Serpents Among the Ruins

by David R. George III

  “Our presence?” Harriman said, surprised by both the absurdity and the audacity of the assertion. “This is neutral territory, Admiral. We are visitors here, and we make no claims on this world or its people.”

  “In the beginning, you are always visitors,” Vokar said. “And in the end, you always stay.” The admiral rounded on his heel and paced away, then turned back to his captives before addressing them once more. The movement reeked of theatricality, although for whose benefit—the Romulan soldiers’ or the Starfleet officers’—Harriman could not tell. “But it is of no matter with respect to this planet,” Vokar continued. “You are not visitors, and you are not invited to stay. You are trespassers in Romulan territory, and you will leave at once.”

  And there it is, Harriman thought, the need for supposition and analysis gone. The Romulans had decided to act first, though they would assert otherwise, claiming their actions to be re actions incited by the Federation. Harriman understood that the months and years of diplomatic ebb and flow had ceased, and that the military tide had crashed through the levees and now threatened a devastating flood. And in risking that first move, the Romulans had also taken a strategically valuable asset.

  “This is neutral territory,” Harriman said again, making the attempt he must make, despite being convinced that nothing short of battle would prevent Vokar from accomplishing the task he had come here to perform. “The people here don’t even know that sentient life exists beyond their world.”

  “They know it now,” Vokar said, turning to glance up at his ship hanging above the city, the fires raging below. “And we have made our intentions clear to them.” By intentions, Harriman knew, Vokar meant the ability and willingness to sow destruction and promote fear.

  “The Federation and the Empire have long had a tacit understanding that this world is off-limits,” Harriman went on.

  “An understanding?” Vokar said. “Perhaps. But an agreement? I am sure that is not correct.” His words contained the arrogance of victory already achieved. “No matter the interpretation of past exchanges, this planet now lies within the sovereign domain of the Romulan Star Empire.”

  “Vokar,” Harriman said, taking a step toward him. Subcommander Linavil quickly moved forward, interposing herself between the two men. She brandished her knife, and Harriman raised his hands, prepared to fend off any attack. Tenger also started forward.

  “Stop,” Vokar said quietly, the single word more powerful for not having been shouted. The subcommander froze, then lowered the knife and backed away.

  Tenger stopped, and Harriman let his hands fall back to his sides. He heard two short tones—somebody trying to contact him on his communicator—and ignored them. “Don’t do this,” he told the admiral. “Allow your negotiators and ours to continue their work.” For many months, Federation, Romulan, and Klingon representatives had been attempting, without success, to find their ways through the ever-deepening and dangerous morass existing among the three powers. “Don’t undermine the peace process,” Harriman said. “Don’t do this.” He motioned toward the starship menacing the Koltaari city.

  Vokar raised his chin before speaking. “It is already done, Captain Harriman.” The minor emphasis on rank seemed intended as derision. “And I see that you still are a captain after all this time. Is Starfleet unwilling to entrust you with greater responsibilities, or are you simply afraid to assume them?”

  Harriman smiled again, but this time, he actually felt like laughing. It amused him that Vokar had so completely misread his vulnerabilities, but more than that, the admiral’s words might well have revealed a vulnerability of his own. “Still a captain,” Harriman agreed, the smile not leaving his face. “And I see that you’re an admiral…again.”

  This time, Vokar himself lifted his hand to strike, moving with remarkable speed for a man of his years. Still, Harriman saw the attack coming and had time to defend himself. Instead, he chose to do nothing. Vokar’s blow landed, driving into Harriman’s face. His head snapped back, and he allowed his knees to give way. He fell onto his back, the hard road unforgiving beneath him. Anticipating the next attack, he looked up, but the admiral simply peered down at him.

  “Contact your ship and get out of here,” Vokar hissed.

  Harriman pushed himself up onto his hands. “Mr. Tenger,” he said. As he climbed back onto his feet, he heard the chirp of a communicator being activated, and then the security chief called up to Enterprise.

  “This is Linojj,” came the response from the ship’s second officer. Harriman detected the concern in her tone even before she continued. “Are you and the captain all right?”

  “We are,” Tenger said. “Can you locate the rest of the landing party?”

  “We’ve already beamed them aboard,” Linojj reported. “You and the captain are the only ones left on the surface.”

  “Lock on to us and prepare to transport,” Tenger told her, then said, “Captain?”

  Harriman tasted blood again, and he coughed to clear his throat, then turned and spat onto the road. He looked at Vokar. “Get us out of here, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Energize,” he heard Tenger say. A moment later, the world of the Koltaari faded from view.

  Silence and the eerie scarlet glow of alert lighting suffused the bridge of Enterprise. Lieutenant Commander Xintal Linojj had ordered the klaxons off and the flashing of the lights stopped, but the pandemonium of the initial call to battle stations now seemed preferable to this grave atmosphere. She peered around at the crew—DeYoung and Kanchumurthi at the freestanding tactical-and-communications console, Fenn at sciences, Tolek at navigation, and Verant in Linojj’s stead at the helm—and saw her own troubled feelings reflected in their faces.

  Except it’s worse for me, isn’t it? she thought. It’s more personal. She looked ahead from the command chair at the main viewer and felt wounded by what she saw there. The emerald-and-white Koltaari planet—so similar in appearance to Cort, the Boslic homeworld—arced across the lower left corner of the screen, a Romulan warship hanging threateningly in orbit above it. The sight recalled too well for her the fractured years of her childhood when her own people had confronted an alien invasion. It had taken almost a decade for the Boslic to completely repel the attackers, and though the final battles had been fought more than a quarter of a century ago, she found that the difficult memories of those days had lost little of their emotional force for her.

  Off to her right, the starboard doors whispered open, and she glanced in that direction, grateful for the distraction. Captain Harriman and Lieutenant Tenger entered the bridge from the turbolift, the captain barely recognizable in native Koltaari garb and with his skin dyed green; several dark patches, like birthmarks, also decorated his features around his nose and mouth. The flaxen, shoulder-length hairpiece he had worn down to the planet now dangled from one hand, though, and she thought that his own short brown hair, swept back and dusted silver along the sides, at least helped his long, narrow face seem more familiar.

  Linojj stood from the command chair as Harriman stepped down from the outer, raised circle of the bridge. Behind him, Tenger moved aft to the tactical position and relieved Ensign DeYoung. Unlike the captain, the security chief had not yet removed his wig, but neither the long blond tresses nor the colorful Koltaari clothing could disguise Tenger’s stern countenance.

  “Report,” Harriman said, acknowledging Linojj with a nod and then looking to the main viewer. Standing beside the captain, she saw that his lower lip had been split open, and she realized that the dark patches she had noticed on his face were actually smears of blood.

  “There are four Romulan ships in all, Captain,” she said. “At least, there are four that we know of.” Romulan cloaking technology generally advanced in parallel with Federation detection equipment, the two alternately outdistancing each other. The Romulans currently held the advantage, their cloaked vessels effectively invisible to Starfleet sensors. “They appeared all at once,” Linojj went on, “three D
’Vorix-class ships in orbit, and the Ivarix-class ship perched above the Koltaari capital.” Since the captain had transported down to the city with the landing party, she assumed that he already knew about—indeed, must have seen—that fourth ship.

  “You got no indications of their drives before they decloaked?” Harriman asked. The Romulans operated artificial quantum singularities to power their warp engines, and it was most often those microscopic black holes that permitted Federation technology to detect the cloaked ships.

  “No, sir,” she informed him.

  Harriman seemed to consider this, still looking at the viewscreen. “Did they fire on the city?” he finally asked.

  “It’s hard to tell,” she said. “Ship’s sensors were impeded by a dampening field that blanketed the capital during and for several minutes after the explosions. We’re not sure why.”

  Harriman turned toward Linojj, but he seemed not to see her, instead looking into the middle distance. “Because Admiral Vokar didn’t want me to transport off the planet,” he said, apparently coming to a realization. “He wanted to explain the Romulans’ intentions to a captive audience.”

  “Vokar’s here?” Linojj asked, surprised. As secretive as the Romulans could be, the name of Aventeer Vokar had been known within Starfleet for years. Now fleet admiral after a long career, Vokar had been involved in several encounters between the Empire and the Federation during his ascent to power. Starfleet Command, she knew, considered him both hostile and dangerous.

  “He’s here,” Harriman confirmed, his eyes focusing on Linojj. “That’s the flagship down there.” He pointed a finger toward the image of the planet on the viewer.

  She shook her head slowly from side to side, reaching up and running a thumb and forefinger along the smooth, raised ridges of her brow. A wisp of her long purple hair fell across her face, and she brushed it aside, irritated. She had hoped that the appearance of the Romulans here—and even that their attack on the city—might have been only a warning to the Federation, a cautionary signal that would not include the actual taking of this world and its people by the Empire. But Vokar’s presence put the lie to such a hope; the Romulans would not have sent a fleet admiral merely to deliver a message. No, Vokar had come here to lead an occupying force.

  To the captain, Linojj said, “After the dampening field went down, we scanned the city. There were no residual readings characteristic of energy weapons, so we believe that explosive charges were actually set on the surface. The Romulans may have intended them to detonate simultaneously.”

  Harriman seemed to consider this for a moment, and then said, “No, I don’t think so.” He walked slowly around the navigation station and paced toward the viewscreen, then looked back toward her. “I think they set off the first charge so that the Koltaari would commit most of their emergency-response resources to that area, and then set off the second to maximize the bedlam and horror in the city.” He peered at her with a knowing and pained expression. “It’s an old Romulan ploy: demoralize your enemies before they even know who’s attacking.”

  “And then appear and show themselves to be the source of the destruction,” Linojj concluded.

  “Yes,” the captain agreed.

  She looked at the Romulan vessel on the viewscreen, her stomach churning in anger. “When the ships decloaked, we had a few tense moments,” she said, continuing her report. “But the Romulans made no moves against the Enterprise. When the dampening field went down, the members of the landing party began calling in. You and Lieutenant Tenger were the last two on the planet. We tried to contact you, but when you didn’t respond, we scanned your location and found the Romulan landing party there as well. We were about to beam you up when the lieutenant contacted the ship.”

  Harriman nodded, then asked, “Where is Commander Sulu?”

  “In sickbay,” Linojj said, “being treated for smoke inhalation. Dr. Morell says she’ll be fine.”

  “And the rest of the landing party?”

  “Unharmed,” she told him. “Although the doctor’s insisting on examining each of them. And she’s already contacted me to demand that you and Lieutenant Tenger report to sickbay as soon as possible.”

  “Of course she did,” Harriman said, offering a wan smile. The doctor possessed a shipwide renown for overprotecting the crew, a trait for which she was continually teased. Looking past Linojj, Harriman said, “Lieutenant Tenger, secure from general quarters.”

  “Aye, sir,” came the crisp response from the security chief. Linojj looked around and watched him operate his console. An instant later, the red alert indicators blinked off, replaced by the standard lighting of alpha shift.

  Harriman stepped forward and rested a hand along the front edge of the navigation console. “Ensign Tolek,” he said, “plot a course for Starbase Iridani.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the navigator replied, sending his long, dexterous fingers dancing across his console.

  “Sir, we’re leaving?” Linojj asked, dismayed, speaking out even before she’d had a chance to consider her words. But unlike the other commanding officers under whom she’d served, Captain Harriman invited questions on the bridge. His command style mixed strength and decisiveness with patience and informality; he made decisions quickly, but allowed any of the crew to ask about those decisions. When she had first come aboard, she had found Harriman’s approach confused and even dangerous, but she had soon come to discover its merits. The crew appreciated their access to the captain, and felt valued by his willingness to listen to them; they trusted him because he trusted them. Linojj often wondered how much of that had been a reaction to Harriman’s experiences with his father, now an admiral in Starfleet Command, a man noted as a hard and unforgiving leader; she and Demora had often speculated with each other about it.

  “Course laid in, Captain,” Tolek said.

  “The helm answers ready, sir,” Ensign Verant added.

  “One moment,” Harriman told Tolek and Verant. He circled back around the navigation console and eased into the command chair. “You have concerns, Xintal?” he asked.

  “I don’t think we should abandon the Koltaari,” she said honestly.

  “We’re not abandoning them,” Harriman said evenly.

  “The Koltaari don’t even know that we exist.”

  “Begging the captain’s pardon,” Linojj said, “but after what the Romulans have done, aiding the Koltaari could hardly be considered a violation of the Prime Directive, if that’s what you’re suggesting.” She looked over at the main viewscreen, training her eyes on the Romulan warship suspended above the planet. She recognized the design of the vessel—with its bulbous command section at the end of along, narrow neck, and its wide nacelle mounts below its angular main body—as from an older class manufactured into the 2290s, but not beyond that time. All three Romulan ships in orbit hailed from that older class, and while all must have been refitted over the years, none could approach the capabilities of Enterprise, itself fully refitted just four years ago, right before she had joined the crew. In her head, she ran numbers and attack strategies, attempting to estimate Enterprise’s chances of dispatching the three older vessels before having to face the much more powerful Romulan flagship.

  “No, this isn’t a Prime Directive matter,” Harriman allowed. “But even if we could somehow defeat all four of the Romulan vessels, what then? A direct attack on Romulan personnel would be considered an act of war.”

  “Isn’t this attack on the Koltaari an act of war?” she said.

  “Against the Koltaari, yes,” Harriman said, “but not against the Federation. Aggressive, yes. Dangerous, yes. But not something that automatically instigates war.”

  “So we’re just going to allow the Romulans to take this world, to enslave these people?” she persisted, her emotions rising. “Because that’s what they’ll do. They’ve enslaved the Remans for centuries.”

  “Xintal,” Harriman said gently, “the Romulans have already taken the first steps to occupy th
is world. If we fight now, it will cost Koltaari lives.”

  “It’s already cost that,” she argued. “Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, in the two explosions.”

  “Yes,” Harriman said, and he cast his gaze downward for a moment, clearly saddened himself at the circumstances that had unfolded here. “But the Romulans are pushing us. They either believe that war is inevitable, and that they should therefore gain as much advantage as possible, or they believe that they’ve already gained some advantage that will assure them victory. Either way, they’re pushing us, inviting us to commit. And we’re not ready.”

  “Captain,” Linojj said, almost pleading, she realized, for people she had never even met. “To allow this to happen to the Koltaari, even to avoid war…”

  Harriman looked at her, the stare of his blue-gray eyes intense. “We’re not going to avoid war,” he said. “Not by leaving the Koltaari to the Romulans, and not by confronting the Romulans right here, right now. We’ll delay it by stepping back at this point—we need to delay it—but…” The captain let his voice trail off to silence, just as she had, and Linojj saw something like conflict in his expression.

  No, not conflict, she thought. Struggle. As though he had already begun to search for the solution that would deny the inexorableness of war with the Romulans. She tried to see what he saw, that their inaction here now was necessary, that in the long run, and perhaps in the short run, even the Koltaari would be better off if the crew of Enterprise did not fight today. To Harriman, she simply said, “Yes, sir,” signaling an end to her opposition. “I understand.” She bowed her head once, a Boslic sign of respect, then turned and tapped Ensign Verant on her shoulder. The ensign quickly operated a control to freeze the helm, then stood and retreated to a secondary station at the periphery of the bridge. Linojj sat, quickly scanned the readouts to familiarize herself with the ship’s current status, then reached up and reactivated the console. “Helm still answers ready, Captain,” she said.