But he saw what was behind her stony, defiant gaze. So he reached out to her. And he supported her when she fell into his arms and broke down in abject, heaving sobs.
SuD Qav
“So I have you at last, Lokog,” General Ja’rod gloated from the sputtering remains of the viewscreen. Lokog crouched on his hands and knees beside his broken command chair, bits of hot metal from the sparking wreck of the gunnery console peppering his skin and hair. Kalun and Krugt lay dead at their posts, and Ghopmoq had curled up under his console and begun crying.
“You are truly a craven coward,” Ja’rod went on, determined to grind his rhetorical boot into Lokog’s face before finally putting him out of his misery. “You are a pirate and a parasite, unclean and unreliable. You call yourself a warrior for your misbegotten people, but you abandon them, then flee from your own allies. You run from battle like a human.” Lokog smirked. He had battled humans; he knew he was hardly worthy of such accidental praise. “And now your dishonor has sealed your fate.”
The privateer looked up at that, struck by the general’s words. Lifting himself shakily to his feet, he spoke. “Yes—I’m a pirate and a renegade. I scrape by on the fringes. I made . . . one . . . mistake . . . and I got a disease! I was deformed! And because of that, I lost my ship, my crew, my standing. I had to build myself back up again however I could—but I no longer had a place in the Empire. I was pushed out! And then the khest’n Federation came along and pushed me out again! And then my own bedmate tried to kill me for not being ambitious,” he went on, gesticulating in annoyance, “and when I killed her and tried being ambitious, your kind tried to wipe out everyone like me!”
Lokog put his hands on his hips. “So, yes. I cheat. I flee. I do what it takes to survive in a universe that seems determined to ruin me. No one else plays fairly, so why should I?”
Ja’rod gazed at him in disgust. “It truly will be an honor to cleanse the universe of your stain.” He ordered his gunner to open fire.
For once, now that he was out of options, Lokog faced his death without blinking. “Your kind has no more honor than mine, Ja’rod,” he said as the disruptor bolts closed in.
“You just have harder heads.”
October 20, 2165
U.S.S. Vol’Rala, Cotesc system
Malcolm Reed’s bearded face stared agitatedly from the bridge’s forward viewer. “Why are you still at Cotesc, Thenar? The Klingon armada will be there any minute!”
Sh’Prenni chuckled. “Why do you ask the question if you’re just going to answer it for me?”
“I’m serious, Thenar.”
“So am I, Malcolm.” She raised herself from the command chair, stepping forward. “The Partners on Cotesc have been working nonstop to replicate transport ships and evacuate as many people as possible before the Klingons arrive. Someone needs to run interference.”
“Ware ships? What’s the point? The Klingons will just hunt them down.”
“Not if I delay them long enough. What I need you to do is make sure they get to Etrafso.”
“Etrafso?”
“Yes.” Sh’Prenni lowered her eyes, then traded looks with the others on the bridge crew. “Thanks to us, its Ware is already shut down. And thanks to you, Kinaph, and the Tyrellians, its people have largely managed to re-establish their subsistence needs without Ware. It’s the one Partnership world that has the best chance of surviving this.”
“That’s a good thought, Thenar. Except you’re sending a whole fleet of Ware drones Etrafso’s way.”
Silash ch’Gesrit stepped forward from the engineering station. “Which is why, as soon as the last of the refugees have been unloaded, we need you to transmit the destruct signal. And dismantle the Ware that’s already shut down.”
“If you cleanse the planet of Ware before the Klingons arrive,” Giered Charas added, “they will not see it as a target.”
“And at least one small part of the Partnership will survive,” Ramnaf Breg finished.
Reed thought it over. “It’s a good plan. It could work. But it’ll have a better chance if you join us in carrying it out.”
Tavrithinn th’Cheen turned from his tactical displays. “The Klingon armada is nearing, Captain. All stations report ready. All particle cannons charged, torpedo tubes clear for firing.”
Sh’Prenni smiled at Reed. “We are joining you, my friend. This is our part in the plan.”
“Damn it, Thenar, you don’t have to martyr yourselves! There are other ways to do penance.”
“In principle, I agree,” she said. “I’d love it if we had one. But timing, circumstances, and Klingon ruthlessness have left none of them available to us today.” Her antennae took on a wistful bent. “This is what we must do. It’s not about punishing ourselves. It’s about protecting the innocent. It’s about doing what we came here to do in the first place.” She blinked away tears. “And doing it right this time.”
Reed held her eyes for a long moment. “It’s been an honor, Captain sh’Prenni.”
“Ohh, Captain Reed.” She grinned with her mouth and her antennae. “It’s been a blast.”
Reed’s image faded before she could quantify the burst of emotion that began to sweep over his face. She could guess, though.
“Captain,” Antocadra sh’Thyfon announced from the science station, “receiving a hail from the Partnership fleet.”
Gathering herself, sh’Prenni nodded. “Onscreen, Cadra.”
Tefcem var Skos, Rinheith Chep, and Fendob appeared on the screen, the immaculate walls of a freshly replicated Ware control room behind them. “Captain sh’Prenni,” Rinheith said. “We are the last ship to depart Cotesc. All the Senior Partners are in space, along with as many Nierl, Xavoth, and Krutuvub as we could find in time. The rest on Cotesc are fleeing the cities. They will survive in the wilderness, or in the oceans for the Sris’si, and hopefully be unharrassed by the Klingons.”
“The Partners of Avathox report that they are also doing . . . as you suggested,” var Skos told her. “Many of the aerial cities’ modules are being reconfigured into warp ships. They shall evacuate as much of the population as they can before . . . before the cities are destroyed . . . and then proceed to Etrafso. The Xavoth should be safe from the Klingons in the depths of their atmosphere, as long as they dismantle their Ware.”
“That is deeply gratifying to know, Partner var Skos,” the captain replied. “The task force will see that they make it there safely. We shall remain here to ensure your own escape.”
Var Skos fidgeted, kneading his clamplike mitts and blinking his large, round eyes. “Captain . . . I have hated you and your crew for what you did to Etrafso. Yet now . . . it is the only thing that will save us. Your actions have made the difference—”
She shook her head. “Don’t. Please, Partner, don’t try to tell us that we’ve made up for our crime. Your civilization would not have been endangered—uncounted sentient beings would not have died—if not for our interference. That is the fact of it, and we all must live with its consequences.”
Fendob whispered a few isolated words in the ear of Rinheith, who interpreted and embellished, perhaps speaking for them both. “Our civilization has been in danger from its neighbors for centuries. Perhaps, by attempting to tame a technology that has harmed so many others, we were always tempting fate. Sooner or later, some nation would have devised this means to destroy the Ware, or another. And we would have had no one acting in our defense when they came.”
“We are entitled to thank you, captain and crew of Vol’Rala,” var Skos finished. “To thank you, at least, for caring. And for trying.”
Deeply moved, sh’Prenni nodded in acknowledgment. “On behalf of my crew . . . I promise we will not fail you again.”
“Captain,” th’Cheen reported, “the Klingons are starting to emerge from warp.”
“Go,” she said to the Senior Partners. After a
final, solemn nod from three different anatomies, they vanished from the screen.
“The last Partnership transport has gone to warp,” Ramnaf Breg reported a moment later. “It’s up to us now.”
“Six Klingon battleships, Captain,” th’Cheen announced. “Heading for Cotesc . . . now one is—three are veering this way. They’ve detected the fleet.”
“Three isn’t bad,” Giered Charas said. “We can handle three, right?”
“We just have to keep them from going to warp,” ch’Gesrit answered. “Barrage them with enough energy or matter to prevent a stable warp field.”
“Excellent,” Zoanra zh’Vethris said. “The radiation and shrapnel when we blow up should do the job nicely.”
“There’s that optimism I fell in love with,” Breg told her.
The navigator sighed. “You were right, Vrith. I should’ve gone home and put my genes in the pool while I had the chance.”
“Ah,” Breg said, “but then we would never have been together.”
“And look where that got me,” zh’Vethris said with an annoyed twist to her antennae. But her hand snaked out and clasped Breg’s anyway.
Over sh’Prenni’s right shoulder, Commander Charas shook his head and harumphed. “I don’t believe it. That damned Banerji will actually succeed in outliving the rest of us after all.”
Sh’Prenni was glad at least one of them would. “I don’t think he’d see it as a victory, Giered.”
“No.” Charas lowered his thick-antennaed head and spoke very softly. “But I do.”
She smiled at him. “We know.”
“One milliphase to firing range,” th’Cheen announced, his confident, proud tones unwavering. Sh’Prenni smiled at him, knowing it was for the crew’s benefit.
Resuming her seat, sh’Prenni hailed the medical bay. “Zhar, are you ready?”
“Don’t worry, Captain,” th’Lesinas replied with gravity. “We’ll keep this crew fighting as long as they’re able.”
She smirked. “Not with each other, I trust.”
“With this crew? We can only hope.”
“You’re a pillar of optimism as always, Chirurgeon. Bridge out.”
Taking a breath, sh’Prenni switched to the shipwide address channel. “All hands, this is the captain. You all know what we fight for. You need no speeches, no more motivation than your own belief in our enterprise. Just look at your crewmates around you, and remember the beliefs we share. I know you will prove worthy of them.”
Charas set his jaw and nodded. “For Andoria.”
Breg leaned forward over her console. “For the Federation.”
Th’Cheen stood fractionally straighter. “For the pride of the Guard.”
Ch’Gesrit sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Uzaveh’s sake.”
Zh’Vethris turned in her seat and met their eyes one by one. “For the Partnership.”
“For the Partnership,” they all agreed in turn.
Reshthenar sh’Prenni rose from her seat and stared at the incoming Klingon fleet in defiance. “Battle stations, my friends. Let’s show them all what honor really means.”
19
October 29, 2165
U.S.S. Pioneer
ONCE THE TASK FORCE had done all it could in Ware space and had set course for home, the captains of Endeavour and Pioneer assembled in the latter’s briefing room (for Pioneer was still the lead ship of the task force) for a debriefing with Admiral Archer over subspace. Joining T’Pol and Reed in the briefing were Charles Tucker, Travis Mayweather, and Hoshi Sato. At last, Tucker allowed himself to think. Almost got the band back together.
“So Vabion is just gone?” Archer asked over the wall screen. Through the windows behind him, the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge peeked intermittently out of the morning fog engulfing the strait for which it was named.
“We lost track of him during the resettlement on Etrafso,” Travis Mayweather replied. “He may have slipped away on a Tyrellian ship, even gone with the Balduk.”
“Or maybe,” Tucker suggested, “he decided to stay and help rebuild, like Olivia did.” At Mayweather’s skeptical look, he shrugged. “So call me an optimist.”
“And you’re confident the survivors of the Partnership will be safe under Balduk rule?” Archer asked.
T’Pol fielded that one. “The Balduk are an aggressive people, but they honor their agreements, and they are highly territorial. They contracted to defend the Partnership from its enemies. Claiming Etrafso as a protectorate is a logical way to fulfill that contract in the face of the Klingon occupation.”
“Except it’s not just the Klingons now. This . . . Silver Armada has the Ware destruct code too.”
“Evidently so, per their alliance with the Klingons. But this could be beneficial to the remaining Ware-dependent civilizations in the region. The Pegenoi are absolutely dedicated to the destruction of the Ware, but will no doubt show more consideration for the lives under its influence than the Klingons would.”
“What about the conquered Partnership worlds?”
“Reports are sketchy,” Sato said. “But from what Balduk intelligence could gather, the Klingons are ignoring hostile environments like the Xavoth and Sris’si homeworlds, as long as their Ware is destroyed. They appear to have occupied Cotesc, Rastish, and others, though.”
“We can only hope the Klingons find the Partners too physically incapable to enslave,” Reed added.
“The Klingons have now begun moving beyond Partnership space,” Sato continued. “They’ve occupied the Pebru and set about destroying their Ware. But they’re starting to get stretched thin. Reports are that other worlds with deactivated Ware are being left alone, so long as the Klingons are convinced it’s being destroyed.”
“Which means Vanot is safe,” Mayweather said, audible relief in his voice. “They’ve already destroyed all the Ware that Vabion distributed there.”
“I’m glad, Travis. If you’d like to swing back by Vanot on the way home . . . check in with your friend Urwen . . .”
Mayweather shook his head. “Thank you, sir. But I think it’s best to leave her, and the Vanotli, with a clean break. Let them carry on without having to worry about Ware or Klingons or anything else in space, until they’re ready.” He smiled wistfully. “Besides . . . a day or two wouldn’t be enough.”
“I understand, Travis.” After a moment, the admiral’s tone lightened. “Speaking of which, Malcolm—I heard from Captain Williams that his daughter is now dating your ship’s historian. Is that okay with you?”
A chuckle went through the room before Reed answered. “Assure the captain that Mister Kirk is an officer and a gentleman. As for myself, I have no objection at this point, as they aren’t in a direct chain of command. It bears watching—but if anything, it resolves a lingering morale issue among my bridge crew.” At Archer’s inquisitive look: “Let’s just say a longstanding tension has been eased.”
“To put it another way,” Mayweather said, “we were wondering if those two would ever figure out what was obvious to the rest of us.”
Archer shared in the general amusement, then sobered. “I’m just glad something positive came out of this disaster. This has not been the Federation’s finest hour.”
The others conveyed their agreement. “What’s the mood back home, sir?” Sato asked.
“Somber. Confused. I think most people saw the Ware as something dangerous, destructive. The thing that destroyed worlds, that nearly provoked a war with the Klingons. As far as anyone knows, either here or in the Empire, it was the failure of the Ardan IV attack that led to the faction behind the invasion being discredited, their rivals put in power. That and the honor Vol’Rala won in battle—their fearlessness that gave even the Klingons pause, and won their respect.”
“That much is true,” Reed averred after a respectful silence.
“Anyway, the Partnership is being seen as one more casualty of the Ware. The complexities of their relationship with it are being lost amid the rest. I think it’s easier for the public to cope with it that way. ” Archer sighed. “You should see the nosedive Abramson Industries’ stock has taken. Suddenly the idea of a future full of bright, shiny robots serving our every need isn’t all that popular. Akomo was probably smart to get out while she could.”
“In more ways than one,” Tucker said. “A little bird tells me the investigation is going to show that one Philip Collier, civilian consultant for Abramson, sold classified Starfleet intel to the Klingons, allowing them to destroy the Ware. Collier will disappear shortly after he disembarks in Federation space.”
The mood darkened. “They think of everything, don’t they?” Mayweather said.
“They certainly try.” Tucker looked at Archer, at the captains, at the rest. “Are we sure this transmission is secure?”
“I swept for listening devices and taps using the protocols you showed me, Trip,” Archer said.
“It’s as secure as I could make it on this end,” Sato added.
“Thanks, Hoshi. If you don’t mind, could you and Travis give us the room?”
The two junior officers traded a look. Both captains indicated that they were free to leave. “Sure,” Mayweather said, rising. “The less I know, the better, right?”
“If you like to sleep at night.”
Mayweather nodded and headed out. Sato rose to follow, but passed by Tucker first. “Welcome back from the dead, Trip,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.
Not just yet, he thought, but he merely smiled and thanked her.
Once he was alone with T’Pol and Reed, Archer addressed him. “What’s up, Trip?”
“My patience, for one,” Tucker said. “This is the second time in as many years that Section Thirty-one has demanded I sacrifice innocent lives somewhere else for the good of the Federation. First it was Sauria, and Maltuvis ended up conquering the whole planet, and who knows what he plans next. Now it’s the Partnership, and a whole civilization’s practically ceased to exist overnight. This is not what I signed on for.”
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