She nodded. “We will be ready.”
The Starfleet ship saw them coming and gave up on its stealthy course, moving to a higher warp velocity.
Hanno had opened a general channel from the Karsu to the other ships, and on the tertiary viewscreen Kein could see the jagul on his command throne, with once again the warrior aspect that she remembered from that day on Cardassia Prime at the fore. “No iron to begin a fight, these Starfleeters,” he rumbled. “They’ll come in hard well enough if they have their nose bloodied, but it’s a rare day that they’ll stand and wait to take a punch.”
The glinn at sensors glanced up at Kein. “Scan relay from the Fell, sir. Data on the target.”
“Show me,” ordered Enkoa.
Kein read the information from a console. The Federation ship was a light cruiser, like something carved out of bleached bone, with a saucer-shaped primary hull, twin warp pontoons high behind it, and a curved secondary fuselage. Partly blanked lines of information from Obsidian Order intelligence reports gave this particular craft an identity.
“Rutledge.” She said the alien name aloud, rolling the odd consonants over her tongue, pondering for a moment what meaning the appellation might have to the humans who crewed it. “What are they doing here?”
“Spying. Trying to read our strength and numbers.” Enkoa’s smile, lost since they had left Tantok Nor, was returning by degrees. “This ship is no match for the three of us.”
“Gul Matrik?” Hanno was speaking to the commander of the Fell. “The aliens are hailing us, questioning our aggressive posture.”
“I read that, Jagul,” Matrik’s voice replied. “I do not feel we need to grace them with a reply.”
On the screen, Hanno’s lip curled. “On the contrary, Gul, we will give them a reply, in the strongest terms. Just not the one they want. Prepare to engage.”
“Moving to battle stance.”
Enkoa leaned forward in his chair, and Kein felt the tension on the Lakar’s bridge jump a notch. Hanno looked out of the screen, directly at the young commander. “Dal Enkoa, maintain your course and speed. Remain at weapons hold.”
“Sir?” Enkoa blinked.
But Hanno was already turning away. “We’ll call on you if you are needed. Karsu out.” The communications screen went dark, while on the main display the two cruisers surged away after the Rutledge, laying the first few blasts of disruptor fire across the bows of the Starfleet vessel.
“Weapons hold,” repeated Glinn Lleye, earning him a sharp look from his commander.
Kein felt Enkoa quietly seething; she sensed the irritation coming off him in waves. In a cold and hollow fashion, it amused her to see him sharing in the same emotions that she had felt back on the station.
Reduced to the status of spectators, there was little they could do but watch the Rutledge thread between the Fell and the Karsu as they harried the alien ship, trying to drive it back toward Kelrabi space. The Federation vessel proved a more able foe than Kein had expected, shrugging off near hits and forcing the cruisers to stay beyond optimal attack range with barrages of proximity-detonating photon torpedoes. The ship’s tactical officer was clearly quite skilled.
Enkoa said and did nothing throughout it all, with only his eyes moving, darting right and left as he followed the tactical plot. He wanted so badly to be in the thick of it, it was almost pitiable.
With challenge after challenge, the Starfleet captain refused to engage. A Klingon or Talarian commander would have turned and fought—and most likely perished. But the Rutledge extended its distance and then, with a last salvo of parting shots, arrowed away into maximum warp, trailing streamers of plasma with carbon-scored wounds all across her pristine hull.
Hanno opened the general channel again. “Pity,” he mused. “A kill this early in the deployment would have been ideal. Still. They’ll carry my message back to their Federation. They know we won’t allow them to cross our borders at will.” The senior officer nodded to himself. “All ships, return to formation. Go to cruise speed, return course to Tantok Nor.”
Enkoa stood up sharply, surprising Kein with the suddenness of the motion. “Jagul, may I speak with you privately?” He inclined his head toward the captain’s duty room at the rear of the Lakar’s bridge.
Hanno frowned. “Very well.”
Enkoa nodded and moved away. “Encrypt and transfer the jagul’s signal to me,” he ordered, quickly disappearing into the small cabin. Kein did as she was ordered, catching a faint scowl on Hanno’s face just before the communication screen blanked.
No more than two metrics had passed before Enkoa tersely summoned her to join him in the duty room.
On larger ships, the cabin was used for high-level briefings or meetings that required some degree of privacy; aboard a Zhoden-class escort, a starship that was only a few steps above a warp-cutter, the room was small and cramped, with another of those irritatingly low ceilings.
Kein entered and found Enkoa at the office’s single desk, his hands steepled in front of him, his eyes hooded. A monitor on the wall was blinking in standby mode, indicating that a subspace communication had just been concluded.
“Dal,” she began.
He didn’t ask her to sit. “We could have destroyed that Starfleet ship,” he began. “If I had been allowed to commit the Lakar to the engagement, we would have destroyed them. Instead, they escaped to return another day.”
“I am sure the jagul had his reasons,” she ventured.
That earned her a glower. No smiles were evident now. “I asked him, Sanir. I asked him what those reasons were. Shall I tell you why he kept us out of harm’s way?” He said the last few words with acid venom. “He wasn’t willing to risk the life of his precious niece’s husband-to-be on a ’minor skirmish.’ The jagul felt I would learn more by observing the actions of Gul Matrik from a distance.” Enkoa’s fingers knitted into fists. “What will that make our new crew think of me? What message does that send, Sanir?”
The message that you are unfit to have the rank you were granted. She chewed on her bottom lip, resisting the urge to say it aloud. That Hanno knows it, even though he gave this ship to you. Kein realized he was waiting for her to answer him, to give him some show of support. “I am sure … Jagul Hanno has his reasons,” she repeated, at a loss to come up with something that would appease her commander.
“I would never challenge his commands,” Enkoa continued, “but … if he did not want me here, why give me this ship at all? What use can the Lakar be? A hunting dog is of no use if it is muzzled!”
“There will be other engagements.”
Enkoa wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was just talking, letting his voice fill the little room, venting his disappointment. “This is my first command, and I want to prove I am worthy of it, worthy of this ship.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “I do not want to hide behind Jagul Hanno.” He seemed to have forgotten Kein was in the cabin, the words rolling from him like a confessional.
But all she heard was a poor officer admitting he was unworthy of a posting that should have been hers. “Perhaps you should sever your ties with his niece.” Kein was unable to completely hide the mocking edge beneath the statement. Enkoa shot a look at her, irritated and surprised in equal measure.
But no, he would never do such a thing. I know him too well. For all his talk of wanting to be blooded, he will always take the path of least resistance. She matched his glare with bland neutrality—the same expression she had seen on the face of the server.
Enkoa looked away. “Inform me when we have reached Tantok Nor.” He waved her off. “You are dismissed.”
A week passed, then two, and there were no more incursions, no more sightings of Starfleet ships. The vast and watchful passive scanner arrays that unfolded from the space station’s outer pylons hung in the dark, like black sails on a becalmed ocean schooner; they drank in the faint echoes of subspace communications, listening to the babble and chatter of the Federation colonists who thought
themselves entitled to set up homes scant light-years from Cardassia’s borders.
In the refectory, Kein sipped her Rokassa juice and sank into the comfort of the chair and the quiet booth. She found this human idiocy difficult to understand. Did they not realize that each world they broke ground on, each township they built, each inch they took would antagonize the Union just that little bit more? Cardassia had never been shy about its territoriality, and yet there they were. She had heard reports that the colonists considered themselves only nominally beneath the banner of the United Federation of Planets, but that was disinformation, surely. Some of the homesteaders on these colony worlds were the families of Starfleet officers; how could the Federation admit that and then pretend that these incursions were not the first foundations of an economic, if not overtly military, invasion?
The skirmish with the Rutledge had echoed through the flotilla. So the rumor about the base said, Hanno had returned to Tantok Nor to find brusque orders from Central Command ordering a wide net be cast over the Dorvan Sector. The jagul had wanted to patrol the border en masse with a fleet under him, but the prefects on Cardassia Prime saw the situation differently. Orders were cut to spread out his forces, to attempt to put the ships everywhere at once. The eight Galor-class cruisers and six Zhodens now patrolled alone, the smaller ships in comm range of reinforcements, the larger ones deep into the indistinct morass of the boundary zone.
Only the Karsu and the Lakar remained close to the Kelrabi system. Each time Kein’s ship ventured out on patrol, Enkoa pulled at his orders like an errant raptor straining against a tether. They would be departing again very soon, moving out to take up Gul Matrik’s patrol pattern when the Fell reported back. It was the first time that the Lakar would be truly on its own. Enkoa was wound tight with anticipation, and had not slept the night before, as far as Kein could tell. She found herself looking forward to the patrol cruise with thinly disguised repugnance.
She drained the glass and turned it in her hands, glancing around the refectory. It was sparsely populated, and Kein was the only officer there. Studying the glass, a thought occurred to her: Why did I come back here? The place was functional at best, hardly the finest of the station’s establishments, and yet some unconsidered compulsion had brought her to this place when she returned to Tantok Nor. She was musing on this as a figure crossed her line of sight. Jagul Hanno, engaged in a terse and somewhat agitated conversation with Tantok’s station gul. He didn’t see her as she watched him pass by.
“Our esteemed jagul appears a little tired, don’t you think?”
The server with the bland face. Here he was again, silent on his approach, almost as if he had been conjured from the air itself to appear beside her. Kein pushed the empty glass across the table with slow deliberation toward the edge, and he caught it deftly, replacing it with a full one. “Did they teach you to be that quiet in waiter school?” she asked. Hanno entered a turbolift and was gone from her sight.
“If he came here, I would make him cela tea,” he replied, ignoring the comment. “It’s Bajoran, but it’s very soothing. I find it quite relaxing. I think he would benefit from it.”
Kein considered that for a moment. Governmental pressures from the homeworld, even out here on the Union rim, were still felt as keenly as they were on the streets of the capital. Distance did little to lessen their potency. She wondered what issues Hanno faced beyond those she knew of. To her, politics seemed like a great stone buried in sand, with only a fraction of the surface showing to outside observers.
“Then again, it is always the obligation of the officer class to shoulder a greater responsibility than the civilian.”
She eyed him. “That maxim is from the Fleet training regimen.”
“Is it?” He expressed faint surprise. “It must be true, then.” The server inclined his head slightly. “I imagine you have your share of those burdens, Dalin Kein. And not all of them stem from the regimens of the Fleet.”
Kein’s eyes narrowed. “You are either a garrulous fool or some sort of spy. Which is it?”
He chuckled, utterly unconcerned by her challenge. “How could I be a spy, if you guessed me so quickly? By your reckoning, then, I’m a fool.” He folded his tray under one arm. “You know me so well for someone who has only met me twice.”
“What is your name?”
“I could give you a name,” he replied, “but the word of a fool doesn’t count for much, does it?”
“Neither does that of a spy.” She took a swallow of the juice. It was tart, just how she liked it.
“I haven’t seen Dal Enkoa on the station for a while,” he continued. “Is he well?”
“His moods are his own.” She answered with more of a sneer than she would have liked, and glared at the waiter. Damn the man! There was something odd about the way he spoke, the way every sentence that left his lips was gossamer, without a single jot of weight to it, and yet she felt compelled to reply to him. Kein had the sudden sense of him taking in everything about her: her body language, the way she held her glass, the tone of her voice, the cut of her uniform . . .
He was no fool. In this moment, she became certain of that. And if it was so, then what did he want with her?
She wondered who his masters might be; what did they want with her?
“Newly minted commanders are often caught between a sullen manner or an overly aggressive one,” he opined. “They take time to find their equilibrium. A good bottle of kanar helps the process along.”
She should have left. She should have got up and left, right then and there; but she stayed, because she wanted to wipe that weak smile off his face. Perhaps that was part of his game as well. “I have enough to do with the running of the ship,” she told him. “I’m not Enkoa’s nursemaid or his confessor.”
“And what would he have to confess?” The server had immediately seized on the inopportune choice of word. “Issues of self-doubt and suitability are also a characteristic of those who rise too far, too fast. Don’t you think?”
Kein looked past him, wondering why none of the other customers in the refectory were signaling the man to refill their drinks or take their orders. For a moment, she entertained the mad notion that he was a figment of her imagination, perhaps some externalization of her subconscious, letting her reflect her irritations off him. Then she glanced down at the glass of Rokassa juice and a different, more unpleasant thought occurred to her. With care, she set the drink on the table and did not touch it again.
He kept on talking, mild and even, calm and metered. “The ruin of those sorts of men usually comes out of nowhere. They’re looking the other way when it happens. Opportunities arise for those around them, those who perhaps feel aggrieved, to let them make their own mistakes. All that needs to be done is to let it happen.” He smiled wistfully. “A very low-inertia form of reciprocity, really.”
Finally, Kein stood and fixed him with a hard eye. This game has gone on long enough. As ever, her stern gaze rolled off him with no visible effect. “I don’t believe I will be frequenting this establishment again,” she told him.
“Oh!” The man seemed genuinely distressed. “Was the service not to your liking, Dalin?”
She nodded at the half-full glass. “Just now, I lost my taste for Rokassa juice.” Kein stepped around him and walked back to the docking ring. Despite the temperate, Cardassia-warm atmosphere around her, her skin prickled with a chill.
Lakar’s patrol got under way, with a pointed dispatch from Jagul Hanno that stressed the nature of the sortie. Spread thin as they were, it was ill-advised for them to engage any enemy starships they might come across, and Hanno explained in no uncertain terms that unless the situation was critical, Enkoa should retreat and call for support if any potentiality for conflict loomed.
The dal nodded in all the right places and he said all the right things, but Kein saw the gestures for what they were, the thin veneer over Enkoa’s boyish need to prove himself a soldier.
In a few hours af
ter a full warp run, they were alone in the interstellar deeps, and the commander assuaged his desire by having Kein run combat drills. This she did with clinical solemnity and harshness, taking the sideways glares and half-hidden sneers of Telso and the other, bolder junior officers without open notice.
Three and a half days into the outward leg of the patrol, sometime after exchanging “all clear” signals with one of the big cruisers, Lleye brought an anomaly to their attention.
“It’s beyond the edge of our designated watch area,” began the glinn. “In section nine.”
“The Gholen’s patrol zone,” noted Kein, glancing at the Fleet tasking orders. “At this time, she’s at the opposite end of the area. Two days away at cruise, by my reckoning.”
Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins Page 18