Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“Back atcha, Captain,” Quinn said. “Rocinante out.” He flipped the channel closed, pivoted the nose of the ship northward, and keyed the main thruster. “Tim,” he said, “lock in that guy’s communicator signal, will ya?”

As Pennington patched the communicator’s transponder data into the ship’s main sensor array, he snuck suspicious glances over at Quinn. “Look who’s all gung-ho to play the hero’s role.”

“Ain’t the first good deed I ever did,” Quinn said, checking his gauges. “Just been awhile, that’s all.”

Unable to keep a sly grin from his face, Pennington remarked, “It just doesn’t seem like you.”

“Tell me something,” Quinn said. “What’d you want to be when you were a kid?”

He wondered if Quinn was setting him up to be the butt of a joke, but his intuition told him Quinn was serious. “I wanted to be a reporter,” he said.

“Yeah? That worked out well for you, then.” Adjusting his cigar between his teeth, he said, “I’ll let you in on a secret, newsboy: when I was a kid, I did not dream of growing up to be a drunk and a loser. We reach?”

Under all that bluster, Pennington mused, there might just be a decent human being trying to get out. Or maybe he’s just playing me, as usual. “If you were so keen to be a hero, why didn’t you do that instead?”

Without a grin or a hint of sarcasm, Quinn replied, “No one ever asked me.”

For a moment, Pennington wondered if perhaps he had been too quick to judge this scruffy, smelly, boorish man. Told that he would be flying his ship and himself into peril, Quinn hadn’t hesitated to accept the risk. It had been Pennington who had committed himself in order to save face—and, he realized belatedly, to avoid disappointing Quinn. To avoid shaming his friend. Which one of us is the real hero?

Before he could let his mind slip into a debate on that topic, he noticed the sky growing dark and flashing with lightning. The massive storm front that he had seen during their approach to the Sagittarius was directly ahead of them—and growing closer with each passing second.

Captain Kutal stood in the middle of the Zin’za’s bridge and felt his good mood deflate into disgust as he read the urgent message that had just been received from Imperial Intelligence. “They can’t be serious,” Kutal grumbled.

He handed the message to BelHoQ. The first officer read it quickly, then sagged with irritated disappointment. “Helm,” he barked. “Take us out of warp.” Qlar, hunched over the forward console, hastened to obey. Moments later the stars on the main viewer went from streaked to static.

“Answering all stop, sir,” Qlar reported.

The captain walked back to his chair and slumped into it. BelHoQ followed and stood facing him from the left. The first officer kept his voice low. “An ambush? Sounds like someone at I.I.’s been hitting the warnog again.”

Kutal feigned surprise. “You don’t think it’s possible?”

“Possible? Maybe. Likely? No. Starfleet couldn’t deploy enough ships here for an ambush without our knowledge.”

“I know that,” Kutal replied, his voice an anger-sharpened rasp. “Not unless they’ve started using devices like the one we encountered on that ship outside the Palgrenax system.”

His speculation seemed to concern BelHoQ. Weeks earlier they had hunted down a ship of unknown origin that had possessed a technology for rendering itself all but invisible to sensors and visual scans. If the Federation proved to be the inventor of such a profound tactical advantage, it could easily spell disaster for the Empire.

BelHoQ calmed himself and spoke in a cool, measured tone. “Standard procedure calls for a full scan of the system before we proceed.”

“Afraid we might be outnumbered, BelHoQ?”

Unruffled by the jibe, BelHoQ answered, “No, Captain. I just want to know where all the targets are—so I can decide which one to destroy first.”

Kutal chortled with genuine amusement and appreciation. “Very well. Run your scan. We’ll hold station here until we’re ready to move into orbit.”

As BelHoQ stepped away to coordinate the intensive sensor sweep of the star system, Kutal stared at the bold white orb of Jinoteur in the center of the main viewer. We can afford to take our time, he reassured himself. We know exactly where the Starfleet ship is—and it’s not going anywhere.

22

Less than fifteen seconds after the Starship Endeavour dropped out of warp on course to make orbit above Gamma Tauri IV, the comm system beeped with two priority signals, and every officer on the bridge tried to report at once.

The flurry of voices was little more than noise to Captain Atish Khatami, who looked to her new first officer, Lieutenant Commander Katherine Stano, to impose some kind of order on the chaos engulfing the bridge.

Stano reacted to the captain’s gentle, pleading stare with an abashed lowering of her eyes. Then she stuck her thumb and middle finger inside her mouth and pierced the din with a sharp, teeth-rattling whistle. The bridge fell silent. Khatami smirked. I knew she could sing. Didn’t know she could do that.

“One at a time,” Stano said, her moment of ire revealing traces of her long-suppressed Tennessee accent. She pointed at the communications officer. “Estrada, report.”

Lieutenant Hector Estrada swiveled his chair to speak to Stano and Khatami. “Priority signals from Vanguard and the Lovell,” he said. “Vanguard’s hailing both of us.”

“Both onscreen,” Khatami said.

Estrada turned back to his console and flipped switches. The image of Gamma Tauri IV on the main viewer blinked and became a split-screen image showing Captain Okagawa of the U.S.S. Lovell on the left and Commodore Reyes on the right. “Captain,” Khatami said to Okagawa, then nodded to Reyes and added, “Commodore.”

“Captains,” Reyes replied. “I just received Dr. Fisher’s forensic report on the colonists who were killed earlier today. The good news is that they weren’t killed by the Klingons. The bad news…is that they weren’t killed by the Klingons.”

Khatami understood immediately: the Shedai were involved. The same nearly unstoppable beings that had killed the former commanding officer of the Endeavour and several other Starfleet personnel on Erilon were on Gamma Tauri IV.

“We have news of our own,” Captain Okagawa said. “Our people are off the planet, but the colonists won’t budge.”

Khatami asked, “Do they know there’s another Klingon heavy cruiser on the way? It’ll be here in less than half an hour.”

Okagawa nodded. “They know,” he said. “But they’re doing whatever President Vinueza tells them to do. And she’s telling them to stay put.”

“We’ve got to be careful how we handle this,” Reyes said. “Those colonists need to be evacuated, but they have to leave by choice—and that means convincing Jeanne.” The commodore caught himself, frowned, and hastily regrouped and rephrased. “And that means persuading President Vinueza. You can’t lie to her, but classified information has to stay classified. Comprende?”

“Understood, sir,” Khatami said. “What’s our timetable?”

“R.F.N.,” Reyes said. “Get those people out of there before all hell breaks loose. Vanguard out.” The channel from Starbase 47 went dark, and Estrada adjusted the image on the main viewer to present Okagawa larger-than-life. The salt-and-pepper-haired man reminded Khatami slightly of her civilian husband, Kenji, who was home on Deneva with their young daughter, Parveen. Looking at the trim, half-Japanese captain of the Lovell, she realized, was making her homesick.

“So…Captain,” Okagawa said with the rehearsed politesse of someone who was masking a profound frustration, “any idea how to get those colonists off the planet without shooting them?”

Khatami chuckled slightly at Okagawa’s grim prognosis for the situation. “Motivating them to leave shouldn’t be that hard,” she said. “I’m worried about the logistics. Best-case scenario, even if every ship they own is spaceworthy, we can only evac fifty percent of them.”

“I considered asking the Klingons to take the colonists prisoner,” Okagawa said. “But I don’t think they could carry more than fifteen hundred. That still leaves four thousand behind.” He sighed. “But the fact remains, Captain, that as of an hour ago, none of them were leaving. So I hope you’re right about being able to motivate them—or, more to the point, her.”

The way Okagawa spoke about the colony president gave Khatami the distinct impression that there was something she ought to know about the woman but didn’t. “Daniel,” she said, “why does everybody walk on eggshells around this woman?”

He rolled his eyes. “You mean aside from her being Reyes’s ex-wife and a high-level esper?”

Khatami paused in surprise, then mimicked Okagawa’s pained grin. “This just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”

“And you’ve been here two whole minutes,” Okagawa said. “We’ve been here five weeks. Imagine how much fun we’re having.”

“I’m guessing there’s a stick and some shaking involved,” Khatami said. “I hope you’ll forgive me for putting an end to it.” She turned her chair toward the communications officer. “Estrada, get me President Vinueza. It’s time to finish this. Her colony is being evacuated, and that’s final.”

“We’re not going anywhere, Captain,” Jeanne Vinueza snapped at Khatami across the subspace channel, “and that’s final.”

This discussion is off to a bad start, Khatami decided. Try not to make it worse. “Madam President,” she said, doing her best to strike a civil tone, “by now you must have noticed that a second Klingon cruiser has entered orbit.”

“Of course,” Vinueza said. “How fortunate, then, that your ship is here as well.”

“If the Klingons move against you, there won’t be much we can do, Madam President. Not unless you’ve reconsidered the Federation’s offer of protectorate status. Have you?”

Vinueza’s faux courtesy communicated her ire. “Well, that depends,” she said with an insincere smile. “Would you or Captain Okagawa like to tell me the truth about what Starfleet’s been doing on this planet for the last five weeks?”

Khatami permitted herself a glance across the bridge toward the science station, where Lieutenant Stephen Klisiewicz peeked up from the blue glow beneath the sensor hood, no doubt curious about how the captain would respond to Vinueza’s request.

“Our people have been supporting your colony, Madam President,” Khatami said. “But we’ve been ordered to withdraw and avoid a conflict with the Klingons. It would be in your colony’s best interest to do likewise.”

“I fail to see how surrendering to the Klingons is in our best interest, Captain. If anything, we’d be rewarding them for being vicious enough to murder our people in cold blood.”

Concocting a plausible scenario that would convince Vinueza to evacuate her colony but also would not expose any classified information was proving much more difficult than Khatami had expected. This would be a lot easier if I could show her what she’s really up against down there. She sighed. “I don’t suppose you’d agree to evacuate if I simply begged you to trust me?”

“No, Captain, I wouldn’t. If the Klingons want to take our colony, they’ll have to work for it. We’re ready for them.”

“I sincerely doubt that, Madam President,” Khatami said. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in touch shortly. Endeavour out.” On a nod from Khatami, Estrada closed the channel. The image on the main viewer switched back to the upper hemisphere of Gamma Tauri IV, the Lovell, and two Klingon cruisers. “Klisiewicz, status of the Shedai energy readings on the planet?”

“Steadily increasing, Captain,” Klisiewicz said. “If these discharge at the same levels we saw on Erilon, they’ll be ready to fire in twenty minutes.” He adjusted his controls and added, “Still no lock on the main firing nodes, though.”

Khatami watched the two Klingon cruisers on the main viewer begin to maneuver to positions from which they could provide each other with covering fire. She wondered whether the Klingons or the Shedai would attack the New Boulder colony first and resolved not to wait to find out. “Yellow alert,” she said, then snapped out orders in quick succession. “McCormick, raise shields. Neelakanta, widen our orbit and optimize our firing position against both Klingon cruisers. Estrada, warn the Lovell to break orbit and move out of the Shedai’s weapons range. Then open a priority channel to Captain Desai on Starbase 47. I’ll take it in my quarters.” She rose from her chair. “Stano, you have the conn.”

Rana Desai wondered why so many Starfleet officers had so much trouble understanding the basic principles of Federation law.

“Atish,” she said to Captain Khatami, whose image graced the small viewscreen in Desai’s private office, “I made this very clear to Commodore Reyes, and I’m certain he made it equally clear to you: the colonists invoked their right to independence. We have to respect that. If they reject our advice, we can’t force them to take it.”

Her answer only seemed to tighten Khatami’s pursed frown. “Rana, we’ve got ten minutes till we start taking fire from the planet’s defense system. When that happens, I think the colonists are going to realize there’s more on the planet than them and the Klingons. So why don’t we just tell them truth and get them out while we still can?”

“That’s not a legal decision, Atish—that’s a command decision. If you want to debate it, you’ll have to talk to the commodore.” Pushing the responsibility onto Reyes felt like a cheat to Desai, but in this case it was legally necessary.

A soft string of muttered Farsi curses escaped Khatami’s lips. “When the shooting starts, those people are going to die.”

“They’ve renounced Federation citizenship,” Desai said. “Your duty is to protect your crew and your ship, not the colonists. Unless its government asks for your help, you have to remain neutral when the Klingons move against them.”

“It’s not the Klingons I’m worried about,” Khatami said. “Those people have no idea what they’re facing, Rana. Please, there has to be some loophole, some pretext we can use to get them out of there.”

Shaking her head, Desai said sadly, “There isn’t. I’ve checked a dozen times. And Atish…?” She waited until the starship captain met her stare across the subspace channel. “If you, Captain Okagawa, or any member of your crews removes even one person from that colony against their will, I will convene courts-martial for everyone involved, on charges of kidnapping and disobeying the order of a superior officer. Is that clear?”

Khatami’s expression hardened into one of cold contempt. “Yes, Captain. If you’ll excuse me, I have eight minutes to convince Commodore Reyes to let me tell the colonists why they ought to be running for their lives. Khatami out.”

The screen on the wall of Desai’s office went dark. The JAG officer buried her face in her hands and heaved several halting breaths before sinking into silent mourning for the lives that she and the law had utterly failed to protect.

She suspected that Khatami’s urgent hail was reaching the commodore’s office at that moment. All Desai could hope for was that the decision to sacrifice those thousands of people on Gamma Tauri IV would haunt Reyes’s conscience as bitterly as it tortured her own.

Lieutenant Sasha Rodriguez locked in the settings on the helm console. “Holding at minimum safe distance, Captain.”

Daniel Okagawa accepted her report with a half-nod. “Magnify our view of the planet,” he said. As weapons officer Jessica Diamond enlarged the image of Gamma Tauri IV on the main viewer, Okagawa looked to his science officer. “Xav, any change in the energy readings from the planet?”

“Still climbing, sir,” Xav replied. “Eighteen percent more powerful than the ones we faced at Erilon.” He blinked once, then added, “Correction—nineteen percent more powerful.”

Anticipation of something dreadful was churning sour bile in the back of Okagawa’s throat. “Mahmud, any sign the colonists are taking the hint yet?”

Al-Khaled checked the monitor at an aft station and shook his head. “Negative, sir. All ships still on the ground.”

“Heavy signal activity, though,” interrupted communications officer Pzial. Touching his fingers lightly to the Feinberger in his ear, he continued, “Reports of groundquakes…spontaneous forest fires…electrical storms…” His red eyes widened. “Sir, I’m picking up similar reports from the Klingon settlement as well. Something about…” He squinted with intense concentration. “Maybe I’m not translating it right, but I think they said they’re being attacked by clouds.”

Okagawa looked at zh’Rhun, as if she might be able to explicate Pzial’s report. She limited her response to a single lifted white eyebrow and a subtle twitch of her antennae.

“New energy reading,” Xav called out. “It’s firing!” On the main viewer, a streak of energy blazed up from the planet’s surface and vaporized the smaller Klingon cruiser in orbit. “By Kera and Phinda,” Xav gasped in horror. “Their shields were at full power.” He stammered, “They just…they…”

His voice trailed off as al-Khaled cut in, “More shots from the planet, sir! Endeavour and the Klingons are going evasive.”

“Captain,” Pzial said, “I’m picking up scattered calls for help from the New Boulder colony—including an official mayday.”

Everyone looked to Okagawa, who felt sick with regret. “It’s too late,” he said, watching the Endeavour and the Klingon ship break orbit at full impulse. “They’re on their own now.”

Between the wind, the rain, the thunder, and the increasingly severe groundquake that had shaken the windows of her ram-shackle headquarters to dust, Jeanne Vinueza could barely hear herself yell. “What do you mean the Endeavour’s gone?”

She staggered and stumbled across the rain-slicked, wildly pitching floor toward her chief of staff, Rik Panganiban. The bespectacled young native of the Philippines clutched the edge of his desk with one hand while trying to hold two open personal communicators in the other. “Hang on!” he shouted into one. He dropped the other as his desk slid across the bucking floor and left him tumbling forward onto his knees.

Vinueza grabbed him and pulled him back to his feet. She had to hang onto him as the ground trembled violently. She bent down and scooped up his dropped communicator while he listened to a panicked squawk of voices from the other one. He covered the device’s voice sensor and repeated his message to her. “They broke orbit sixty seconds ago! Said they’re taking fire!”

“From the Klingons?”

“No,” Panganiban hollered over the din, “the planet!”

This is what Diego was hiding, she realized. Starfleet’s searching for some kind of superweapon—and we’re sitting on top of it. “Get Vanguard on the comm,” she said as her anger rose to the occasion. “I want Commodore Reyes on the line right now!”

“There’s no time, Madam President,” Panganiban protested. “The transports are powering up! We have to evacuate!”

Thunderbolts from the sky hammered down on the colony outside Vinueza’s office window. Plumes of fire answered each strike, launching cones of orange-yellow flame into the deluge of torrential rain and screaming wind. The streets were packed with fleeing colonists, falling over one another in a mad dash for the transports. Panic was setting in because everyone knew that there were too many bodies and not enough ships.

Panganiban grasped Vinueza’s arm and tried in vain to pull her away from the window. “Madam President, please! We have to—”

He saw it at the same time she did. Massive, shimmering tentacles of dark energy reached down out of the stormhead and snared the first few transport ships as they began to lift off. In seconds the deep-violet coils completely wrapped around each of the three ships and began to contract. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled—then all three ships broke apart and collapsed to the ground in fiery jumbles of metal and corpses. More crackling serpents descended from the bruised-black clouds and hammered the other ships still on the surface. Gouts of bloodred fire mushroomed along the perimeter of New Boulder.

All the thousands of people who had been running toward the transports turned and fled in the opposite direction, oblivious of the fact that they were being herded into the center of New Boulder. Vinueza watched in horror from her second-floor vantage point as the colonists’ pursuers came into view.

Vaguely humanoid obsidian giants moved like whirling dervishes, obliterating stone and metal with the same ease that they pulverized flesh and bone. Their snaking arms ended in vicious conical points and punched with enough force to pulp people’s torsos, scattering their orphaned limbs. Bodies flew apart in front of the titans with each blow, and the walls of the city fell to dust under their relentless advance.

There were hundreds of them. They came from all directions, laying waste to the colony, reaving its people with merciless precision. Blood ran in the streets. The percussion of the storm devoured the screams of the dying.

Vinueza grabbed Panganiban by his collar and pulled his face to hers. “We’re trapped! Get on the comm and get me Reyes, now!”

Reyes’s eyes burned with fatigue. Reports were coming in at every station in Starbase 47’s operations center, and even with all his senior personnel and watch officers summoned to duty in the middle of gamma shift, it seemed as if there weren’t enough eyes to monitor every task.

He stood in the middle of it all, hunched over the hub on the supervisor’s deck. Gathered at the octagonal console with him were T’Prynn, Jetanien, Cooper, and Lieutenant Isaiah Farber, the station’s chief of engineering.

“Endeavour’s reporting moderate damage, sir,” Farber said. “Shield failures, power loss in the warp drive.”

Reyes’s thoughts were moving quickly. “What about the Klingons? Did they get hit?”

Cooper called up a tactical grid on the hub’s flat, central display. “One ship dusted in the first salvo; the other looks like it got hit the same as Endeavour.”

As usual, Jetanien focused on the bigger picture. “Are the Klingons moving against the Endeavour?”

“No,” said Cooper. “They’re pulling out.” The first officer widened the scope of the display. “Endeavour’s falling back to regroup with the Lovell.”

T’Prynn studied the situation report and the tactical display with trademark Vulcan reserve. “Commodore, based on the scope of the attack and the greater power levels involved, it appears that our adversary has mounted a much larger offensive than what we encountered on Erilon.” Reyes looked at her and was met by her icy stare. “A decisive counterstrike, made swiftly, could inflict significant damage upon our attacker.”

“What my esteemed colleague neglects to mention,” Jetanien interjected, “is that any counterstrike we might make would fall first and foremost upon the colonists of New Boulder.”

“I omitted that detail because it is irrelevant,” T’Prynn said. “Our principal objective remains—”

“Commodore!” shouted Lieutenant Commander Dohan from the main deck of the operations center. “Emergency signal from the New Boulder president’s office!”

Reyes lurched away from the hub toward the railing that circled the edge of the supervisor’s deck. “Onscreen!”

A static-hashed scene from a nightmare appeared, spanning nearly sixty degrees of the circular compartment’s wraparound video display. The image trembled, colors blurred together, flashes of fire and lightning whited out portions of the screen every few seconds. In the background was a parade of carnage. Goliaths as black as tar tore through crowds of civilians and transformed squat buildings into mounds of debris. Storm clouds trailed writhing twists of indigo energy that snagged even the smallest ships from the air and crushed them into sparking, burning husks. The sound was scratchy and intermittent but clear enough for Reyes to make out every horrified scream.

But all he could see was Jeanne—the woman he’d once loved, the woman part of him still loved, despite all that she had done to him—her face all but pressed to the video transmitter. “Damn you, Diego!” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell us the truth?” Terror and rage were united in her tears and in the bitter fury of her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Struck dumb with guilt and horror, Reyes had no defense. Risking the colonists’ lives had been an abstraction, a game of numbers, but watching them die in real time—the reality of it sickened him to his core. He didn’t know what to say. Groping futilely for words, all he could muster was her name, and even that caught in his throat as tears overflowed his eyes.

“Jeanne…”

She screamed. A fearsome blur ripped her body in half, then obliterated her completely in a whirlwind of slashing blows.

Weak, wordless sounds issued from Reyes’s throat. His knees buckled. He slumped over the railing, unable and unwilling to catch himself. His fall was arrested by Jetanien’s scaly manus from the right and T’Prynn’s pale hand from his left. They pulled him from the railing and turned him away from the screen.

He felt as if he were suffocating; he couldn’t make himself breathe. The desperate choking sounds of his strangled grief echoed in the sudden, profound silence of the operations center. There was no strength in his legs; only his friends’ support kept him upright long enough to plant his hands on the hub and slump forward.

The signal from Gamma Tauri IV ended, and the great screen behind Reyes turned blank and dark gray. Long seconds of heartbreaking emptiness pressed down upon him. He reached up to palm the tears from his cheeks and eyes; his hands, normally so warm, were ice-cold.

One breath followed another. Focus returned. He knew what had to be done. Swallowing to clear his throat and steady his voice, he turned toward his first officer. “Coop,” he said, “get Captain Khatami onscreen.”

“Aye, sir,” Cooper said. He relayed the order, which traveled the deck in swiftly whispered acts of delegation.

Several seconds later, as the main viewer blinked back to life with an image of Captain Atish Khatami, Reyes regained his weathered mask of stoic resolve. “Captain,” he said. “Is your ship still combat-ready?”

“Yes, Commodore,” Khatami said with a curious double-take.

Everyone around Reyes was silent as he continued. “Then these are your new orders. I want the Endeavour and the Lovell to fall back to maximum photon-torpedo range from Gamma Tauri IV. From there, you will execute General Order 24 against the planet immediately. Is that understood?”

Khatami looked taken aback. “General Order 24, sir?”

“You heard me, Captain,” Reyes said. “Glass it.”

It had been several minutes since any outgoing transmissions had been detected from Gamma Tauri IV, and Atish Khatami knew that in all likelihood it was because all the colonists—including the Klingons—were dead. Pondering the commodore’s invocation of General Order 24, however, she mourned the countless indigenous species that thrived on that world—plants, bacteria, insects, complex terrestrial and marine animals, and others so unique that they had as yet defied classification. Part of Starfleet’s credo echoed in her thoughts: “to seek out new life…”

In moments, she would be exterminating it.

This isn’t right, protested her conscience. It’s a sin against Allah, a crime against science. She clenched her jaw and reminded herself that Commodore Reyes would not have given such an order lightly. She pictured the shadowy killing machines that had rampaged across the New Boulder colony and imagined them finding their way to Deneva…and bearing down on her husband and daughter. That notion made Reyes’s order easier to follow.

Lieutenant Estrada turned from the communications station. “Captain Okagawa confirms the Lovell is set to fire on your order, Captain.”

Stano stepped down into the command well of the bridge and placed herself at Khatami’s right side. “All torpedo bays loaded and ready, Captain.”

“Mr. Klisiewicz,” Khatami said, “where are the Klingons?”

The science officer checked the sensor display and reported quickly. “Holding at station, opposite our position relative to the planet.”

Khatami looked to Estrada. “Hail them.”

Though the commodore’s orders hadn’t included warning the Klingons about the impending barrage, Khatami decided it might be prudent to make sure they understood in advance that they would not be the target of the forthcoming salvos of torpedoes. Bad enough I have to blast a planet down to its mantle, she decided, I’m not starting an interstellar incident as well.

“I have the Klingon commander,” Estrada said.

“Onscreen.” Khatami faced the main viewer.

The image of a grizzled, gray-maned, ridged-headed Klingon warrior gazed back at her. “This is Captain Gerzhog, commanding the Imperial Klingon battle cruiser HovQaw’wI’,” he rasped. “Identify yourself.”

“Captain Atish Khatami, commanding the Federation starship Endeavour,” she replied. “We’ve been ordered to begin immediate photon-torpedo bombardment of Gamma Tauri IV. This barrage will continue until all life on the planet has been exterminated. We will not target your vessel. Do you understand?”

Gerzhog conferred briefly with someone out of frame and answered, “Understood, Endeavour. We will assist you by bombarding the hemisphere opposite your position. HovQaw’wI’ out.” The screen blinked back to a motionless starfield.

“The Klingons have armed their weapons array, Captain,” Klisiewicz said. “Their targeting scanners are focused on the planet’s surface.”

“Then it’s time,” Khatami said. She stood from her chair. In unison the crew got up from their seats and stood at attention beside their duty stations. “Mr. Thorsen,” she said, looking to the chief of security and senior weapons officer. “Ten full salvos, on my order.” Khatami turned back toward the main viewer and steeled herself. Gamma Tauri IV was just a speck on the viewscreen, and that was how she wanted it to stay until this was over. She had no desire to observe this atrocity in detail. Denying herself the luxury of tears, she gave the order.

“Fire.”

Whooping screeches accompanied every multiple-warhead salvo that shot away from the Endeavour. The blazing blue streaks joined with identical payloads fired from the Lovell. Sparks of sapphire, they glowed in the darkness of space for several seconds until they cruised out of visual range, on course for their rendezvous with Gamma Tauri IV.