Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [50]
Someone at Starfleet, he had no doubt, was trying to ruin him at the very least, and more likely to kill him as well as ruin his reputation. He had gone over, in his own mind, all the Starfleet-related jobs he had done for the past few years, and couldn’t quite make the intuitive leap from any of those to his becoming a target. That left only Starbase 311 and the Tholian massacre that had taken place there. That was the wild card, the life event that seemed most likely to have brought him to the attention of his unseen enemy.
Had the whole attack on the starbase been designed to kill him, he wondered? Was the only survivor of the assault really the target? Was someone now trying to finish the job left undone two years before? It seemed unlikely, but he had to consider every possibility. And to do that, he had to try to recall those details he had intentionally boxed away, forever, he had hoped. Somewhere in that incident the key to what was happening to him now might be buried, and if it was there he had to turn it up. So he scanned the records on his padd of his work there, and he worked on remembering.
The Tholian Assembly took the concept of territoriality to new heights. There were various theories espoused for this, but the fact was that Federation relations with the Tholians had always been marginal at best, and very little was known about their forbidding world-a Class-Y planet incapable of sustaining human life-or their culture. Tholians were believed to have very short lifespans, possibly measured in months, although there was speculation that they passed on their consciousness in some kind of crystal memory formation from one generation to the next. Whatever the psychosocial reasons, though, they didn’t tend to stray far from their own territory, and they didn’t like it when others encroached. That was, in fact, a huge understatement-they defended their own territory with rabid determination. As a result, most other cultures tried to keep their distance lest they raise the ire of the Tholians.
Which, given the expansive nature of the Federation, was bound to happen someday. Starbase 311, a free-floating space station, was primarily a scientific field station, in the far outreaches of the Alpha Quadrant. While its stated purposes were science and research, the fact of the matter was that it was the closest Federation outpost to Tholian space and therefore of political and possibly military significance as well. If the Tholians would accept a starbase so near Tholian space, what else might they accept? Whole regions of the Alpha Quadrant were unexplored due to the Federation’s unwillingness to test the Tholian comfort zone, so 311 was intended from the outset to be somewhat of a test case.
Because of its military potential, Kyle had been assigned to the starbase to examine the situation for himself. If the Tholians permitted the starbase to function unmolested, then there might be room for further expansion, and Kyle’s role was to help arrive at that determination. If, on the other hand, the Tholians objected to 311’s presence, Kyle would be on the scene to help strategize a Starfleet response. Either way, his strategic expertise was needed there, and he went where he was needed.
He was there for only a couple of months, as it turned out. A couple of months-but for everyone else on the starbase, their final months. Sitting on his bunk on the Kreel’n ship, he brought up the list of those who had served on Starbase 311 alongside him. Humans, Deltans, Rigelians, Andorians, Vulcans, Saurians… the sons and daughters of at least a dozen worlds had died that day. Looking at the names brought back flashes of memory. Li Tang, brilliant and sarcastic; Wulthrim, whose laughter could shake the starbase on its axis, Sul Sul Getreden, acerbic