The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [147]
“Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to test a new countermeasure is to actually try it out in battle,” Shosetsu said. He paused to drain his glass. “Even the ones that turn out to be useless.”
Realizing he was no longer hungry, Shosetsu pushed his plate forward slightly, leaving the meal half eaten. There are worse things than uselessness, he thought. Like paranoia and fatalism.
The keening of an electronic boatswain’s whistle interrupted the uncomfortable silence that ensued. Dunsel walked to the companel mounted on a nearby bulkhead and punched the “receive” button.
“Bridge to Captain Dunsel,” said a crisp, efficient female voice.
“Dunsel here, Hendricks. Go ahead.”
“Procyon’s systemwide warp-detection alarm has begun to develop an anomalous cascading pattern of node failures, all concentrated in a small volume of space near the system’s edge.”
Dunsel frowned, evidently impatient. “What do you make of it?”
“Captain, it looks a lot like the node-failure pattern that occurred in the Altair system just before the Romulan incursion there.”
“Tactical Alert,” Dunsel said, speaking with a decisiveness that went a long way toward exorcising the bad feelings that had plagued Shosetsu throughout the meal. “Get me General Shran, asap. I’m on my way to the bridge.”
Shosetsu rose from the table and followed Dunsel to the hatchway. Useless or not, he thought, here we come.
Firstmoon, Fesoan Lor’veln Year 464
Wednesday, March 10, 2156
I.G.S. Weytahn, the outskirts of the Procyon system (Andoria)
Shran hated it when Jhamel had bad premonitions, mainly because they had a terrible and inconvenient habit of coming true. The moment after he closed the subspace channel that connected him with the transceiver in the dwelling that he and his three shelthreth mates shared beneath Andoria’s northern ice fields, this morning proved to be no exception.
As Shran strode briskly from his austere cabin to the bridge of his new command, the I.G.S. Weytahn, Subcommander Nras filled Shran in on the details of what had happened. Several adjacent sensor nodes on the outer periphery of the system’s warp-field detection grid had just gone down, and the pattern of new failures was spreading rapidly inward toward Andoria and her sister planets. Fortunately, the epicenter of the trouble was occurring on the same side of the system that the Weytahn was presently patrolling.
Something very bad could be coming, and very quickly. And as the head of the newly formed Andorian Imperial Guard unit charged with the monitoring and defense of the cursedly unreliable defense grid that the cowardly Vulcans had so graciously “loaned” to the Andorian government, it was chief among General Shran’s new duties to repel whatever hostile force was on its way.
“I will not permit this enemy to strike at our vitals by blinding our defense network,” Shran said, trying to encourage his restive crew as he took his seat at the center of the small but well-armed warship’s bustling command deck. “Add at least ten Yravas-class fighter craft to the support squadron, and take us out to the gap in the grid,” he told Thras, the helmsman. “I want to take a good look at whatever vermin are trying to burrow under our fences before we destroy them.”
Of course this was no mere nuisance infestation of grelths; no one present could have had any doubt that the pests in question today were Romulans.
“We are being hailed by both of the visiting Starfleet ships, General,” said sh’Rreev, the young shen who was running the Weytahn’s comm network, once the squadron had gotten under way. “They are requesting an informational update and offering their assistance.”
“We should not be too quick to share the glory of this kill with the pinkskins,” said Nras, who was standing at Shran’s immediate right and speaking in an aggressive whisper. “Especially when the Romulans appear to be using a tactic our human ‘allies’ may well