The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [229]
He recalled that the besieged city, Amber, had been the home port of the S.S. Kobayashi Maru.
EIGHTY
Day Forty-Three, Month of T’ke’Tas
Sunday, June 20, 2156
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
KHAZARA’S MINIATURE, GHOSTLIKE HOLOIMAGE materialized about a hand’s width above the massive desk, giving Valdore the momentary impression that the heavy sherawood beneath the figure had suddenly developed antigravity properties.
“You have proved my objections to be groundless, Admiral,” the newly minted vice admiral said. “Your decision to divert most of the D’Neva and Hlai’vna attack groups to K’Feria has proved to be a wise one.”
Though he knew others had seen it as a risky gamble—a gamble that had cost the Empire dearly in both lives and resources—Valdore continued to believe that he had merely made a pragmatic trade: the worlds that the hevam knew as Deneva and Altair VI in exchange for K’Feria, better known to the enemy as Kaferia, or Tau Ceti IV.
That planet was a beachhead superior to any other the fleet had yet seized, for it was closer to Earth than even Thhaei, ancestral Vulcan. And as such it was worth at least twice the price of any of the other planets that Romulan forces had seized and occupied elsewhere in Coalition space.
Valdore allowed his lips to curl into an ironic half-smile as he regarded his newest junior flag officer. “Your promotion is safe, Khazara. You needn’t continue to kiss my aehf any more than duty absolutely requires.”
Khazara chuckled. “My apologies, Admiral. But I haven’t finished kissing your aehf yet. Please allow me to finish, so that I can move on to kicking it.”
“Continue, please,” Valdore said, folding his large hands across his desktop. Khazara had always been plainspoken to a fault, even as a lowly centurion; it was a quality that Valdore prized—at least up to a certain hard-to-define point that most of his subordinates seemed loath to approach too closely.
“I must also confess that the consequences of redeploying from the Haakonan border region have been significantly less dire than I had predicted. With K’Feria in our hands and the Haakonan supply lines apparently interrupted, fortune has chosen to favor the Romulan Star Empire in both our current theaters of war.”
“You’re too kind, Vice Admiral,” said Valdore, sensing that his subordinate had concluded the lhiet-polishing phase of his communication. “But...” He trailed off, encouraging Khazara to continue, and to venture into less complimentary territory.
“But we cannot count on such happy circumstances continuing forever, Admiral,” Khazara said. “The Haakonans are extremely clever people, as well as extraordinarily patient. We haven’t isolated them permanently from their offworld supplies of war matériel. They still have ample potential to cause us grave trouble—unless we deal with them the way you dealt with the Coridans.”
Valdore sat back in his chair, stunned but trying hard not to show it. As blunt as he had come to expect Khazara to be, he hadn’t expected him to invoke the ghosts of Coridan Prime, a world Valdore had essentially destroyed, merely to constrict the enemy’s dilithium supplies.
It wasn’t that Valdore was shy about causing destruction; such things were part and parcel of war. He had no problem trading the lives of some for the lives of many, particularly when the losses were among military personnel who understood the hazards of the job and the cold iron of the chain of command. He even recognized the need to execute the relatively small, mostly civilian populations of the hevam outposts his forces took, in the interests of Romulan state security.
But the indiscriminate destruction of enemy worlds, the wholesale slaying of hundreds of millions of noncombatant inhabitants, was another