Orphans - Kevin Killiany [15]
“A navigational array would make sense,” Gomez was saying. “The ship’s rotation would provide continuous triangulation.”
“That’s a lot of firepower for a fledgling space force to deliver,” the black-haired male—tactical systems specialist?—observed. “I wonder if this ship was the common threat that unified the Dancidii.”
Tev shrugged, dismissing the speculation. “Either their impacts turned the vessel or the crew attempted evasive maneuvers. In either case the ship’s course was altered. Extrapolating from the age of the ship and its limited maneuverability renders eight possible points of origin, all beyond the range of Federation exploration.”
Kortag grunted. Clearly not satisfied, but resigned to accepting the Federation’s limitations.
“You will download these speculations and all of your hard data to memory crystal,” he ordered, rising. Kairn and Langk rose with him. “We will collect it in four hours. The Empire will remember your efforts.”
He strode toward the door. For a heartbeat, Kairn thought the security chief was going to block their way. But responding to either an unseen signal or her own judgment, she moved well clear of their path.
“Explain yourself.” The human captain’s voice, speaking again in Klingon, caught them just as the automatic door opened.
Kortag paused just within the room. “It is a Klingon problem.” He stated the obvious without turning. “Klingons will deal with it.”
“The ship is in Federation space,” Captain Gold pointed out. “And will be for eight more days.”
“Your Federation asked us to come.”
“To work with us,” Gold said. “This is a joint mission.”
Kortag gave no sign he heard the words, much less granted their validity. He stepped forward.
“Our intent is to save the thousands of beings aboard that vessel,” Gold stated flatly. “You are welcome to either help us do that or get the hell out of Federation space.”
The human’s voice lacked Klingon heat, but so did a knife blade.
Kortag whirled at the threshold, his eyes blazing. Langk and Kairn stepped clear, but their captain didn’t charge. Instead he stalked back to stand behind his chair at the head of the table.
“The Klingon Empire does not exterminate helpless peoples,” he growled; his raised hand forestalled response. “Do not insult me by denying your insinuation.”
“Your choice, sir,” Captain Gold said in the same flat tone. “Do you go or stay?”
Kortag swept the Federation engineers with his glare, coming at last to the Starfleet captain.
“We have a common goal,” he said at last. “What do you propose?”
CHAPTER
9
Three fours of days before the Quest
I ’ve done this before,Fabian Stevens told himself as he watched the giant cylinder rising under his feet. This is no different from landing on the Plat.
On the other hand, the Kursican Incarceration Platform had been spinning in orbit, not streaking through deep space at some ungodly fraction of the speed of light. And he had approached it, not hung in front of it like a Lilliputian matador taunting a planetsized bull. Well, maybe hung was not the right word. He—along with Kairn, Tev, Soloman, Carol Abramowitz, Pattie, and Lauoc—had been beamed into space directly in front of the colony ship moving at exactly the same speed. The plan was to slow down just enough to soft-land.
Stevens found it hard to brake; far too easy to imagine himself smashed to a monomolecular film on the spinning surface. Forcing the remarkably vivid mental image aside, he focused on aligning his flight with the garish, eight-pointed star that had been beamed to the center of the twelve-kilometers-wide plain of metal.
The visual target was intended to provide both orientation and a sense of scale to help them judge their descent. For Stevens the kaleidoscopic effect also added motion sickness, but now did not seem like a good time to bring that up.
Stevens cringed at his own unconscious pun.
Kairn