“Lovell, this is al-Khaled. Do you read me?”
Captain Okagawa answered, “We read you, Mahmud. Go ahead.”
“Captain, have you beamed up the forensic samples from the attack on our survey team?”
“Affirmative,” Okagawa said. “We just started compiling the data for Dr. Fisher on Vanguard. Why? What’s happened?”
Al-Khaled focused on breathing and staying calm. “We need to get a priority message out to Vanguard, right now. Tell the commodore that the ‘storm’ he warned us about is starting—and it looks like we’re gonna get hit head-on.”
Mogan had been a Klingon warrior his entire adult life, and he had been an agent of Imperial Intelligence for the past decade. He had fought countless battles, walked innumerable battlefields…but this one was the first to give him pause.
The battle’s result appeared to be entirely one-sided. More than a dozen Klingon reconnaissance agents had been slaughtered, dismembered like lingta in an abattoir. Severed limbs and heads lay scattered across the smoldering site at the base of a cliff. Twisted, mangled torsos rested in the blackened dirt beside bodies hollowed out by some terrible force. Every wounded appendage, every liberated skull, was sheathed in a crystalline shroud. Disruptor rifles had been reduced to splinters.
Halfway up the cliff, sixty qams above ground, an obsidian-walled tunnel looked as if it had been cored from the bedrock.
His platoon of QuchHa’ fanned out behind him as he led them across the killing field, watchful for any sign of ambush or a trap. Bootsteps crunched on the gravel as a hot, westerly wind kicked up dust from the rocks and ambered the afternoon light. “Watch the flanks,” he said to his men, who nodded and continued to swivel their heads slowly as they advanced, searching for any sign of Klingon survivors or enemies.
At the cliff Mogan stopped and looked back the way he had come, toward the armored ground transport he and the rest of his men had used to get here from their base camp. “It’s secure,” he declared. Then his eyes sought out the team’s scientist. “Dr. Kamron,” he said. “Start your analysis.”
Kamron, one of the few men under Mogan’s command who was not one of the QuchHa’, kneeled amid a jumble of body parts and began scanning them with a handheld device. Next he chipped off pieces of the crystalline substance and inserted the fragments inside his scanning device for a more intensive analysis.
Mogan’s eyes studied the distribution of debris, the patterns of scorch marks and bloodstains. He visualized the genesis of each bit of evidence and constructed in his imagination a reenactment of the battle. To one of the nearby QuchHa’ he said, pointing out details, “The attack began here. Multiple opponents. They came from above, from that hole in the cliff. The center of the formation was attacked first.” He turned, backpedaled as he followed the clues, narrating as he went. “The front ranks turned, and the rear guard charged. A cross-fire. Their targets split up, broke toward the flanks.” His eyes roamed the ground, sensing the direction and momentum of the combat. “Whatever attacked them did not prioritize among their targets. They killed whoever was closest.” He reached the edge of the battle zone, where the ground ceased to smolder. Dropping to one knee, he scooped up a handful of the radiantly warm earth and sifted it between his fingers. “They were hit with overwhelming force. It was over in seconds.”
His words provoked anxious looks among the QuchHa’, and not for the first time Mogan was angry and ashamed to think of these weaklings as Klingons. Such as these are not fit for war, he brooded, gazing with contempt on his weak-browed troops.
Dr. Kamron walked quickly toward Mogan, his mien stern. When he had closed to within a half-dozen paces, Mogan commanded him, “Report, Doctor.”
“All members of the reconnaissance unit accounted for,” Kamron said. “Time of death approximately one hour ago. All casualties inflicted by physical trauma. No sign of energy residue on any of our men.”
Mogan pointed at the dark, glasslike substance that coated a nearby head. “What about that residue, Doctor?”
“Some kind of living crystal. Origin unknown.” The scientist pointed up at the roughly circular opening in the cliff. “The same substance is up there, coating the walls of that tunnel. It does not match any natural elements or composites indigenous to this planet.” Stepping close to Mogan, Kamron confided, “But it does resemble substances documented before…on Palgrenax.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Mogan said. “I want your full report in six hours. For my eyes only, understood?”
With a nod, Kamron said, “Yes, sir,” and drifted away.
Mogan paced around the perimeter of the battlefield. Allowing such a valuable asset as Palgrenax to fall under the control of an imbecile like Morqla had been a grave misstep by the Empire. It had led to the planet’s destruction at the hands of an enemy and resulted in the loss of a valuable strategic resource—one that the Federation had already taken the lead in studying and possibly exploiting. Imperial Intelligence did not intend to let the mistakes of Palgrenax be repeated here, but the threat that had presented itself could not be ignored, either. Mogan had to act quickly.
He pulled his communicator from his belt and set it to a secure frequency. “Mogan to Hanigar.”
Moments later, his Imperial Intelligence supervisor answered. “This is Hanigar. Report.”
“Threat assessment complete,” Mogan said. “Status positive. Recommend response protocol Say’qul.”
“Understood,” Hanigar replied. “I will relay your recommendation. Hanigar out.” The channel went dead, so Mogan closed his communicator and tucked it back on his belt. He was surprised at how little resistance Hanigar had offered to his suggestion that they summon reinforcements and eliminate the independent colony as a precursor to asserting absolute dominion over the planet. Typically, Imperial Intelligence supervisors were loath to request aid from the Defense Force, preferring to handle sensitive operations independently. The exercise of brute force, however, was the Defense Force’s singular specialty.
He called out to his troops, “Back to the transport! We’re returning to base! Move!” He jogged behind them, barking orders to round up the laggards of the bunch. As he stepped aboard the transport and sealed the hatch behind him, he grinned at the knowledge that a military strike on the independent colony, no matter what flag its people lived under, would certainly draw the ire of the Federation and place the Empire’s diplomats in politically untenable positions.
If there was one thing that Mogan loved above all else, it was finding anonymous ways to make politicians miserable.
Captain Daniel Okagawa prepared his report for transmission to Commodore Reyes on Vanguard. The past six days had been filled with low-key tension, the product of maneuvering survey teams around the Klingons’ recon units, who clearly were seeking the same elusive artifacts that Starfleet had come to Gamma Tauri IV to find. In the past hour, however, the bad news had started to come in like a high tide dimmed with blood, and Okagawa suddenly found himself nostalgic for the days of merely simmering aggression.
He tabbed quickly through the layers of information on the data slate he’d been given for review. Casualty reports, complete with service records on each of the lost Starfleet personnel; brief dossiers on the nine civilian engineers, twenty-eight laborers, and two New Boulder peace officers slain at the aquifer dig; an after-action report by two ensigns who had barely escaped the slaughter of the survey team; several kiloquads of classified forensic data collected at the scene, for Dr. Fisher’s personal review; and his own command report, for Vanguard’s senior officers.
Nothing like a little bit of light bedtime reading for the commodore, Okagawa mused with dark humor.
An insistent beeping on a console behind him was silenced by the Lovell’s junior communications officer, Ensign Folanir Pzial. The young Rigelian placed a Feinberger receiver in one ear, then started flipping switches and inserting data cards in slots around his console. Whatever he was doing, he was working intensely and quickly, and it captured Okagawa’s attention.