Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code Read online

  Indeed, it was the benefits of his superior education that currently enabled Vol’Rala to hold its own while massively outnumbered by Klingon privateers. Granted, most privateer vessels were little threat to a capital ship like Vol’Rala, but nine of them could pose a significant danger if allowed to surround the starship. Th’Cheen’s precision fire prevented that, damaging or driving off ships that attempted to close off gaps in the Klingon formation and leaving those gaps clear for Breg to dive through. The Klingons managed to dodge the worst of it—these privateers tended to flee readily from any serious challenge—but he managed to cripple two of the smaller ships and leave a third, one of the prize ships, tumbling with only one working engine, out of the fight until its engineer could rebalance the thrust. He even managed to clip SuD Qav’s wing, destroying one of its disruptor banks.

  But then Banerji spoke. “Captain, I’m picking up a trans­mission from the Ware station—directed at the Klingons.”

  “Can you decipher it?”

  “Given time, perhaps.”

  “I think we can handle that without you,” Charas remarked. “The Klingons are breaking off the attack. They’re on an intercept course for the probes!”

  Commander ch’Gesrit stared at the first officer. “The Ware alerted the Klingons?” the engineer asked.

  “We’ll sort that out later,” sh’Prenni said. “No more dodging, Ramnaf. Head for the probes.”

  “Aye, Captain, but we’ll never reach them in time to save them.”

  “Then belay that. Aim right for the station so we can fire another probe salvo. We’ll blast right through the Klingon lines if we have to.”

  That proved harder in practice than promise, however. Only two of the privateer ships veered off to take out the probes, leaving five between Vol’Rala and the station. The number of foes had been nearly halved, but the need to close in on the station created the very disadvantages that sh’Prenni had been trying to avoid, limiting the ship’s maneuvering options and allowing the Klingons to hem them in against the planet from above.

  The job was harder now, and Vol’Rala began taking significant damage. A dorsal shield generator blew out, requiring th’Cheen to refocus the adjacent emitters to compensate, but not before a lucky shot blew out a power relay, overloading one of the wing cannons. Worse, the Klingons had now drawn blood, with Chirurgeon th’Lesinas reporting several injuries from the relay explosion. Th’Cheen rededicated himself to his work, coordinating with Commander Charas at the opposite tactical station to hold the Klingons at bay. The lieutenant would never allow anyone in this crew to think he valued them less than himself. He would defend them with all his skill, and he would fulfill his captain’s orders. Anything less would be letting his clan down.

  But then Sud Qav and another vessel bracketed Vol’Rala from aft and combined their fire against the starboard secondary engine pod. Th’Cheen retaliated with everything he had while Charas bolstered the shields over the pod and Breg twisted the ship in an attempt to break their target lock. But it was not enough. “Pod overloading!” ch’Gesrit cried. “We have to jettison!”

  “Do it,” sh’Prenni ordered. The engineer cut the pod free, and while th’Cheen kept up his fire against the pursuing Kling­ons, Charas used the tractor beam to fling the overloading pod toward another ship.

  But the pod exploded while it was still less than a kilometer from Vol’Rala. It was fortunate that it was only a secondary pod. The main nacelles were well-protected within the body of the ship, vertically bracketing the antimatter reactor, only a portion of whose plasma output was channeled through the wings to the secondary engines. So the explosion was much milder than that of a full-fledged reactor breach. Still, at that range, it was enough to do considerable damage. The radiation pulse weakened the dorsal shields enough for the vapor cloud and shrapnel to overload them and penetrate to the hull. The ship rocked and tumbled, and th’Cheen barely managed to keep his footing by clinging to his station’s support column. Banerji was not so lucky, falling from his stool and knocking Charas to the floor. The first officer’s curses were audible even over the deep ringing of the hull.

  “Damage report!” sh’Prenni ordered.

  “Aside from the obvious,” ch’Gesrit replied, “we’ve lost the dorsal and both wing cannons and most of our dorsal shield emitters. The upper primary nacelle has four coils down, and the port pod has a radiation leak—I’m shutting it down for its own good, not to mention ours.”

  “Casualties?”

  Charas had clambered back to his feet to study his console. “Reports still coming in.”

  “We still have maneuvering,” Breg put in.

  “And the probe launchers,” th’Cheen added. “And enough working cannons and torpedoes to make a fight of it.”

  “Let’s do so,” sh’Prenni ordered. Though th’Cheen could hear in her voice the question she was choosing not to ask: whether they could survive the attempt. Surely they would all agree that was irrelevant, so long as they achieved their goal.

  But again, news from Banerji appeared to change the equation. “Captain! I’m detecting six small ships emerging from warp, closing on our position. They read as Balduk!”

  “Oh, good news at last,” sh’Prenni said. The Balduk were one of the local races that had been preyed upon by the Ware without their knowledge. A prideful, aggressive breed, they had been outraged to learn of their exploitation and had offered assistance to the Starfleet task force a few moons back. “Hail them, Hari. Let them know we need assistance.”

  It was a moment before Banerji replied. “They aren’t responding, Captain. However . . . they are exchanging communications with the Klingons.”

  The readings on th’Cheen’s console suggested the nature of those communications. “Captain . . . the Balduk ships are on course to join the Klingons’ formation. They’re hemming us in.”

  “What?” sh’Prenni cried. “Hari, hail the Balduk again. Inform them that the Klingons are apparently working in concert with the Ware.”

  As Banerji complied, sh’Prenni turned to Charas. “Giered, what are our odds against both contingents?”

  “Vanishing, Captain. We’ve got one engine and less than half our weapon and shield capacity.”

  “Can we take out the Ware, at least?”

  Banerji came up alongside Charas’s shoulder. “Not unless we survive long enough to use the station’s signal array against the planet’s Ware. Which does not appear to be an option anymore.”

  The captain narrowed her lips, her antennae folding back angrily. “Send a distress call to the task force. Tell them . . . our situation.” Requesting assistance seemed unrealistic at this point.

  Banerji turned back to his console to comply. Once he had completed his task, he reacted with surprise to a signal from his console. “Captain—Sud Qav is hailing us.”

  Sh’Prenni turned to face the forward viewer. “Put him through.”

  Lokog’s mutated features appeared before them again. “I told you only we would be laughing,” he said, matching the action to his words. “You have no way out, ’anDorngan.”

  “I have to admit, Lokog, I’m impressed,” sh’Prenni said. “How did you get the Balduk on your side?”

  “It was not I,” the Klingon said. “They and we have both been employed in a common cause: the defense of the Partnership of Civilizations against the aggression of the Federation.”

  The captain scoffed. “You expect me to believe your interest is altruistic?”

  “If altruism pays us well enough, then yes. Although seeing you at my mercy is almost payment enough.” The gloating captain grinned widely, revealing that the viral mutation that had stripped away his skull ridges had done nothing for his dental alignment. “Captain Reshthenar sh’Prenni, I hereby place you and your crew under arrest for crimes against the Partnership of Civilizations. You will submit immediately—or be destroy
ed.”

  Th’Cheen desperately tried to think of a way out—some brilliant tactical ploy that would let Vol’Rala break the englobement and gain the advantage over the combined armada. It was his job to protect this ship and its crew, to fulfill its mission. His pride as a Cheen demanded that he not fail his captain, his family, or himself.

  When it came down to it, though, for all his education and training and hard work, he had never been much for inspiration. He was relentless in a fight, but it was his captain’s strategic brilliance that guided his aim. He could give her nothing more than he already had.

  But when he looked at his captain now, all he saw was resignation. There was only one available option for defending her crew. “Very well,” she said through clenched teeth, her antennae low, forward, and trembling. “We surrender.”

  7

  Gronim City, Denobula

  AFTER THE WEDDING, the new spouses, the family, and most of the guests adjourned to Gronim City’s legendary kaybin district for the celebratory bacchanalia. Phlox found it amusing that human marital customs inverted the Denobulan practice by putting the night of sexual indulgence before the wedding and the reception after it. Of course, this was because human marriages were typically monogamous, with the participants allowing themselves a final night of license before settling down—or at least that was the theory. Among Denobulans, by contrast, the post-marital kaybin crawl was a celebration of the new spouses’ fertility and the physical and spiritual joys involved in the exercise thereof.

  T’Pol, unsurprisingly, had declined to join Phlox and his family in the crawl—as had Hoshi Sato, for reasons Phlox could understand. But Jeremy Lucas was along for the ride, and though Admiral Archer had been hesitant, Dani Erickson had talked him into participating in the name of cross-­cultural enlightenment. Sohon Retab had also been hesitant to join the crawl, given the absence of his wife, but had agreed once it had been pointed out that Gronim’s high-class kaybin bars offered fine food, wine, music, and other delights besides the sexual.

  It had been a long time since Phlox had last enjoyed the wonders of the kaybin bars, let alone with all three wives at once, or in commemoration of such a special occasion. Yet despite his best efforts to embrace the joy of this night, Phlox was unable to shake off his somber mood entirely. Archer noticed this, sidling up to the doctor as they trailed the wedding party through the lush vegetation, colorful signage, and lively street performers of the kaybin district. “If you like, I could have T’Pol bring down a security team from Endeavour.”

  “What? Oh, no,” Phlox replied, laughing off the suggestion. “I appreciate the offer, Admiral, but the police escort should be more than adequate to frighten off those young ruffians. And they’d be unlikely to try anything here. Crime in a kaybin district is almost unheard of. This is where we celebrate life and beauty and fertility. It would be like vandalizing a church, in Earth terms.”

  “Hate groups on Earth used to burn down churches. Life is the last thing people like that hold sacred.”

  Phlox waved off his concerns. “You heard Mettus, Admiral. He wasn’t there to do violence—he was there to embarass me. To ‘rescue’ Vaneel from my pernicious, Antaran-loving influence. He’s made his point, achieved what he set out to do.” He shook his head. “I’m afraid Mettus was never ambitious enough to strive for much beyond that.”

  Archer frowned. “If you don’t mind my asking . . . how did things get this bad between you and your son?”

  “I’ve spent decades asking myself that same question. I always strove to treat my children with respect and understanding. To give them freedom to discover their own identities. It always seemed to me that cracking down harshly on one’s children only gave them more to rebel against.”

  “Maybe,” the human said. “Then again, some children might crave more attention. More structure.”

  “And act out in order to attract it? Yes, Nullim and I thought that might be the case with Mettus. He often seemed to feel that he was at a deficit for attention. He was my youngest child, my only one with Nullim. He was only two years younger than Vaneel, and she was always a handful.” He gave a rueful chuckle, then sobered. “And by that time, I was heavily involved with the IME, spending increasing amounts of time offworld. Perhaps Mettus resented the fact that I paid more attention to aliens than to him, and that left him vulnerable to recruitment by the anti-Antaran movement.

  “But by the time Nullim convinced me to make it clear how strongly I disapproved of his associations, the damage had been done. They’d already polluted his mind with their twisted view that showing any kind of tolerance toward Antarans was a sin against nature itself. He believed that my ‘favor’ toward Antarans—hah! As you’ll recall, I could barely bring myself to stay in the same room with one at the time, regardless of my professed beliefs.” Archer nodded. “But he saw it as a rejection of him as my son, as choosing ‘the enemy’ over my own flesh and blood. It only drove him deeper into their clutches.”

  Phlox sighed. “Beyond that . . . I can’t say. That encounter at the wedding was the first time we’ve spoken since our estrangement. They’ve had decades to indoctrinate him deeper into their worldview.” He paused in thought. “Still, some things haven’t changed. He still resents me. And he’s still drawn to Vaneel.”

  “I thought you said he was jealous of the attention you gave Vaneel.”

  “Oh, he was. But you know Vaneel, always the champion of the underdog. She instinctively took him under her wing to ease his feelings of neglect. Besides, all our other children were grown or nearly so, while those two were almost the same age. It created a natural bond between them.”

  “So if Mettus resented you for choosing Antarans over him,” Archer observed, “just imagine how he must feel about Vaneel marrying one.”

  “Yes . . . I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it brought him into the open.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen Vaneel speak so harshly to him. Whatever bond they once shared, she’s clearly washed her hands of it.”

  “He brought it on himself, Phlox. He chose hate over family. You did your best as a father, but some people are just lost causes.”

  “I’ve often thought so,” Phlox admitted. “But still . . . Tullis came back. And today I have an Antaran son-in-law, something both our peoples would’ve thought impossible just a dozen years ago. So it’s hard for me to believe there isn’t still hope for Mettus. Maybe . . . maybe what he did today is a way of reaching out. After twenty years of silence, even renewing the argument is a step forward.”

  Vaneel caught up to them from behind, and Phlox realized he and Archer were no longer trailing the others. “Come on, Dad, you missed the turnoff!” She gestured over her shoulder toward a narrow, tree-shaded side street, into which the rest of the party had already nearly disappeared. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the way,” she said as she led him and the admiral back toward it. “It was you and Mom who introduced me to this place, after all.”

  Archer stared after Vaneel, then threw Phlox an odd look. “You and she—we won’t all be . . . together in there, will we?”

  Phlox realized what he was asking and laughed. “No, no, Admiral. You know how Denobulan men generally feel about public displays of affection. No, there are private rooms available for the more intimate portions of the evening,” he went on as the two of them entered the quieter side street. “The kaybin bars provide everything that a romance-seeking couple or group—or individual, for that matter—could possibly desire, including their privacy. The public areas are for food, music, conversation—the kinds of pleasures best enjoyed in a crowd. It’s not unlike—”

  “Phlox, get down!”

  The shock of Archer’s weight knocking him to the ground—and of a phased-energy beam squealing in his ear and singeing the side of his head—left Phlox dazed. He heard angry cries, feet pounding, weapons firing. As his hormonal responses to danger kicked in,
he became aware of the scene around him. Denobulans in brown jumpsuits with red shoulder patches were attacking the party, firing at them. Archer had already incapacitated one and was now fighting off another. Phlox looked around desperately for his wives and daughter, but he saw that Vesena had led Feezal and Nullim up into the trees for cover. But Vaneel and Thesh had stayed on ground level with Sun-woo, Pehle, Sohon, and Dani Erickson, who lacked the Denobulan knack for climbing. They were sheltering behind a large voat tree, which was fortunately too damp from the day’s rains to catch fire as energy beams burst against it.

  Phlox spotted another attacker creeping out from the shelter of a tree behind him, drawing a bead on Pehle. “Hey! No!” Phlox yelled, unthinkingly running forward into the man’s sights. Before the potential consequences of that act could register on his conscious mind, Archer was there, spinning the man around by the shoulder and striking him in the jaw. The firearm went flying, but the brown-clad man retaliated. The attacker must have been half Archer’s age, but Starfleet combat training prevailed and the man fell, having inflicted only minor abrasions and contusions upon the admiral.

  By now, the police were pouring into the side street from both ends, and the attackers began to break ranks and flee. But one voice cried out: “Keep firing! Death to Antar!”

  Mettus’s voice.

  Phlox saw his son and two other raiders charge forward, guns blazing. The voat tree, eaten away by the beams, began to crack and topple, sending the party scrambling from its shelter. Flying wood shrapnel and stray bolts forced Phlox to duck and avert his eyes, and when he could look again, several people had fallen.

  Archer arrived beside him, pulling him behind another tree, then crouching and looking for an opening. The police were returning fire against the attackers now, and in moments the man and woman flanking Mettus fell unconscious. Mettus took a more grazing blow to his shoulder and fell, the gun falling from his numbed fingers.