“No, Captain,” M’Rek said, standing. “That the RomuluSngan have made us pawns in their cowardly ambushes is bad enough, but for you to make the Klingon Empire appear so…vulnerable in the eyes of your world’s leaders, and those of the Coalition of Planets…The shame and dishonor is simply more than can be borne.”
Krell spoke up, the rising timbre of his voice showing very clearly that he was still in great pain from his exertions. “There are security considerations as well, Captain Archer. These recordings show the bridge and instrumentation of a Klingon battle cruiser with great clarity and in considerable detail. I doubt that Starfleet or any of its allies would hesitate for an instant to begin reverse engineering our command-and-control architecture and other related technologies based on what they find in these images.”
Archer rose from the bench where he’d been seated, noticing only then that Phlox had finally quit scanning and was putting his medical scanner away. “Chancellor M’Rek, for the leader of a warrior society, you seem to have some fairly ridiculous fears.”
M’Rek bristled, leaning forward to grasp the railing in front of his bench with both hands. “You dare?”
A still, small voice somewhere deep within Archer counseled caution, but at the moment he felt too angry to listen to it. “You’re damned right I dare,” he said, jabbing an accusing finger into the air. “You would allow your people to become embroiled in a dishonorable war against the Coalition of Planets instead of going after the real authors of the conflict? You’d let the Romulans get away with doing this to you, just to save yourself some embarrassment?”
“We act to spare the Klingon Empire from dishonor, Tera’ngan,” M’Rek said, his voice pitched in a dangerous tone that seemed to provoke his soldiers to hair-trigger readiness.
But Archer knew he couldn’t afford to back down now. “Even if that aversion to dishonor could mean the difference between a war with the Coalition and a war against our common enemy?”
M’Rek sneered. “Do not presume to lecture me on the subject of honor, Captain. If you fear war against us, then you must find your own way to convince your leaders that the Klingon Empire will not take the blame for the attack upon Draylax. Persuading them will be your responsibility.”
I’m getting awfully damned tired of playing errand boy for one side against the other, Archer thought, his fighting instincts rising even as his diplomatic side struggled to maintain control of a very bad situation.
But, unless he had badly misjudged that situation, he knew he would leave Qo’noS with far more information than the Klingons realized.
THIRTY-THREE
Tuesday, July 22, 2155
Enterprise NX-01
“YOU KNOW, JONATHAN, about a hundred or so years ago what you just did would have been called bootlegging,” Erika Hernandez said, a grim smile on her face.
Archer nodded toward the new viewscreen that sat on his desk; Burch had assigned a crew to install a replacement terminal after Archer’s “accident” with the previous computer prior to his trip to Qo’noS. The new screen, its image area split down the middle at the moment, displayed the faces of both Hernandez and Admiral Gardner. Archer had contacted them both only a few minutes earlier, eager to see their reactions to the images taken aboard the hijacked Klingon battle cruiser.
“I had no idea what Doctor Phlox was really up to at the time,” Archer said. “At least until his constant ‘medical scanning’ started becoming obnoxious.” He didn’t feel any pressing need to tell them about Phlox’s cover story about the disorder that had supposedly afflicted his third lung, or the doctor’s good-natured phallic-based putdown.
“Well, thank God that Denobulans seem to have the same capacity for sneakiness that we humans do,” Gardner said. “Though using a medical scanner to eavesdrop on so much audiovisual material is a new one even to me.”
“So do you agree with me that this information in Phlox’s ‘bootleg’ is vital?” Archer asked.
Gardner shook his head. “I agree that it could be vital, Captain Archer. If the Coalition Council believes it, it would certainly be one more nail in the coffin for the Romulans. But you have to realize that some will say that the Klingons faked the whole thing just to get themselves off the hook.”
“Begging the admiral’s pardon,” Hernandez said, a look of concern on her face, “but the idea that the Klingons would have gone as far as they have—destroying their own ships, killing their own people—for the sake of a propaganda video they had every reason to believe we would never see…that’s just paranoid talk.”
“I won’t take offense at your characterization, Captain Hernandez, because I know it wasn’t directed at me,” Gardner said. “But that still doesn’t mean that the Tellarites or any of the other races won’t be suspicious of the Klingons.”
Perhaps it was the wound in his side or the way his ribs still ached whenever he breathed, but Archer found he was having a hard time keeping his temper in check. “How much more evidence is the Coalition Council going to need, Admiral? Do they need an engraved invitation to war, delivered by a skipping Romulan schoolgirl, before they’ll believe the truth?”
Gardner scowled slightly. “While Starfleet’s tech people get busy building countermeasures to this new Romulan weapon, I’ll have my analytical staff comb through every shred of evidence we’ve got—including your doctor’s surreptitious recording—in order to make a presentation to the Coalition Council. But I can’t make any promises as to what the politicians will finally decide to do. Especially if the Klingons aren’t willing to go public with the real culprits behind the attacks on Draylax. Until that changes, it’s going to be very hard for some not to go right on blaming the Klingon Empire for what happened at Draylax.”
“Admiral, Draylax was probably just the start of hostilities,” Hernandez said, worry creasing her brow. “If the Romulans can seize control of Klingon ships, then they can disguise any of their own attacks as Klingon aggression.”
Gardner moved one hand up to run his fingers through his close-cropped gray hair. “As far as most people in this part of the galaxy are concerned, the Klingons are already aggressive and untrustworthy. So how do you propose we differentiate between normal Klingon aggression and Romulan-controlled Klingon aggression?
“Here’s the deal,” Gardner continued. “In my judgment, the best use of our forces is for both of you to resume your original tandem mission patrolling the Coalition’s shipping lanes.”
He held up his hands, palms outward, as if to ward off the arguments he knew must be coming. “I know neither of you thinks that will be helpful, but now at least you know what to watch for. Or at least you know what you might face. Most of the attacks so far, other than the Draylax incident, seem to have occurred in Coalition-controlled space. So while you’re out preventing any further attacks that might lead to a Coalition-Klingon war, I’ll be doing my damnedest to get the Council on board.
“I don’t know what that means yet,” Gardner said. “And I have serious doubts that the Klingons will be willing to ally themselves with us, even to punish the Romulans. What’s your take on that, Captain Archer?”
“I…yes, I don’t think an alliance with us is in their plans,” Archer said. “If they’re going to go to war against the Romulans, their crazy sense of pride is probably going to demand that they do it on their own. But if M’Rek was making serious plans to go to war against the Romulans anytime soon, he certainly kept them hidden from me. Which is exactly what I would expect him to do.”
Gardner nodded. “Me, too. So all I have to do is convince the Council not to move against people upon whom we can’t rely for help against the Romulans, even though those same Romulans can attack us any time they damn please while making it look as though the Klingons are really the ones responsible.”
Pointing toward his own screen—and presumably at both captains—Gardner continued: “It’s going to be your job to stop any further attacks, which I know is going to be extraordinarily difficult unt
il we find an effective countermeasure to this…Romulan hijacking device. I know you’re spoiling to go on the offensive, regardless. Unfortunately, we’ve been forced into a defensive posture, at least for a while.”
Archer listened as Gardner gave a few more instructions to both him and Hernandez, but his insides were tying themselves in knots, and not solely because of the residual pain of his injuries. Despite his own desire to take more precipitous and direct action, he had to admit that the admiral’s words made a good deal of sense.
Still, it was hard to calm himself in the face of the overwhelming worry that he might not be able to act in time to prevent an unnecessary interstellar war—just as he had failed to reach Coridan Prime in time to take any action that might have prevented the Romulans from effectively destroying most of the planet’s surface. Despite all he had done—and the combined efforts of everyone serving aboard both Enterprise and Columbia, and Trip as well—the duplicitous nature of the Romulan remote control system had all but perfectly framed the Klingons as the bad guys du jour.
And the Coalition Council, whose members all too frequently seemed only barely able to trust one another to begin with, might be swayed all too easily by such a convenient narrative. Even after adding to the equation the new evidence he had just acquired on Qo’noS, Archer could hardly fault anyone who had ever gotten on the wrong side of a Klingon captain for failing to believe the Klingon Empire to be unequivocally innocent of the Draylax incursion, much less beyond a reasonable doubt.
Still, as he said his good-byes to Gardner and Hernandez, then reached for one of the alien herbal painkillers that Phlox had prescribed for him, Archer was at least comforted by the knowledge that he would be taking the more hazardous patrol route. According to Gardner’s orders, Columbia would be headed for safer territory, while Enterprise was to set a course for the Gamma Hydra sector, perilously near Romulan space. The fact that the region was under dispute by both the Romulans and the Klingons—as well as near the Coalition-proposed “Neutral Zone” intended to create a buffer separating both the Klingons and the Romulans from Coalition territory as well as from each other—meant that if another ship-to-ship engagement was in the offing, it was more likely to occur on Enterprise’s flight path than on Columbia’s.
Archer exited his ready room and entered the bridge, the determination in his stride slowly wrestling the pain from the duel with Krell into submission.
“Travis, lay in a standard commercial convoy heading for Gamma Hydra, section ten,” he said. “And don’t spare the horses.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Tuesday, July 22, 2155
San Francisco
INTERIOR MINISTER HAROUN AL-RASHID FELT nowhere near as serene as he strived to appear. Though he kept his hands folded meditatively atop the wide, semicircular negotiation table in the Coalition Council Chamber, he waited anxiously for the hammer to fall on a pair of urgent but still-unresolved questions.
The foremost of these questions involved the rising likelihood of war with the Klingons. And the second, whose long-term implications arguably outweighed most conceivable consequences of the recent Klingon-Draylax incident, would almost certainly have a profound effect upon the outcome of the first.
The heavy oaken doors that separated the central auditorium from the small private conference rooms at the rear of the building opened with an echoing impact that made al-Rashid believe that the metaphorical hammer had fallen at last. Momentarily glancing away from the senior representatives from Andoria, Tellar, and Vulcan who were striding purposefully through the doorway at the opposite side of the chamber, he saw his own internal feelings of tense anticipation reflected on the faces of the humans who sat at the table with him: United Earth’s Prime Minister Nathan Samuels and Centauri III’s Ambassador Jie Cong Li.
Like al-Rashid, both of his fellow humans had opted to have no staff members or junior functionaries accompany them to today’s special closed-door meeting, in hopes of blunting the prevalent nonhuman perception that Homo sapiens was attempting to dominate Coalition business. In the same spirit, al-Rashid and his human colleagues had all agreed not to apply undue pressure on the nonhuman Coalition members to close the current human-nonhuman political rifts in favor of Earth and Alpha Centauri.
Despite the new compromise proposal that the representatives of both the United Earth and Alpha Centauri governments had signed off on yesterday—and the looming conflicts it would no doubt engender—al-Rashid still had no reason to think that anything had changed since the last time the full Council debated the issue; so far as he knew, Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar still vehemently opposed Earth’s initiative to confer full Coalition membership upon the human-inhabited Alpha Centauri settlements, citing as unfair the resulting “species voting bloc” that would favor humanity’s interests over the Coalition Council’s nonhuman world.
It’s going to take a long time for us all to learn to really trust each other, al-Rashid thought as the Vulcans approached the table, followed by the Andorians, the Tellarites, and Grethe Zhor, the official diplomatic observer from Draylax. Feeling dispirited by the nearly constant birth agonies that the nascent alliance continued to experience, he tried to buoy his sense of hope by reflecting on the manifold difficulties humanity had already overcome over the past century on its painful way to resolving Earth’s internal strife and numerous social evils; his own people, for one, had both bled and shed the blood of others for generations prior to the eventual peaceful resolution of the long-standing and bitter Israel-Palestine conflict. If humanity could find peace among its own, then surely it could do so again out among the stars.
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in that closed-door meeting they just came out of, al-Rashid thought, rising to his feet along with his human colleagues to face their nonhuman counterparts as they reached the opposite side of the semicircular ranks of the council tables.
But as the assembled delegates from six worlds acknowledged one another with silent and respectful nods, al-Rashid found his eager anticipation slowly morphing into a gradually deepening sense of dread. What if today is the day it all finally falls apart? he thought, not relishing the prospect of Earth suddenly finding itself standing friendless and alone against the heavily armored belligerence of the Klingon Empire.
Although the somber Vulcan contingent—which consisted of Vulcan Minister Soval, flanked by Ambassadors L’Nel and Solkar, his senior aides—reached the council table first, they remained standing until each of their colleagues had taken their seats. The hirsute Ambassador Gora bim Gral of Tellar and his two all but indistinguishable aides were the first to sit, followed by Andorian Foreign Minister Anlenthoris ch’Vhendreni and his somewhat younger adjutant, Ambassador Avaranthi sh’Rothress, and finally Grethe Zhor of Draylax.
“Thank you all for agreeing to attend this special meeting today,” said Nathan Samuels, addressing all the nonhuman delegations simultaneously once everyone had taken their seats. Casting a significant glance at the woman from Draylax, he added, “I know I speak for everyone here when I offer my sincere hopes for our success in maintaining interstellar peace, especially beyond the present boundaries of Coalition space.”
Not to mention inside them, al-Rashid thought, taking comfort in a bit of gallows humor.
But no amount of humor, gallows or otherwise, could contain his mounting impatience to discover the outcome of the nonhumans’ just-concluded meeting-within-a-meeting. Addressing his alien colleagues, al-Rashid said, “Have you come to a decision yet about how to deal with Draylax’s, ah, Klingon problem?”
Samuels scowled, evidently not comfortable with such a blunt frontal assault, while Li seemed only mildly surprised at the forwardness of al-Rashid’s question. Fortunately, none of the nonhumans present appeared offended. Gral, Thoris, and Grethe Zhor merely looked silently toward Minister Soval, almost as though they had all agreed to make the phlegmatic Vulcan their spokesman regarding the matter.
Steepling his fingers contemplatively befo
re his pursed lips, Soval said, “Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar have each agreed to defer their final decisions about whether to declare war on the Klingons until after Earth’s military experts present us with a new intelligence briefing on the issue.”
Minister al-Rashid nodded, thankful for whatever restraint the other Coalition members—particularly the Andorians—were willing to exercise.
“This decision is only a provisional one, of course,” Thoris said in a cautioning manner. “As far as the Andorian government is concerned, at any rate. My people are not in the habit of allowing threats of incursion to grow unchecked, whether they arise near our homeworld or our colonies. But my government has agreed to stay the hand of the Imperial Guard for the moment—at least until we have more complete information about this…Klingon problem.”
“Thank you,” Samuels said. Coming from the notoriously touchy Andorians, this was practically a declaration of pacifism.
Let’s hope their restraint lasts long enough for us to find a way to keep the whole Coalition from being dragged into a major shooting war, al-Rashid thought. And to keep our allies at our backs in case diplomacy with the Klingons fails at the end of the day.
“Regarding the other matter before this body,” Soval said, “I believe we have come to a far more definitive decision.”
“You are referring to Minister al-Rashid’s compromise proposal regarding Alpha Centauri’s petition for Coalition membership?” said Samuels.
The prime minister’s gaze broke with Soval’s long enough to communicate very clearly to al-Rashid that there would be hell to pay if the Coalition continued tearing itself asunder over this extraordinarily sensitive issue—particularly with a Klingon war apparently looming on the horizon.
“Indeed,” Soval said. “We have all decided to accept the interior minister’s compromise offer. Vulcan, Andoria, and Tellar will support Alpha Centauri’s admission to the Coalition—if Earth and Alpha Centauri will both support the simultaneous admission of Draylax.”
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