Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“Do you have anything to report before I contact Captain Okagawa?” al-Khaled asked. He eschewed preambles or niceties when talking with T’Laen, who had no patience for inefficient communication styles.

Highlighting an area of the map on the main viewscreen, T’Laen replied, “We have completed our analysis of grids 2115 south through 2119 south. No contacts and no sign of ambient radiation. However, a biological survey team in grid 3642 north has confirmed the presence of a type-V life reading.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” The news quickened al-Khaled’s pulse. A type-V life reading was the Operation Vanguard code for detection of the Taurus meta-genome, an incredibly complex genetic artifact that was composed of hundreds of millions of unique chromosomes linked by a series of common chemical markers, which Federation scientists currently speculated might act as a kind of checksum for the eventual recombination of all its various strands. So far, unique variants of the meta-genome had been found on such far-flung worlds as Ravanar IV and Erilon—and now Gamma Tauri IV. Though it wasn’t what they had been sent here to find, it was a good sign that they were looking in the right place. So far, both of the ancient artifacts that had been uncovered by Starfleet explorers had been on worlds where the meta-genome had been found. Though it was too soon to be certain that the meta-genome and the artifacts would always be discovered in tandem, the correlation between their discoveries was enough to encourage al-Khaled.

Starfleet’s attention had been drawn to Gamma Tauri IV by its most recent discoveries regarding alien technology captured on Erilon and by continuing research of the Erilon artifact itself. Building upon the work al-Khaled’s team had done a couple of years earlier, during the construction of Starbase 47, a team on Vanguard had succeeded in creating a less powerful but more focused facsimile of the alien “carrier wave” that had been transmitted from the Jinoteur system and had interfered with many of the station’s onboard systems. Hypothesizing a link among the carrier waves, the artifacts, and the alien entities that the Endeavour crew had tangled with in a handful of bloody encounters on Erilon, Xiong’s team on Vanguard had begun sending pulses of the synthesized carrier wave toward a number of planets that fit their search profiles. Something about the response received from Gamma Tauri IV had moved it to the top of Xiong’s list of exploration targets. Commodore Reyes had wasted no time detailing the Lovell and its team to the colony planet to assist in developing the settlement for the benefit of its residents and the Federation as a whole, but they had kept secret their ongoing search for another, possibly hidden alien artifact on the planet’s surface.

Al-Khaled left T’Laen and walked into his office. The door hissed shut behind him. As he settled into his chair, he pressed a button on the desktop and opened a secure channel to the Lovell, which had been in orbit for the past four weeks, fabricating material and components that were then beamed or flown down to the planet’s surface. The past week had been spent creating pipes for an irrigation system. Must be a thrill a minute for the folks shipside, al-Khaled mused with a grin.

His desktop viewscreen glowed to life inside its bulky gray metallic shell. The face of Captain Daniel Okagawa appeared. From the few background details visible on the tiny screen, al-Khaled surmised that the captain was in his private quarters aboard the ship. “Good afternoon, Captain,” al-Khaled said. “Davis tells me you have news from Vanguard.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Okagawa said. “The word from the colonial admin office is that New Boulder’s going indie.”

“Are you kidding? They refused protectorate status?”

“Afraid so,” Okagawa said. “I don’t have to tell you, this makes things a bit trickier.”

As soon as al-Khaled could unclench his jaw, he asked, “Are they planning on kicking us out?”

“Don’t know yet,” the captain said. “I talked to Miller. He says the new boss doesn’t sound like one of our bigger fans.”

After taking a few seconds to consider the ramifications of the captain’s news, al-Khaled said, “We’ve built a pretty good working relationship with the colonists, so I don’t think we need to worry about any bad blood. After all, we’re not really asking them for anything.”

“All true,” Okagawa acknowledged.

“My only real concern,” al-Khaled said, “is what happens when word gets out that this isn’t a Federation colony.”

Okagawa sighed. “Let’s deal with one disaster at a time, shall we? The new colony president is still on Vanguard while her ship refuels and takes on new passengers, but she’ll probably be here inside of a week. We need to focus on making a good first impression and not ticking her off.”

Al-Khaled nodded. “Okay, I can do that.”

“Two things you ought to know,” Okagawa said. “First, she’s an esper—so watch what you think when she’s around.”

That provoked a dismayed groan from al-Khaled. “What else?”

“Her name’s Jeanne Vinueza,” the captain said, then added in a sepulchral tone, “and she’s Commodore Reyes’s ex-wife.”

A wince and a frown. “Permission to resign?”

“Denied,” Okagawa said. “And heaven have mercy on us all.”

3

A few dozen strong Kollotaan was all the Wanderer had sought; now she had them. Bound to the nodes of the First Conduit, these had proved both strong enough to withstand the terrible stresses of amplifying the voice of the Shedai and tractable enough to do so without struggling to the point of death. More than a hundred of their kith had perished as the Wanderer refined her trials, and many dozens more had been returned wounded and broken to the Conduit’s core, to be tended by the legion of the untested.

The Wanderer increased the power flowing into the Conduit. Eldritch fires surged inside the core, and its Song pitched higher and brighter, drowning out the panicked din of the Kollotaan. She projected her thoughts into the burning prison.

Unify, she commanded. One Song. One Voice.

Like a chorus yielding to the will of a conductor, the Kollotaan tuned themselves to the Song of the First Conduit, blending together into harmony. Some of them spoke in tones deep and resonant, others in pitches bright and piercing. Together they captured its eerie majesty and projected it into the void.

Its ineffable beauty permeated the Wanderer’s being, and for a moment it made the agony of physical existence almost bearable, almost worthwhile.

It was time. She spoke.

Awaken.

The imperative resounded and swelled within the First Conduit, and the power of the command trembled the foundations of the First World. The Wanderer’s directive left the Conduit, amplified by the Kollotaan.

Quantum frequencies vibrated in sympathy throughout the vast expanse of space as ancient Conduits stirred to life, their fires reignited by her urgent call. The Wanderer felt them pulse and respond in kind, echoing her summons into the endless dark, answering her invitation to return to the almighty embrace of the Shedai.

Awaken.

Light-years away, one consciousness stirred, then another. Crimson hues of anger sounded like brassy crashes of noise, disrupting the harmony of the Song.

It is not time, protested one. Raged another, Why do you rouse me? Violet waves of defiance surged back across cold, unfathomable distances. Be silent…. Go back to the darkness.

The Wanderer added the blinding whiteness of authority to her commandment and adjured the others, Rise…and return.

Resistance to her charge ran deep. None wished to endure the tribulations of the material realm again so soon after succumbing to oblivion. An hour of trial is upon us, the Wanderer warned. Our legacy is imperiled. Awaken and come home.

On a pelagic orb circling an unremarkable yellow star, deep below the shroud of its ocean primeval, a massive coral reef shrugged and broke free of the seabed. Creeping armies of bioluminescent bottom-feeders skittered away, retreating into crevasses and trenches. Schools of fish wheeled and turned and fled into the refracted shadows. The coral shattered and fell apart, dissipating into a dusty cloud rent by swift thermal currents. Free of physical bonds, the Herald shifted from a solid state to a fluid one and propelled himself by will alone through the dense medium of the sea. The Song of the Conduit pealed brightly in his thoughts, undistorted by the watery haven he had chosen for his aeons-long slumber.

The summons was like a pulse, a life force, a beacon pulling him forward. The briny depths foamed and boiled at his passage, molecular bonds excited almost to breaking by the energy of his essence coursing unshielded toward his destination. Then the Conduit was before him, its obsidian glory revealed for the first time in countless millennia. Sediment and barnacles and coral all had been blasted away, pulverized by its sudden resurgence of vital power.

Rise, came the behest of the Wanderer. And return.

The Herald envisioned the First World and projected his essence into the Conduit for the instantaneous journey home.

Our legacy is imperiled.

The Avenger stirred with furious anger, her wrath inflamed. The Wanderer would not speak such words lightly, she knew. Nor would she rouse us without cause. War is upon us.

Gathering her strength to break free of this world’s womb of fire was an arduous task. Secreted within its nickel-iron core, she had remained beyond the reach of all but the most omnipotent noncorporeal beings, none of whom had proved so rash as to disrupt her deathlike repose. Now she shaped herself into a subtle blade of excited particles and sliced her way upward.

The fluid outer core of the planet was relatively rich with light elements, such as sulfur and oxygen, which she penetrated with ease. Soon it thickened, impeding her ascent; she began her relentless drilling climb through the lower mantle of oxidized iron and silicate perovskite. Its resistance was considerable, but her impetus was greater. She punched through into the plastic magmas of the upper mantle, churning them with her rapid passage until at last she sped toward the crust and burst through, to the freedom of the surface.

Like a colossus of living smoke, she strode the face of this primitive world while plumes of magma jetted skyward behind her, laying waste to the landscape and plunging millions of helpless Telinaruul into blind flights of panic. Their cities collapsed beneath the tremor of tectonic shifts provoked by her rising. One after another they were swallowed in surges of lava, from scores of volcanoes spurred by the heat she had imparted to the upper mantle.

Molten rock and sulfurous plumes blanketed the planet as the Avenger moved openly over its landmasses and seas, the air alive with the lamentations of billions of Telinaruul who prayed to her for mercy, having taken her for the deity of apocalypse. She ignored their desperate petitions and cleaved the face of a mountain to reveal the Conduit that she had hidden there aeons earlier, before she had buried herself in the heart of this world, for a sleep that had been intended to last longer than any known biological species had ever lived.

Awaken and come home, implored the Wanderer.

Receive me, replied the Avenger. I return.

Individuals came at first, then duos and trios. With supreme patience, the Wanderer watched and waited and periodically repeated her adjuration: Awaken and return.

Shapes came alive and congregated as the returning Shedai took avatars for the Colloquium. Some animated tendrils of snaking energy, others drifted as flashing clouds, a few chose to emulate the corporeal forms worn by their ancestors.

The Herald had been the first to return, and he had added his own voice to the Wanderer’s. Then had come the Sage, he who embodied the living memory of the Shedai, the sum of its wisdom. In tandem the Adjudicator and the Warden had emerged from the Conduit, each choosing shells exotic and complex. The First World turned and shuddered under the renewed power of the Shedai Colloquium, and as one day-moment passed into another their numbers swelled with the ranks of the Nameless, they who are Shedai. At last the one known as the Maker revealed herself, and upon her proclamation a census was taken.

The Wanderer did not need to listen as the count ensued. She knew that when the names of the gathered were known, one of their august number would be found absent.

Ever insolent, she brooded. Singling him out in her thoughts, she cast her voice once more to the empty reaches, seeking him out. Return.

Alone on an airless moon under the cold grace of starlight, the Shedai Apostate lay mingled with the regolith, his essence one with the fine powder of meteorites long ago turned to dust.

The Wanderer’s voice called out, no longer a general appeal as before but a targeted imperative meant expressly for him. He did not dignify her entreaty with a reply. The aeons of silence had suited him well, and when, not so long ago, the first stuttered Songs of Conduits had drawn his attention, he had hoped that such disruptions were only the fleeting product of the artifacts’ destruction, perhaps by an aggressive intelligence or some natural calamity. But soon the Song had become more frequent, more focused, and he had realized that the sleepers were rousing. Just as I had warned them, he reflected. Rest is not for ones such as us. We should have embraced eternity, not tried to cheat it.

Unlike the others, the Apostate had not slept these many aeons. Sequestered on the lifeless satellite of a barren planet, he had enjoyed a measure of privacy and peace that had been denied to him in all the ages before then. To be summoned at the whim of one such as the Wanderer galled him. I am second only to the Maker, he fumed. Who is she to command me?

The Colloquium gathers, came the Wanderer’s thought-pulse. The others are risen. Hie unto us. The Maker commands it.

Indignation blackened the Apostate’s thoughts. Never had the Colloquium heeded his counsel; there was no reason to expect that would change. His role as a voice of reason was ever vilified, his partisans permanently consigned to a vocal minority. Attempts to guide or ameliorate the Colloquium’s harshest voices were inevitably futile. He resented being forced to endorse such a charade with his presence.

The Maker commands it.

Denying the summons was not an option. If he refused, the Colloquium would be forced to assail his thoughts until he relented. The longer he refused them, the more resentful the Maker would become and the longer this travesty would endure.

He propelled himself with an act of will through the vacuum, to the artifact that would grant him passage to a home and a legacy he had long ago renounced. Undisturbed for so long, the Conduit dominated the moonscape, its brilliantly reflective obsidian surface standing in stark contrast to the blanched gray vista of pockmarked desolation.

Desist, he commanded the Wanderer. Prepare for my coming.

Blinding flashes of thought-color racked Nezrene [The Emerald]. Unlike the fleeting touches of the Lattice, where minds might meet and share for a brief time before retreating into privacy, the surges of the Conduit were constant and overwhelming. It was like drowning in a sea of thoughts too great to comprehend.

Against her will, she found herself echoing and tuning the voice of another Shedai, from a distant node in a thought-space network far more complicated and robust than anything her own people had ever contemplated.

Prepare for my coming, said the voice. Its defining qualities were arrogance and power, with undertones of resentment and melancholy. As soon as the message was relayed, the radiant auras of the beings around her and the rest of the Lanz’t Tholis’s crew shifted noticeably, taking on hues of fear and anticipation. Then a tide of malevolent consciousness passed through her, cold and terrible.

The Song of the Conduit faded then, and the luminous beings began to confer among themselves. Forcing herself to dim her troubled thought-colors from crimson to a muted violet, Nezrene reached out to the minds of her shipmates. Commune with me, she invited them. The ones trapped in the core of the machine did not answer her. They writhed in the searing darkness, bereft of even the enemy’s voice. Those bonded to other nodes of the Conduit, however, replied with the kind of intimacy that normally came only during touch-communion or a private SubLink.

Waves of incandescent scarlet coursed along the mind-line of Tozskene [The Gold]. They are Shedai.

The Voice speaks, chimed Yirikene [The Azure]. It speaks and compels us.

We must resist it, counseled Nezrene. We must break free.

Dismay coruscated through the others’ mind-lines. Destrene [The Gray] protested, They disintegrated the commander and the subcommander. If we fight, they will destroy us as well.

I am not content to remain a prisoner, Nezrene countered. She felt out of place assuming a leadership role among her shipmates. Before the Lanz’t Tholis had been ensnared and its crew forcibly abducted into slavery, she had been just one of several tactical specialists. Though she was one of the more experienced members of the crew, she was merely one of the warrior caste and certainly was not worthy to assume the duties of one of its leaders. Adopting such a posture during a crisis of this magnitude felt like arrogant presumption to her, despite the obvious necessity of her doing so.

Tozskene, she instructed, see if this shell that holds us will let you look into orbit; try to find the Lanz’t Tholis. Destrene, monitor the Shedai and warn us if they return to work the machine again. Yirikene, I want to know if we can use this machine to send our own signal back to Tholia. Flooding her thought-colors with reassuring shades of indigo and dark green, she added, We might die trying to break free, but I will not live as a slave to the Shedai.

4

Ambassador Lugok paced liked a caged targ through long, red slashes of dusk light that fell across the stone floor in front of Councillor Indizar’s desk. “How long will it take for Sturka to come to his senses?” he wondered aloud. “Every day I’m on Qo’noS is a day wasted.”

His hostess—the acting head of Imperial Intelligence, one of the more senior members of the Klingon High Council, and a noted ally of Chancellor Sturka and his chief advisor, Councillor Gorkon—tracked his perambulations with a dispassionate stare. “The Tholians provoked us,” she said. “You know that better than anyone. Or have you lost your taste for battle, Lugok?”

“Meh,” Lugok growled. “I don’t care if Sturka wants to blunder into war with the Tholians. Recalling me and my delegation from the Federation starbase was a mistake.”

Indizar cast a bemused grimace at him. “It hardly seems to have impeded your dialogue with the Chelon. You seem to have exchanged more words with him since leaving the station than you ever did while serving aboard it. If anything, distance has made you more productive.”

Lugok’s bark of laughter was laced with derision. “I’d hardly call encrypted back-channel communiqués through third parties productive. Real communication requires presence—the chance to look one’s foe in the eye. My efforts are little more than a stopgap, a way to salvage what little progress we’d actually made.”

The councillor lifted a polished stone carafe of bloodwine and refilled her onyx goblet as well as Lugok’s. He lifted his goblet and downed a generous mouthful of the tart alcoholic beverage. Indizar watched him with a pointed stare. “Tell me, Lugok, are you under the delusion that I invited you here so that you could regale me with your litany of complaints?” She picked up her goblet and took a sip. “It’s not as if diplomacy was my paramount reason for sending you to Vanguard.”

He looked out the window and across the First City toward the Great Hall, took a deep breath, and swallowed a few expletives. All his hard-won status as a member of the Diplomatic Corps meant nothing to Indizar. To her, I am just another field agent for Imperial Intelligence—and not a particularly valuable one. He turned back to face her cool and level stare. “I presume this is about Lurqal.”

Indizar leaned back in her chair. “In the brief time since your official delegation left Vanguard, the quality and quantity of usable intelligence she’s provided have declined sharply. The last truly original piece of information she gave us was the tip about the Jinoteur system, but that was nearly two months ago. Since then her reports of ship movements have lagged behind intelligence we’ve obtained for ourselves. Tell me, why does an agent trained to operate self-sufficiently for years at a time suddenly become complacent when mere cutouts such as yourself and that ha’DIbah Turag are removed from the equation?” The tenor of her query gave Lugok the distinct impression that he was being held to blame.

“There could be many reasons, Councillor,” he answered. “With decreased diplomatic activity aboard the station, her direct partici—”

“According to Turag,” Indizar said, “Lurqal spends a great deal of time with the station’s Vulcan intelligence officer. Have you considered the possibility that Lurqal might have been compromised?”

Lugok spat out his mouthful of bloodwine in contempt. “I read Turag’s report. It’s pure fantasy. He’s never even seen Lurqal and the Vulcan together.”

Nodding, the slender politician said, “I noticed that omission, but his circumstantial evidence is intriguing, to say the least…. Putting aside his imagination, how do you account for Lurqal’s increasingly poor performance?”

With great reluctance, Lugok admitted, “I can’t.”

“Then we have a serious problem,” Indizar said as she rose from her chair and circled the desk toward Lugok. “After the Palgrenax disaster, we can’t afford any more mistakes in the Gonmog Sector.” As she leaned close to Lugok, the musk of her perfume aroused his animal appetites. “I’m trusting you to correct Lurqal’s performance. The outrider Sagittarius just returned to Vanguard, recalled from a great distance. I suspect it’s being sent to Jinoteur. Make it clear to Lurqal that I want to know when it’s going to ship out. I don’t intend to let the Federation succeed where we have failed.” The councillor backed off and returned to her seat behind her desk. “Dismissed, Lugok.”

The ambassador nodded his farewell, took two steps backward from Indizar’s desk, then turned on his heel and exited her office. As he walked to a turbolift, Indizar’s offhand comment about the Palgrenax disaster continued to bother him. Her mention of that ill-fated planet had reminded Lugok of the risks that came with trying to seize control of the Gonmog Sector. Whatever had drawn the Empire’s interest to that world, it had been guarded by something extremely powerful and deadly—a force that had wiped out a Klingon occupation army with ease before annihilating the planet itself. Though Lugok was not yet privy to all the details of what the Empire’s scientific advance teams had discovered on Palgrenax, he was certain that it was connected to the Federation’s unusually aggressive expansion into the region. Whatever they found, they don’t want us to have it, he concluded. That’s reason enough to find it, at any cost.

After a few minutes of walking to and riding in turbolifts, he returned to the lobby of the huge government administrative complex. Turag was waiting for him. The burly young warrior served publicly as Lugok’s bodyguard, but like himself Turag was a covert operative of Imperial Intelligence. As Lugok marched past him on his way to the front entrance of the building, the younger Klingon fell into step beside him. Together they shoved their way through a throng of QuchHa’, descendants of a Klingon offshoot race whose ancestors had been mutated by an unusual genetic affliction more than a generation earlier. Frailer and smooth-headed like the humans, the QuchHa’ were the Empire’s war fodder, its most expendable class. Privileged scions such as Lugok abused them with impunity.

Turag smirked. “Did she say anything interesting?”

“Does she ever?” Lugok replied. He hated walking next to Turag, because the warrior’s powerful physique only reminded Lugok of his own slowly expanding girth.

Keeping his voice down to avoid drawing attention, Turag asked, “So…what does she want from us now?”

“Lurqal’s slipping,” Lugok said, passing through the security checkpoint on his way outside. Large archways scanned him and Turag as they passed through them. Lugok nodded to the phalanx of guards lined up along one side of the checkpoint. None of them returned the gesture.

Outside, the heat and humidity were as thick and comforting as the womb. Streets were packed from corner to corner with bustling bodies, and a frantic buzz of hover-vehicle traffic filled the sky overhead. From several avenues away, Lugok caught the aroma of fresh gagh and rokeg blood pie. Time for supper, he decided, and quickened his stride. Turag stayed with him.

“Did Indizar read my report?” the bodyguard asked.

After a grunt of acknowledgment, Lugok said, “She puts more stock in it than I do, but she’s far from convinced.”

“What is our next plan of attack?”

Lugok turned right, toward the tantalizing smell of well-spiced gagh. “Indizar thinks Starfleet is sending its scout ship Sagittarius to Jinoteur, and she wants to know when. Relay that request to Lurqal. And make her understand that we won’t tolerate any more mistakes.”

A top the roof of the Great Hall, protected by an invisible force field over the seat of the Klingon government, Councillor Indizar stood next to Councillor Gorkon and watched Chancellor Sturka stare into the setting sun.

“How much does Lugok know?” asked Sturka.

Indizar glanced at Gorkon, then replied, “Less than he thinks he does, but perhaps still more than he should.”

Sturka issued a low growl of understanding. “Has Captain Kutal been debriefed about this morning’s Jinoteur debacle?”

“Thoroughly,” Gorkon replied. “His battle group met with overwhelming force when they entered the system. It’s actually quite remarkable that the Zin’za escaped with only sixty-five-percent casualties.” Gorkon tactfully omitted any mention of the fact that, while Kutal’s ship had barely escaped the system, its three heavy-cruiser escorts had not been so fortunate. Also absent from his remarks was the fact that this was the second failed expedition to the Jinoteur system since its peculiar properties had first been reported by their spy on Vanguard.

“What of the Tholian vessel detected in the system?” Sturka said. “Did it participate in the attack on our ships?”

“No, my lord,” Gorkon answered. “Captain Kutal reports that the ship was deserted—but he also said it was undamaged.”

The chancellor gazed out, past the jagged rooftops of the First City, toward the qIj’bIQ, the dark river that cut like a wound through its center. Though the air was growing cooler with the approach of night, waves of heat continued to rise from the stone architecture of the Great Hall’s roof. Overhead, the sky was hidden behind a ragged blanket of clouds. Along the dark band of the horizon, only the brightest stars were faintly visible through narrow rents in the sky.

“Most curious,” Sturka said at last. “Indizar, did you say that your people found something in the Zin’za’s sensor logs? Something from its mission to Palgrenax?”

“Yes, my lord,” she said. “Immediately prior to that planet’s self-immolation, the Zin’za detected a number of complex signals moving between various locations under the planet’s surface—the same locations where it had detected extreme power spikes. Dr. Grinpa tells me that the data-traffic pattern was consistent with a coordinated weapons system and that it bears many similarities to Tholian signal encryptions—though it was many orders of magnitude more complex.”

That spiel inspired Sturka to actually turn away from the cityscape and face her. “Interesting,” he said. Then he looked at Gorkon. “Could the Tholians have been using the Gonmog Sector to develop a secret weapons program?” Directing the second half of his comment to both of them, he continued, “It would explain why they’ve harassed our ships and tried to force us from the sector.”

Indizar shook her head. “I don’t think so, Chancellor. All of Dr. Terath’s reports about the artifacts and their environs suggest that they are hundreds of thousands of cycles old, or possibly even more ancient. And whatever attacked Governor Morqla and his troops on Palgrenax, it was not a Tholian.”

“I would have to agree with Councillor Indizar, my lord,” Gorkon said. “The Palgrenax attack on the Zin’za was more powerful and sophisticated than anything the Tholians can currently muster. However, their actions suggest they have knowledge of the weapons’ potential, and they mean to deny us the opportunity to possess or investigate it.”

Sturka walked slowly in a wide arc, gradually circling behind the two councillors as he ruminated aloud. “That would explain the Tholians’ attack on the Federation starship Bombay. Gorkon, where did that happen?”

“Ravanar IV,” Gorkon answered.

Nodding, the chancellor continued, “Yes, yes. And more recently, their battle cruiser, the Endeavour—it came back to the starbase with heavy damage.”

“From Erilon,” Indizar interjected.

The chancellor scratched pensively at his chin. “And what do both those planets have in common right now?”

“Permanent Starfleet ground installations,” Gorkon said.

That drew a grin and a growl from the grizzled Klingon leader. “Not a coincidence, I’m sure…. Where is Starfleet’s newest ground installation in the Gonmog Sector?”

“Ge’hoQ,” Indizar said. “They call it Gamma Tauri IV.”

As he paced back in front of Indizar and Gorkon, Sturka asked, “What do we know about that planet?”

“Qo’noS-class, though somewhat more arid. The Federation colonists are setting it up as an agricultural colony.”