Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code (27 page)

“But now we see who you are, and what you have achieved. You have contended with a power that has destroyed or enslaved worlds and have tamed it, used it to build something astonishing. Something that needs to be preserved.”

She stepped closer, pacing slowly before the benches to focus on the Partners one by one. “Now we truly do have a common enemy. The Klingons invade your worlds even as they begin to invade ours. And it is largely due to our own actions—mine and my crew’s—that this has happened. The Klingons would probably have come for us both in time, but we set a chain of events in motion that provoked the war facing us now.

“And I speak for all my crew when I say that none of us are willing to sit idly by, to do nothing to fight that invasion.
Locking us in cells will not make amends for our mistake. Let us do what we sought to do from the beginning. Let us defend your way of life, together, as a crew.”

“Your ship is wrecked,” Partner var Skos said.

“And the Ware could repair it in a day,” sh’Prenni replied.

“Your fellow captains have already committed their fleet to our defense,” Partner Chouerd said, its tendrils swaying within the frigid atmosphere of its life pod. “What can one more ship add?”

She sharpened her voice. “What did our one ship achieve before?” It was a risk to remind them of that, but it made her point. “It is not the amount of force that makes the difference, but the precision of its use. Even in striking recklessly, we alone created ripples that affected the quadrant. What could we make happen if we directed our force more wisely?”

“Your attempts to help us have met with little success so far,” pointed out Tribune Tchoneth of the judicial council. “They have led to one mistake after another.”

It was her fellow Hurraait, Partner Rinheith, who countered her words. “And have we made no mistakes in this affair? In our fear of Starfleet, our own misunderstanding of who they were, we sold Ware drones to the Klingon renegades. We played our part in provoking this invasion. Let us not make another mistake out of bitterness.”

Next to Tchoneth, a male Monsof named Tribune Ronled leaned over and muttered a few words in the Hurraait’s ear, supplementing them with gestures and expressions. Tchoneth interpreted his question. “Do you expect that fighting in our defense will exonerate you for your crimes? Do you propose this as an alternative to implantation in the Ware?”

Sh’Prenni held Ronled’s gaze firmly, for it was his question.
“Tribune, I do not expect to come back alive from this mission.” The Partners murmured in shock. “I hope to, certainly. I intend, and my crew intends, to make every possible effort to achieve victory against the invaders. But it is virtually certain that not all of us will live. And it is very possible that none of us will. We all understand that.” She swept her gaze across them all, her antennae cocked in determination. “So do not imagine that we ask this for ourselves.”

She pivoted on her heel and returned to her seat beside Jahlet, aware of the eyes of the guards upon her every move. She had said what she needed. The rest was in the Partners’ hands—as it always should have been.

October 17, 2165

U.S.S. Vol’Rala

The bridge looked as good as new, if not better, now that the Ware’s repair robots had finished their work and allowed the crew to enter. Still, Giered Charas felt there was something missing as he moved to stand by the starboard tactical station. “Banerji should be here,” he grumbled, tossing a glance at the science station behind him. “How can I keep sharp without someone to insult?”

“You can insult me,” Zoanra zh’Vethris said idly as she sank into her seat, stroking the navigation controls with almost sensual satisfaction and trading an excited smile with Ramnaf Breg beside her at the helm. “It would be a refreshing change from being admired all the time.”

“Oh, but there’s so much to admire,” Breg remarked.

“There. You see what I have to deal with?”

Charas frowned. “No—I can’t bring myself to beat up on children.”

The navigator smirked. “Now there’s an insult without even trying. Good start.”

“Hari’s needed on the Ware project,” Captain sh’Prenni reminded them. “Of all of us, he probably has the best chance of redeeming our mistake. Would any of us take that from him?”

Charas lowered his head, taking her point. “He’d better not foul it up,” he insisted, and the others assented solemnly, understanding his real meaning.

Sh’Prenni looked around at Charas, zh’Vethris, and Breg; at Lieutenant th’Cheen, who stood proudly by port tactical; at Commander ch’Gesrit, who was already fiddling with his engineering console and complaining quietly about the imagined inadequacies in the Ware’s repair job; at the relief science officer, Ensign sh’Thyfon, who gazed back at the captain with confidence despite her evident anxiety; and at Chirurgeon th’Lesinas, who stood with them on the bridge as he always did at the beginning of a mission. “My friends,” she said, “
Vol’Rala
lives again. And she yearns to reclaim the honor of her name. Let us give all we have to aid her in that worthy enterprise.”

“Vol’Rala!”
Charas cried, echoed by the others.
“Vol’Rala!”

Sh’Prenni lowered her strong, lanky frame into her command chair. “Are we clear to navigate?”

Ensign sh’Thyfon worked her console and reported, “The station has accepted the Partners’ payment and released the mooring clamps.” Charas sighed at the reminder that the Ware still blindly pursued its programming despite the Partnership’s best efforts to work around it. It would be a miracle if Banerji and his colleagues could break it free of those limits. But Banerji could if anyone could, Charas knew; it was his own job now to ensure the human had that chance.

“Very good, Antocadra,” said sh’Prenni. She gave Charas a tight nod, which he returned. Then she faced forward. “Ensign Breg—we have an appointment with the Klingons.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sh’Prenni took a deep breath and smiled. “Take us out.”

Sausalito Harbor, San Francisco

Jonathan Archer stood numbly under the shower and let the hot water pummel him for an unknown amount of time. Normally it relaxed him, but tonight, the weight of worlds was not so easily sluiced from his shoulders.

It helped when the shower door opened and he felt a pair of soft, long-fingered hands stroke his back. The door closed behind Dani Erickson, and Archer finally let himself relax as her arms encircled him, as her warm bare body pressed against him from behind. She held on to him for some time, doing nothing more, just waiting.

“I’m not ready for what comes next,” he finally said. “I’ve faced war before. I’ve stood against the annihilation of my civilization.”

“More than once,” Dani added.

“But I was only responsible for one ship. One crew. I didn’t have to think about the fate of hundreds of ships, tens of thousands of personnel, billions of lives.”

Pulling back from the embrace, Dani grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around somewhat forcefully. “Are you kidding, Jon? Most of the time, you and your crew were the ones whose actions made the difference between life and death for all those billions. In the Romulan War, the Xindi conflict—hell, even the Temporal Cold War, which was so big I can’t even understand it.”

He chuckled. “Join the club.”

“If you ask me,” she went on, “the problem is that you’re not out on the front lines anymore. It’s not that you feel you have too much responsibility now, but too little. You think if you were out there, facing the Klingons or the Ware or whatever comes next, you could take direct action. Say the right thing, do the right thing at the right moment to save the day.”

He gave her a sidelong look at her melodramatic choice of words. Dani did like to tease him about the space-hero stuff. “But that’s the thing,” he replied. “I should be able to do even more from where I am now. I’ve tried reaching out to the ­Klingon High Council, tried to arrange for high-level talks to prevent this thing. But they’re so divided now that no one has the authority to rein them all in.”

Taking a deep breath, Archer shut off the water. “I trust my captains in the field. T’Pol and Reed, sh’Prenni, O’Neill, Shumar, Groll, La Forge . . . I know they can handle whatever the galaxy throws at them as well as I ever could. But sometimes . . . sometimes things just spiral out of anyone’s control. There was nothing any of us could’ve done to prevent the Rom­ulans from invading. And now it’s happening all over again with the Klingons.”

“We’re stronger now, though. It’s not just Earth—it’s the Federation. And we know the Klingons. We’ve handled them before.”

“Not like this. Don’t underestimate them just because they aren’t some faceless threat like the Romulans. Their weapons and ships are probably even better than what the Romulans used. And if anything, the fact that they’re not afraid to face us openly might make them even more dangerous.”

Archer sighed heavily. “And their fleet might be moving in
to attack Federation worlds as we speak. And I have to go in there and—”

“Hey.” She took his hands. “You don’t have to do anything until tomorrow. For now . . .” She moved in against him and pulled him into a deep kiss. Nothing more needed to be said.

It took a while for Archer to notice when the comm signal sounded a few minutes later. “Oh, hell . . .”

“Mmm, can’t you ignore it?”

“You know I can’t. Sorry.”

Her eyes smoldered. “Don’t be long.”

Resisting the double entendre that suggested itself, he left the shower, wrapped a towel around himself, and moved out into the living room. Down by the foot of the desk, Porthos looked up from the cushion where he had been letting the gentle swaying of the houseboat lull him to sleep. But the beagle did not jump up and run over to beg for cheese as he would have in the past. It was a sobering reminder that Porthos was beyond the typical lifespan for a beagle, and that even with all of Phlox’s best mad medical science, Archer would have to say good-bye to his old friend before much longer. He feared that the coming war would leave him too few opportunities to spend time with Porthos while he still had the chance.

Crouching down to scratch the little dog between the ears, Archer used his other hand to tap at the activation switch, finding it by feel. “Marcus, unless this is urgent, your timing really stinks.”

“Oh, I’m confident you’ll want to hear this news, Admiral.”

It wasn’t Marcus Williams. Still, Archer recognized the smug, nasal voice instantly, even though he’d only heard it a few times in his life. He sat up to face the gray-haired, black-suited man who’d broken into his comm channel. “Harris. What do you want?”

The Section 31 operative gave him a polite smile that Archer found less than convincing.
“This is a courtesy call, Admiral Archer. I know that recent events have placed you under a great deal of stress,”
he went on, pointedly saying nothing about just how he knew.
“So I just wanted to assure you that a solution is already in hand.”

Archer’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The less you know at this point, the better. But you’ll understand soon enough. For tonight, just rest easy. You can afford to now.”

Archer didn’t sleep a wink that night.

October 18, 2165

Starfleet Headquarters

The explanation came as soon as Archer entered his office the next morning. The aides were in a hectic state, and Captain Williams strode through them to address the admiral upon catching sight of him. “Admiral! It’s astonishing, sir. According to our intelligence reports . . . our listening posts . . .”

Had the invasion started? The captain sounded too relieved for that. “What is it, Marcus?”

“Sir, all the Klingon ships are withdrawing from our borders. The entire fleet has been reassigned. The High Council’s even put out diplomatic feelers to the Federation. Sir, something’s changed their minds.”

Archer stared, dumbstruck. Finally he asked, “The war is over?”

“Technically, it never started. There was never a formal declaration on either . . .” Archer waved him off, and Williams nodded. “Yes, sir—I’d say it’s over.”

The admiral studied him. “Then why don’t you look happier, Marcus?” The taller man hesitated. “Captain . . . what is it?”

“Sir . . . the Klingon fleet hasn’t demobilized. It’s just been redeployed.”

“Where to?”

The look of concern in Williams’s eyes reminded Archer that his aide’s daughter was aboard
Pioneer
. “Sir . . . they’re on course for Partnership space.”

17

Menvoq VI, Klingon Empire

L
ANETH GRINNED WOLFISHLY
as the command post’s view­screen showed the
HemQuch
warships beginning to emerge from warp—not far from the hundred-plus Ware drones ­arrayed to defend the planet. “We will make short work of them,” she said. “And then, to Qo’noS!”

Next to her, General Kor crossed his arms over his burly frame. “Do not fight your next battle before you have won the current one, my dear.” She glared at his condescension. “Still, I admire your passion for the fight.” The gray-templed general gestured in displeasure at the command center around them. “Standing here, directing dots on a screen . . . it lacks the grandeur, the intensity of the real thing.”

Laneth chuckled. “It will be intense enough for the Imperials as they die.”

“Yes, but why should they get all the satisfaction?”

She rolled her eyes at the nobleman’s pomposity. It delayed her recognition of the anomaly on the tactical display. “Wait . . . why are there only three warships?”

The son of Kaltar stroked his beard. “A scouting party, perhaps,” Kor said. “To assess our strength before the mass attack. But Ramnok and B’orel have not been so cautious in their tactics before.”

“If that is so,” Laneth pointed out, “we should destroy them immediately, before they can report our numbers.”

“Yes, of course,” Kor agreed with a sigh. “Hardly worth getting out of bed for.” He gave her a courtly bow. “But you are welcome to do the honors, my lady.”

Suppressing a growl of annoyance, Laneth stepped to the controls. However much she disliked Kor and his elitist attitudes, she was the representative of General K’Vagh, and she would act with the dignity that came with that posting. Besides, she relished the opportunity to direct the drones that would blow more
HemQuch
fools into atoms. They would call it dishonorable, Kor would call it mundane—but to her, it was simply progress, a more efficient and practical way of destroying one’s enemies.

“Switch to visual,” she ordered as two squadrons of drones moved in on the three approaching warships. She wanted to see their destruction as directly as possible. She grinned again as the drones spread into their attack formation, their command ships hanging back at a safe distance.

“Captain!” one of the sensor technicians announced. “The Imperial ships are beaming some kind of signal at the drones. Targeting the command ships most strongly, but encompassing the entire formation.”

“What signal?” Laneth asked, only mildly puzzled. Surely they would not be so stupid as to think there was anyone on the command drones to talk to; by now they must know that the only life-forms aboard them were the servitors and prisoners whose brains fed their data cores.

“Unknown. It is extremely complex . . . almost like a teleportation signal, but no one is transporting aboard.”

A few moments passed before another technician, this one in charge of monitoring the drones’ performance, furrowed
his smooth brow and reported, “Captain, there is some kind of new activity in the drones’ computers. They have activated their repair programs.”

Laneth frowned. “They have not yet been damaged!”

“No, Captain. I do not— Hold, Captain . . . something is happening!”

Before she could chastise him for his vague report, the visuals on the screen rendered further words unnecessary. Laneth watched the magnified views of the drones in shock as they faltered in their paths, began to dissolve from within, and finally exploded one by one.

“What has happened?” she demanded.

“I do not know!” the technician cried.

Sick of hearing that, Laneth drew her disruptor and burnt a hole in his chest. She shoved his corpse aside and began inputting her own commands.

“What are you doing?” Kor asked, moving in behind her.

“Sending the rest of the drones. We must destroy those ships before they do that again!”

But it was futile. Every wave of combat drones disintegrated before it could even reach firing range of the Imperials. The three battleships drew relentlessly closer to Menvoq VI.

They have made progress too,
Laneth realized.

“Excellent!” Kor crowed, making her stare at him in bewilderment. “Let them come. At last, we can do real battle!”

“Are you mad, old man?” she demanded. “We must withdraw! Without the drones, we have too few ships to hold the planet.”

“We have more than they do.”

“We are two days from the homeworld! Now that these have done their job, more will surely come. Kor, if we have
lost our advantage, we must conserve the ships and warriors we have. We must consolidate our forces around the territory we
can
hold!”

Clenching his teeth, he stared down at her. “Is that the will of K’Vagh?”

“It is my will. Which the general trusts me to exercise. He will agree.”

For all his elitist bluster, Kor knew how to act resolutely when he needed to. “Very well. To the ships! We will withdraw to Qu’Vat and regroup for the next stage of the war.”

Laneth appreciated his confidence, if only because it motivated the soldiers as they abandoned the post (readying a delayed self-destruct before they left, of course, as a trap for the incoming occupiers). But she feared that, with this strange new power the Imperials had to destroy the Ware with the wave of a hand, the war was as good as lost.

We should never have trusted that fool Lokog,
Laneth thought—but then she smiled.
At least they will be coming for him too.

U.S.S. Endeavour,
Arvospu system

T’Pol studied the contingent of Klingon battlecruisers that had emerged from warp on the outskirts of the Arvospu system’s cometary belt. The five D5-class warships would indeed present a formidable challenge to the defenders of the system. This very battle group, one of several currently invading Partnership space, had already defeated multiple drone squadrons, often several at once, by anticipating and countering their limited battle strategies. This group had lost one cruiser and sustained significant damage to several more in the process, yet had nonetheless emerged triumphant. T’Pol calculated that the addition of
Endeavour
and
sh’Lavan
to Arvospu’s defense would improve the odds of success, particularly as they had been granted interface access to the command drones, able to modify their programmed responses to a certain degree. In
Endeavour
’s case, Thanien ch’Revash would direct his drone squadrons from the situation table at the rear of the bridge. Yet those odds were uncomfortably far from certainty.

Still, T’Pol had not come to fight, if it could be avoided. Negotiation with Klingons was a difficult prospect at the best of times, far more so when they were actively engaged in combat. Yet she had seen Jonathan Archer accomplish it on more than one occasion. She hoped she would be able to manage as well. “Hail the lead ship,” she instructed Hoshi Sato.

The Klingon captain who appeared on the viewscreen was young but commanding in appearance, his forehead plating pronounced and edged along the temples with serrated ridges. He looked oddly familiar to T’Pol—perhaps a relative of some Klingon she had met before.
“This is General Ja’rod, commanding the Imperial invasion fleet,”
he declared.
“Stand down or be destroyed!”

“I am Captain T’Pol of the
U.S.S. Endeavour
,” she replied. “We have no wish to fight you, but we cannot permit you to occupy this system.”

Ja’rod glowered at her.
“You are known to me, Vulcan. You served under Archer on his ship.”

“That is correct. And I have done business with the High Council before, most recently in the matter of Chancellor M’Rek’s post mortem. I request that we parley and attempt to negotiate an honorable resolution to the current crisis.”

“Your Federation’s concept of honor eludes me, Vulcan. First you attempted to destroy the technology of these infernal drones, yet now you attempt to protect it.”

“We seek only to protect those who depend upon the Ware for their way of life.”

“They have allied themselves with enemies of the Klingon Empire. Their way of life is over.”

“That was not their intent. They acted only in self-defense, but were taken advantage of by a dangerous renegade. He demanded their technology in exchange for his protection, then sold that technology to your . . . competing parties within the Empire.”

“Protection from you, it seems.”

“Regrettably, yes. General Ja’rod, this entire situation has arisen as a consequence of a series of misunderstandings and poor choices by a few individuals, and the willingness of a few others to exploit them for personal gain. Now it has escalated out of control, at great cost to millions. But the damage can be mitigated by a similarly few individuals, if they make the right choices here and now. You and I are in a position to become those individuals. Please, General. Do not allow us both to be swept away by the tide of circumstance that has engulfed us. Let us take control of our fates together.”

Ja’rod laughed bitterly.
“Did you learn to lie so well from your Vulcan teachers, or from Archer? I said I know of you,
Captain
T’Pol. Our fates are already entangled. For I am Ja’rod—son of Duras.”

T’Pol raised a brow. That explained the familiarity of his ridge pattern.

“Yes,”
Ja’rod went on, noting her recognition.
“Duras, whom your human master Archer disgraced and then slew. There is blood between us, Vulcan. And even though yours is green, I know it will flow just as freely.”

“Your father’s fate was the consequence of his own actions,” T’Pol said for the record, knowing it would make no difference. “He left us no choice.”

Again, Ja’rod laughed.
“And your
Ha’DIbaH
allies’ fate is the consequence of their actions. So by your own logic, Vulcan . . . my choice is equally clear.”

The general signed off, and the armada returned to the viewer, looming still closer. But it was not long before Sato reported: “Captain, they’re broadcasting some kind of signal. Not to us . . . toward the drones,” she finished with a frown.

T’Pol addressed Thanien over her shoulder. “Commander, drone status?”

“Nominal, Captain,” the seasoned Andorian officer replied. “No, wait . . . there’s a power drain.” He worked the tabletop controls. “The replication and repair systems are engaging. The drones are nonresponsive.”

“Captain!” Lieutenant Cutler cried from the science station moments later. “The drones are breaking up!”

“Onscreen.” The angle changed to a telescopic view of the nearest drone squadron. T’Pol watched intently as the blocky gray ships dissolved from within and exploded. Another familiar sight—but this time, she knew exactly what it resembled.

“Elizabeth,” she said, “analysis of the signal?”

“It’s our own protocol, Captain. From the botched trial at Etrafso. The signal that destroyed the Ware.”

“How did they get it?” a stunned Sato asked.

“That can be determined later,” T’Pol answered. “Lieutenant, has there been any progress toward a countermeasure?”

“The team’s still working,” Cutler said. “But they’ve been searching for a modification of that command set, not something to shut it down once it’s been fed in. After all, it’s not like they had any plans to . . . to use it.”

“Uzaveh,” Thanien swore. “Captain, the drones transmitted
the signal before they were destroyed! It’s been relayed to other Ware within the system!”

It took only a second for T’Pol to realize the ramifications, and a second more to launch into action. “Hoshi, contact the Arvospuan authorities. Warn them to evacuate any populations dependent on Ware life support, and to sever all data and communication links with other Partnership systems immediately.” While the previous shutdown signal had only been powerful enough to reach one star system at a time, this one co-opted the Ware’s own mechanisms, giving it a much greater potential reach.

“If the signal’s already been sent,” Cutler advised, “it may be too late to save them all. And where could they go? All the technology in the system is Ware.”

“Except us. Ensign,” she said to Ortega at the helm, “take us back to Arvospu. Hoshi, advise Captain Sharn to follow. We shall rescue as many as we can. Advise the medical section to prepare life-support chambers.”

Thanien stepped forward to her side. “Captain, the Kling­ons—­shouldn’t we try to stop them?”

“We and
sh’Lavan
could not survive a firefight, and certainly could not destroy all five battlecruisers. So long as even one survives, it retains the capacity to destroy all Ware in an entire system—or more, if we cannot successfully quarantine each system. Battle would be a futile gesture under the circumstances. Our energies will be better spent evacuating what Partners we can and working on a defense against the destructive signal.”

Thanien stared. “It took over a week to get as far as creating the destruct code. Will our defense efforts be any less futile a gesture?”

She held his gaze evenly. “I do not know, Thanien. But we and the Partners must at least survive if we are to try.”

U.S.S. Pioneer,
orbiting Rastish

“The Klingon fleet is twenty minutes away,” Rey Sangupta advised. “We can barely even begin to evacuate in that time. It’s not just the Nierl and Xavoth and others from non-Minshara environments. There’s that huge floating city in the ocean. We have a team there right now!”

“We need a way to buy time,” Malcolm Reed said. He turned to the team gathered in the situation room: Tucker, Akomo, Banerji, and Vabion. “Is there any way to block the signal?”

Akomo shook her head. “There’s Ware all over the system. The destruct signal only needs to reach one receiver to do its job. We made it too potent.”

“Then you need to devise some kind of countersignal to negate its effect. Better yet, to immunize against it.”

“We still don’t know how to fix the mistakes that created the destruct code. We wouldn’t know where to begin.”