“Yes, Captain,” Pazlar said. “And Xin and I were as surprised as you are by the warp signature Ensign Evesh picked up on Hranrar.”
“As far as anybody knows, the Hranrarii have never ventured into space, with or without warp drive,” Riker said. “So this warp signature must belong to somebody else. Could the Gorn have been idling one of their ships on or near the planet’s surface without us knowing about it?”
Ra-Havreii pointed up at the solar-system-spanning diagram with a shake of his head that made his long white mustachios sway like slender tree-limbs in a gale. “No, Captain, this appears to be a home-grown Hranrarii phenomenon.”
This made no sense. “Explain.”
“First, the Gorn aren’t in the habit of using Archer-style antique engines,” Ra-Havreii said. “And second, Ensign Evesh reported that this pattern came from deep in the interior of one of the Hranrarii cities.”
“And that’s why it changes everything,” Pazlar said as she descended toward the catwalk in a gentle glide.
Understanding struck Riker with the finality of a guillotine blade. “The Hranrarii must use controlled, force-field-mediated matter-antimatter annihilation in the central power plants for their cities. Too bad Mister S’syrixx didn’t remember to include this little detail in his initial report.”
Pazlar shrugged. “I wouldn’t necessarily read anything sinister into that, Captain. Perhaps he didn’t know about it, or didn’t consider it worth mentioning.”
“Warp power is certainly the best explanation I can find for the apparent material wealth of the Hranrarii,” Ra-Havreii said. “At least judging from the images the away team attached to their last subspace burst. What I don’t understand is why they never saw fit to apply this technology to its most obvious use—powering superluminal star-ships.”
“Maybe that application isn’t as universally obvious as we’d like to think it is,” Pazlar said.
Riker looked up at the warp-field diagram through narrowed eyes. “You’d think we would have detected a warp signature like that from a long way off. Why didn’t we notice this before an away team stumbled across it?”
“You’d think that the Hranrarii’s warp emissions would be detectable from orbit, or even from across the system,” Pazlar said with a nod. “But Ensigns Evesh and Dakal seem to have accounted for that as well. They’ve hypothesized that the planetary information network works in tandem with Hranrar’s magnetic field to create an interference pattern that conceals subterranean warp signatures almost completely.”
Ra-Havreii nodded. “And that can’t be an accident. For this society to remain as peaceful as it appears to be, it must have taken measures not to attract undue attention. Otherwise it would have been preyed upon by warp-capable species who don’t possess the Hranrarii’s reticence about building starships.”
“Unfortunately, merely keeping a low profile isn’t always enough to keep people out of harm’s way,” Pazlar said with a melancholic expression.
Riker looked away from the hovering diagram, fixing his gaze instead on his senior science officers. “As fascinating as all of this is, I’m not sure why you keep saying it changes everything.”
Looking mildly incredulous, Pazlar exchanged a quick glance with Ra-Havreii before replying. “Don’t you see, Captain? The fact that the Hranrarii possess warp technology completely changes Titan’s duty toward this civilization vis-à-vis the Prime Directive.”
“How? The Hranrarii still don’t have any interstellar spaceflight capability. Hell, as far as anyone can tell they haven’t even put an artificial satellite into orbit yet.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Captain,” Ra-Havreii said. “But doesn’t the Prime Directive set warp capability as its main criterion for first contact?”
Riker nodded. “It does. But I think it also assumes that that development always coincides with warp-driven space travel.”
“Well, whether the drafters of the Prime Directive assumed that or not,” Ra-Havreii said, “the Hranrarii civilization stands as empirical proof that the assumption is wrong—or, at the very least, needs to be reexamined.”
“I don’t think I have the authority to do that,” Riker said. “Starfleet Command takes a dim view of officers who legislate from the captain’s chair.”
“May I speak freely, Captain?” Ra-Havreii asked.
“Go ahead. And that applies to both of you.”
The Efrosian stroked his pale chin as he gathered his thoughts. At length, he said, “Whether anybody serving aboard Titan understands it or not, there’s one central principle this vessel stands for: honest confrontation with our deepest, least-examined prejudices and biases.”
Riker nodded during the engineer’s pause. He couldn’t quarrel with anything Ra-Havreii had said so far, having already encountered—and, he hoped, subsequently removed—the ugly stain of prejudice on his own soul. That stain had not been evident to him until his first meeting with Dr. Ree, whose predatory, dinosaurlike appearance the captain had found intensely disturbing—at least at the beginning of his working relationship with Titan’s Pahkwathanh CMO, nearly three years ago.
“I’m no legal expert, sir,” Ra-Havreii continued. “I’m just a lowly, hairy engineer. But I feel very strongly that the actual building and flying of starships shouldn’t be the main consideration here. It can’t be.”
Pazlar was nodding vigorously. “I agree. Demonstrating warp-drive capacity—which really amounts to little more than sustaining and harnessing the mutually annihilative reaction of matter and antimatter, as the Hranrarii have done—is what determines whether a culture has attained warp capability.”
“And the presence of warp capability cancels out a society’s Prime Directive protection,” Ra-Havreii said. “Because it signals that the world in question has reached the first contact threshold. Insisting that the threshold can only be crossed via a space vessel—well, that’s just another human . . .” The engineer trailed off, his already pale complexion becoming even paler, as though he feared he may have said too much.
“Xin, I did give you permission to speak freely,” Riker said with a gentle smile. “Go ahead and spit it out.”
Ra-Havreii nodded. “I was going to say that the default expectation that the development of warp technology always follows a faster-than-light trajectory is just another unexamined prejudice. It may be a prejudice that the Prime Directive’s drafters weren’t even aware they had, but it’s a prejudice nonetheless. A bias that every Federation member has shared without question, more or less, since the signing of the Federation Charter.”
“Whether we think of it as a prejudice or a bias or an erroneous assumption,” Pazlar said, “I think we can all agree that it’s one of those things that Titan is all about challenging.”
My God, Riker thought as he tried the notion on for size. He now wished more than anything that he hadn’t made Deanna part of the away team; he could really use her counsel at the moment.
“Do you two have any idea what you’re actually suggesting?” he said. “What it really means for Titan? For all of us?”
“I think so, sir,” said Pazlar, looking glum. “It may be that you are no longer enjoined from intervening on behalf of the Hranrarii.”
Ra-Havreii nodded in agreement, his mien as solemn as Riker had ever seen it. “I’m inclined to agree, Captain. But there’s an even graver implication.”
Riker nodded, his brow crumpling under the weight of his new knowledge and responsibility. “This might not be just a matter of my no longer being forbidden to act. I may be required to take action of some kind to stop the Gorn from wiping out the Hranrarii.”
“I don’t see how Starfleet could hold you to that,” Pazlar said, a look of deep concern creasing her porcelain features. “I hope nobody needs to remind you that Titan is hiding out from a Gorn fleet at the moment. To say nothing of the incoming Typhon Pact armada that’ll be breathing down our Bussard collectors by tomorrow.”
“And add to that the fact
that we can’t count on any Starfleet reinforcements to come to our rescue,” Ra-Havreii said.
“There’s only so much Starfleet can expect of Titan,” Pazlar said. “Or her captain.”
“She’s right, sir. Titan is just one ship up against a multitude of others. You’re just one captain. We’re just one crew.”
One ship, Riker thought. One crew.
Even though he was responsible for the safety of both, he couldn’t restrain himself from imagining that one ship plowing straight into Brahma-Shiva on a high-warp suicide trajectory. How many millions of Prime Directive-emancipated Hranrarii lives might he save in a single stroke by taking this single precipitous—and final—action?
If no better means of saving the Hranrarii presented itself between now and the moment the Gorn activated the planet-altering device, could he live with himself afterward if he ultimately decided to do anything less? Could he really settle for the option of lodging ineffectual after-the-fact complaints with the Gorn Hegemony over its act of genocide against the Hranrarii?
Starfleet Command might very well commend his decision to save Titan and her crew—not to mention Riker’s own family!—under the assumption that the Hranrarii simply couldn’t be saved, given the present circumstances.
Gripping the railing before him as though he were in danger of tumbling upward from the catwalk’s surface and into the lab’s sprawling holographic cosmos, Riker felt far from certain that he could grant himself that same consideration.
A voice from his combadge startled him out of his musings. “Captain, I just picked up a fragmentary signal from the Beiderbecke,” said Lieutenant Lavena. “Their communications are being jammed at the source, but it’s pretty clear that they’re under attack.”
He tapped the combadge, then vaulted over the catwalk’s railing as he spoke, trusting the lab’s variable-gravity field to bring him to a soft landing. “Red Alert! And make best speed to the Beiderbecke.”
SHUTTLECRAFT BEIDERBECKE
“Get us out of here, Ensign!” Vale shouted, trusting Bolaji to do what was necessary while she concentrated on the comm system’s controls. She disabled the insanely loud alarm klaxon, then fired up the comm.
“Beiderbecke to Titan! The Gorn have found us.” She heard only a burst of static in reply.
The goddamned lizards are jamming us, Vale thought, watching as the once-placid planetscape swung crazily across her forward field of view, disappearing and reappearing in response to Bolaji’s frenzied maneuverings along all three of the shuttlecraft’s axes of motion. A greenish, angular, multi-nacelled vessel whose hull plating vaguely resembled reptilian scales appeared intermittently in Vale’s field of view, its forward tubes exuding a baleful red glow that became visible in between the harsh white flashes from the Gorn ship’s disruptors.
The Beiderbecke rocked and shimmied; Vale’s stomach lurched in sympathy a split-second between the impact and the intervention of the shuttlecraft’s inertial dampers, which Bojali’s constant pitching, yawing, and spinning were already straining past their limits.
“Shields are down to twenty percent,” Bolaji said as yet another energy barrage struck the shuttle with the force of a giant fist. “I’m afraid that first salvo really caught me with my pants down.”
“Returning fire,” Vale said, deciding she had no energy to spare on recriminations. She put aside her efforts with the comm system, switching instead to the tactical displays. “Deanna! Keep trying to raise Titan.”
“Are you sure that’s wise, Chris?” Troi said from the aft cockpit console she had just occupied. “We’d be giving away Titan’s presence here.”
“That train left the station the moment the Gorn found us,” Vale said as she engaged the Beiderbecke’s phaser-lock, which made contact long enough to score a brief but well-placed hit on the Gorn vessel’s forward ventral area. “They already know that a short-range vessel like this one couldn’t get this far from Federation space without a mothership hiding somewhere nearby. And the Beiderbecke’s markings ought to make it clear enough to Captain Krassrr which mothership that is.”
Vale fired the phasers again, to little effect. The gauges and telltales on the tactical console were presenting ominous portents. “Damn. We’re losing power.”
As if in answer to Vale’s words, the cockpit lights suddenly dimmed to a fraction of their usual brightness.
“I’ve just lost warp drive,” Bolaji said. “Impulse engines and maneuvering thrusters are also failing.”
Undeterred, Vale initiated a bypass to reroute emergency battery power to the tactical systems. The phasers remained dead, but the shuttlecraft’s sole photon torpedo launcher showed as operational. She wasted no time arming it and loading the tube with the first of the Beiderbecke’s compliment of two photon torpedoes. The target lock was apparently fried, so she aimed by pure dead reckoning. When she was ready, she slammed her fist onto the icon marked “fire.”
Vale felt the Beiderbecke shudder slightly from the recoil. “Torpedo one, away,” she said. Without pausing to check the departing missile’s trajectory, she loaded the second, then repeated the firing procedure.
This time the torpedo’s gentle recoil was replaced by a violent, if momentary, shaking.
“Another disruptor hit,” Bolaji said, her tone steely and businesslike despite the dire circumstances. “Shields are down. Main power and secondaries are both out.”
Every internally illuminated cockpit instrument winked out for a split second, along with the overhead lights. Vale checked her hiccupping tactical console, which would have been as black as space had the internal batteries not just kicked in.
“Oh, shit.” The second torpedo hadn’t made it out of the tube, which was evidently no longer in operational condition.
And the torpedo, along with its armed and ready antimatter payload, was lodged in the damaged launch mechanism.
“Olivia, I’m taking over at the stick,” Vale told the pilot as she reconfigured her console for the task. “Help Deanna get everybody to the transporter. Sortollo, wrangle the emergency evac kits. Dakal, grab those data modules.
“We have to abandon ship, and fast.”
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH AUXILIARY VESSEL DEWCLAW
As far as Gog’resssh was concerned, the sudden and unexpected departure of one of the ecosculpting fleet’s best-armed vessels—on a heading that would take it far from the S’alath’s hiding place in the planet’s northern magnetic shadow—could have been a sign from divine S’Yahazah herself.
Gog’resssh allowed his second, the half blind Zegrroz’rh, to pilot the Dewclaw out of the S’alath’s ventral landing bay and into the far southeastward extremity of Hranrar’s intense magnetic field.
“Hold position here,” Gog’resssh said from his position in the cramped cockpit, crouched directly behind Zegrroz’rh as the second worked the pilot’s console with plodding deliberation. Five warriors fidgeted behind them, spoiling for action. “Any closer and we may become all too visible, even to distracted eyes.”
“Holding position, First Myrmidon,” the pilot said, angling the thrusters to null out the Dewclaw’s forward acceleration. “Our unwitting resupply ship awaits our pleasure.”
Determined to remain as serious in his focus as possible, Gog’resssh ignored his underling’s guttural chuckles. He turned and took several loping steps until he reached the console near the auxiliary craft’s small transporter stage. We have drawn close enough to our target to be in danger of discovery, he thought. But are we still too far away to achieve our objective?
Seeking a definitive answer to that question, he began synchronizing the transporter’s targeting scanners to the standard deflector-shield frequency of a Gorn military recon vessel. . . .
GORN HEGEMONY WARSHIP S’ALATH
Although more than a suncircuit’s worth of careful, clandestine planning was about to come to fruition—and though all the necessary components were in place to assure a successful outcome—an intense sensat
ion of foreboding assailed Z’shezhira’s innards.
As she sat watching her station on the command deck, she felt cold, unable to believe that the prospect of her longdreamt-of reunion with S’syrixx might finally have drawn near enough to be within claw’s reach.
But it was true. Mad Gog’resssh was now off the ship, for however briefly, along with his hideous second-in-command, Zegrroz’rh, and several others. Moreover, three of Gog’resssh’s strongest war-caster subordinates had accompanied him on his little “shopping expedition” among the ecosculpting fleet. Never before had First Myrmidon Gog’resssh permitted the ranks of those who held the figurative shackles of the S’alath’s surviving complement of tech-casters to grow so thin. Gog’resssh had trusted her to help maintain order during his absence, and that error was to be his downfall.
Assuming that I do not lose heart before our captors return, Z’shezhira thought, struggling to keep her escalating fear invisible to the lone war-caster who was present with her on the command deck. Did Sk’salissk, Gog’resssh’s helm officer, have any inkling of the turmoil she was barely managing to contain?
All I have to do is wait for the signal, she thought. The silent, mostly dimmed console before her would display a prearranged pictogram, sent surreptitiously by Vrezsarr, the engineer. Then I have to do what must be done.
The signal would come, and she would rise quietly and approach the helm officer, but she would take care not to do so stealthily. There was no point, after all, in alerting Sk’salissk of what was to come by acting as though she were doing something untoward and trying to conceal that fact.
She had seen the way Sk’salissk had been looking at her lately, despite the ingrained taboo against mating across caste boundaries. Fortunately, the helmrunner was a junior officer, and had interpreted her frequent proximity to Gog’resssh as an imperative to maintain an appropriate distance. But with the S’alath’s commander off the ship, she might catch Sk’salissk off guard by casually brushing against him as she passed his station. Thus distracted, the young war-caster wouldn’t see the end coming before it was too late. And since they were the only individuals present on the command deck at the moment, neither would anyone else.
Star Trek: Typhon Pact 02: Seize the Fire Page 23
