minister Kalin Tala sends her greetings.”
“And she has my congratulations on her election victory.”
“I'll relay the sentiments myself, Your Holiness. My original assignment from First Minister Kalin was to train what we’re calling the 1st Baraka Defense Reserve in the use of our weapons, but I don’t think we have time.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting nothing, Your Holiness.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of archival plastic. “I’m informing you that in response to General K’Hugh’s atrocities at Hromi 7, at 0430 GMT this morning the Republic of Bajor declared war on the Klingon Empire.”
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
They see you as just a child
Surprise when they find out that a warrior will soon run wild
Prepare for your greatest moments
Prepare for your finest hour
The dream that you’ve always dreamed is
Suddenly about to flower
We are lightning
Straying from the thunder
Miracles of ancient wonder
This will be the day we’ve waited for
This will be the day we open up the door
I don’t wanna hear your absolution
Hope you’re ready for a revolution
Welcome to a world of new solutions
Welcome to a world of bloody evolution
In time your heart will open minds
A story will be told
And victory is in a simple soul
Your world needs a great defender
Your world’s in the way of harm
You want a romantic life, a fairytale that’s full of charm
Beware that the light is fading
Beware as the dark returns
This world’s unforgiving
Even brilliant lights will cease to burn
Legends scatter
Day and night will sever
Hope and peace are lost forever
This will be the day we've waited for
This will be the day we open up the door
I don’t wanna hear your absolution
Hope your ready for a revolution
Welcome to a world of new solutions
Welcome to a world of bloody evolution
In time your heart will open minds
A story will be told
And victory is in a simple soul
Jeff Williams and Casey Lee Williams, “This Will Be the Day” (from RWBY Volume 1)
Admiral’s Day Quarters, Deep Space K-7. 5 December 2406.
For the first time since taking command of K-7 Forces—now the Eta Eridani Fleet Area—Admiral Stephen Alcott was actually pleased with the status of the fleet that, outside his office’s window, glinted in the sunlight from their parking orbits over Sherman’s Planet.
He had relieved sixteen captains, replaced fifteen seriously damaged or too-outdated starships with transfers from rear areas, and through repairs and reinforcements had increased his total to eighty-four starships. It was more than twice what had been left when Menninger retired, with more on the way. Modified Class V probes laid by Kanril’s raiders were now providing a cheap replacement for the early warning nets that had been destroyed by K’Ragh early in the war, with three ships painted up in M’Karret’s stealth coating assigned to tend them.
Speaking of which, he saw out of the corner of his eye that the ‘message waiting’ light was blinking on his desk screen. He turned away from the view and went to the desk.
Alcott quickly ran the numbers in his head. Forty-six hulls, plenty of scouts and a solid core of battlecruisers and raptors to fly cover for the carrier. It looked to him from the attached sensor data like some of the theories Kanril and others had brought him were bearing fruit. The probes weren’t equipped with active measures like tachyon detection systems, they were relying on ordinary passive subspace sensors, and yet they were still picking up the track of the Klingons’ transit through their cloaks.
That meant the Klingons had gotten sloppy. Even granting that a vo’quv-class carrier wasn’t exactly easy to cloak to begin with, that the fleet had been detected well enough to identify individual ships meant the ships were flying close enough together at a high enough speed that the waves produced by their warp bubbles and navigational deflectors were combining and amplifying. Two Kamarag-class battlecruisers made for another interesting clue: the class had been a short-lived design from the first third of the previous century, built almost exclusively by the House K’lek yards. It was a rare ship; to have two of them probably meant that General K’Hugh was pulling resources from his own House fleet to fill out the ranks.
He quickly calculated the arrival time and arrived at about 1800 GMT on the Eighth. Perfect.
He quickly jotted down a series of OPORDs to be hand-delivered. There was no room for mistakes: if the Klingons knew Starfleet was on to them they could easily turn around and go home. And Kanril Eleya was absolutely right: they didn’t need to just turn the Klingons back, they needed a decisive victory. He’d seen it around the station. Morale had been bad when he arrived, it had gotten worse after the disasters at Vega and Turtle Bay, but it was picking up with the news spreading through the fleet of a series of small victories won by the twenty small ships that had disappeared and returned with stories and plunder.
It was time to kick things into high gear.
He quickly issued more orders, dispatching fifteen ships: five towards the border, ten on patrol, leaving a decent-size strategic reserve after subtracting the ships tasked to Sand Spider. If the Klingons were watching—and they probably are—they probably wouldn’t fall for the deception a third time, but he’d do everything he could to muddy the waters.
And meanwhile, he’d let his spacers enjoy a short vacation.
Menendez Beach, Sherman’s Planet .
Up in the black, Sandra Pickens was a section leader for almost two thousand spacers.
But down here, she and they were all just folk enjoying themselves.
“…Risa’s beaches are so much better,” Captain Bolivar Perez insisted. “You can’t even compare them. This… this is like Mexico.”
“Phegh. Y’all’s arta know better—this raht yere, et’s a real beach,” Sandra retorted, laughing. “Ain’ bin terryfoamed dahn ter trukk’d in sand bah overeagah tour’st treps.” She had a cooler open and had mixed something with shaved ice and a little paper umbrella—that could probably strip the paint off her ship’s hull if she spilled it. “‘Sides, dun need no safeties on th’ trek,” she added, picking up a powerboard with her other hand.
“You’re going to powerboard after drinking that?”
“Ah’m-a-gonna drink et whahl ah’m on th’ powahboahd,” she corrects him, “an’ ah’ll still kek yo’ TRIBBLE yougin’.”
Now Perez was interested. “Ten credits says otherwise, Pickens.”
“Nuh-uh, losah bah’s th’ next bottle.”
“Best two out of three?”
“A’raht.”
Music echoed from further up the beach as the two older captains waded into the surf. Somebody had set up a boom box playing some jazz/folk metal fusion band, and a big bag of marshmallows was ready and waiting by the campfire in case the thirty or so young men and women nearby ever stopped dancing.
“By the rising of the moons,
By the rising of the moons,
With your phaser on your shoulder
By the rising of the moons
“By the rising of the moons,
By the rising of the moons,
And a thousand phasers blazing
By the rising of the moons
The song ended and somebody paused the music player to groans and boos. “Hey, hey, hold on! Hold on a minute!”
The speaker is Idani Emrys, skipper of the Ottowa. Bajoran like me, but raised on Terra Nova after her parents escaped the Occupation. And I’m pretty sure she’s three sheets to the wind already.
“Let’s not forget! That song came from the Maquis Archipelago! Forty years ago, because some sh*theads from Earth decided to sell them out to the Cardies, the wraiths got loose! Now they’re tryin’ it again? Hell to the no!”
“Hear hear!” I hear Anne Blackfoot chime in.
“Here’s a toast!” she hollers, raising a bottle. “We’re gonna take our planets back, we’re gonna kick the Klingons back to Qo’noS, and we’re gonna tell ColDev and those *ssholes who tried to sell out half the cluster to go phekk themselves with a rusty spike! To Admiral Alcott, and Kanril Eleya!”
I’m glad it’s getting dark because now my cheeks are burning. But I raise my bottle, too. “Admiral Alcott!” I repeat.
USS Nighthawk, Captain’s ready room.
“I thought you had orders to enjoy yourself for a few hours.”
Missy looked up in annoyance, which she quickly pushed down. “You did say that, sir,” she replied to Admiral Alcott. “But Eleya and everyone else wanted a beach party. It’s thirty-six degrees down there, so either I sit in the water up to my neck to keep cool, I wear a cooling vest, or I have heatstroke in under twenty minutes.”
“Heh.” The admiral nodded as he dropped into one of the chairs. Heated fortunately, because Travis kept her ready room in the single digits. “Still, the fourteen-hour stand down means ‘stand down’, not get buried in paperwork.”
“Well, why aren’t you on the beach then? I know Joe’s down there.” She grinned. “Probably teaching the newbies the dirty versions of the old drinking songs.”
“I’m from Mars, remember? I don’t much care for hot weather either. Besides, I’m their direct commander. Folks need to feel they can cut loose without feeling that they’re being judged.”
She put the PADD down on the desk and stood up, coming around to the other side of it and sitting on the edge. “Well how about you, when’s the last time you had some time?”
“I’m the admiral in charge,” Alcott replied. “I’ll relax when everyone else does.” He grinned. “That is what is called a ‘hint’ by the way.”
“Fine fine.” She reached up and unsnapped the pips at her collar, dropped them on the desk and held out her hand. “Well, come on, Steve. With the upgrades we’ve gotten recently, the Alpine ski program in the holodeck can do the entire Hannenkam or the Vallée Blanche.”
“Never ski’d the Hannenkam,” Alcott said as he got to his feet. “And haven’t had skis on since the divorce.”
“Well all the more reason to do it in a holodeck first, before you get a chance to let me show you up before an audience.”
Alcott just grinned. “In your dreams. What say after the Hannenkam we do Olympus Mons?”
“I think we’ve got that one. I know we’ve got programs for all the Andorian ski areas, so we have to have Mars as well.”
Holodeck 2, two hours later.
She could have stayed out there longer, but then Melissa was engineered to survive at temperatures well in the negative range; the Admiral wasn’t. Fortunately the Olympus Mons program also had one of the many warm up chalet’s, complete with roaring fires and warm drinks.
He took a long sip of the mulled wine. “This is good, the taste is dead on.”
Missy smiled. “Thank one of my new engineers. He is damn good with the replicator systems.”
“Who is he?”
“Lieutenant Rin. He’s a Ferengi, think he’s down on the beach trying to sweet-talk one of my security team leads.”
“Good luck to him, then,” Alcott said with a grin, before turning a bit more serious. “I want to thank you by the way.”
“For what?”
“For not pitching a fit for working for a lieutenant commander at your rank.”
Missy snorted, a very unladylike sound. “Oh, please. How long have we known each other?”
“Since you were a wet-behind-your-very-large-ears cadet, and I was finishing an instructor rotation.” He chuckled. “I think Quinn never really forgave me for snagging you for the helm twenty minutes after you graduated.”
She laughed. “Hey that was his fault for staying for the buffet after his speech instead of hustling over to personnel. I trust your judgement. I heard the arguments, ‘Kanril is a loose cannon, she doesn’t have the time in grade, I should be commanding the task force.’ Arguments made by the same *ssholes who argued against me getting into Starfleet, against me being promoted, getting command etc.”
She sipped her own drink, hot chocolate instead of mulled wine. “She knows her stuff, I’ve no problem following her lead. Joe Mwangi doesn’t either, and he’s a rear admiral. Starfleet is supposed to be led by the best for a particular mission, not who’s spent the most time preparing briefings and who has six days more seniority.”
“Some say you’d be better for an aggressive mission like this.”
She shrugged. “I’m aggressive yeah. But I don’t put my heart in it like she does. I do what has to be done, but she’s got the instinct to fight dirty. Which is what we need now.”
“Just so long as we don’t get too dirty. I still have to justify all this to Starfleet Command when all’s said and done.”
“We’re holding our own, and even attacking when before it was retreat after retreat. And yeah, we lost a few worlds without the Empire firing a shot, but let’s be honest here. The Federation shot us in the foot with the way those worlds were handled. It’s almost like someone was trying to drive them away.” She sipped her drink again. She didn’t metabolize alcohol like normal humans, hence the hot chocolate after cold hours on the ski slopes, it had a similar effect. “They’re doing the same to my homeworld—except we’re not close enough for them to really do much to.”
“Well, you’re half-right. Elizabeth Tran sent us a going-away present: someone upstairs was trying to drive the locals off the planets to get around the eminent domain clause of Article I.”
“Nice,” Missy said, in a tone of voice that indicated it was anything but. “With travel time, before they can even start to return once there’s a ceasefire, boom. Planets full of resources up for grabs.” She shook her head. “At least the Empire is honest about the worlds they conquer. Ah well.” Finishing her drink, she stood up, the chocolate giving her about as good of a buzz as she ever had. Another side effect of the engineering her ancestors did.
“Come on,” she said, “you’re about dead on your feet.”
“‘Am not,” Alcott replied, but it was visible in his eyes.
“When did you last sleep, Stephen?”
“Had a couple hours after the report to Starfleet Command last night.”
“Well, despite what someone recommended,” Missy chuckled, “I’m going to…”
Between the activity on the ski slopes in the holodeck, the real, not syntheol mulled wine, and the events of the past few months… what she was going to say was drowned out by a snore.
She checked her watch. close to nine hours left. “Computer, end program,” she said softly.
The chalet vanished, all the furniture gone except for the chair the Admiral was sprawled in. Despite the size difference, she was more than strong enough to lift him. “As I was saying,” she said as she exited the holodeck. “I’m going to put you to bed, then try to get at least eight hours myself. We both need it.” At least in her cabin he wouldn’t be bothered unless it was an actual emergency, and she had a comfortable enough couch for herself.
Menendez Beach.
Sun’s going down and we’ve got only about five hours left before we have to get back to our jobs, when Jarkko Mäkinen and M’Karret sit down next to me just shy of the surf. Jarkko hands me another beer. “So, I got a question,” M’Karret asks me.
“Yeah?”
“What is it with all the gravity assists?”
I grunt in confusion but Jarkko chuckles. “He’s asking why you keep turning the engines down and swinging around gas giants like a helvetin frisbee.”
“Yeah. Not like anything else we’ve done was standard Starfleet practice but what’s up with that? I mean, I can see reducing the energy signature…”
I nod. “More or less. You come in at a reasonable velocity, you can slingshot around a planet, hit ‘em from someplace you could never have gotten to at warp or impulse without them seeing you.”
The Caitian nodded. “Makes sense, but I was more wondering where you learned that from. We run Stalker fighters in a similar manner, one reason why I had my chief engineer put an idle setting between all stop and power ahead.”
“You’re gonna laugh when I tell ya.”
M’karret chuckled. “Maybe, but tell me anyway.”
I grin. “Pre-warp Earth science fiction.”
He does laugh, and Jarkko sprays a mouthful of beer into the surf. “Which ones?”
“Oh, you should see the bookshelf I keep in my quarters. Kris Longknife, Ben Bova, bit of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica…”
“You would probably like, hum, how to translate the name. Fang and Claw is one series, pre-warp story of when my people left the Ferasans looking for our own world.”
“Funny thing, that’s something we don’t have where I’m from,” I remark. “I mean, we must’ve had science fiction at some point, it can’t possibly have all gotten lost in the Occupation. Could it?”
Jarkko shrugs. “Don’t look at me. Where I’m from on Earth we were under somebody’s thumb for like a thousand years but we managed to keep enough folklore intact to write an epic.”
“Man, I don’t even know. Fantasy books, sure, got tons of those, even some stuff you might call science fantasy, ‘sailing in the heavens’ type stuff. But nothing strictly technological, and forget hard sci-fi…”
“Terva the Last.” From just outside the firelight, Sandra walks up, dripping. “Y’all kin thank Terva th’ Last. Ah’m s’rpahzed y’all wouldn’ know thet, Kanril, et’s an assay quest’in in th’ Bajor’n cultural attache exam. He war try’n ter git thangs ‘back t’ th’ will o’ th’ Prophets.’ Burned tech manuals, specul’tive fiction works, music, an’ people. Lahk y’ verra own Pol Pot.”
“Who’s she talking about?” M’Karret asks.
My mouth twists, but I slowly nod, seeing the connection. “Yeah, that didn’t exactly come up much at the temple school I went to, Captain; I didn’t learn any of it until I was almost fifteen. You got another couple bottles?” Jarkko gets up and goes over to the cooler, gets one for Sandra. “Okay, this is a couple thousand years ago, but… You know how sometimes Bajor gets called a ‘theocracy in democratic garb’ or some such cr*p?” They nod. “Yeah, well, back in the day it was the real deal. Monarchy invested by the kai, divine right and everything. The Bajora managed to subjugate the planet over a few thousand years—”
“The whole planet?” Jarkko repeats disbelievingly.
“Most of it. There were places like the Paqu-Navot region where they didn’t bother with much more than missionaries because it was all nomads. Had some good kings, had some TRIBBLE kings, a few monsters, but then you get to where we’re actually industrialized, I think roughly like Earth in the late 20th century? And it all comes apart. Somehow King Terva gets it in his head that this is all heresy—”
Sandra interrupts, “Et was on’acount of ozone depletion an’ industrial wastes. There’s sum int’restin’ history theah—feah’s ‘bout ‘global warmin’ an’ all the res’, only his idear was to end th’ science inste’dda fixin’ th’ problem. Sorry t’ interrupt.”
“Yeah, and naturally folks didn’t like going along with it. So he loses it, starts burning cities when they won’t comply, the irony of using air-dropped napalm apparently being completely lost on him…” I look up at their nonplussed expressions. “Sorry, that sounded funnier in my head. Anyway, Kendra, that’s where I’m from, Dahkur, Wyntara Mas, a bunch of the ethnic groups that had been under the Bajora royals’ thumbs for the past zillion years decided they’d had enough. We fought back, half the army stopped following orders, Terva got forced to abdicate and nobody really knows what happened to him afterwards, and the phekktard had shot his brother and been so busy raging and burning he’d forgotten to have any kids. So we established a republic.”
Sandra was silent for a moment, then, “Y’all kin thank Terva th’ Last for losin’ knowledge o’ the Oralians, too. Ifn’ he’d bin stopped arlier, th’ Cahdashians mahgt’ve bin a Bajoran dependency ‘stead of the othah way ‘round.” She flicked a bit of froth from her beer into the campfire, “Oah, thet’s th’ Speculations of a few diggahs Ah knew durin’ peacetime. His pogrom set yo people beck fahve hunnert oah moah years scientifically. Akorem Tarel’s got documentation she’s published—y’all were on the verge of fusion power an’ even early theories o’ warp...but then, Terva come an’ torched th’ minds behind et.”
M’Karret looks at Sandra. “Wait… you read?”
She throws a piece of ice at him. “Occasional readin’. In ‘tween kick’n people’s *ss.” I snort at that. “Poahnt bein’, fo’ raght roun’ thet tahm to right ‘roun, oh, 2100, the scars from thet kept them from… looking up. No science fiction, an’ science etself slowd t’a crawl. They’s bareleh hed solar sails figgered out bah Earth’s sixteent’ cent’ury, an’ they wasn’t as far as they was then, when Terva killed th’ researchers, teachers, scientists, and engineers. Th’ Temples restrict’d whut they’d saved to a trickle, jes t’ avoahd ‘nother outbrek o’ madness lahk Terva.”
“Yeah. I don’t really wanna talk about this anymore.”
“That’s fair enough,” Jarkko agrees, and reaches for the boom box to turn up the music.
Sandra grabs Perez by the arm. “Yo’ dancin’ with me, or Ahm kickin’ yo *ss.”
“Madame, I am a Spanish caballero,” he says in a voice that sounds hilariously exaggerated. “I would never dare turn down a dance with a beautiful lady.”
She drags him to the far side of the campfire, and M’Karret gets up to “go see what my crew’s doing.”
Leaving me alone with Jarkko, who’s just sitting cross-legged in the sand, looking at me.
“What are you thinking?”
“That I’d really like to ask you to dance, Kanril. Eleya?” the blond man adds questioningly.
I pause, a little aback, then smile. “If you did, I’d accept.”
I let him take my hand and lead me beside the fire, and for the first time in a while I don’t have to be the larger-than-life captain of a starship anymore, just a woman dancing with a man. And the fact that he’s got a good 24 centimeters on even me isn’t a bad thing: I got my height from my father and I always feel a little awkward standing half a head or more over a partner.
As we dance, I take a risk, step a little closer to him and let him wrap his arms around me. I feel his hands brush my hipbones over my swimsuit, feel my blood pump a little faster, and out of the corner of my eye l see Sandra watch me.
Go for it, she mouths.
So I do. It’s just a light, experimental kiss at first but I let him deepen it. And then I just stop moving, because it feels really good and I haven’t been kissed like this since senior year at the Academy.
I break the kiss briefly and look at his face. He’s older than me, the beginnings of some crows feet, but not by so much.
He brushes a stray hair out of my face, brushing the scars on my cheek, then kisses me back, and now I’m sure I can feel his arousal against my belly. I give him a slight nod, and he takes my hand and we head off to a secluded spot in the woods.
Up there, I’m a soldier commanding over a thousand other soldiers.
But down here, we’re just people enjoying ourselves.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
So anyway, I figured it wasn't a huge stretch for them to have also had their own psychotic authoritarian movements in the past and so wrote one into my series bible in very vague terms. I name-dropped King Terva from that in Create Your Own Fate, and then while writing the beach scene I had the weird notion that maybe Eleya latched onto prewarp Earth sci-fi because it was something Bajor didn't have its own equivalent for. And then one starts to wonder how that could have happened, so I just let Patrick run with it.
It occurs to me that this may be one of the points at which Masterverse!Eleya starts to notice some of the cracks in the mythology she's built up around her culture through her upbringing, kinda like what happened with Colonel Shad Yima and Prime!Eleya in A Changed World. Which kinda leads into another point I wanted to make with this segment: that these are virtually children fighting this war, and indeed any war. Granted, they're not as young as the kids Liz Tran recruited in the last story by a long shot, but Eleya is only 26 and already has almost nine years of military service under her belt (four of them as enlisted and two at the Academy), and Jarkko and the other tacscort jocks in the group are roughly 30. Which makes them only a little older than me, and Eleya a couple years younger. Nearly everybody I went to high school with is married with children at this point, whereas these characters are spending the best years of their life doing their damnedest to kill other people their own age en masse for reasons that are way, way over their heads.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Our sentinels
They report in the news
Position of our foes
This battlefield’s been chosen, tactically in advance
Time to alert our fighters
We’re soon in range
Midway
We’ll meet at Midway
Naval war
Calling all men to deck
Got to be airborne
Head out into the sun
Descending on our foes
This is a crucial moment in the heat of the war
To fly and hit our targets
Down in the waves
Midway (Display their might, ordering carriers, admirals at war)
We’ll meet at Midway (To win the fight, tactics are crucial)
Naval war
Far from shore, a Pacific war
Bombs are falling from the skies
It’s a bomb-run day, it's the naval way
A blood-red sun is on the rise
Far from shore, a Pacific war
Bombs are falling from the skies
It’s a bomb-run day, it's the naval way
A blood-red sun is on the rise
Midway (Display their might, ordering carriers, admirals at war)
We’ll meet at Midway (To win the fight, tactics are crucial)
Naval war
Midway (Display their might, ordering carriers, admirals at war)
We’ll meet at midway (To win the fight, tactics are crucial)
Naval war
Midway
Sabaton, “Midway”
Music by Joakim Brodén
Lyrics by Joakim Brodén and Pär Sundström
Captain’s quarters, USS Nighthawk, orbiting Sherman’s Planet. 6 December 2406.
He was chilly, but not cold. And not in his cabin. Admiral Alcott sat up, a moderate hangover from the real alcohol the evening before. “Where the hell… Oh yeah.” As his eyes focused he recognized some of the images on the wall. One looked very familiar.
He sat up, noting that he was alone—and that from the looks of things, only one person had slept there. Swinging his feet onto the deck he stood, then walked over to the wall over the dresser, looking at the image. Some of them were still in Starfleet, some had past onwards. He looked at his own face, hair less grey over a decade ago, his not-yet-ex-wife standing next to him, and the rest of the bridge crew of the USS Exeter. Down in front, due to height, a very young-looking Ensign Travis.
So that’s what I looked like before I started going grey, he thought amusedly. His clothes were nearby. Looking at the chronometer, he had enough time to get to his own quarters and shower before the morning brief. Eight hours. It had been forever since he’d slept that long, it seemed.
The outer room was colder. She turned the heat up for me, he realized. There was snoring coming from the couch in the outer room. She’d given up her bed for him because he wouldn’t have been comfortable at her preferred environmental settings.
He knew from experience how good her hearing was. As he stepped out of the room she stretched on the couch and opened her eyes. “Good morning” Missy said as she sat up wearing an overlarge sleeping shirt that almost came down to her knees, and barely hung onto her shoulders.
“Good morning. You didn’t have to give up your bed for me.”
She just smiled. “You’re almost half a meter taller than me. You wouldn’t be comfortable on the couch, and if I took you back to your quarters, you’d have been interrupted by idiot ensigns with non-emergency traffic that needs your signature three times before 0500.”
“Only two times—the yeoman is getting smarter. Still you’re right, I haven’t had this much sleep in weeks.”
“Maybe you should crash here more often then,” she said, then her ears flicked back a bit in that way he recognized as thinking she might have said something embarrassing.
“I just might,” he replied. “But I’ve got a briefing in under an hour for the upcoming mission.”
“Heh.” She stretched. “I’d invite you for breakfast, but I’ve got to get my reports in to be there on time for your meeting.” She smiled. “They’re done, I just need to go over them first.”
Alcott nodded. “I’ll see you there then.”
She watched him walk out of the cabin, then sat back, wrapping her arms around her knees. Sandra would call her an idiot for not pouncing him last night. But that wasn’t her way… and she knew it wasn’t his either. Running a hand through her hair, she sighed and headed into the head. Win the war first, worry about other things later.
Bridge, IKS qa’rol, Hromi 6 system. 8 December 2406.
The Imperial Klingon Defense Forces 7th Carrier Wing blossomed out of warp over Baraka’s night side like a deadly flower, the viewscreen of the command bridge compensating for the light of the blindingly bright sun.
General Krall, son of K’Bron, sat in center chair, sore from morning bat’leth practice. He was still mystified at the destruction of Ch’tang’s task force, but also eager. After spending a quarter-century on Gorath training his brother K’lek’s warriors, to command a fleet against a truly worthy enemy again would be… He pushed aside the old dream. This would not be that day: he would not win great battles against a worthy foe, not here, because it seemed that once again Starfleet had left the planet defenseless. The space around baraqa was empty.
“Curious,” he remarked under his breath.
“My lord?” his boqDu’, K’lir, said.
“The language of this planet, this ‘Arabic’. The sounds are much like ours, wouldn’t you say?”
K’lir shrugged. “I guess.”
Inbred imbecile… “Communications, begin broadcast.” He stood. “Attention to the People of Baraka, I am General Krall, son of K’Bron. In the name of the Klingon Empire, I am here to liberate you from the oppression of the United Federation of Planets, to bring you the true civilization of the Klingon Empire, and the prosperity that will be yours under our rule.” He said it without conviction, because he didn’t really… feel… this. It was the script: it was wordy, long, and in his opinion, belaboring of the obvious in pointless bombast. He preferred the simpler challenges of old, with what do you contest our claim over this world.
The planet grew in the viewer, filling the screen. It was almost two minutes later when he lost patience and demanded of the communications officer, “Damn it, are they too afraid to speak, are they disgusted at our presence, are they mute? Have you gotten any response at all?”
“Nothing yet, sir. Wait. We’re receiving a response from the surface, text-only.” The bekk put it on the screen.
“What in Kahless’s name does that mean?” Kaduk, his flag captain, wondered aloud.
“‘God is great’,” Krall translated. “They’re refusing to surrender, they mean to fight us.” He bared his teeth. “And we shall oblige them.” Hope filled his heart, which beat with a new...no, a very old feeling. Glory is in the offing after all! Anticipation faded the aches of age and enforced exercise like a balm through his soul. His delight tinged with pity. They can’t be strong enough. But he felt a fervent wish that they were.
That was when the lead bird-of-prey was skewered amidships on a beam of golden light from the planet’s surface.
“Take evasive action!” Krall barked as the smaller ship vanished in the silvery flash of a breached warp core. “What was that?”
More fire came from emplacements on the surface, rapid and precisely aimed. The carrier took four hits on the ventral surface before it could withdraw beyond the weapon’s firing range. “Phaser fire!” the sensor bekk barked. “Ferengi- or Bajoran-built, I’m not sure which!”
“Ventral shields at 62 percent, casualties in environmental control! I’m diverting power to compensate!”
“It’s more glorious when they fight back!” General Krall enthused. YES!! “Return fire!! Photon torpedo spread on the emplacements! Commander of the Air Group, launch all fighters for sorties against surface targets of opportunity!! All ships, advance!!”
Lieutenant Colonel B’Gorak, the often ignored science officer, looked up. “General, do you want the projected damage to the prize??” He said it in the same tone another, noble-born officer, might say, Are you out of your f*cking mind?
Two more of their escorting birds-of-prey bloomed with detonations.
“Bring us lower! Helm, bring us to accurate bombardment range!”
B’Gorak noted the plot—the detonations had fallen far from the defensive arrays, the gunners’ haste and the defenders’ jamming combined… he felt a surge of raw disgust at the General’s wasteful tactics. He looked to his own Captain, Kaduk, son of Wrolth, another commoner who, like him, had risen to officer status during the war with the Gorn.
Do something about this lunatic! he willed.
Below them, residential areas, farmer’s fields, everything but the proper target it seemed, was catching fire, or burning.
But his captain would not offend a noble-born general, much less take the necessary risk of relieving him.
B’Gorak did the only thing he really could do under the circumstances. He pinpointed one of the emplacements, and with the ship’s graviton generators, he slapped the place that gun was firing from, with an artificial singularity. “Landing zone prepared, General.”
But his gut told him this was stupidity: even in the inevitable victory, the planet would be made worthless thanks to the lunatic in command. There is no glory in mindless, pointless destruction.
He didn’t get to have time to wonder if he could manage a transfer to another unit after this. A concentrated burst from the remaining defensive batteries struck true, sending plasma feedback through EPS conduits to his console. Relays froze open, contacts tack-welded closed, and the micro conduits overloaded in the blink of an eye.
His last thought was simply, That looks ba—
Al-Hamra Mountains overlooking Tripoli, Baraka.
Up until the moment that the general ordered ‘returning fire’ (a.k.a. orbital bombardment), the Barakan gunners had felt a reluctance to actually take lives.
It’s amazing, how one becomes significantly more focused when a photon torpedo destroys part of one’s hometown.
Ground-based torpedo launchers shifted skyward, following the lead of the professional Bajoran Militiamen manning the primary battery as green bolts came down from the sky. “Sydi, ladaya hadaf qifl!” a farmer-turned-Starfleet Reserve crewman apprentice shouted in Arabic.
“’iitlaq!” the Ground Forces training officer commanded. Three red bolts shrieked up their launch rails and rocketed up through the night sky, and a raptor entering the atmosphere blew up.
Not far away, General Lem sat in a reinforced underground control bunker calmly directing fire, concentrating the Barakan gunners with their lighter, more mobile weapons against the birds-of-prey and landing ships while his own emplaced, shielded batteries kept the capital ships busy.
“General, six birds, four assault transports, coming in two points off due north.”
He only had a few hundred light infantry of his own, and no armor; most of his people were artillerymen. “Relay the report to Admiral Johnson and get the Guards sorted for ground assault.” A nearby detonation rumbled through the ground and set the lights flickering for a moment. “And check on the phekk’ta backup generators!”
A bird-of-prey, the newer model of B’rel, wobbled as it passed overhead, disruptors and launchers pounding at the north ridge batteries.
A lance of gold speared it like a cave fish, and the Klingon attack ship broke apart in the air in a groundshaking fireball.
On the horizon, something distorted and the ground shock from the south radiated right through his boots. Prophets, what could distort a hill like that?
The earth and stone were ripped upward, bulging then twisting, and the southwest batteries went offline as winds picked up at ground level, streaming into a cyclone storm of debris that reached almost to the command post.
“General, backup generators are up!!”
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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Low-rankers dragged the remains of Science Officer B’Gorak from the burnt and shattered remains of his console. The General didn’t care. “We’ve opened a hole in their defenses! Continue! To glory!!”
The vast ship shuddered as she crossed into the upper ionosphere of Baraka, firing disruptor cannon and torpedo loads down at the defending batteries.
Three lances of gold reached up amid a cloud of smaller bolts, converging on the vo’quv-class vessel’s port nacelle, tracing a path of destruction along the supports, into the ventral plating, finding gaps in protection and burrowing in.
Alarms screamed on the bridge deck. Smoke boiled from ruptured coolant lines and plasma fires, but this was nothing compared to the bulk of the ship’s pressurized volume, as shielding that was already taxed by the low-altitude pass failed, followed by structural integrity fields along the belly of the vast beast.
Kaduk had enough. This noble-born General was getting his ship destroyed. “Belay that order. Withdraw, if we even still can.”
The general turned. “You dare defy me?!”
Kaduk drew his blade. “I’m relieving you. Commander Air Group, all fighters to escort positions. NOW.”
He lunged.
The general’s youth had been spent with fencing masters, honing a natural athletic ability. Kaduk, son of none, of no house whatsoever, had grown up among working-class neighbourhoods and youth gangs, where the battles, while not as refined, were far more intense and sincere.
Blades found flesh, the ship shuddered again and again both from external hits, and from internal explosions caused by those hits.
Blood flowed, as the atmosphere itself tore at the now exposed hull of the carrier. “HELMSMAN, I said withdraw!! Gain us altitude!”
The General, not yet dead, thundered, “Press the attack!!”
“Sir! Enemy ships, coming in!”
USS Kagoshima, exiting warp off Baraka.
The Klingons’ fierce formation discipline is starting to break. Their fighters seem confused: some are trying to continue escorting the landing transports, others trying to break away. Their birds-of-prey are likewise trying to decide their course.
If I had to guess, I’d say the general leading the task force just got challenged by his flag captain. That’s what happens when you let mutiny be a legitimate way to get a promotion.
Well, I’m sure not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Tess?”
“Ready.”
“Jarkko, take your section after the starboard echelon. Sandra, you and me, up the center. I’ll take your wing.”
“Raht, tallyho, two-o’clock, Ah got two D7-series Bee-Cees coming about. Range, fifty kay!”
“Mwangi, suggest your squadron go wide, come in low left.”
“Affirmative. As of now, all units are weapons free.”
Baraka Defense Center.
“General, I’ve got multiple locks on the carrier!!”
“Kill it.”
From five major installations, pale gold speared skyward, accompanied by surface-mount torpedo launchers and the coordinated fires of dozens of lighter weapons.
The flash was brighter than a thousand suns. Even at 100 kilometers distance, it was too close. When the antimatter fuel bunkerage was pierced on the Klingon carrier, it was less directed and more energetic than a simple warp core breach.
Screens and monitors blanked temporarily before overcoming the electromagnetic pulse. “Brace!!”
The atmospheric shockwave didn’t care about friend or foe, and Klingon fighters striving to get clear were slapped downward into easy range. The low-fliers were in turn smacked into the surface like expensive bugs on a high speed windscreen, and on the surface, half the windows in Tripoli shattered simultaneously.
Crews on the smaller weapons found the enemy’s shuttles, those that hadn’t been slammed into the ground and crushed under the force of the in-atmosphere detonation, easy targets, shredding them in their disabled state.
A few enemy ships managed to evade the shockwave and survive the pulse—and they climbed for altitude. Many were speared even as they quested for escape by the surface defense system.
A cry went up from the Barakans. “Allāhu akbar!!”
“We… won?” Field Colonel Nas wondered.
“Let’s not count our latinum before it’s earned,” General Lem cautioned. “Tracking, check on the other ships, and see if you can pick up any escape pods. This isn’t over yet.”
“Sir?”
“A vo’quv has a crew complement of over five thousand,” he explained. “I would like to think some of them realized their danger, and did the intelligent thing… and were then lucky enough to survive that explosion.”
“Lem, Johnson, we got company! Looks like a couple waves of troops made it to ground!”
The remains of Fist Company, 133rd Klingon Infantry, suburbs of Tripoli.
Sergeant M’Kevn, son of Klobol, was a carpenter’s son. He did not care much for the rhetoric of the glory of conquest. Especially at the moment. “Headcount?”
“We have eleven men, sir.”
‘Sir’. When did I become the commander…? Oh yes, when Barko decided to order a frontal assault on dug-in infantry. They rested in a place that stank of human coffee and tobacco smoke. “And our wounded?”
“There are four who can walk, sir,” the Lethean medic reported.
“We are six kellikams from the spaceport. There are… or were, ships there, shuttles with warp capability,” M’Kevn said. “How many of our wounded who cannot walk would recover if allowed to rest?”
“Three more.”
Only three? He sighed. “The invasion is foiled, we need to get out, that port is our best bet for a means to get out. I want two men for each of the three who cannot walk, to help carry them. Two scouts ahead, and two behind. We move through the streets quickly, we will not pursue battle, but avoid detection.”
“Yes sir.”
It was a solid plan. Twelve warriors wasn’t Kahless, and this wasn’t that legendary city. “I should have stayed in my father’s trade…” he muttered. Damn those noble sons of targs to Gre’thor for this. Most of his squad were new to the Hromi front, many of them weren’t more than a couple of years past their manhood rituals. Only he, and the medic, were veterans who’d seen more than one campaign.
The loss of the carrier wasn’t the problem, the loss of command integrity in the strike force was, as was the loss of warship support, fighter support, shuttle support…
“Let’s go, it’s a long walk when you’re in a hostile city.”
They didn’t make it half a Kellikam before a force of locals with MACO advisors caught them in the open and bottled them in an ambush. Disruptor fire—Klingon disruptor fire!—bloodily took the head off the medic as M’Kevn dove behind a parked car.
“Single fire! Check your targets!!” he bellowed at his remaining soldiers. Some listened, some did not.
“Squad Six,” a voice said on his communicator, “this is Shuttle Four. I’ve got you on my screen, I’m going to try and get you by transporter.”
We’re saved.
Then there was the sound of air ripping overhead, followed by an explosion higher up. Only then did the crack of a coilgun reach him.
M’Kevn took a peek around the car. There was a tank at the end of the street, a Starfleet T-204, its barrel traversing and lowering from where it had shot down the shuttle.
“Cease fire,” he ordered his men.
“What?”
“I said, cease fire, damn you!” He threw his disruptor rifle over the roof of the car and hollered in English, “Terms!”
He heard the electronic voice of one of the suited MACOs bellow, “Check fire! Check fire!”
Chief Special Warfare Operator Laurie Diehl looked at the Klingon standing on that car. His body-armor was torn up, and there were bandages, she was pretty sure, on his bandages. His troops peeked out of their ‘hiding’ spots and they looked as green as grass. Old uniforms, older gear, consistent with that light battalion that had smashed itself to pieces about half a klick over. It was a reminder that the Klingons don’t give their best gear to non-House units, especially, according to intel, units mostly from lower-class backgrounds, like dedicated infantry units.
From the Klingon perspective, she knew, it took more courage to swallow your pride and surrender than to fight to the death: the Klingons considered it dishonoring to do so. “Throw your weapons over the barricade, you won’t be hurt!”
Somehow, the Klingon leader got his young soldiers to do it. “I have wounded men! Our medic’s dead!”
“We’re going to approach your position, we’ll provide aid!” she hollered back. She hand-signaled for the tank crew to cover them and cautiously picked her way forward with the Barakan volunteers. It was rare but not unheard-of for Klingons to dishonor a ceasefire: there is, after all, “nothing more honorable than victory.”
Up close, she realized, there wasn’t one of them that wasn’t wounded. The three stretcher cases were the worst, but they’d definitely survived being chewed on. Half of them would be stretcher cases in any rational military.
“What happened to your men, um… Bekk?” Diehl asked, trying to identify his rank insignia.
“I think the translation is ‘gunnery sergeant’, actually,” the Klingon answered as the Barakan militia began collecting discarded disruptors and knives. “My name’s M’Kevn. What happened? First, we landed, then, the rest of the battalion smashed into the ground on that shockwave, after which, our Commander ordered an unsupported frontal assault on one of your defense-positions, then, he died, we were cut off and that was a good thing too—because the rest of the company was chopped to targ hash, six of us died falling back and what you see, is what is left of my platoon, my company, and possibly the battalion.” He grimaced. “That idiot in command of the carrier…” He coughed, and a fresh bloom on his bandages erupted.
“Alraqib, ’ana mumridatun,” one of the Barakans said. At his blank expression, “Oh, sorry, English. I’m a nurse, Sergeant,” the woman in grey-green fatigues repeated, shifting an old Klingon disruptor rifle to her back. “Do you mind if I work on your men?”
“Please, do,” he said. “They did not deserve this… to be defeated in their first battle due to the vanity and madness of—” he started coughing again, and blood bubbled in his mouth.
“I think you’d better lie down, Gunny,” Diehl said, and triggered her comm system while she helped him onto a collapsible stretcher and broke out her own first aid kit. “MACO One-Six-Echo to Control, I need medical support for some prisoners at my location. I got one Klingon male, forty-ish, possible sucking chest wound…”
Bridge, USS Nighthawk.
“I don’t believe it,” Missy Travis blurted. “Admiral, they’re retreating, we’ve won!”
Rear Admiral Joseph Mwangi nodded as the bridge erupted into cheers. “Well, Kanril, what do you think?”
“I’ll take the ‘scorts after them, sir, keep ‘em running and see if we can’t catch a ship or two that falls out. Recommend you stay and help clean up.”
“Permission granted. You are to be guided by the principle of calculated risk, understand?”
“Yes, sir.” On the plot, the Kagoshima peeled away from the Wilson and warped out after the surviving Klingons, with twelve escorts hot on her tail.
“Admiral Johnson, this is Admiral Mwangi. We’re going to start landing emergency medical aid. What’s your status, over?”
“A few Klingon units are still refusing to surrender but we’ve got them surrounded. Focus on the northern suburbs of Tripoli, we’ve got reports of heavy civilian casualties.”
“We’ll start there, then. Mwangi out.”
Situation Room, Deep Space K-7.
Admiral Stephen Alcott followed the battle at Baraka in silence, and took special note of the casualty reports. It wasn’t, as the Klingons sometimes accused their enemies, that the Federation deliberately buried their defenses in civilians. Rather, the Federation had simply learned over its two centuries of existence that most of their opponents didn’t care to draw a distinction between soldier and civilian to begin with, which for a planet like Baraka meant that the civilian areas were what was worth defending.
Still, compared to previous confrontations in the war, the casualties on the Federation side were light. Tripoli’s suburbs weren’t densely populated—each property averaged half a hectare or more in size—and the ground troops had faced less than a third of the Klingon troops that had departed. In space, two escorts and a light cruiser disabled but recoverable, some light damage to the Wilson and the Zulu. In exchange, four battlecruisers, a fleet carrier, eight raptors, and at least fifteen birds-of-prey destroyed or disabled, and another D7 had surrendered to Kanril after suffering a reactor casualty while fleeing.
The Klingons had tasked a major battle group for this invasion, far more than would’ve been necessary to hold a planet of 140 million. Clearly K’Hugh had meant to use Baraka as a stepping-stone to encircle K-7. Instead, the survivors had been sent running for Ganalda with their balls kicked up between their ears.
And there hadn’t been a lot of survivors.
Alcott smiled grimly as his eyes went to two systems on the strategic map. No more retreating from Federation worlds, he vowed. From here on out, he was going on the offensive.
There was only one real concern. Most of the survivors Starfleet or Bajoran units captured were from ‘green’ formations. The Baraka task force included a high percentage of units that hadn’t seen early action, and General Krall—SFI had supplied the name—hadn’t led a combat force since before the Dominion War. It indicated a weakness… but it was puzzling at the same time. Something was going on inside the Empire’s command structure, and it was making an opportunity.
He’d still have to exercise some caution. But it looked an awful lot like someone in KDF’s Third Fleet was rolling back Martok’s reforms.
In the Soviet Union, summer 1943
Tanks line up in thousands as far the eye can see
Ready for the onslaught
Ready for the fight
Waiting for the Axis to march into the trap
Mines are placed in darkness
In the cover of the night
Waiting to be triggered
When the time is right
Imminent invasion, imminent attack
Once the battle started
There’s no turning back
The end of the Third Reich draws near
Its time has come to an end
The end of an era is here
It’s time to attack!
Into the motherland the German army march
Comrades stand side by side to stop the N*zi charge
Panzers on Russian soil, a thunder in the east
One million men at war, the Soviets’ wrath unleashed!
Fields of Prokhorovka
Where the heat of battle burned
Suffered heavy losses
And the tide of war was turned
Driving back the Germans
Fighting on four fronts
Hunt them out of Russia
Out of Soviet land
Reinforce the front line
Force the axis to retreat
Send in all the reserves
Securing their defeat
Soldiers of the Union
Broke the citadel
Ruins of an army
Axis rest in hell
The end of the Third Reich draws near
Its time has come to an end
The end of an era is here
It’s time to attack
Into the motherland the German army march
Comrades stand side by side to stop the N*zi charge
Panzers on Russian soil, a thunder in the east
One million men at war, the Soviets’ wrath unleashed!
Onward comrades! Onwards for the Soviet Union! Charge!
Oh, mother Russia!
Union of lands
Will of the people
Strong in command
Oh mother Russia!
Union of lands
Once more victorious the red army stands!
The end of the Third Reich draws near
Its time has come to an end
The end of an era is here
It’s time to attack!
Into the motherland the German army march
Comrades stand side by side to stop the N*zi charge
Panzers on Russian soil, a thunder in the east
One million men at war, the Soviets’ wrath unleashed!
Sabaton, “Panzerkampf”
Music by Joakim Brodén
Lyrics by Joakim Brodén and Pär Sundström
End of Part I
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— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/