“Do you really expect the other castes to just fall into line behind you?” Z’shezhira heard herself saying.
“Not immediately, no,” Gog’resssh said. “And the political caste will be the most difficult of all to persuade, because of their arrogance. But they are every bit as jealous and fearful of us as is everyone else in the Hegemony. If the politicals will not assume an appropriately subservient role, we will destroy them.”
“And remake their worlds for ourselves,” Zegrroz’rh said. “As well as yours.” Z’shezhira realized with a loosening of her guts that Gog’resssh’s lieutenant was addressing her directly. Leaning menacingly forward in order to bring his phalanx of sharpened teeth to an uncomfortable proximity with her throat, he added, “When we were first brought on board the S’alath, you tech-casters tried to have us destroyed as genetically unfit. Do not believe for a moment that any of us have forgotten that.”
“We will have to act decisively, Second Myrmidon,” said Gog’resssh. “To ensure that none of the other castes ever gets to attempt such a travesty again.”
At a gesture from the first myrmidon, the two warriors exited the command deck, the better to refine their grandiose new military plans in privacy. Z’shezhira hoped this meant that she could count on them not to act rashly or prematurely, despite their apparently accelerating descent into madness.
It suddenly struck her yet again how profoundly dangerous these paranoid troopers could be, despite their having been half-crippled by radiogenic illness. The fact that they had only a relative manusful of grunt troops at their disposal in no way appeared to diminish the threat they posed, so long as they could maintain control of the S’alath. And if those two really do get their hands on that ecosculpting device—assuming that’s really what it is—the damage they might inflict upon the Hegemony could be irreparable. Unless someone does something about it.
Unless I do something about it.
She thought about the flotilla of Gorn vessels that even now was trying to wrangle that object in the skies over Hranrar.
And she wondered whether she really could get away with using the very same sensors she had used to monitor those vessels to send a covert warning to the Ssevarrh—the very ship to which her beloved mate-to-be S’syrixx had been assigned before the uncaring claws of fate had separated them.
7
U.S.S. TITAN
Riker slowly paced the length and breadth of his ready room, feeling like a caged tiger. Forcing himself into a semblance of calm, he came to a stop behind his desk and leaned with his hands against it, facing his two most trusted officers and confidantes. “If the Gorn can find a way to do it, they’ll try to fire that device up again. And they won’t waste any time doing it, given what seems to be at stake for them.” According to the analysis of Starfleet Intelligence, the stakes might be nothing less than the entire defense capability of the Gorn Hegemony.
Vale offered a glum nod. Like Riker, she was standing, and she, too, seemed to radiate the nervous energy of a person trained to take action, yet prevented by circumstances from doing so. “In other words, we’re right back where we started.”
“Not entirely,” Deanna said, leaning against the wall near the ready-room door. “At least Starfleet Command has been apprised of the situation.”
At least there’s that, Riker thought, though he wasn’t sure how much good that would do anybody aboard Titan. True, the shuttlecraft Handy was on its way back from its voyage past Vela OB2–404’s distant heliopause, the vast spherical boundary that marked the distance at which the incoming winds from other, more distant suns overwhelmed the local star’s outbound particle flux. The purpose of the Handy’s flight had been to deploy a series of subspace radio relay buoys between the heliopause and the relatively more confined space of Vela OB2–404’s Kuiper belt and points sunward.
Thanks to the efforts of two accomplished shuttle pilots, Ensign Olivia Bolaji and Ensign Waen—and Ensigns Crandall and Kuu’iut, specialists, respectively, in engineering and tactical—Titan now had an open subspace channel to Starfleet Command, at least as long as the series of subspace relays remained capable of piercing the local interference. Admiral Alita de la Fuega, the commander of Titan’s base of operations at Starbase 185, had listened to Riker’s verbal report with rapt attention and was now up to date on the Vela OB2–404 situation. She had enthusiastically endorsed Riker’s every decision up to this point.
But when Riker asked for permission to use force to neutralize the Gorn terraforming operation—and requested that Starfleet send slipstream drive-equipped reinforcements to counter the phalanx of Gorn vessels Captain Krassrr said he was expecting—de la Fuega’s enthusiasm appeared to have reached its limit.
On the terraforming matter, the admiral had said she’d need time to consult with Starfleet Command before any decision could be made. And regarding Riker’s request for reinforcements, she reiterated how terribly overstretched Starfleet was at the moment because of the destruction the damned Borg had wrought. “We’ll try to shake a few ships loose,” she’d said just before signing off.
Riker, who was already more than familiar with Starfleet’s post-Borg circumstances, had immediately parsed the true meaning of the admiral’s parting words: I’ll do what I can, but I don’t expect that to amount to much.
Or, more plainly: You’re on your own.
Shaking the captain from his reverie, Deanna said, “I suppose we ought to be thankful that the Gorn’s little technical snafu bought us at least some additional time.”
“Which could run out at any moment,” Vale said, folding her arms across her chest. “Suppose the accident that aborted the Gorn’s first attempt to use that device didn’t do any appreciable damage? They could have it up and running again in next to no time. And fate might not intervene again to save the inhabitants of Vela OB2–404 II.”
Whatever ultimately happens to those people could be up to us, Riker thought. Correction: Up to me.
Riker watched his wife take one of the padded seats that faced the desk, evidently attempting to defuse the tension in the room. He welcomed the gesture, though he doubted it would do him any good.
“Point taken,” Deanna said. “I recommend that we use the meantime, however long that might last, to find a way to save the planet’s native civilization that both the Gorn and Starfleet Command can live with.”
“Is that all, Counselor?” Vale answered with ironic blandness. “I thought we might have to accomplish something really difficult today.”
Riker cast a warning frown at his exec. “It seems to me that’s one of the better options we have at the moment: trying to convince the Gorn to spare this planet and do their terraforming someplace else.”
“They didn’t seem all that keen on talking the last time we tried to reason with them, Captain,” Vale said, matching Riker’s frown.
He cast his gaze at Deanna. “Maybe that’s because I let the wrong person try to reason with them then.”
“I’m game to try,” she said without any hesitation, just as he knew she would.
Vale held up both hands in a stop gesture directed at both at Riker and Troi. “Now wait a minute. Commander, I understand that trying to reason with the unreasonable is right in your wheelhouse as Titan’s senior diplomatic officer. But given the low probability of success—and you’ve got to admit that the Gorn have never been easy to deal with—we need to consider all our options before we put Titan in harm’s way again.”
“You’re talking about Commander Keru’s idea,” Deanna said, not asking a question.
Vale’s frustration seemed to be close to coming to a head. “Why the hell not? If we take them by surprise and blow up that terraforming dingus, those Gorn ships will no longer have the means to wipe out an entire civilization.”
“But if we were to do what you’re suggesting,” Deanna said, countering Vale’s heat with her own cool calm, “the Gorn might see it as a justification for going to war against the Federation. And with the
Gorn Hegemony now formally aligned with the Typhon Pact, we could easily end up with the Tholians, the Breen, the Tzenkethi, the Kinshaya, and even the Romulans at our throats as well.”
“And then there’s the little matter of Titan’s chances of surviving the immediate aftermath of a raid like that,” Riker said, recalling his tactical officer’s vehemence—for a Vulcan—in supporting his own bleak analysis of the problem. He was determined to avoid the blow-it-out-of-the-sky option—a course of action that would deny the alien terra-forming technology not only to the Gorn, but also to the Federation—while any other alternative remained.
Vale waved a hand before her as though erasing an invisible chalkboard filled with flawed equations. “Well then let’s just tuck our tails between our legs and go home? Damn.”
Riker considered that. True, he could order Titan entirely out of the system. But had he taken every opportunity to dissuade the Gorn from their present course of action?
Focusing his attention on Deanna, Riker came to a decision. “Commander Troi, I want you to put your diplomacy hat on. We’re going back to the second planet. Once we’re there, you’re going to appeal to the Gorn’s better nature.”
“That’s assuming,” Vale said sourly, “that they have one.”
Bathed in the blue-green brilliance of the main viewer’s rendition of the reflected light of OB2–404 II, Troi found Captain Krassrr’s reaction to her overtures to be entirely predictable.
She felt a keen sense of disappointment just the same.
“Earther, did your translation devices suffer damage sometime prior to our last communication?” Krassrr’s guttural, annoyance-tinged voice rumbled from the bridge’s audio speakers. “I thought I ordered your commander to withdraw your vessel from this system.”
As before, the commander of the Ssevarrh was reticent about using visual communications with his adversaries—or at least with this particular adversary. And although thousands of kilometers still separated Titan from the Ssevarrh and her sister vessels, Troi once again sensed a powerful emotional undercurrent of revulsion coming from Krassrr. It reminded her of own reaction the first time her father had taken her to see—and touch!—the Jalaran river eels at the Rixx Aquarium.
But for Troi’s conversation with the Gorn captain, the bridge was utterly silent. Will and Chris sat at their respective stations, listening attentively. The rest of the bridge crew, from Lavena at the flight-control console to Rager at ops to Dakal at sciences to Tuvok at tactical, were equally quiet and motionless. But they were all poised like coiled springs, ready to take whatever split-second action circumstances might require their captain to order.
“I acknowledge that you are uncomfortable with our presence here, Captain Krassrr,” Troi said, raising her voice to its most sincere diplomatic pitch; she could only hope that the Gorn version of the universal translator was doing justice to her efforts. “Please let me assure you that we have come in peace. We merely wish to talk with you.”
“‘ Talk,’ mammal? The way you and your Met’rr’onz allies ‘talked’ your way into domination over Inner Eliar?”
It took Troi a few moments to process the unfamiliar place name into something more generally recognizable: Cestus III, the initial flashpoint of every Federation-Gorn conflict over the last century. “We have no designs on any of the planets in this sector, Captain Krassrr. Our interest is purely scientific and humanitarian.”
During the lengthy pause that followed, Troi wondered whether the word “humanitarian” was giving Krassrr even more trouble than the Gorn name for Cestus III had briefly given her. The question briefly reminded her of a joke that she’d overheard Titan’s reptiloid chief surgeon, Dr. Ree, telling Commander Tuvok nearly a week ago during lunch in the officers’ mess: “Commander, if vegetarians eat only vegetables,” the carnivorous Pahkwa-thanh physician had asked the sedate, plomeek-soup-sipping Vulcan tactical officer, “then what do you suppose ‘humanitarians’ eat?”
“Permit me to make my meaning as clear as crysmetal, mammal,” the Gorn captain said. “You are not welcome here.”
Beyond Krassrr’s obvious annoyance at Titan’s return and his profound but unsurprising sense of revulsion at having to speak (again) to a humanoid, Troi sensed something else coming from the Gorn vessels as well: anger, though not all of it was aimed toward Titan. She also picked up impatience, directed both internally and externally. There was fear as well, as though death was imminent, which Troi herself knew might very well be the case. And mixed in with all those intricately braided emotions, like the sound of a single voice that was nearly being drowned out by a chorus of others, was something that felt vaguely like unease.
Or possibly even regret.
On the main viewer, some twelve thousand klicks below Titan, the planet designated in Starfleet’s stellar cartographic database as OB2–404 II serenely continued its eternal rotation. Near the planet’s eastern limb floated the alien artifact—some of the crew had lately taken to calling it Brahma-Shiva—which pointed straight down like a cold, dead finger at a world that would soon be shorn of all the life that currently dwelled upon it should the Gorn move their plan forward unopposed.
Could that fact have been the source of the emotion that so smacked of regret?
Did someone among one of the Gorn crews, either on the Ssevarrh or one of the other vessels, feel strongly that what they were attempting to do here was wrong?
And just how much influence, if any, might such a person exert over Captain Krassrr?
“Do we understand one another?” Krassrr continued.
“Perfectly, Captain,” Troi said. “Just as you must surely understand that Titan poses no threat to the operation you are presently conducting. You are expecting reinforcements to arrive soon, after all, and I assume you could always summon more at any time.”
Troi felt an odd emotional response coming from the Gorn captain; it felt almost as though he disagreed with what she had just said, or at least some portion of it. Doing her best to put this ambiguous information to one side, she continued: “Since you are in a position of such obvious strength, you have nothing to lose by negotiating with us.”
“Negotiating, mammal? Negotiating what?”
“The possibility of your choosing a different planet on which to conduct your . . . tests.”
The Gorn commander made a derisive snort that the universal translator passed along unchanged. “What could you know of our . . . tests?”
“Probably a good deal more than you realize. Certainly enough to know that they threaten the existence of a civilization native to this planet.”
“That is unfortunate. But it cannot be avoided.”
“That isn’t true, Captain. The Federation can help you locate an uninhabited world that will suit your purposes as well as this one.”
Krassrr snorted again, but this time the noise sounded vaguely like laughter. “We are already receiving more than enough help from our Typhon Pact partners.”
“Are you, Captain?” Will said. “The only Typhon Pact-aligned ships I see here so far belong to the Gorn Hegemony.”
“That will soon change, mammal. You would do well to be elsewhere when that occurs.”
“Thank you for the friendly warning, but I’d like to talk with you a little more first. Our offer of assistance is sincere.”
“It is also useless. Your Federrazsh’n would conveniently delay even beginning any such search until after my caste had already suffered so much attrition that the Gorn Hegemony could never again raise its claws against your never-ending expansions and incursions. The stakes are far too high for us to take your offer seriously, Captain.”
“Are the stakes so high that they would turn the Gorn Hegemony into a genocidal nation?” Tori asked.
“I regret the necessity of destroying Hranrar,” Krassrr said, and Troi sensed a kernel of sincerity buried beneath innumerable thin layers of studied hostility. “But that is the Hranrarii’s problem, not ours.”
Troi s
uddenly heard a series of incoherent growls coming through the bridge speakers, as though somebody had interrupted Krassrr to present him with some urgent news—none of which, unfortunately, was being translated for her, either because it was too indistinct or too guttural for the translation systems on either end of the connection to handle.
The subspace link closed down in a burst of static. On whatever emotional channel she had managed to open with Krassrr, Troi registered only confusion and distraction. There was no sign, however, that an attack on Titan was imminent.
“What are they planning to do, Commander?” Vale wanted to know.
Troi turned toward the exec and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Then for now at least, we watch,” Will said. “And we wait.”
8
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
During the latter half of the more than one Gornar suncircuit that had passed since her capture, Z’shezhira had begun to notice a change in Gog’resssh—beyond the obvious fact of his steadily escalating paranoia. He seemed to have come to trust her on some level, despite the huge gulf of caste-difference that separated them. It struck her as almost paradoxical, especially given the thickening cloud of suspicion that surrounded Gog’resssh and the twenty-odd other remnants of the former Sazssgrerrn garrison as he and his second myrmidon drew their plans against the Federrazsh’n vessel and those of their fellow Gorn.
But it was also highly fortunate, since it enabled her to hide certain information from the first myrmidon—information such as the sensor returns that revealed that the Federrazsh’n vessel had surreptitiously returned to the Hranrar system, where it had hidden its presence among the system’s remote zone of icy rubble, just as the S’alath had done elsewhere in that selfsame immensity. And then there were the readings that, upon careful study, would have revealed that the Sst’rfleet ship had sent one of its auxiliary craft far out-system, and then back. Z’shezhira felt it was necessary to do whatever she could to “manage” what Gog’resssh learned about what was happening elsewhere in the Hranrar system, the better to keep his mind focused on whatever the Gorn recon flotilla was doing on Hranrar proper.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 02: Seize the Fire Page 10