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.