Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise)
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THE ROMULAN WAR
BENEATH THE RAPTOR’S WING
OTHER STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE BOOKS
Last Full Measure
by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels
The Good That Men Do
by Andy Mangels & Michael A. Martin
Kobayashi Maru
by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels
—STAR TREK—
ENTERPRISE®
THE ROMULAN WAR
BENEATH THE RAPTOR’S WING
MICHAEL A. MARTIN
Based upon Star Trek®
created by Gene Roddenberry
and Star Trek: Enterprise
created by Rick Berman & Brannon Braga
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ISBN 978-1-4391-0798-0
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For Majel Barrett Roddenberry (1932–2008), a grand lady who left us far too soon.
For Tim Dechristopher, an “auction hero” whose singular act of courage confounded the (thankfully defunct) Bush Administration’s unconscionable eleventh-hour attempt to despoil vast tracts of Utah public land.
And for Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, a warrior of conscience who drew from the terrors of war the determination and grace to work for the ideals of peace.
Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
Turning the widows’ tears, the orphans’ cries,
The dead men’s blood, the pining maidens’ groans,
For husbands, fathers, and betrothèd lovers,
That shall be swallowed in this controversy.
—Henry V
William Shakespeare
The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
The bulk of this story is set in the second half of the year 2155— and into the first half of 2156 (ACE). The destruction of the civilian freighter the Kobayashi Maru (Star Trek: Enterprise—Kobayashi Maru) set off a series of events that will forever shape the history of Starfleet, United Earth and her allies (Star Trek: Enterprise).
TOMORROW
2156
PROLOGUE
Thursday, July 22, 2156
Late in the month of Soo’jen, the Year of Kahless 782
Qam-Chee, the First City, Qo’noS
FLANKED BY A PAIR of scowling guards, Jonathan Archer led the way into the center of the dimly illuminated, vaulted chamber. An oddly heterogenous mélange of smells—the ghosts of old sweat mingled with leather, incense, and the coppery tinge of blood, along with vague notes of freshly turned earth and lilac—assaulted his nostrils as he came to a square-shouldered stop before the ranks of empty High Council benches that bracketed the Chancellor’s equally empty seat.
He fought down a surge of worry that the urgent errand on which Starfleet, UESPA, and the United Earth government had dispatched him as a special envoy might already have ended in failure. Did we get here late? Or early? He prayed silently for the latter as he took in another lungful of the slightly moist, too-warm alien air.
Making a slow half turn to his right, he regarded the stoic woman who stood at his side, dressed, as he was, in a standard blue Starfleet duty jumpsuit. Her characteristically dignified bearing betrayed no trace of worry or any other emotion—including the olfactory distress Archer knew she must have been experiencing. It had taken at least two years of living aboard Enterprise before Commander T’Pol’s sensitive Vulcan nose had become accustomed to some of the much milder odors to which she’d had to adapt in order to live aboard Enterprise.
He’d sometimes ribbed her good-naturedly when her nose would wrinkle in the presence of his beagle. Today, however, he felt no such urge. I hoped to hell the last time I had to come here really was the last time I’d have to come here. The captain paused to take a mental count of each of his previous visits to this ancient, forbidding hall, and came to a stop at three. Let’s hope that the fourth time’s the charm, he thought, drawing in a long, deep breath through his mouth.
But the way the chamber smelled was far less germane to his aversion to this place than were the bruises and scars he’d acquired here, courtesy of an extremely disgruntled Klingon general. Besides, after the ugly turns Earth’s efforts to stop the advancing Romulan fleet had taken lately, Archer would embrace any potential allies, even if they drank methane and farted sulfur.
A reassuring staccato tattoo of hard footfalls began echoing from the far end of the room, approaching from beyond the High Council benches and the Chancellor’s thronelike central chair. Within moments, a dozen or so members of the High Council had taken their places on the benches from which they deliberated the Klingon Empire’s gravest matters of politics and war. The room filled with the low murmur of conversation between the various representatives of the Klingon Empire’s great Houses.
Chancellor M’Rek, his beard seeming longer and grayer than Archer remembered, took his seat a moment later, the dour-visaged Fleet Admiral Krell standing at his side. Archer noticed immediately how closely the scowl Krell favored him with resembled the expressions he’d already seen on the faces of his and T’Pol’s escorts. Like the dour Klingon guards, Krell’s forehead was as smooth as Archer’s, completely bereft of the intricate topography of cranial ridges that M’Rek and all the members of the Council displayed so proudly.
Just as clearly, Krell had neither forgotten nor forgiven the role that Archer and his chief medical officer had played in that unhappy circumstance, irrespective of the incalculable number of Klingon lives those actions might have saved across the Empire.
Krell’s probably also still cranky about having to let Phlox stitch his arm back on after that last little tiff he and I had, Archer thought as a transitory phantom twinge shot across a long-healed broken rib in accompaniment to
the memory. Let’s hope this meeting stays civil.
The Chancellor, wearing a warrior’s full armor and a ceremonial cloak of office, raised one mailed fist above his head. The members of the Council responded immediately by falling silent.
M’Rek focused his attention on Archer, his craggy brow ridges and snow-white eybrows casting shadows that turned his eyes into twin cavern fires. “Speak your business, Captain,” he said, his voice booming and reverberating through the entire hall.
“First, thank you for allowing us to speak with you today, Chancellor,” Archer said, doing his best to remember everything he’d been told about observing the necessary diplomatic niceties.
M’Rek acknowledged Archer’s expression of gratitude, while seeming simultaneously to dismiss it, with a single curt nod. “I am a very busy man, Archer. Speak.”
But Krell interjected before Archer could open his mouth. “This Earther and his logic-chopping Vulcan lap targ have come before you today for only one reason, Chancellor. The RomuluSngan have sharpened their ghojmeH and placed its edge against his planet’s throat. He comes to us because he is desperate.”
”Mevyap!” M’Rek barked, suppressing both Krell and the rising gabble of voices from the Council benches. As the noise swiftly faded back into silence, his steely gaze never wavered from Archer’s.
After pausing for the space of a handful of heartbeats to gather his thoughts, Archer said, “I don’t deny that the war hasn’t been going well for us lately, Chancellor.”
“That is good,” M’Rek said, nodding again as he idly stroked his beard. “A lie would have been a poor way to begin this dialogue, especially given your history with us.
“We have been observing your world’s accelerated ship-building efforts from Qo’noS for some time now. Just as we have observed the RomuluSngan fleet venturing ever deeper into your territory from their fortress in the Calder system, and their other forward operating bases. They have been making so much scrap of many of your new vessels, Captain—di’DeluS-class, I believe you call them.”
”Daedalus,” Archer said quietly. The name conjured images of fire and hubris, of watching, both hapless and helpless, while a dream ignites, crashes, and burns to ashes.
“And I have observed that your vaunted NX-class starships have fared only slightly better, Captain,” Krell said, a sneer on his lips.
Archer fought to keep his demeanor neutral, even though Krell’s words had jabbed a wound that had remained open for the past several weeks—ever since Columbia NX-02 had vanished from the Onias sector without a trace, along with all hands, including his ex-lover, Captain Erika Hernandez.
He only just resisted an urge to ask Krell how his surgically reattached arm was feeling.
“I find it curious, Captain,” M’Rek said, “that your Starfleet has chosen to build so few new vessels like your Enterprise. They are obviously of a newer, better design than your so-called Daedalus ships, or even those of your Intrepid-class. Not to mention faster and far more extensively armed than anything else your Starfleet is flying.”
They’re also a hell of a lot more expensive and labor-intensive to build than the oldDaedalus-class design, Archer thought. Although he would have jumped at a chance to swap Starfleet’s present complement of hastily built—and even more hastily retrofitted—Daedalus-class vessels for so many NX-class starships, he knew that the prospect was about as realistic as finding a lamp containing a genie authorized to grant him three wishes. Under the current dire circumstances, Earth simply couldn’t afford to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the adequate. Irrespective of all the reversals Starfleet’s Daedalus-heavy ship complement had experienced lately, Archer understood better than most how long it took, from keel-laying to champagne ceremony, to get a single new NX-class vessel out of spacedock and into service. Three or more new Daedalus ships could be launched in that same span of time.
“Starfleet has had to make certain... adjustments,” Archer said. “Based on the realities of the war.”
“A war that you are losing,” said Krell. “Thanks in large part to the scruples of your Vulcan ‘friends.’”
T’Pol chose that moment to speak up. “I have lived among humans for more than five years, Admiral. During that time I have learned from experience that it would be unwise to underestimate them. Particularly when they are as determined as they are at present.”
Judging from the involuntary movement of his left shoulder—very near the bat’leth incision that had briefly relieved him of his left arm— Archer could see that it had taken Krell considerably less time to learn the folly of underestimating even a single determined human.
But he could also see from Krell’s deepening scowl that the Klingon fleet admiral’s pride was healing far more slowly than had his physical wounds, if at all.
“T’Pol is right,” Archer said, taking care to address the more levelheaded M’Rek. “We’re not about to give up, no matter how grim things might look. But we’re not too proud to ask for help. And that’s why we’re here—to make a formal request that the Klingon Empire enter the war on Earth’s behalf.”
Krell answered with a short burst of derisive laughter even as the High Council members fell to murmuring urgently among themselves. “You and your Denobulan lackey leave countless numbers of us afflicted with this,” the admiral said, placing a gauntleted fist against his smooth cranium. “Then you steal privileged information from this very hall. And now you expect us to save you from the RomuluSngan?”
The Council members immediately initiated a chaotic chorus of shouts and catcalls that made the British House of Commons back on Earth sound like a sewing circle at a small-town public library. M’Rek again signaled for silence. It came, though less swiftly than before.
Archer knew that there was little point in trying to deny the essential truth—at least from Krell’s perspective—behind the admiral’s charges. These people value honesty, he thought, and decided that now was the time to lay all his cards on the table.
“That’s right, Admiral. Yes. In spite of everything, I’m asking you to help us defeat the Romulans. Please.”
Archer’s words hung like smoke in the otherwise silent room as the Council members awaited a response from the stone-faced Chancellor.
Krell sneered again. “So your Starfleet decided to use as its errand boy a captain so cowardly that he would turn tail and leave a defenseless ship’s crew to die, rather than place his own vessel at risk.”
I said the same thing to Admiral Gardner myself, Krell, Archer thought as the room erupted in renewed noise. Let’s hope he was right in shooting down my objections.
“That accusation is most unfair, Admiral Krell,” T’Pol said as order and decorum gradually returned to the room. “Saving that ship was simply not a realistic possibility.”
“No, T’Pol,” Archer said to her quietly. “It’s entirely fair. I just have to learn to live with it.” He felt more certain now than ever before that his failure to save the Kobayashi Maru would remain an albatross around his neck for the rest of his life.
Archer turned back toward M’Rek, facing him squarely as he tried in vain to read the Chancellor’s craggy, impassive face.
“I declare a recess,” M’Rek said, his eyes narrowing. “The Council will deliberate and consider your request. And though I must salute your courage in coming here despite all we know of your record, I must question the wisdom of your leaders in dispatching you to deliver it.
“Go now, Captain, and await our decision. But do not be hopeful.”
With that, the guards stepped forward. T’Pol fell into step beside Archer as he allowed the soldiers to lead them back toward the heavy wooden doors through which they had entered.
Back in the anteroom that fronted the Great Hall, Archer knew there would be little to do but wait. And hope, despite the chancellor’s doubtless well-meant warning.
Hope is pretty much all Earth has left at this point, he thought.
“Do you believe the Kli
ngons will decide to enter the conflict?” T’Pol said, standing with her arms crossed as Archer searched in vain for a place to sit in the wide, empty corridor.
He shrugged. At length, he said, “Regardless of what Shran or Krell might tell you, I’m no warrior. When I took command of Enterprise, I was an explorer. What the hell happened to those days anyway?”
T’Pol’s protracted silence only made him wonder if he had wasted the last few years of his life pursuing the vain hope of bringing peace and security to this mostly lawless jungle of a galaxy.
TODAY
2155
ONE
Day Thirty-Seven, Romulan Month of K’ri’Brax
Tuesday, July 22, 2155