EP 5 ACT 2
***
"Runabout to bridge," Struckchev's voice interrupted Christian's thoughts as he re-scanned through the reports Lirik had prepared earlier.
"Christian here, go ahead," the Captain slipped the padd between his right thigh and the side panel of the still dusty command chair, concentrating on the starfield in the main viewscreen as he imagined the Kosovan at the helm of the runabout.
"Sir, I've scanned what is left of a faint warp signature, I think it may have been the path taken by the alien ship."
"Very well, once the patients are aboard you and the Commodore take the runabout and pursue the trail to its source. We will follow you at best speed," Christian nodded over to Reb. Pausing, he then said; "Put the Commodore on a moment, will you Commander?"
"Er…" the Kosovan waited before replying. Turning his head he could see on the mute monitor that in the rear of the runabout Jackson and O'Hara were both sitting, head in hands sobbing their hearts out in apparent grief. "The Commodore is tied up right now, sir. I'll have her contact you as soon as she's free."
Christian thought the response to be strange, but not beyond the bounds of reason. Feeling a slight tingle in his left cheek, he sensed Narli's penetrating gaze upon him. He turned to face the communications station where he found the Andorian watching him with a twisted grin. Christian didn't respond, turning instead back to the reports Lirik had filed.
* * *
Struckchev calculated he could afford two minutes to check on the Commodore and the Lieutenant before starting approach manoeuvres. "Ensign, keep an eye on things here for a minute, please."
"Aye, sir," Souveson shifted in her chair - concerned that she had not been with the Nurse when the patients were beamed aboard, and wondered why the Commander had not reprimanded her for such a security oversight. Instead, she remained quietly at the co-pilot's position, constantly checking sensors for any other ship.
The Kosovan stepped into the rear of the vessel. Although the Commodore had stopped weeping, she still looked upset. "Commodore Jackson, are you all right? What's wrong?"
Jackson barely looked up before her face contorted into another wave of tears, her only ability to communicate being a swift shake of the head. O'Hara was steadily crying and sniffing, barely able to treat the wounds of her patients.
Struckchev placed a hand on the nurse's almost bare freckled shoulder. "Hey, what's all this about?" he said.
O'Hara could hardly speak, only managing "It's so unfair, all those deaths," before covering her eyes with one hand and letting a deep belly cry come forth.
Strangely, Struckchev followed O'Hara's train of thought and began to imagine untold varieties of death aboard the Papillon. In his mind's eye he saw the Captain and bridge crew incinerated, the engineers vaporised, the weapons officers sucked out into space, the medical crew steamed alive - it was almost too much to bear. Instinctively, the Commander whirled round and left the rear of the runabout before he too broke down. His head was spinning.
Throwing himself back into the pilot's chair, the Commander bit his tongue too hard and focused on the flight path back to the Fantasy in an attempt not to cry. He believed he could control his feelings, but his concentration seemed to give him a warm turning to hot feeling of depression and grief as a small trail of blood trickled out the side of his mouth.
* * *
Behind the Captain's chair, Lirik was taking the period of boredom to use the tactical station as an interface to the computer core in order to get an idea of what state the ship was in. During his previous night's visit to main engineering, he'd discovered that Christian had ordered the Orion woman, Hedrik (apparently some kind of expert in computer programming and hologram and transporter technology) to work with engineer Leonard in supervising the re-insertion of the hundreds of thousands of memory chips into the ship's huge computer core.
So far, they had completed a mere 10%, and with the additional damage to the central core structure it was unlikely ship-wide computer systems would be operational for some days to come - perhaps longer. Hedrik had re-initialised the isolated bridge computer core, and with that came rudimentary computer interfaces for all bridge stations, but not nearly enough to get it up to spec. Leonard had completed similar routines in engineering and life support to keep things rolling. Local, automatic subsystems linked to the shared network automatically took care of the rest.
Lirik scrolled through the long (but not extensive) list of command programs now available. He noticed that, presumably as a result of the cascade during the first few hours on the ship, several key programs such as the emergency command hologram, the self-destruct sequence and the command code interface protocols had been totally erased.
Anyhow, Lirik thought to himself, with little equipment on the other end of the bridge controls actually working, the computer programs that were available were largely redundant. So only the helm, basic flight and engineering stations and communication consoles had anything to actually interface with - and then only in a limited capacity.
Despite these numerous problems, Lirik still regarded their situation to be extremely lucky. For one thing, had they not been aboard a passenger liner, they would not have had the luxury of the expensive and cumbersome emergency warp system. It was approximately the size of three small shuttlecraft. Wrapped in duranium, the interfacing unit remained sealed behind a protective shield to the rear of main engineering. Its use was as a last resort escape device which when activated would automatically deploy the nacelles, create a stable warp field (spacial phenomena permitting) and allow several seconds of warp speed up to six or so consecutive times.
Lirik was getting no joy from the console. Suppressing an outburst he drew a long breath and looked up through the skylights above his head. For a second, he thought he felt something, a distant calling not unlike that he had felt approaching the planet Medusa for the first time. It was gone as quickly as he had become aware of it - during years in space, he had become used to such 'echoes' of his brethren around the galaxy, often the long dead whispers of pronounced electromagnetic activity around the time of creation. Alien and archaic, even to his refined sensitivity, it came across into his Human perception more like a distant song.
Lirik's gaze fell onto the top of Christian's head. 'Still reading my reports', he thought, looking over the man's shoulder and feeling a warm glow of ego. Lirik glanced around the bridge, Narli was busy plotting - he recognised that tell-tale faraway look, and logged it for later analysis. Then he had an idea.
"Excuse me," he turned to the Science station behind him where the quiet Professor Karnak was engrossed in a complex calculation scrawled onto an old fashioned padd. The woman didn't react, her graceful expression focussed on some ethereal theory. Lirik approached and placed his hand on the back of her chair. "Professor?"
The woman gasped audibly and jolted away from him. Several heads turned briefly, but not the Captain's.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," Lirik said, straightening, a polite withdrawl of his clearly unwelcome Medusan presence. "I was hoping that you could help me with analysing this communication." He held out the rolled up transparency he had carried with him to the bridge.
The woman was clearly frightened, but managed to retain a certain amount of outward Vulcan composure. "Computer diagnostics are not yet available," she said quietly.
"Yes, I know," Lirik rubbed his nose and spoke casually. "But I figured your Vulcan trained scientific mind might be able to decipher the language."
The Professor looked at the transparency, then at Lirik. He thought she looked as if she was trying to come up with an excuse, but could think of none. Not even replying, she rudely snatched the transparency and turned away from him, sitting down in the high backed chair once more.
'Thanks' Lirik thought, but didn't say a word, wondering if maybe this Vulcan-disciplined mind was tearing itself apart on the inside: or perhaps she was always this rude.
* * *
On exiting the runabout, Souveson felt suddenly very queezy and weak. She instinctively thought Lirik must be nearby, but a visual check showed her that wasn't the case. She was even more surprised when her knees gave way beneath her and she fell hard onto her hands. The strange eunuch creature O'Hara referred to as Wheezy lolloped to her aid, but when asked what was wrong, the Ensign could only open her mouth and whimper. Her throat felt a little closed and her eyes began to weep, both of which made her panic into thinking something was very wrong - perhaps a seizure caused by yesterday's fight. The loss of co-ordination and coherent control of her physical body caused her to feel frightened, and then real tears of disbelief and frustration followed.
Across the way, Wheezy could see that along with the two prostrate aliens, Lieutenant O'Hara and the Commodore were also being eased gently off the runabout. "What happened?" she called to the New Parisian aiding them.
"I don't know, they're all like this," he called in reply, his facial jewellery tinkling with the movement of his jaw.
"Tell the Captain!" Wheezy shouted, thinking fast, "No, wait! First seal the deck. It could be some kind of virus."
The fresh-faced young man nodded and ran over to the door and closed it, then initiated the environmental seal that hissed slightly upon activation, and lit the door frame with the vibrant green of the quarantine field. Running quickly back to the Hudson, he leapt aboard almost colliding with the woman he saw arrive injured from Engineering the day after their escape - Cally Warnerburg. Not stopping to help her, he brushed past and stepped onto the Hudson's bridge, stopping immediately in his tracks. In front of him, beside the communication panel the Commander was swaying, wide-eyed and sweating profusely, phaser in hand. The young man glimpsed a series of red bars across the top of the weapon - it was set to disintegrate.
As Struckchev raised it toward the young man, he gulped and raised both hands. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," he said. "My name is Hensil Arrorot, I'm a friend."
* * *
Back on the hangar deck, to Wheezy's surprise, the elderly woman from Earth who was part of O'Hara's small team swept the black, deep sleeves of her nun's habit back into the crooks of her elbow joints and displayed considerable strength. She stepped onto the ledge of the door and deftly lifted the rotund form of Cally Warnerburg onto the deck a few feet below.
"Careful, Sister," the young, well-dressed man Wheezy had come to know as Unadi Kaswak came to the Puerto Rican nun's aid, "we don't want to add to the casualties."
Wheezy scoffed at the youngster's attitude - on her world, a woman as fit for her years as Sister Matthew would have been given the highest respect. His patronising attitude would have been swiftly dealt with.
In her own arms, Souveson had become less stressed, her eyes glazed over, but all other vital signs just about normal; the people from the planet Jetralex possessed a heightened sense of touch, so much that they were able to describe a smooth pane of glass as feeling like corrugated cardboard. Without warning, Wheezy juddered - as if someone had walked over her death tomb. A feeling of panic washed over her, every sense felt as if it had been set afire. Wheezy yelped slightly, then dropped her patient and rolled heavily onto her back.
Sister Matthew came over and knelt beside her with a tricorder. "She's the same as the rest," she called to Unadi, "some kind of overwhelming psychosomatic reaction."
"I can sense confusion in them, and it's growing worse," Unadi said. "We will surely be next."
Sister Matthew saw the young man's face pale. He was clearly very afraid. She thought back to how he had come to be a part of the medical team. O'Hara had met the young man when he helped to move the casualties to the makeshift sickbay area from the observation lounge shortly after leaving Vekarian space. It was Sister Matthew who had spotted him using his empathic abilities to calm a distressed patient - turned out the man was part Human, part Rumaronian, a race of powerful empaths.
Unadi, she discovered, only possessed the ability to influence others emotionally (his blessing and his curse), though his abilities were diluted by his Human side. The nun had managed to talk heart to heart to the man during several night shifts - mostly an attempt to stay awake. Though he had as a youngster quickly ended up on the wrong side of the tracks, (he wouldn't give the full details and talked in riddles) he still appeared to be a good person at heart. So it was no surprise that she found him eager to help the sick, as if to make up for all the bad that had been in his life for the last few years, perhaps.
* * *
In the cockpit of the runabout, Hensil could feel himself swooning. The Commander now looked as if he had drifted into some kind of waking sleep on his feet, and the New Parisian knew that if he didn't act now, it might be too late to contact the bridge. Stepping to one side, out of the line of fire, Hensil leapt forward, and grabbed the phaser, knocking Struckchev into the co-pilot's seat. The huge bulk of a man was thankfully already unconscious.
Hensil felt light headed. He looked at the dazzling array of lights on the contact padds around the cockpit, and realised he had no idea which part was the communications panel. His head turned from side to side, reading the small words on each title bar. "Got it!" he had found the right panel, but none of the buttons beneath were labelled. Some had digits, but there seemed no logical order to them. He suddenly wished he had paid more attention at school, but here he was feeling desperately inadequate. As he began to blame his ignorance on the effects of whatever was hindering them, he suddenly remembered the computer's voice-interface.
"Computer, connect me to the bridge," he ordered.
The computer bleeped, but there was nothing but a faint hiss. Hensil waited, then heard a distant tribble or two, like a console being used almost out of earshot. "Hello?" he called.
"Hello?" came the nearby stern reply. "Who is this? Identify yourself."
He couldn't be sure, but Hensil thought it was Captain Christian. "You've got to help us, there's something wrong," his tongue suddenly felt as if it had swollen to the size of a Ruplunsa Pear. "Everyone ish shick." He had bitten his tongue, and hard. He could taste the iron of blood in his mouth. Hensil's eyesight began to blur. As he toppled over, he lost bladder control and lay wet and precarious over the pilot's chair. Tears of embarrassment and helplessness began to run down his face.
* * *
On the bridge of the Fantasy, everyone's attention was on the Captain. He glanced left and right, as if looking for someone. Finally he stood and turned to Lirik. "Get down to the shuttle bay and find out what's going on. You have a medic rating, don't you?"
Lirik hesitated, wondering how the Captain had found that out. "Yes," his voice was almost soft.
"You better take some muscle along. I believe Andorians are known for their physical prowess, Ambassador?" he saw the blue skinned man flinch with surprise. Christian smiled at that. Narli did not reply, instead nodding politely as if unphased and walking to the turbolift behind him.
"If it's an attack by the K'Tani," Lirik said joining the taller white-haired man beside the open tubolift doors, "it might take more than just the two of us."
"I'll send you some help, get going," Christian urged, his face hard and voice snappy, though with an aura of comfortable control.
* * *
As the turbolift descended the many decks, Lirik and Narli stood at opposite sides, each sizing the other up. Lirik broke the silence, as usual.
"Tell me, Ambassador, why has the Andorian government been engaged in secret negotiations with the Qovakians?" Lirik wasn't actually sure of his facts, but couldn't get the puzzle of the official communique out of his head. It was a gamble, but with even odds of extracting information, it couldn't get much better.
Narli smiled broadly. "I am but a humble trade minister, Yeoman. I would not know of such things."
Lirik bit his bottom lip as the turbolift slowed, then proceeded along a horizontal course. "Look, we've known each other for a long time," Lirik dropped his body language to a casual, familiar stance. "Given the predicament we're in, we should pool our resources. Let's make a pact - what I know in return for what you know."
Narli's smile faded, he hated it when Lirik was sincere. It was so … un-spy-like. The halting turbolift and parting doors stymied the Yeoman's attempt to make progress with his investigation. Setting the environment field on its highest setting, Lirik waved the Andorian back and proceeded cautiously ahead into the corridor. The turbolift exit was a 'butt' end, with the doors being at the end of a turbolift lateral shaft. Hence, either side of the doors the corridor stretched away left and right, before angling sharply back. Several metres away on the opposite side, one of the airlocks leading to the shuttlebay glowed with a deep green border.
"Looks like they sealed the doors from inside," Lirik said, feeling more comfortable about dropping his guard. "This is an old ship - isn't green for quarantine?"
Narli shrugged and joined Lirik in the still air of the corridor as the turbolift doors swished closed behind them. Narli pressed an antenna against the hangar door, using an ancient and painfully difficult Andorian technique of cupping the end receptor in a vacuum against a surface to perceive the space beyond.
"Anything?" Lirik asked, but Narli merely popped his antenna off the cold metal and shook his head. "Let me try."
Narli knew to stand well back when they Yeoman employed his Medusan abilities for real. With three taps on his wrist-mounted control panel, Lirik dropped the energy shield surrounding him and placed both hands flat on the metal. Concentrating, he extended his Medusan energy forward - not in physical form, but more in the realms of perception.
Gradually he began to feel the energy in the door - in the lights, and in the multitude of circuitry embedded in the walls, floor and ceiling around him. Narli's presence was clearly felt. Steadily he pushed the envelope away from the Ambassador and forward, feeling the energies abruptly stop as he hit a large nullity of empty space, presumably the open area of the hangar deck beyond the bulkhead. In his typically awkward Human way, Lirik steadily increased his perception, focusing down toward the deck (presumably anyone inside was either standing, sitting or lying on the floor rather than floating in the air). Without warning, his perception leapt forward by a rate of several metres - it was an uncontrolled movement that left Lirik's Human understanding momentarily confused. The fuzz of blur suddenly cleared in his mind's eye, and he perceived the strong presence of the runabout Hudson's warp engines. Filtering the interference out, he finally found what he was looking for.
"Found them," he stated calmly, unaware that he and Narli had now been joined by ten or so burly looking characters, including some quiet Helans, Vulcan attendants and the three Klingons. "I count.." it was at least a whole minute before Lirik continued his sentence, the Medusan energy was beginning to drown out his Human perception, causing him to lose track of linear time. "I count eleven people." He quickly withdrew his hands. Like a dimming light he shrank the Medusan field rapidly towards his centre point and promptly lost his balance and fell backwards, thumping unceremoniously into the deck.
The largest of the Klingons nearly pulled Lirik's arm out of his socket as his gloved hand hoisted him roughly to his feet. The Klingon then suddenly let go, flexing his hand and looking at it curiously, turning his palm over as if he'd just handled something very unpleasant. "Well?"
"Yes," Lirik realised the man had merely expressed concern for his health, "Yes, I'm fine." He quickly initiated the environmental shield once more.
"What is their condition?" Narli asked loudly.
Lirik held his forehead and then wiped the beads of sweat from around his mouth. "I think they were unconscious, close to the floor - perhaps laying down. I couldn't sense any movement, anyway."
"We should find a window to look in and verify," the Klingon Kro'Ner commanded.
"Now why didn't I think of that?" Lirik smiled weakly, walking down the long corridor toward the door leading to the smaller adjacent standby bay.
Without speaking, two hefty Helan males stepped in front of Lirik and lifted off the large wall panel beside the door control. As he looked inside, up and down locating the small control unit, Lirik wondered how the men had known exactly what he intended to do (and, indeed, how to do it).
"Ah, bad luck," Lirik muttered to himself. Turning to the group he noticed Fraxon, the young Helan brother to Vostaline. The young alien smiled broadly and winked as soon as they made eye contact. "Fraxon, go and bring Lieutenant Commander Leonard. Tell him we urgently need to reinitialise the command networks around the hangar deck."
Fraxon nodded and scooted off into the turbolift. The other men struck various waiting poses and Lirik took the opportunity to study them. They were a mixed group - different races, different faces and expressions, clothes and mannerisms. Even their individual smells were distinct, although the combined smell and feel of a group of men always seemed similar to Lirik, no matter what their race.
Ambassador Narli broke his train of thought as he sidled up, speaking in a hushed tones. "So, Yeoman, you were saying we should pool our resources?"
"Oh no you don't," Lirik wagged a finger, "you first, Ambassador."
Narli humphed - Lirik was one of the pushiest Humans he tolerated, and then he only excused him because the boy was part Medusan. He quickly checked over his shoulder to make sure they would not be heard and pitched his voice into a barely audible whisper. "The painful truth about this whole situation, my friend, is that it was avoidable. The Qovakian Government knew very well that the K'Tani were massing forces for invasion and they purposefully kept the facts from us while more and more of us arrived on Helub."
Lirik didn't flinch, but rather spoke in a slow whisper. "My dear old Andorian friend," Lirik was patronising Narli in his most condescending voice, "tell me something I haven't worked out for myself already."
Narli beamed. "I didn't think you would take your finger off the pulse. So much for your retirement from Starfleet Intelligence, eh?"
"Don't read too much into it. For a man in my liaison position I merely like to keep abreast of the gossip - official and unofficial." Lirik retorted. "You never know when a little knowledge like that can come in handy."
The Ambassador wiped the front of his top teeth with his tongue. "The night before the K'Tani invasion would have been a good time."
Lirik raised his eyebrows. "Well I don't appear to be the only one to have been duped by the Qovakians. You and every other representative from our part of the Galaxy were foolish enough to trust that history would not repeat itself, believing that the K'Tani were no longer a threat simply because the Qovakians told us so. We were all well fooled."
"Maybe not all," Narli said. "While you were languishing in that salubrious underground den of iniquity you deem to call a 'nightclub', I was talking to a reliable informant on Helub who told me a party of Romulans were already in partnership negotiation with the K'Tani."
Lirik looked shocked. "How the hell did you know my whereabouts that night?" He wasn't missing the point about the Romulans, but instinctively felt more angry about the intrusion of privacy.
"Mister Lirik," Narli folded his arms, suppressing a smile, "as the Federation Council's official conduit to the chief representatives, don't you think people are guarded against you? Everyone is aware that knowing your whereabouts at all times is paramount if one wants to conduct secret liaisons."
Lirik flushed - for Narli to be going behind his back was one thing, but for the others, he had not given it a second thought. No, he decided, it was just Narli's way of winding him up. "Care to do a little historical assessment?"
Narli nodded. "This situation is indeed rooted a long time in the past."
Lirik began by shaping both his hands as if presenting a large, thick, invisible sandwich to his cohort. "First of all we've got Qovakia: a lot like the Federation, just a touch smaller, more densely populated and spread thinly around the outskirts of this part of the Galaxy. The Qovakians don't have a Starfleet like us, because the massive impenetrable borders of Tholian space has led them to believe there would be little profit in far-flung exploration. However, they do search their own, densely populated and highly active area of space, apparently leaving pre-warp worlds alone as we do and making contacts and alliances with other warp-capable races - mostly for trade."
"Correct," Narli used his hands to indicate many finger shaped ships approaching Lirik's sandwich. "Skip a hundred years or so of the Qovakian union being formed. Then arrives the K'Tani from somewhere on the very outskirts of the galaxy itself. They are a powerful military species with many XXXXresources. As their Empire spreads, so their influence and numbers grow until they finally penetrate Qovakia. In time, they manage to conquer each and every member world, while at the same time plundering those worlds that had been left alone by the Qovakians."
Lirik picked up the thread. "And so the K'Tani jihad continued until their campaign was halted at the impenetrable borders of Tholian space. Time passes, blah blah blah," Lirik gestured as if to ignore the decades of hardship and torment. "Then the inadequate Vekarian-led rebellion is helped by the Ore and the K'Tani are overthrown. Then Starfleet arrived-"
"No, Yeoman," Narli waved both hands in front of Lirik's face. "You are missing a crucial piece. The Ore were a mostly peaceful, spiritual people who had many traditions and strange rituals. One of which was their entire number - millions apparently - would make a centennial pilgrimage through Qovakian space - what had by then become K'Tani space. The K'Tani, of course, attacked them, thinking them a threat."
"How do you know so much about the Ore?" Lirik was surprised at this amount of detail, and a little bitter that his constant work for the Federation representatives prevented him from finding out more during the first few weeks in the Outer Zone. Even that last night on Vekaria before the invasion he had opted to drink and enjoy the music rather than talk to the locals and build on the picture of knowledge he already had. He felt foolish.
Narli twisted his mouth into a kind of smile. "Does it matter?"
"Fine," Lirik crossed his arms. "But I thought we were sharing."
Narli ignored the snub. "So the K'Tani attacked and decimated the Ore, allegedly without provocation. They decimated the Ore Armada and effectively threw what survivors were left into the hands of the Qovakian rebel leaders," Narli paused and swallowed before he continued. "The Ore were dramatically changed by the experience, it is said. They became ugly, super-strong, almost invincible creatures of immense will and determination. Twisted by the instant near-genocide of their people and horrors of what the K'Tani had done to those families who were captured. In fact, the Ore became so extremely dangerous that the rebel leaders kept them apart from other rebel soldiers and far away from Qovakian citizens because they were considered such a liability."
"You mean, very few people actually saw them?" Lirik interjected.
"Apparently. Though I must say, Yeoman, that I have no hard evidence to support any of this," Narli admitted. "But it is the consistent picture our people built over the past few weeks. As soon as we became suspicious of a missing link in the Qovakian story everyone in the Andorian delegation was ordered by Andorian intelligence to gather as much information as possible. It was a difficult task dealing only with personal accounts, rumours and what little information we could glean from official records."
Lirik nodded. "The Federation also heard rumours about the Ore as soon as they arrived on Helub," he checked his timepiece - Leonard was taking his time. "But the police, politicians and red tape - not to mention lack of available files - hindered every attempt at detective work. The Qovakian secret police did a brilliant job of diversion. But it sounds like your party got more than Starfleet Intelligence. Tell me more about these Ore people. What exactly did they look like?"
"I have not seen an image, but their spiny, black bodies are spoken of as being the colour of death itself," Narli raised his eyebrows at the fabled description yet Lirik was thinking logically and laterally. "Anyway, back to the plot. The Ore took the rebellion into a new and bloody era. Though their missions were daring and often suicidal, the ferocity and consistency of attacks changed the rebel's cause quickly in their favour."
"Legendary space-faring warriors - and heroes," Lirik said to himself. "It was the Ore who overthrew the K'Tani, not the Qovakians."
Narli nodded. "Precisely. Though reduced to only few in number - a mere thousand or so - they went ahead of the rebels into every battle and led many suicidal - but critical - missions over the few years of their remaining existence, steadily increasing the rebel strength and encouraging others to join. The K'Tani had underestimated the rebellion's potential for success and realised that defeat could be imminent. Finally they massed forces for a last ditch confrontation." Narli cocked an antenna and looked up - Fraxon had returned alone. Lirik looked over Narli's shoulder to the young flushed man.
"He's on his way, Sir," Fraxon called cheerily. Lirik raised a thumb in acknowledgement and turned back to the Ambassador.
"On the eve of battle, the Qovakians secretly decided that this was a battle they could not afford to lose. They were paranoid that the Ore had become a little too hungry for victory, despite the Ore's assurances that they would be quickly victorious if united. So they opted to hold back. The Ore engaged the enemy, too late realising that the majority of their Qovakian friends would not be coming for a while. The betrayal gave them an added fury, and they all but single-handedly decimated the K'Tani fleet. Of course, they were all wiped out in the process, but by the time they were the Qovakians had arrived to pick off the last remaining K'Tani ships."
Lirik nodded solemnly, looked up and locked eyes with the older man.
Licking the soft white hairs caressing his top lip, Narli concluded. "Freedom was once more resumed. Those surviving K'Tani who were not killed for war crimes were sterilised and incarcerated."
"But not all of them?" Lirik scratched his ear, noticing that Fraxon kept looking in his direction with a nervous - or was it curious - glint in his eye.
"There's no evidence to suggest that the Qovakians pursued the escaped K'Tani beyond Qovakian borders. Indeed the K'Tani were known to have other fleets in more distant regions of the Qovakia, but again there was no mention of any truce or treaty with the K'Tani government or an outside military leader," Narli said.
"The Qovakians must have known that another invasion could follow at some point in the future," Lirik nodded. "It was just a matter of time."
The Ambassador dropped his arms and played with his nails. "The Qovakian Government is mostly made up of former rebel leaders. When our first contact was made in the Outer Zone they must have seen us as an unexpected but immediate opportunity for alliance."
"Absolutely," Lirik straightened his posture. "They would have realised that without the Ore people to protect them the next time around, they would need outside help in holding off any future K'Tani invasion. So when Starfleet's powerful ships arrived we must have been seen as a gift from the Gods. The Qovakians must have decided it would be a neat idea to have more of that kind of company along."
Narli grasped his hands together, checking over his shoulder, finally realising himself that it was taking Leonard a long time to arrive. "So they then invited every other race in the Alpha Quadrant to come along to the party - the Romulans, the Cardassians, they didn't care who: it was just a case of the more military capability the better."
"I think they were in the process of drawing up military treaties with several nations," Lirik said referring to the transparancy he couldn't translate.
"We trusted the Qovakians and they betrayed us," Narli said.
"It's much worse than that, Ambassador," Lirik leaned into the bulkhead. "They may have been driven to silence because of the shame they felt for their betrayal of the Ore. Had we known that it may have been enough for us to withdraw - or at least be cautious." Lirik's head was spinning a little from their brainstorm. A sick feeling ground at his belly. "If your intelligence provided all this, then Starfleet's top brass must presumably have known the same. Possibly even the high council." He looked up at Narli. "The truth would have come out eventually, so why didn't anyone on our side blow the whistle and stop any more civilians from coming through the wormhole? For that matter, why didn't they order an immediate retreat of everyone that had arrived so far?" He hung his head.
"There could be any number of reasons," the Ambassador gently slapped Lirik's arm. "As you well know, Lirik."
Lirik swallowed, then humphed. He hated the ridiculous aspects of intelligence policy and had long since learned never to try and work out why things happened as they did, but rather to just do the best job possible and move on. "So it's the same old story, Ambassador. The ones in power knew about the possibility of conflict, but not the certainty of it, so to keep up appearances or maybe through blind arrogance chose instead not to act?
"Ours is not to reason why," Narli grinned. It was the first line of the unofficial spy credo.
Lirik grinned back. "Ours is just to do and die."
Narli nodded and slipped his hands into his low pockets. "For what it's worth we ourselves found no hard evidence that any K'Tani were still at large, there was no reason to make such a quick reaction."
"But we people had no choice in the matter," Lirik chewed his cheek. "It's incredible bravado, isn't it," he said, "the Qovakians must have known that at some point we would find out the truth. Maybe they assumed the military conflict would happen before that took place."
"Why else would the Qovakian Government get themselves and my fellow delegates to safety before things got ugly?" Narli said.
Lirik looked up with sudden realisation. "Jesus, I wonder what happened to them? Why didn't the bloody Qovakians at least warn us of the attack?"
"Perhaps they didn't know themselves until it was too late," Narli suggested.
Lirik felt a hot wash of anger at Narli's platitudes. "Not by my fucking timing it wasn't. Starfleet were destroyed because they were caught by surprise. And not just us - the Klingons, the Cardassians; perhaps not the Romulans, but that remains to be seen."
"I myself only pieced the puzzle together once we were aboard the Fantasy," the Andorian admitted, in a way trying to make Lirik feel better. "Given our situation and our new policy of sharing information, I suppose we should take all of this to the Captain?"
"Not me," Lirik said surprisingly. "He doesn't have time for me as it is, and I don't want to end up cleaning toilets on this old tub while he fumbles his way through this situation. It would be much better coming from you. Though he'll want to know why you've been quiet for so long."
"Simple," Narli said, "it wouldn't have made any difference."
Finally Leonard stepped out of the turbolift along with Murak, the Romulan.
"Yeoman, what is it exactly you want to do?" he asked proficiently, clutching onto a yellow canvas bag full of tools. Leonard looked a little odd because he had removed his mustard undershirt, wearing only his grey tunic that was unzipped to just below his muscular chest. White blonde hairs licked around the zipper, probably catching occasionally and hurting like buggery, Lirik thought.
"The quarantine seal is active, but I'd like to take a look at what's going on in there," Lirik responded. He walked up beside the broad man, hearing the faint singing of the German's breathing process as he used his large nostrils. "I thought we could manually seal off the standby bay, irradiate it from potential biohazards and enter that way - at least we could get a good look at what's inside the main shuttle deck."
"You don't have time for all that," a woman's voice called from behind the group of men. The figure pushed forward - a youngish woman with pronounced gills and other facial markings. From the blood stained sleeves and tunic, Lirik guessed she was the remaining medic from the sick bay. "They must have used the quarantine seal for a reason - what if they're dying in there?"
A gentle hand cupped Lirik's shoulder - it was Fraxon. "Excuse me, but we have a number of radiation suits."
Lirik locked eyes with the woman, but rather than arguing his strategy, he instead thought about the alternative. "What about a rad suit? Would that provide enough protection?" The woman shrugged - Lirik wasn't sure either. "Commander?"
Leonard cupped his beard and opened his mouth in thought revealing his wide pink tongue and bright white teeth. The engineer shrugged.
"Well, okay," Lirik said, "we'll just have to chance it. We'll limit the number going in to minimise risk. Myself, Miss…?"
"Hebash, Veana K'Rana Hebash," she said a little more nervous than before.
"Okay Veana, also the Ambassador and … is it Kro'Nar?" Lirik in fact knew that the name was Kro'Ner (Kro'Nar was a female name in Klingon), but wanted to test the man's reaction.
"It is Kro'NER," he said with a respectful but at the same time antagonistic lilt.
"Kro'Ner, sorry. Would one of your colleagues please inform the Captain of our intentions?" Lirik asked.
"WE are not messengers," the young, wild looking Klingon spat with venom.
"I will go," one of the Vulcan attendants, still wearing skimpy material over his muscular frame, stepped forward.
"Thank you. Fraxon, bring enough rad suits for everyone if you can," Lirik felt the gentle brush of the man's hand along his shoulder blades as he departed. A curious thing to do, and Lirik couldn't be sure of what the young Helan was up to making such moves on him. He turned to the Ambassador. "Let's just keep this between you and me for now?"
Narli nodded and as Lirik turned away he smiled broadly. For him, this had so far been a tremendous day of achievement.
ACT 3