• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Despite his best efforts to moderate his reaction to his executive officer’s words, Shran’s antennae betrayed him, standing almost straight up before flattening backward against the curve of his white-haired scalp. There had been a time not all that long ago when he might have agreed wholeheartedly with Nras’s greed for battle prestige, if not with his paranoia. But his new life among the pacifistic Aenar had taught him much about the wages of unchecked violence, the value and necessity of considering consequences, and, above all, the central importance of facing responsibility. And it would be irresponsible in the extreme to refuse the open hand of a friend threatened by a common enemy—especially an enemy who had already tried to pierce Andoria’s defenses on more than one occasion and had been repelled by mere luck and happenstance as much as by strength and military acumen. Increasing one’s reliance on friends might well decrease one’s reliance on luck.

“They are our allies, Nras,” Shran said, carefully modulating his voice to reinforce the message already being sent by the position and electrostatic charge of his antennae—a warning to his overeager subordinate that he was treading dangerously. “Remember, the pinkskin who discovered the Romulans’ method of using sublight craft to pierce our defenses is Malcolm Reed, who serves under Archer aboard Enterprise. I consider Archer and his crew friends. And Reed is no more a Romulan collaborator than Archer is.”

“As you say, General,” Nras said, though it was clear from the roused state of his own quickly shifting antennae that he still needed some convincing.

Shran paused momentarily to reflect upon how the attacks at the pinkskin colonies at Deneva and Altair, to say nothing of the Andorian world of Threllvia IV, had been preceded by almost identical warp-field detection failures. He also considered how much more forthright the pinkskins had been about sharing the best of their expertise, their personnel, and even their ships with Andoria than had any other Coalition member, including even the Tellarites. The humans had even sent the Andorian Imperial Guard and the other Coalition militaries the rough specs for several prospective countermeasures against the much-feared Romulan “remote-hijack weapon,” in the evident hope that the allies would soon begin collectively refining the initial designs by testing them in actual combat.

Despite their aloof airs of superiority and the relative technological advancement they enjoyed in comparison to the pinkskins, the Vulcans still had much to learn from them about how to treat allies.

Shran pointedly turned his back upon Nras, whose fuming silence filled the air like a static charge. “Put the Earth-ship captains on the screen,” he said to sh’Rreev at the comm station. “They will fly at our side today, if that is their wish.”

U.S.S. Yorktown NCC-108

Nearly twenty minutes had passed since General Shran had officially invited the two Starfleet vessels to join his squadron on its emergency excursion to the outer edge of the system’s lonely and deep-frozen Kuiper belt.

Seated behind the Yorktown’s still-battle-singed helm console, Travis Mayweather watched the bridge’s forward viewscreen anxiously, knowing full well what he was about to see even before the squadron reached visual range of whatever it was that had already crippled such a wide swath of the local warp-field detection grid. Because the system’s white F-type primary star, Procyon, was somewhat brighter than Sol, the Yorktown’s computer needed to perform very little enhancement to the image that appeared moments later: a group of perhaps a dozen small, sleek fighter craft, each one’s belly displaying the bright red plumage and viciously sharpened claws of a predatory bird.

“Fourteen vessels total,” said Lieutenant Albertson at tactical. “None of them giving off warp-field emissions, and therefore all moving at far closer to space-normal speed than to c.”

“I am detecting one warp field, though,” Ensign Giannini said