Those antennae curled downward in abashment. “Apologies, Captain.”
“And if you can’t handle being part of Starfleet, perhaps you should consider a career change.”
“With respect, Captain, it’s not that. I just . . .”
“Yes?”
“Why ‘Starfleet’? Why did they have to use the Earth name when they combined the fleets? Why not . . . ‘the Federation Guard’?”
“Or ‘the High Command’?” Kanshent riposted, chastening him. “It’s a fleet of starships, Veni. Can you think of a more generic name than ‘Starfleet’?”
“Generic or not, it is identified with the humans.”
“And that is its virtue,” she told him. “It was Earth’s Starfleet that won the trust and respect of the unaligned worlds. It was Earth’s Starfleet that proved its strength to them by winning the Romulan War.”
The tactical officer scoffed. “Only because we saved their hides at Cheron.”
“We and others, yes. But it was their reputation that won our support. And their reputation, and Archer’s, that leads others to seek our help now. Why not take advantage of that? It’s only a name.”
“It just feels sometimes like the humans are running everything.”
“Would you rather the Vulcans still were?” They shared a grimace at the thought. “The humans are useful as a buffer between the rest of us, and as a genial face to put forward to our neighbors. And their ambition is taking them far. I’m willing to ride in their wake as long as it benefits Andoria.”
He gave her a sidelong look. “And if it stops benefitting us? Do we go live on Alrond?”
Kanshent chuckled. “We will do what benefits our people, always. But that is a decision for another day. Today, we have an ambush to plan.”
“Yes, Captain.”
And a dinner menu, she thought as she returned to her command chair and began a computer search for Malurian dietary requirements.
March 27 to 28, 2163
Kanshent found Garos to be a courteous and entertaining dinner guest—even bringing a gift, a rather entertaining bottle of Malurian mead. He also proved to be, unsurprisingly, quite devious when it came to concocting ambushes. The two commanders worked out their plan with much laughter over dinner, then put it into action with all seriousness the next morning.
The site Garos chose for the ambush was a rogue ice giant less than a light-year from the site of the Mute attack, an almost featureless gray orb floating in perpetual shadow, accompanied only by the few moons that had survived its ejection from its birth system or been captured in the intervening eons. Thejal took up a tight orbit around the innermost and rockiest of those moons, which possessed sufficient mineral resources to make it convincing that they were mining it for repair materials. They took enough of their systems offline or into low-power mode that they would appear convincingly defenseless—enough to give Kanshent cause for concern, even with the assurances of ch’Refel and the chief engineer that the weapons and shields could be brought up to full power on short notice. “Do not worry, Captain,” Garos told her from aboard Rivgor as they made their final preparations. “We will be concealed nearby at full power, able to occupy the Mutes until you are at full strength.”
“If all goes perfectly,” Kanshent replied. “I don’t like to rely on luck.”
Garos gave a confident smile. “I prefer to make events play out in my favor.”
Thejal sat in orbit, playing lame, for over a day before sensors detected a warp egress nearby. The Mute ship closed quickly on their position, and for the first time it broadcast a hail. Kanshent was unsurprised to see her own image appear on the screen, hear her own challenge to the Mutes edited to serve their script. “You—are—disable—d. Require you to submit your vessel.” The message repeated on a loop.
Kanshent’s antennae twitched in annoyance that she’d given them such perfect material. “Shut that off.”
“Do you want to issue a challenge, Captain?” zh’Vansh asked.
“Why? To get it hurled back in my face? No.”
The vessel closed slowly, relentlessly, but did not open fire. Kanshent stepped over to ch’Refel’s station. “Fire a weak burst from the ‘working’ cannon. Try to miss slightly.”
“I never learned how to miss, ma’am.”
She chuckled. “Expand your horizons. Or at least your target lock.”
“Yes, Captain.” He fired. “Imagine that. I missed slightly.”
“Really.”
“And the Mutes still approach. No change. No return fire.” Ch’Refel paused. “They’re coming to take possession,” he said. “They intend to board, probably kill the crew, then take their prize home.”
“Are we so sure?” Kanshent asked the young tactical officer, adopting the tone of the Guard instructor she had once been. “Consider: If they capture ships as prizes . . . why do they never use them?” She nodded at the screen. “All we see are those ships. Fire again.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He missed a little less this time, but still did no damage. “But . . . there’s never any sign of debris or bodies. If they don’t use the ships, what purpose do they put them to?”
“Perhaps they dissect the captives and their ships to study potential enemies. Learn their technology, their weaknesses. Decrypt their databases. By this point they could have accumulated data on half a dozen neighboring races or more.”
“Readying for a mass invasion?”
“Perhaps.” She smirked. “And maybe they’re saving some of the captured ships for then. Maybe to use as false-flag decoys. And so we come back around to where we began with the Romulans.”
Ch’Refel checked his console. “Five thousand zhihal.”
“That’s close enough,” Kanshent said. “Power up shields and weapons. Let’s hit them for real. Zh’Vansh, invite Rivgor to the party.”
The Mute ship slowed its approach as it detected Thejal ’s power surge, but that was its only response. The first barrage weakened its shields, but still the Mutes did not return fire. “What are they waiting for?” ch’Refel asked.
The black vessel hung above the moon’s surface for a few moments and then began to thrust into a higher orbit. “They’re retreating.”
But just then, a torpedo sailed upward from the ice giant and struck the vessel’s flank. The Malurian ship rose from the clouds where it had been hiding, looking like an aquatic predator breaching the surface of a dark ocean, and continued to bombard the enemy. “Flank them,” Kanshent ordered, and Thejal came around to block their path, firing. Two ships were normally not enough to hem in another, but maneuvering around a giant planet with a tight moon system was more constraining than maneuvering in open space, as Garos had wisely realized. They had the Mutes cornered.
And like any cornered prey, the Mutes struck back. Spreading arcs of green energy lashed against Thejal’s shields. “The forward emitters are damaged again!” ch’Refel reported.
“Compensate.”
The helm officer tried to turn the ship away, but those spreading bolts were tricky, and some of their energy splashed around the edge of the lateral shield and dug into the exposed hull. “Return fire! Take out their weapons!” Kanshent called. What is Garos waiting for?
Their return fire struck true; ch’Refel lived up to his assertions. Rivgor fired at the same time, striking the same flank. “Their shields are failing!” ch’Refel called.
“Thejal to Rivgor. Target their engines. Fire to disable.”
Both ships struck at the glowing modules on the ship’s aft, whose green light flickered and faded. “Cease fire.”
But Rivgor kept on firing. “Its weapons are at full strength!” ch’Refel exclaimed—just before the Mute ship erupted in a blinding flash, leaving only an expanding cloud of debris.
“Get me Garos!” Kanshent demanded. A moment later, the Malurian’s gray face appeared on the screen. “What happened? We needed prisoners to interrogate!”
“Forgive my overzealous weapons officer
, Captain. We were only concerned for your safety.”
“I appreciate that, but as you see, we can handle ourselves.”
“But not without damage. You seem rather vulnerable at the moment.”
“Perhaps if your weapons officer had shown more zeal a few moments earlier, we would not be so vulnerable.”
“Hm,” Garos replied. “Well, perhaps we should correct that imbalance.”
His face vanished from the screen, replaced by an image of the massive Malurian warship bringing its weapon ports to bear on Thejal. “Garos, what are you doing?” Kanshent cried.
But the only response was fire.
Rivgor
“The Andorian warship was completely destroyed,” Dular Garos reported to his partners over the private viewscreen in his quarters. “My weapons officer was successfully able to replicate the energy signature and firing pattern of the Mute ships.”
“Up to your old tricks again, I see,” his benefactor purred, a finger twirling her long black hair. “Using impersonation to turn your enemies against each other. I have tried to teach you more original forms of deception, you know.”
“And your methods have been effective up to a point. But your . . . operatives have not been able to insinuate themselves into every Federation official’s bedchamber. There is still considerable pressure for a peaceful solution from some quarters—especially Archer and his pet Vulcan. The loss of a Starfleet ship of the line at Mute hands should inflame passions nicely.”
“Do not presume to lecture us about passion, Garos!” Navaar leaned forward as if to offer him a better view of her assets, letting just enough anger into her expression and voice to enhance rather than undermine the sensual way she presented herself. “We are the masters of that particular weapon.” Behind Navaar, her junior sisters, D’Nesh and Maras, stepped closer toward the pickup to reinforce their visual impact, emphasizing the abundant quantities of green skin that they habitually left exposed.
“Then you might try to remember,” Garos told the Orion merchant princess in a bored voice, “that my own passions are unmoved by your rather crass attempts at seduction, Navaar.” Not only was he biochemically bonded to his mate back home, just as monogamously devoted to her as were her other seven husbands, but Malurian males had no sexual interest in females who were less than half again their height and three times their weight. “That’s why you chose me, remember? You need an ally who can think for himself, not a pheromone-addled slave.”
“Don’t overestimate your importance,” D’Nesh told him. The middle sister by age, only slightly younger than Navaar, the curly-haired D’Nesh nonetheless fancied herself the “cutest” of the trio and generally acted accordingly. But beneath that bright, innocent smile, she was perhaps the most vicious-minded of the three. “Even you don’t know how many assets we have in play. You’re a small piece in a much bigger game.”
“Now, now, sister,” Navaar chided. “Garos and the Raldul alignment are an invaluable part of our stratagem. Their mastery of disguise has let us penetrate deeper into Vulcan, Axanar, and other places where our sisters cannot easily spread their influence.”
Ah, Axanar. Garos was particularly proud of that one. Designing facial prosthetics that actually filtered methane and supplied oxygen to the wearer had been a challenge even for Raldul’s master maskwrights. But it had paid off; his agents had successfully bribed or blackmailed enough Axanar defense officials to persuade them to cooperate with the other unaligned worlds in seeking Starfleet aid. At the same time, dozens of Orion slave women in service to Navaar and the Syndicate had employed their own subtler forms of persuasion—including pheromones rather milder than the elites’ but still stronger than their sellers and pimps admitted—on the Rigelians, Ithenites, and Tesnians, and, subsequently, on a few of the Federation delegates to the Deneva Conference.
“And now he’s given us an incident that we can use to inflame more rage and conflict,” Navaar went on. “We should be grateful to him for that.”
“True,” D’Nesh conceded. “The chaos should be quite entertaining.” Maras just smiled and stroked her sides. The youngest and least intelligent of the three sisters by a significant margin, Maras spoke little, preferring to communicate with her body, which she tended to keep even more exposed than her sisters did. But then, apparently, her sisters were starting to approach the age when their beauty would begin to decline (not that Garos could tell the difference), which was perhaps why Navaar and D’Nesh were so determined to secure their power and legacy within the Syndicate while they still could. They were fortunate that Maras lacked their cunning and ambition, or she might have overthrown them by now. Although perhaps Garos was being too cynical. Orion sisters of the elite lineages were close to one another by necessity. Their intense pheromones tended to repel other females, excepting close relations. Their sisters or first cousins were often the only true allies they could have.
“I appreciate your confidence,” Garos told the Orions. “But I confess, I have my reservations about pushing Starfleet too far. A handy enemy to distract them from policing their borders is certainly of value; business has suffered badly since this interstellar peace took hold. But it’s a delicate balance to strike. Push the Federation too far in a warlike direction and it could backfire. If they truly were to embrace the idea that they had a responsibility to police the galaxy . . . they could become an empire as dangerous as the Romulans or the Klingons. And then they wouldn’t hesitate to crack down on both of our people’s business endeavors far harder than they already have.”
Navaar gave him a sultry smile. “Trust us, Garos. I assure you, we’ve considered all the angles.”
“I hope so, Navaar. I joined you because you promised me we could destroy the Federation—not make it stronger.”
“Oh, but Garos. Why do you think we prefer to rule from the bedroom instead of the throne?” She put her arms around her sisters’ shoulders, and they posed for him as a group. It was so reflexive to them that they didn’t even care whether they had a receptive audience. “Because we know that, sometimes, one of the best ways to destroy someone is to give him the power he wants.”
She slipped free and stepped closer to the camera, twirling a strand of her hair. “Why do you think we’ve had your operatives infiltrate Vulcan to stir up anti-war protests? Merely as another distraction? Think about it: Do you imagine the Vulcans would tolerate being part of such an aggressive Federation as you describe?”
He considered it. “Given what cowards they’ve become since the Syrannites took over, no, I suppose not.”
“And how long would the Tellarites stay comfortable as part of the Federation,” D’Nesh added, “if the Vulcans weren’t there to balance out the Andorians? Especially with our friends on Alrond making the Andorians look hungry for conquest.”
“I can see that. But it would still leave a powerful human-Andorian union, with plenty of warships and plenty of will to use them.”
“But with less support and less trust from those around them,” Navaar said. “We can hate their kindly benevolence all we want, but the fact is that it’s one of the most effective scams ever invented—even when they actually believe it. Archer brought the Federation together by reaching out and winning his neighbors’ trust. He and his allies have been working to spread that trust further, to gain more allies who could come to the Federation’s aid in its times of need—and maybe even join them, make it bigger and harder for entrepreneurs like ourselves to stand up against.”
Maras laughed. “Bigger and harder.”
Navaar threw her an affectionate glare. “Without that trust, the might of what remained of the Federation would provoke fear. And we could play on that fear, as you tried to do with the Tandarans, Garos.” She smiled. “Though I think we could select a more effective mark. We do a lively business in slave girls with the Klingon Empire.”
“I understand now,” Garos said. “Instead of trying to weaken them, you harden them until they become brittle.”
<
br /> Navaar laughed. “Yes! And then . . . we apply the necessary force to shatter them.”
March 29, 2163
U.S.S. Endeavour
Thanien had refused to believe that Kanshent and Thejal were gone. The whole time that Endeavour had spent en route to the rogue giant, he had clung to the hope that Garos’s transmission had been a deception or a mistake. When Cutler and Kimura confirmed that the cloud of debris orbiting the inner moon did indeed include Andorian hull alloys and organic remains, enough to account for a whole Sevaijen-class cruiser, his hope vanished in a torrent of despair and rage. He struggled to hold in his emotions, remembering that he was on a human ship . . . a Federation ship . . . and such displays were inappropriate here.
It was not so much that his cousin and her beloved crew had died. That was a risk every Guard member lived with every day, and Thanien had lost his share of colleagues and friends over the years . . . often to the Vulcans. But he had seen her so recently, and she had been so vital, so challenging, so proud of her family back home. And she had been taken by a nameless, voiceless foe, one he could not even face and demand answers from.
“I’m truly sorry that we were unable to bring them down faster,” Garos told T’Pol and Thanien over the bridge viewscreen, speaking from his own bridge aboard Rivgor. “But Captain Shelav and her crew battled fearlessly to the end, weakening the Mutes enough that we were able to deliver the final blow before we too were destroyed. They have our eternal gratitude for that.”
“No doubt,” T’Pol replied. “It is regrettable that you were unable to capture any of their crew alive, or retrieve any viable data stores from the remains.”
“Yes,” Thanien said through clenched teeth. “It is more urgent than ever now that we track them down to where they live.”
“Perhaps next time,” Garos said.
“Thank you for your assistance, Mister Garos,” the captain said. “Endeavour out.” She turned to face her first officer. “Mister Thanien . . .”
“Captain?” Lieutenant Cutler interposed. “Could you take a look at these sensor readings? Something’s not quite adding up.”
Star Trek: Enterprise - 015 - Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures Page 14
