The Captain's Oath

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Harlie!”

  “What? I can literally smell the lust between you two. And life is short.”

  The deck swayed again. “I sincerely hope not.”

  A moment later, they arrived at the blocked doorway and got to work. Fortunately, it proved to be a matter of leverage—once Diaz and H’Raal put their full weight on one end of a heavy beam, Chivithan was just able to push its other end up and over an obstruction in the debris pile and swing it out, letting it fall to the deck. With that linchpin piece removed, the trio outside and the others trapped inside were able to move enough other chunks of debris for the room’s occupants to get out.

  At first, the trapped workers crowded the exit, creating a jam. But H’Raal spoke to them with her usual breezy confidence that every situation she faced was simplicity itself to overcome. “No problem, all, just make a line, one by one. There you are. See how easy that is? Now go to your left. Never mind the swaying and groaning, it’s just a little wind. I sway and groan too after a long night.”

  Chivithan helped escort her coworkers to the exit, where Diaz could see that Hauraki and a repair team had managed to force the hatch open enough for even a Chelon to squeeze through—although the floor of their sphere was now visibly at a different angle than this one, and slightly upslope on what had been a level deck minutes before. She realized that enough outer atmosphere must have leaked in for the sphere to be losing its buoyancy. “Harlie, we’d better move.”

  “We’re fine,” H’Raal said as she helped the last worker over the debris. “See? Plenty of time. So let’s go fast,” she finished over the increasing groaning sounds around them.

  When they were mere meters from the door, right behind the last evacuee, the module sagged sharply and the bulkhead material around the hatchway began to split open on top. Diaz stumbled, then coughed, her eyes stinging and tearing. The man in front of her was also coughing, sinking to his hands and knees. Diaz and H’Raal helped him up and into the hands of the rescuers on the other side. Diaz saw Captain Kirk standing beside Joshua Hauraki, catching her gaze, urging her forward. He and Hauraki reached out to her, and she reached back.

  But just before she could take their hands, the deck tilted more sharply and she stumbled back. H’Raal caught her but was unbalanced by her weight. Both women fell to the deck, H’Raal on her back, Diaz facing her on hands and knees. H’raal’s huge golden eyes locked on hers.

  What happened next was almost too fast for Diaz to process. H’Raal nuzzled her quickly and gasped, “Love you, Meesh.” Then she drew back her powerful legs and thrust them into Diaz’s midriff, pushing her back into Kirk’s and Hauraki’s clutches.

  The men pulled her back . . .

  The bulkheads groaned and shrieked as the sphere tore free . . .

  Harlie grinned up at Diaz as if she were about to go on the ride of her life . . .

  And she was gone.

  Sixteen

  Maybe you’re a soldier so often that you forget you’re also trained to be a diplomat.

  —Leonard McCoy

  U.S.S. Sacagawea

  After the processing sphere had broken loose from Laputa and sunk into the clouds, the Agni had stopped their attack. The reason for this was unclear, but it came as a relief to the city’s occupants, the Regulan officials, and Kirk’s crew. It gave them a chance to repair the city, offload or return evacuees, tend to the wounded . . . and mourn the dead. In addition to Kamisha Diaz’s Caitian friend who had died before Kirk’s eyes, a dozen other Laputans had perished, either from the direct projectile impacts, the turbulence and structural collapses they had caused, or exposure to the toxic atmosphere. Over eighty more had been injured or poisoned. Both Diaz and Hauraki had suffered minor pulmonary and optic damage from their brief exposure to the atmosphere, but Dr. Wachs had treated them as efficiently as McCoy would have, albeit with less grumbling along the way. There was little the doctor could do about Diaz’s grief and guilt at the loss of her friend.

  Still, there was no telling how long this lull would last without knowing what motivated it. “Maybe we did some damage to their ground facilities after all,” Gary Mitchell proposed to Kirk and Adebayo as they gathered in the briefing room with Hauraki to review the incident.

  Adebayo looked unconvinced. “Or maybe the Agni simply felt their point was made. They could have easily destroyed the whole city, caused massive loss of life, but instead they did little more than infrastructure damage, with surprisingly few casualties.”

  “No amount of casualties is few enough,” Kirk countered.

  “Even we aren’t always capable of avoiding casualties, no matter how surgical we try to make our strikes.”

  “You think this was meant to be just a warning, Commander?” Hauraki asked.

  Adebayo spread his hands uncertainly. “I think it’s significant that they did no more than fire warning shots until we arrived—a starship that had fought them before. Surely their sensors told them that we had beamed down to the city; even if they lack the technology themselves, they could have scanned the energy exchange and detected the increase in the city’s population. After all, their sensors must be far better than ours to see through that soup of an atmosphere.”

  “You’re saying our arrival provoked them?” Kirk asked, displeased by the suggestion.

  “Ever since our first encounter, the Agni have not attacked until the situation escalated. We warn them off, they simply ignore us. We threaten them with force, and then they fight. Until now, the Agni and Regulans have been in a standoff, merely watching each other. Our arrival may have seemed like an escalation. So they made their position known. They’re warning us to leave the planet.”

  “Us?” Mitchell asked. “As in Starfleet? Or as in the aerial cities?”

  “Since they were firing warnings at the cities before we arrived, most likely the latter. They’ve claimed the planet and are warning us to leave.”

  Kirk frowned at his first officer. “On the surface or in the air, the Regulans have a prior claim to the planet. The Agni are the squatters here, the invaders. And not only here. There’s no telling how many worlds they’ve already occupied.”

  “I doubt it’s that many,” Adebayo said. “It just strikes me that each of their incursions into Federation space has been smaller, more subtle. First nine ships came openly, and several were damaged in the fight. Then five ships tried to sneak past our defenses, and more were damaged. Now, an unknown number of ships have successfully snuck in and tried to stay hidden beneath the clouds. Only when we discovered them did they begin to threaten us.” He shook his head. “This does not feel like an act of aggression or conquest to me. It feels more like need. Like they lose more and more each time, yet are compelled to keep trying.”

  “If they needed something from us,” Kirk replied sternly, “they could have asked. Instead, they intruded on our territory and took what they wanted.”

  “Took something we have absolutely no use for. If we had known their intended destinations from the start, all of this could have been avoided.”

  “If they had asked. They didn’t. Which means we can’t be sure their intent is merely to settle the N-Class planets.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know how to communicate with us any more than the reverse.”

  “Or they just didn’t want to. They’ve ignored us, then shot at us, that’s all. If we want them to talk to us, we need to make it clear to them that they have no other choice.”

  “You mean retaliate, Jim? Show our strength by attacking their surface outposts?”

  “They have to be shown they can’t get away with killing Federation citizens. To understand the value we place on sentient lives, they have to know there’s a cost for taking them.”

  Adebayo sighed, but he could clearly tell Kirk’s mind was made up. “Even so, it won’t be easy to do them damage without endangering the cities. Those people down on Hearthside are essentially the Agni’s hostages. The high ground is not an advantage here.”

&
nbsp; Kirk rose. “For that, we need to bring Colonel Orloff and her people into the loop. This is their system; maybe they have ideas we haven’t thought of. I’ll contact the colonel and coordinate. Dismissed.”

  Kirk strode out, noting that Adebayo remained in his seat while the others left, seemingly lost in thought. Kirk left him to it, hoping that he would come to his senses in time.

  RDF Venant RGC-302

  Yelena Orloff was there to greet Kirk when he materialized in the transporter room of the Venant. “Thank you for coming, Captain,” the short-haired colonel said after welcoming him aboard. “I’m grateful for the assistance your crew provided in defending against the Agni attack. I hope I can rely on you when we take the fight to them.”

  Kirk studied her. “We’ll do whatever we must to defend the system, Colonel.”

  Orloff seemed satisfied by his answer. Before taking him to the conference room, she gave him a quick tour of the Venant, an old but well-maintained midsized cruiser named for the classical Persian designation of Regulus. In peacetime, the Regulus Defense Force had little need for its battleships, since Starfleet defended the system from outside threats; but Orloff took pride in her crew’s readiness and discipline.

  Kirk and Orloff were met in the vessel’s compact conference room by Councillor T’Zeri. The comm display was active, linking to the main council chamber on Regulus III and to T’Zeri’s fellow councillors—a Vulcan male, a human female, a Caitian male, and an Arodi (the species was monogendered). The Vulcan, Council President Sentok, asked, “Colonel Orloff, Captain Kirk, do you believe the cities will be attacked again?”

  “It’s only a matter of time, Mister President,” Orloff said. “We managed to shut down their attack with a robust defense, but it’s clear they want us gone from Hearthside, and the cities are under threat as long as they remain beneath us. I recommend a strike on the surface before they can regroup and devise another means of attack.”

  “The atmosphere creates a considerable obstacle to our attacks, Colonel,” said T’Zeri. “How do you propose we damage the Agni without endangering our cities?”

  “With the assistance of Captain Kirk’s crew, we’ve had some luck retuning our phasers to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere. We also have a reserve supply of spatial torpedoes that could be equipped with conventional explosives.” She set her jaw. “There is an additional option. Given that the Agni’s biology is dependent on sulfuric acid just as ours depends on water, it stands to reason that alkaline compounds such as sodium hydroxide or calcium carbonate would be toxic to them.”

  Kirk stared. “Colonel, are you suggesting we resort to chemical warfare?”

  The ruddy-faced woman smirked. “If it helps, think of it as giving the planet an antacid.”

  The suggestion appeared to ruffle T’Zeri’s Vulcan calm. “You trivialize a drastic suggestion. At this point, the loss of life, while regrettable, is limited. It is not Federation policy to escalate a conflict preemptively.”

  “We have been invaded, Councillor,” Orloff insisted. “Our own soil occupied by creatures seeking to expel or destroy us. We are entitled to stand our ground, whatever it takes.”

  “Colonel,” Kirk said, “for what it’s worth, we can’t be certain yet of the Agni’s motives. They did take care to target largely empty regions of the city. And they may have stopped of their own volition once they’d communicated their intentions.”

  “They targeted critical infrastructure, systems whose failure would endanger the entire population of the city, regardless of the immediate death toll. Their intention is to remove us from one of our own planets. If we let them do that, how long before they decide we’re not welcome anywhere in the system? Or in the Federation? Who knows how many more will come if we let them get a foothold? This could just be the advance guard.”

  “This is their third known incursion, not the first. Each time, they’ve come in smaller numbers, tried harder to avoid us, as if their resources are limited and depleted by each battle.” It surprised Kirk to hear himself echoing Adebayo’s arguments, but Orloff’s belligerence went too far in the other direction. “That means we may be dealing with them from more of a position of strength than we thought. And that creates an opportunity to offer them an alternative.”

  T’Zeri looked interested. “Do you propose negotiation, Captain?”

  “I’ve already got my science and communications officers working on breaking their language, and their counterparts on the Lexington and Enterprise are doing the same.”

  Orloff looked bewildered. “You don’t negotiate with invaders, Captain! Surely you understand the need for an aggressive defense of our sovereign territory. You’ve fought the Klingons multiple times, defended our borders.”

  “Not every enemy is the Klingons, Colonel. Conflicts have arisen from misunderstandings before, as with the Xindi or the Vertians.” He sighed. “I resisted the idea myself, at first. But the fact is,” he confessed, “the Agni have never initiated a move more aggressive than simply entering our territory. It was when we objected to their entry, attempted to repel them preemptively, that they began to fight.”

  “I call occupying one of our planets aggressive!” Orloff countered, her tone growing angrier.

  “We didn’t even know they were there for weeks after they arrived, maybe longer. They made no moves against us until we discovered their presence. The surface is so hostile and inaccessible from the upper atmosphere that it might as well be an entirely different world. Maybe we and they just need to set some boundaries.”

  “They crossed our boundaries! They ignored them! What makes you think they’d start honoring them now?”

  “We cannot know,” T’Zeri told her, “until we talk to them. As long as they make no more aggressive moves, that should remain our priority.”

  On the screen, Sentok and the other councillors debated the matter for a time. The Caitian agreed strongly with Orloff, the Arodi more tentatively so, while the human favored negotiation. T’Zeri had already made it clear where she stood. That left the tiebreaker vote to Sentok. “Councillor T’Zeri and Captain Kirk are correct,” the president finally said. “No conflict can be resolved until communication exists. We must attempt to negotiate.”

  With the decision settled, Orloff grudgingly accepted. But as the meeting broke up and she left without a word, it was clear to Kirk that she no longer considered him an ally. He wasn’t sure he could blame her, for his change in perspective still surprised him.

  Now he just had to order Kamisha Diaz to redouble her efforts to make peaceful contact with the beings who had killed her best friend.

  U.S.S. Sacagawea

  “Of course, Captain,” Ensign Diaz said when he came to her quarters and gently broke the news. Her eyes were still red from crying, but she maintained her discipline well. “I understand how important this is. It’s always Starfleet’s duty to look for the peaceful way first.”

  “I know how hard that can be in a situation like this. If you have any moral objection to this, or any concerns about your objectivity—”

  “With all due respect, Captain, that won’t be an issue.” She cleared her throat, took a breath. “At first I didn’t know if I wanted to help open a dialogue with Harlie’s—H’Raal’s killers. With the killers of over a dozen Regulan citizens. But then I realized . . . it’s the only way the people of Regulus will ever be able to face them and demand an accounting. Whether it’s for diplomacy or for seeking justice, we need to be able to make our words clear to them.

  “So, no, Captain. I feel no conflict anymore. I’m committed to breaking their language.”

  Kirk nodded solemnly, squeezing her shoulder in support. “Thank you, Ensign. Whatever the outcome, you’re doing Regulus and the Federation an important service.”

  Her eyes held his, fire burning in their darkness. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, sir.”

  Nubicuculia, Hearthside

  Over the next two days, the Agni remained quiet, evidently c
ontent to wait so long as the Sacagawea and the Regulan ships in orbit made no moves to change the status quo. It gave Ensigns Diaz and Chalan time to work on deciphering the Agni’s communications between Hearthside and 88 Leonis III—a task that required a science officer as much as a linguist (and Diaz was both) due to the need to deduce the likely structure of the Agni’s brains and sensory organs and build a baseline for communication from that.

  As it turned out, though, the first major breakthrough came not from Kirk’s crew on the Sacagawea, but from the Enterprise’s science officer Spock and one of its junior communications officers, a xenolinguist named Uhura. After another day of subspace correspondence with them, Diaz and Chalan reported that they had constructed a partial translation matrix that should at least allow communicating the desire for negotiation. The matrix was not yet advanced enough to automate the interpretation between two such alien mentalities, so Diaz would need to be on hand for the talks to finesse the program manually and interpret between the two sides. The ensign assured Kirk that she was able and eager to perform that task.

  After that, it was simply a matter of contacting the Agni and inviting them to open peace talks. Once the message had been sent, it was some time before a response came, giving Kirk some momentary doubts about the reliability of this Spock fellow’s work. But when the answer did arrive, it was a terse “Yes. Choose location and time.”

  The most sensible location was one of the aerial cities. Bringing the Agni to the still-damaged Laputa would be both impractical and in poor taste, so the Regulus Council decided to hold the session on one of Hearthside’s smaller cities, Nubicuculia—a choice perhaps made with a touch of humor, for the name came from the sky city in Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds and literally meant “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Although Kirk hoped it was not an ominous choice, for in the play, the strategic position of the city had allowed the mortals dwelling below to conquer the Olympian gods above.