Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [0]
Part One: The Color of Envy
Chapter 1
Year 2278
Bridge of the Klingon Ship SoSoy Toj
“Today, my excellent warriors, our success will be etched on the gravestones of fifty thousand Federation dead. Today, my excellent warriors, you and I will fall upon nothing less than a fully populated and operational starbase.”
Space boiled out before their supercharged warship, flickering on the giant forward viewscreen. The stars in the distance were the yellow and pink stars of civilization, orbited by planets bubbling with progress, the most populated sector of the settled galaxy. From this point on, all the space before them would be Federation territory.
And the commander’s craggy face flexed with envy.
“Look,” he said, moving his crippled hand. “Even their space is better than ours.”
He sounded deeply moved by what he saw.
Was he? Or were his words for the sake of the crew, who had never seen Federation space before?
The navigation panel was particularly warm in this overpowered vessel. A short reach—the sensor grid controls also were throbbing.
Or perhaps I am the one who is too warm.
“Gaylon, look and appreciate what should have been ours.”
“Yes, sir,” Gaylon answered. Still perplexed then, he stole a moment to turn and look at Kozara, “Sir, how is their space better?”
“Look at it. A thousand luminaries displayed for the naked eye. Tails and sweeps and trunks, nebulae and storms, sparkling anomalies and ore-rich planetary clusters … they have everything. And look where we must live.”
Gaylon peered at the distant suns, the nebulae, and tried to see what Kozara saw, but in truth the space before them looked like any other space he had ever seen in his career.
“We live where we have always lived,” he pointed out, minding his tone. “The Federation took nothing from the Klingons. We live where we evolved, sir, I thought.”
“Yes, but the Federation plots to keep us there, Gaylon. Never forget. Now … order the crew to begin scans. See if our plan is working … if we can move forward.”
Gaylon nodded and threw a gesture to the sensor officer and the two crew members at the warship’s complex helm.
No Klingon had ever piloted a ship like this one before. This was a refitted heavy cruiser, one of the old-style Klingon fighting vessels. Very old, very strong, thick, ready to fend off bolts of disruption from the earliest days of conflict with the Federation, in the days before modern shielding and advanced tracking sensors. Gaylon found himself envious of the helmsman and the navigator, the sensor officer and the tactical specialists here on the bridge. Of all here, he and the commander were the only crew who had no panel to man.
And he wished to touch this ship, to work it. There was something to be said for a lower rank.
The commander gazed at the open slate of Federation space and upon it, apparently, he saw etched his future.
“My new son will have a famous father,” he murmured as Gaylon and the other bridge officers watched. “He will be Zaidan, son of Kozara, destroyer of an entire starbase, victorious disruptor of an entire sector … and all will bow before him.”
Gaylon clamped his mouth shut. What was the point of speaking? Kozara was looking at glory and there was no turning his eye.
“This, warriors, is the culmination of months of preparation and plot,” Kozara continued, not really speaking to any of them. “Starbase 12 is one of the Federation’s longest established starbases. For months we have introduced operatives—spies—into the workings of the starbase. Our operatives have fulfilled their purpose now and have evacuated the station. Because of that work, Starbase 12 is experiencing a power shutdown. They are running on emergency power only, meaning … they have no weapons. Gaylon, inform the crew of the second stage of events.”
“Yes, commander.” Gaylon shook himself from his surprise—he hadn’t understood that his commander had shifted from hopeful reverie to an address of the bridge crew.
In any case, he turned to the other officers and struggled to gather his thoughts and