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.”