That, she had thought, was the cost of being QuchHa’ in today’s Empire—forced to exist on the margins, to settle for limited and low-quality resources. Even crews in the service of the few powerful QuchHa’ nobles, like her own patron General K’Vagh, needed to make do with the meager leavings cast aside by the HemQuch majority.
But now, as her ship convulsed and groaned around her, as plasma conduits burst and spewed a heady mix of fumes into the air, as her gunner lay dead atop the burning ruins of his console and Engineer Muqad struggled to reroute weapons control to Laneth’s command throne, she knew that the cost of being QuchHa’ was far dearer than she had realized. Her Bird-of-Prey and the small battle fleet it led were all that stood between the QuchHa’ colony on Mempa VII and total obliteration. And it was beginning to look as if it might be a good day after all—a good day to die.
To be sure, there were better ways to die than as a near-defenseless sitting target. But even that could be an honorable end if the cause was worthy. The people of Mempa VII had done nothing to warrant annihilation. Councillor B’orel had encouraged their persecution and harrassment by HemQuch from the neighboring Mempa VIII colony in order to provoke retaliation, then had claimed that the Mempa VII colonists had launched an insurrection—even that they had conspired with the native jeghpu’wI’ on Mempa II, using those frail bipeds’ skill in genetics to engineer a new version of the Qu’Vat virus and turn all Klingons into QuchHa’. A lie, of course; if the Mempans’ science had been capable of that, the QuchHa’ would have used it to cure their affliction rather than spread it further. But B’orel’s power on the Council was based on his exploitation of the Klingon majority’s hate and fear toward the victims of the Qu’Vat mutation, and he hoped that he could win the chancellorship by rallying the Empire behind a war of extermination against them. Starting with Mempa VII, so that the evidence of his lies would be turned to glass and ash along with every populated area on the planet.
Laneth cursed Arbiter Daqel for his slowness in picking the new chancellor. The weakling claimed it was to allow fair consideration of all candidates, but it had only created more instability within the Empire as factions like B’orel’s acted on their own to bolster their status. B’orel had even implicated General K’Vagh in the alleged insurrection, scuttling her patron’s bid for the chancellorship before he had even completed the declaration of his achievements in the ja’chuq—achievements that easily eclipsed B’orel’s. And civilians like the Mempa colonists were paying the price for B’orel’s political maneuvering.
It was the Klingon way not to fear death, but a pointless death raining down from above, based on a lie and delivered against those with no opportunity to defend themselves, was without honor for either side of the battle. By sparing the colonists to fight on, and more importantly by standing against the lying, dishonorable HemQuch who sought to annihilate them for selfish gain, Laneth and her crew would earn their own place in Sto-Vo-Kor.
At least, she hoped they would. She strove not to believe B’orel when he argued that the human taint within them would forever bar them from the fields of the honored dead. Surely his own actions proved he had little understanding of honor. But at least he was still a true Klingon.
No—she quashed the doubt within herself. If nothing else, Laneth felt an obligation toward the QuchHa’ people. She had been one of the original subjects of Doctor Antaak’s Augment experiment at the Qu’Vat colony, under K’Vagh’s supervision. The idea of injecting herself with human DNA to become stronger had seemed ludicrous to her, even knowing that it was genetically augmented; but she had obeyed the general’s orders and undergone the treatment. At first, the increase in strength, aggression, and sensory acuity had been heady, but the loss of her beautiful ridges and fangs had been a high price to pay. She had soon learned that there were deeper changes as well, for when she and the other four survivors of the experiment had attacked the Starfleet vessel Enterprise to prevent its interference, Laneth had felt fear for the first time in her adult life. She had been sickened by the human taint within her—at first figuratively, then literally as the mutagenic virus had become deadly and nearly killed her and her brother Augments. When Antaak and his Denobulan consultant had finally devised a cure, by cruel fate it had stripped the five of them of their superior abilities, while leaving them and countless others with the taint of humanity upon their faces—and, she had believed, in their hearts.
In those first bleak months following the Augment crisis, Laneth would have agreed with the likes of B’orel that she and all the other victims of the mutation should be put out of their misery. She would have taken her own life if General K’Vagh had not forbidden it. Though K’Vagh had been made QuchHa’ himself, a sacrifice he had made to save Laneth and millions more from the dishonor of death by disease, he had refused to compromise his own honor, becoming a relentless advocate for the QuchHa’ under his command and all others like them on Qu’Vat, Mempa VII, and every other world ravaged by the virus. His own son Marab, whom Laneth had once scorned as weak for allowing himself to be beaten by Enterprise’s human crew, had died honorably in a battle against HemQuch bigots, proving that his heart was Klingon after all.
Marab’s sacrifice had convinced Laneth that the weakness she had felt within her heart had been merely the result of her own fear that the human element within her would make her weak. K’Vagh had reminded her of the Sixth Precept of the qeS’a’ and the words of Kahless that went with it: “All Klingons have weaknesses. Warriors know to hunt their weaknesses and cut them out.” B’orel now twisted that very precept as his excuse to slaughter the QuchHa’, but Marab had shown Laneth what it truly meant: that it was the effort to destroy the weakness within her own heart that made her Klingon. Battle against others was merely a crucible to burn away the weaknesses within oneself.
Laneth took comfort in that thought as enemy fire continued to tear into her Bird-of-Prey, hoping that, by defending this colony, her fleet could prevent B’orel from gaining a victory that would propel him closer to the chancellorship.
At first, that had seemed an attainable goal. B’orel’s commanders were dull-witted sorts employing typical, straightforward orbital bombardment tactics, parking themselves over the colony towns in forced synchronous orbits and sending down torrents of disruptor fire. This had made it easy enough to counter them, whether by striking at the sitting targets or moving beneath them to block their fire. Laneth’s fleet had managed to take out half the HemQuch ships while losing only one of their own, and that one merely a five-person Tajtiq-class fighter of the type Laneth had commanded in that long-ago attack on Enterprise, back when all this had started.
Her hopes had been dashed when enemy reinforcements had arrived, thanks to B’orel’s alliance with Ja’rod, son of Duras. Although his father had been disgraced and defeated by Archer of the selfsame Enterprise, Ja’rod had spent the subsequent years seeking to rebuild his fallen House’s reputation through victory in whatever battle presented itself. He had managed to accrue enough wealth, lands, and glory through his conquests to make it likely that he could win a seat on the High Council, particularly if he had the patronage of the next chancellor. Ja’rod had come personally to join the attack on Mempa VII, and Laneth had found that, however much she might scorn his opportunism and HemQuch sense of entitlement, his battlefield victories were well-earned. His ships employed a more imaginative bombardment strategy, taking advantage of orbital dynamics to send torpedoes on spiral paths around the planet to strike from multiple directions, running the defenders ragged in their attempts to intercept the fire. Once B’orel’s remaining ships had followed this lead, Laneth had seen no choice but to let the Mempan colonists endure some hits while her ships targeted the enemy fleet directly. Her brave QuchHa’ had inflicted serious losses on the foe, yet at the cost of equal losses on their own side—and the enemy had more and larger ships to spare. A battle of attrition would inevitably be resolved in the foe’s favor
.
Laneth had lost most of her fleet now, and Krim’s own weapons were nearly silent, forcing her to block the enemy’s fire with her ship’s shields for as long as they lasted. It was little more than a token gesture . . . but a Klingon never retreated. The only ground she would let herself or her men fall back to was the endless battlefield of Sto-Vo-Kor.
She tried to take comfort in the thought that she had earned an honorable death, that she would soon be reunited with Marab and her father and brothers. But a trace of doubt lingered. She could not be sure what awaited her upon her death. All she could be sure of was that she was losing. She had failed in her mission to protect the colony. She may have failed to prevent B’orel’s chancellorship and the extermination of her people. What comfort was honor in the face of that? What she needed was victory, and her last chance at that had been taken from her.
Along with a decent cup of qa’vIn.
She was just about to cut loose with a string of curses against the inevitable when a new tone sounded from the barely functioning tactical station. “Commander!” cried its operator Kholar, one of the few surviving personnel on the bridge. “A wave of new ships is incoming!”
“Theirs or ours?” Laneth demanded.
“I do not know, Commander! I do not recognize the configuration. They are small, but these energy readings . . . Odd . . . I read no life aboard!”
She stared. “They must be shielded.”
“Not that I can detect. Commander, now they decelerate. The sheer force of it! It would crush a crew, even with our best dampers.”
“Never mind that! What is their course?”
“They are closing . . .” Kholar gasped and straightened. “On the enemy fleet, Commander! They are opening fire!”
The main screen was cracked in two, so Laneth had to watch the tactical display over Kholar’s shoulder as the strange, boxy gray ships unleashed powerful energies against the fleets of B’orel and Ja’rod, battering down their shields. Three HemQuch ships were blown from orbit before they could redirect their batteries from the planet to the new attackers. That put paid to the last of B’orel’s forces, but Ja’rod’s ships managed to return fire effectively, tearing large holes in the newcomer ships. But to Laneth’s astonishment, the new ships seemed to repair themselves and continue the attack. More and more of Ja’rod’s vessels were rendered unto dust, and Laneth found herself bitter that she could only watch this glorious battle—and hopeful that the newcomers were truly on her side, rather than some new invaders who would turn their attention against her next.
The battle was resolved when Ja’rod’s flagship turned tail and ran, vanishing into warp with one other survivor and lowering Laneth’s opinion of the man enormously. So much for Klingons never retreating. Still, he had survived to fight more battles, which made him better off than Laneth had been a moment ago. After all, her fleet was holding its ground only because they had no means to do otherwise.
“Commander,” Kholar said, “they are hailing.”
She let out a breath. Hailing was not shooting. “Respond.”
A QuchHa’ visage appeared on the screen, but it was not one she knew. He had the long hair that Defense Force regulations no longer permitted QuchHa’ males to wear, but it was scruffy and unkempt, as was the leather vest he wore instead of a military uniform. Behind him was a bridge that seemed to be that of an old corvette, probably decommissioned decades ago. A privateer? she wondered.
“I am Captain Lokog,” the Klingon said, offering no patronymic. “I control the fleet that has come to your rescue. And in timely fashion, it seems.”
She looked down her nose at him. “An earlier arrival would have been preferable, Captain. I am Commander Laneth, daughter of Garjud, in service to General K’Vagh.”
“Then I would like to speak with your general and offer him my services. I control many of these ships.” Lokog leaned forward and smiled. “And with them, we QuchHa’ can conquer the Empire!”
Laneth smiled back. Perhaps fate had sided with her after all.
August 27, 2165
U.S.S. Endeavour
T’Pol had been staring into her meditation flame for some moments before she realized that Hoshi Sato was giving her a puzzled look from its other side. The captain had invited her friend to sit with her so that they could discuss a matter of some delicacy, but she had fallen into silence thereafter.
“Forgive my unaccustomed hesitation, Hoshi,” she said. “I have been uncertain how to broach this topic.”
Sato looked uneasy, but replied, “Take your time.”
“I have waited more than long enough. There is a secret that I and others have been keeping for a considerable amount of time—a classified matter that circumstances now require me to reveal. It is also . . . a personal matter. The reason I have waited this long to broach the subject was that it required consultation with a certain individual who . . . cannot be communicated with openly.”
T’Pol suppressed a surge of frustration as she gazed at the meditation flame. For years, she had been able to commune telepathically with Trip during meditation, due to the unusually strong mental bond they had somehow forged as a consequence of their intimate relations during Enterprise’s mission to the Delphic Expanse. This ability to communicate across interstellar distances had saved both their lives on more than one occasion, and had facilitated their pursuit of a relationship despite their need to avoid open interaction. Trip had often said that his awareness of her in his mind was the primary thing that kept him emotionally stable in the course of his work for the secretive group that he called Section 31.
But three months ago, something had changed. V’Las had captured her and Archer and attempted to employ forced mind-melds to program them into doing his bidding. T’Pol had endured a similar mental assault years before, and the prospect of being subjected to another had been profoundly disturbing—terrifying, to be quite frank. She had reached out to Trip’s mind, seeking comfort . . . and had been unable to make contact. This had not been unprecedented, given the intermittent nature of their connection; and she had been rescued soon thereafter, so she had given the matter no further thought. Yet in the weeks that followed, the bond had not resumed. She knew from Pioneer’s reports that Trip was alive and well, and the coded communications they had exchanged when the opportunity arose had given no hint of any problem. She had been reluctant to broach the issue overtly through such a detached method of correspondence, or to burden Trip with her concerns while he faced the crisis posed by the Ware. She had considered the possibility that Pioneer’s distance might be too great to allow their connection to form. Theory suggested that telepathy was based in quantum entanglement and thus independent of distance, but in practice, it seemed to become increasingly difficult as distance increased—at least in Vulcans, who were primarily touch telepaths.
Yet Endeavour had been drawing closer to Pioneer for two weeks now, ferrying one of the Federation’s top diplomats, Ambassador Boda Jahlet of Rigel, to negotiate with the Partnership of Civilizations on behalf of Vol’Rala’s captain and crew. Thanks to Chief Engineer Romaine’s creative efforts to boost Endeavour’s speed and Ensign Ortega’s deft selection of the most expedient route, the starship was now more than halfway to the rendezvous point, within the range of distances that had allowed T’Pol to communicate with Tucker in the past. And still there was nothing. The loss of contact was becoming a source of concern for her. Could something Trip had experienced in Ware space have closed his mind to her—or made him turn away by choice?
At the moment, there was nothing she could do to address that question. She turned her thoughts back to the here and now. “I also hesitated for another reason. This revelation could be upsetting. I had hoped to think of a way to soften its impact for you.”
Sato laughed nervously. “Whatever it is, you’re just making it feel worse at this point. You should probably just tell me.”
<
br /> “Very well.” She took a deep breath. “Hoshi . . . Trip Tucker is alive. We falsified his death a decade ago so that he could pursue a deep-cover mission in Romulan space. He is currently aboard Pioneer as the civilian engineering consultant Philip Collier.”
The human’s reaction was unexpected—a deep sigh of relief. “I knew it! Oh, and here I was worrying what terrible thing you were going to tell me.”
T’Pol frowned. “You were aware that Mister Tucker was alive?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly know . . . not in the sense of having proof, or anyone telling me. But I figured it out long ago.”
The captain studied Sato, struck by all the ways this woman continued to surprise and impress her. “When did you realize the truth?”
“I guess it was at the Battle of Cheron. Remember how I recognized the coded transmissions from that agent calling himself Lazarus? Then I saw how—forgive me—how agitated you were about rescuing Lazarus from his escape pod.”
“I need not forgive the truth,” T’Pol admitted. “It is an accurate assessment.”
“And Admiral—well, Commodore Archer seemed pretty intense about it too. So I realized Lazarus had to be someone important to both of you. You and he didn’t really have a social circle in common outside the Enterprise crew.” She shrugged. “And the name ‘Lazarus’—to someone like me, who thinks about words and their origins all the time, it indicated someone who’d come back from the dead. And that brought some of the oddities about Commander Tucker’s ‘death’ into focus for me. Not right away, but when I thought about it afterward, I saw how it all fell into place.”
Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code Page 16
