by David Mack
They wanted to be deceived, Picard realized, and so they were.
Cognizant that lives depended upon him playing his part, Picard kept his back straight, his chin up, and his eyes trained on the battle. He shot a look at K’Ehleyr, as if to imply that he was involved in what she was doing.
She noted his stare and played along. “Yes, sir. I see it.” Moments later she unleashed a barrage on the last enemy ship holding the line above Andoria, and reduced it to ionized gas and free radicals. “Target destroyed, sir.”
“Well done, Commander,” Picard said. “Secure from Red Alert.”
Picard occupied himself watching the main viewer until K’Ehleyr relayed to the screen beside his chair the damage and casualty reports from their ship and throughout the fleet. The damage to the Enterprise had been moderate, mostly to its shields. Several rebellion ships had suffered far worse, unfortunately. While he read the summary of the battle, she stepped forward to stand beside his chair. “We’re receiving subspace comms on multiple channels,” she said.
He looked up, unsure if he should feel alarmed or curious. “From who?”
“Groups of escaped slaves in stolen ships, looking to join the rebellion.” K’Ehleyr nodded at the damage reports on Picard’s screen. “And just in time. We could use some reinforcements.”
“I doubt any of the ships they’ve procured will be able to take the place of the warbirds we’ve lost,” Picard said. “But we’re in no position to turn them away. Where are they assembling?”
“Earth.” She smiled. “It’s become the new rallying point for the rebellion.”
Picard found K’Ehleyr’s good mood infectious. “Remarkable. I’d thought Saavik mad when she said that liberating worlds such as Earth and Tellar and Andoria would galvanize support for the rebellion—but there it is.”
“Never underestimate the value of a symbolic victory.” She handed him a data padd. “There’s something else. It’s important.”
Intrigued, he took the padd and read the message she had called up on its screen. When he finished reading it, he blinked and then read it again. Then he looked up at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Can this be true?”
“We just verified it with three sources. It went out on a general frequency.”
He marveled at the good news. The Ferengi Alliance had just declared its support for the Terran Rebellion, recognizing the worlds it had liberated as its new sovereign possessions—in other words, it considered the Terrans a new nation. With that recognition came an offer of alliance—funding, safe passage, and trade agreements. “Could this be the turning point?” He looked up at K’Ehleyr. “Might this be the moment when the rebellion’s hopes are, at last, vindicated?”
“Maybe,” K’Ehleyr said. “Maybe not. But at the very least it’s an opportunity, and one we need to start using as soon as possible.”
“Agreed.” Picard swiveled his chair and looked back at the aft duty stations. “Lieutenant Troi, send out a message on all frequencies. Declare Andoria’s new status as a free world—and then acknowledge the support of the Ferengi Alliance.”
Troi, whom Picard had appointed as the Enterprise’s chief of security, looked up from her console with a polite nod. “Aye, sir.”
Picard turned forward and looked up at K’Ehleyr, who remained at attention. “Order the fleet to regroup and prepare for return to Erebus Station. As soon as all ships report in, have Intrepid open a wormhole and make the jaunt.”
“Yes, sir. Will we be joining them?”
“No. Our orders are to remain here and assist in the repatriation of free Andorians to their homeworld.” Picard looked at the blue-gray, Class M moon orbiting the massive gas giant Andor and realized he had just helped write a new chapter in its history. Its conquest by the Alliance decades earlier had led to the genocide of nearly the entire Andorian species. He had no idea whether enough survivors of that endangered race remained to repopulate their world, but he felt a sudden swell of pride in knowing that he had given it back to them, regardless. We all deserve a second chance in life. Let us hope this can be theirs.
He watched the main viewscreen, which showed the rebellion fleet gathering into the optimal formation for group passage through the artificial wormhole the Intrepid was about to generate. A year ago, who would have believed such unity was possible among such a diverse and motley collection of people? It amazed him to think that he had played any part in it, however manufactured his role might be, and he felt the faint stirrings of a feeling he’d never thought to find again.
It was hope.
Captain Krona slouched in the command chair of the Vor’cha-class battle cruiser I.K.S. Ya’Vang. He saw no reason to expend effort on posture, reasoning that he’d sit up or get up if and when the situation called for it. Until then, he considered it one of the perks of command that he could enjoy the musky atmosphere and low buzz of activity on his bridge in comfort. “Helm,” he said, “time to target.”
Ronak, the flight controller, answered, “Two minutes.”
A grunt of acknowledgment from Krona was enough to make Ronak turn away and resume his duties. This was the way Krona thought a ship should be run: loose, simple, and quiet. The Ya’Vang’s previous captain had been Kurn, who had followed Intendant Kira of Bajor to the I.K.S. Negh’Var—a move that had seemed advantageous at the time but later proved to be Kurn’s undoing. His death had come as no surprise to Krona, however. He’d always suspected Kira was trouble.
Krona watched his first officer, Commander Garvig, lurk from one console to the next, checking each crewman’s work and collecting information. Unlike the Ya’Vang’s lean and sinewy commanding officer, Garvig was a hulking brute, even by Klingon standards. His biceps and thighs were too massive to fit in most standard-issue garments, so rather than have him tatter and stretch a new pair of breeches into rags every day, he had been granted dispensation to dress in an ancient style of battle tunic. The one-piece crimson garment reached to his knees and was cinched at the waist by a leather belt. His unusual attire, coupled with his peculiar reddish mane and beard, had once prompted a Terran to compare Garvig to something called a vyqIng. Despite having no idea what a vyqIng was, Krona had interpreted it as a compliment.
Garvig spent a few moments questioning the ship’s comely young communications officer, Beqar, before parting from her company with a leer and smile. He approached the dais of Krona’s chair and leaned on its lower tier. “No change in comm traffic, Captain. No sign they’ve detected us.”
“Good. Stand by to drop the cloak on my order.”
The first officer nodded and stepped away to man the cloaking controls himself. Krona respected that kind of hands-on leadership. He distrusted officers who were too quick to delegate rather than do important work themselves.
Ronak said over his shoulder, “One minute to target, Captain.”
Krona turned toward the tactical officer. “Qeyhnor, arm the warhead.”
“Arming sequence engaged,” Qeyhnor said. Garvig and the other officers often mocked Qeyhnor for being “too handsome to be a warrior,” but despite all their jests, the man had proved himself repeatedly as an exemplary soldier and a shrewd battle planner. “Beginning trajectory computations.”
“Beqar,” Krona said, “tell Hervog to stand ready. As soon as we fire, we’ll need the warp drive back online.” He watched the target grow larger on the main viewscreen while Beqar passed his orders down to the chief engineer.
“Thirty seconds,” Ronak announced.
So close now. Krona straightened his back and centered himself in the seat, tensing for the culmination of months of secret planning and preparations. The Ya’Vang was the only ship in the fleet currently equipped with these special new munitions, and only a handful of his crew had been briefed on the true nature of their mission. Regent Klag had made it expressly clear that every facet of this operation was to be considered top secret, and its details shared only on a need-to-know basis. Even here, on the bridge, the only off
icers who fully understood what was about to happen were Krona, Garvig, and Qeyhnor. Ronak knew only a set of coordinates to which he’d been ordered to guide the ship. Outside of the Ya’Vang’s crew, only the regent and a handful of the most senior generals at the High Command knew the horror they were about to unleash.
For his part, Krona was eager to see how this scenario would play out. He had long advocated for this sort of weaponry and these kinds of ruthless tactics, but until now no one on Qo’noS had seemed inclined to support them. Amazing how much faster things get done when you put a general on the throne, he mused.
“We’ve reached optimal firing position,” Ronak said.
“All stop,” Krona ordered. He got up and leaped down from his dais, eager to be in the heart of the action when the decisive moment arrived. “All hands, stand by for battle stations. On my mark, drop the cloak, fire the missile, and set a reverse course away from here, at maximum warp.” He watched Garvig make a final circuit of the bridge, confirming that everyone was ready to act. Then the first officer took his post at the cloaking station and nodded at Krona. The captain bared his teeth and declared, “Mark!”
In a rush of action, the bridge lights snapped from red to blinding white, and Krona heard the primary systems hum back to full power as the cloak disengaged. Barked orders and confirmations overlapped, fast and sharp, between Garvig and the other officers. Then, over the din, Qeyhnor announced, “Missile’s away!”
Krona slapped Ronak’s shoulder. “Helm! Get us out of here!” Ronak pivoted the ship hard about and jumped it from a dead stop to maximum warp in a matter of seconds. Knowing they might not outrun the subspace shock wave, Krona snapped at Qeyhnor, “Raise shields, all power aft!”
Garvig commanded, “Aft viewer!” The main screen switched from streaking stars to the fiery trail of their trilithium warhead–equipped missile arcing into the orange dwarf star known to the Alliance as Ventarus Idrilon, and to the residents of its fourth planet as Ferengal.
Moments later the star dimmed and went dark, collapsing into a dark pinpoint. Then it detonated in a brilliant flash that washed out the main screen for half a second. Krona watched with morbid fascination as a faster-than-light subspace shock wave erupted from the slain star, expanding outward in a deadly sphere that turned the system’s four rocky inner planets to dust in a matter of seconds and sent its three outer gas giants spinning off into interstellar space, orphaned rogue planets condemned forever to roam the darkness.
In a word, it was glorious.
One minute later, Ronak reported, “We’re clear of the shock wave.”
“Secure from battle stations,” Krona said. “Reengage the cloak and set course for home, warp seven. Beqar, send the following message to General Goluk at the High Command: ‘Mission accomplished. Ferenginar has been destroyed.’”
30
Blood on the Scales
The fierce, scarred visage of Regent Klag glowered from the main viewscreen on the Enterprise’s bridge. “By now your long-range sensors can confirm what I’m about to tell you: The Ferengal star system, and with it Ferenginar, the capital of the Ferengi Alliance, has been destroyed—wiped entirely off the star charts.”
Picard listened, mute with horror, to the message Klag was broadcasting throughout the Alliance and to all of local space. “We, the Klingon Empire, have done this to warn all who would dare to support the criminal slave uprising known as the Terran Rebellion: Do so at your own peril. Any world that knowingly harbors ships or members of the rebellion will share Ferenginar’s fate. There will be no hearing, no trial, no chance to beg for clemency. From this moment on, you are either with the Alliance or against it.
“To the rebellion, I issue this further ultimatum: Any world or star system that you claim as your own will be destroyed as Ferenginar was. And unless all your forces surrender to us immediately and unconditionally, and hand over the secrets of your wormhole propulsion technology, we will unleash our new trilithium warheads upon every populated star system in the former Romulan Star Empire. We will destroy one system after another until you comply with our demands. You have three days. After that, Fek’lhr take you.”
The transmission ended, and the screen went dark for a moment. Then Troi patched in four other signals, side by side. On the far left was O’Brien, transmitting from the Defiant, which was deployed to Tellar. To his right was Eddington, commanding the jaunt ship Liberty, which had just ousted Alliance forces from Vulcan. Next was Saavik, who was secure on Erebus Station and communicating via a relayed quantum signal. On the right was Captain Calhoun, who was in orbit of Earth aboard the Excalibur, organizing new recruits into the rebellion.
Most of the rebellion’s leaders shared a grave mood, Picard observed with a scholar’s dispassionate perspective. Saavik, as usual, was alone in betraying no emotional reaction to Klag’s screed. Eddington appeared thoughtful, as if he were parsing the Klingon’s diatribe for hidden nuances. Calhoun, on the other hand, looked ready to explode at the slightest provocation. O’Brien was pale and visibly shaken; he was the only one of the commanders who chose to sit down.
Saavik spoke first. “We have confirmed that Ferenginar was destroyed by the detonation of trilithium munitions inside its star. Given that the Klingons have already deployed this weapon once, it seems very likely that they will do so again. The only question now is, where do they plan to strike?”
The enraged Calhoun replied, “That’s the only question?” He pointed forward. “Here’s a better one: What planet of the Klingon Empire do we frag first? And which three do we blow up after that?”
“That is not a productive line of inquiry,” Saavik said, her affect cold and businesslike. “Though we are more than capable of engaging the Alliance in a war of attrition on this scale, doing so is antithetical to our long-term objectives.”
Calhoun snarled like a wild animal reacting to captivity. “Long-term objectives? Are you serious? Unless we give the Klingons a reason to stop, this’ll never end. They’ll lay waste every world a Terran’s ever set foot on.” He pointed his finger aggressively. “Listen to me, Director. I’ve fought the Klingons for a long time. I know how they think. If you want them to back down, you need to show them we can burn worlds, too.”
O’Brien mumbled something, but no one seemed able to make it out, because his mouth was covered by his hand. Confused looks passed among the rebel leaders. Finally, Picard asked, “What did you say, General O’Brien?”
The stout, haggard man lowered his hand. He looked stricken. “I said, ‘It’s Ashalla all over again.’”
Eddington winced at the mention of the vaporized former capital of Bajor. Calhoun scowled in frustration. Picard emulated Saavik and held his poker face.
The Xenexian replied, “This won’t be a repeat of Ashalla for one very simple reason: We’re not going to surrender this time.”
“That’s not fair,” Eddington said. “You weren’t there. You didn’t have to choose between losing the station and sacrificing billions of innocent lives.”
“Correct me if I’m misremembering this,” Calhoun shot back, “but weren’t you the ones who were supposed to be holding Bajor hostage? Wasn’t it you who spent years threatening to glass its surface if the Alliance moved against you? So how did you go from that to total surrender when the Alliance shot at Bajor first?”
Eddington grappled a moment with his temper. “It was complicated.”
“This isn’t.”
“The hell it’s not,” O’Brien said. “Millions died in Ashalla when our bluff got called. Billions just died on Ferenginar because they dared to support us. We didn’t pull the trigger on those people, but that doesn’t mean we just get to wash their blood off our hands. And it damned sure doesn’t mean the answer is to slaughter billions more.”
Disgust twisted Calhoun’s features. “What’s your solution, little man? Lay down our weapons, give the Klingons our wormhole tech, and let them win?”
Picard was done listening to them a
rgue. “That’s enough.” Calhoun opened his mouth to retort, but Picard silenced him with a stern glare and prevailed in the test of wills. “I understand why each of you feels as you do. But to be perfectly blunt, you’re both wrong. This is a time for neither surrender nor vengeance. Captain Calhoun is correct: We cannot allow the Alliance to possess wormhole technology. And frankly, given their history, I see no reason to believe they would keep their word even if we capitulated to their every demand.
“On the other hand, I’m sympathetic to General O’Brien’s point of view. We must not allow our desire for victory to blind us to the suffering of the innocent. This is not some parlor game, not some abstract exercise in theory. This is war, and real people are at stake. We owe it to those who have put their trust in us not to be cavalier with their lives.” He moved forward, cognizant that he had become the focus of attention, both for the others on the channel and on his own bridge. “Surrender is not an option, but neither is genocide. We need to target this new capability of the enemy and neutralize it, while minimizing collateral damage.”
Eddington betrayed a shadow of doubt in his worry-creased brow. “That’ll be difficult now that the Vulcan agents inside the Empire have been executed.”
“There are other ways of gathering intelligence,” Picard said. “We need to start using them. Captain Calhoun, prep your crew for a quick raid into Klingon space. We need to capture one of their communication relays. O’Brien: If I get you aboard a Klingon relay station, could you hack its encryptions and access their network?”
O’Brien shrugged. “Probably.”
“That’s a start. My crew will pick the target. Be ready to strike within twenty-four hours. I’ll expect updates hourly until we deploy. That is all.”
Calhoun, O’Brien, and Eddington acknowledged Picard’s orders and signed off in quick succession. None of them looked happy with Picard’s middle path forward, but they seemed resigned to it, and that would have to suffice, he decided.