If working retail at Christmastime hadn't kicked my butt, this would have been my December challenge entry. As it is, I still don't feel like I've edited enough, or maybe I just don't know my characters well enough yet. Anyway, constructive criticism is gladly accepted, especially as I intend to finish the long arc of this story through several more "episodes".
“Is the cloak working properly?” Captain Lightman’s eyes swung over to the Engineering station, where her first officer, Guna, monitored the new cloak.
He gestured helplessly with a tentacled hand. “Seems to be, but maybe we’re leaving a wake or something we don’t know about. It’s never been done -- a cloak on a regular warp drive, I mean. The Romulans use a quantum singularity drive and --”
He was cut short as a Klingon disruptor volley slammed into their unshielded aft quarter. People and loose objects tossed about the bridge. Lights flickered, then died. The red alert klaxon sounded automatically until the captain regained her feet and slammed a hand against the button to turn it off. “Status!”
Guna swore wetly, his facial tentacles knotting under the pressure. “Overloaded every system, cloak’s down along with everything else. I’m going below,” he said, already moving for the corridor door.
Lightman sat down and braced herself for another shot. It never came.
“Tupeno. Communications is a priority. I suspect the Klingon wants to gloat.”
“They could just board, our shields--”
“Kino, shouldn’t you be working on getting our weapons back up?”
“I have communications,” Ensign Tupeno reported.
“You’re kidding. Already?” Lightman narrowed her eyes at the gynoid. “We don’t even have main lights back.”
“My systems weren’t shorted out,” Tupeno said innocently. “Audio-only at the moment, but the Klingon commander is hailing.”
“Open channel.”
“Need some help, human?” The rough, surprisingly female Klingon voice came disconcertingly out of Tupeno’s rosebud mouth.
Lightman answered, in fluent Klingon, “No, I’m good.”
The channel was quiet nearly long enough that Lightman though the Klingon had closed it. Finally, she answered. “Your bravado surprises me, human.”
“You assume I’m human,” Lightman said calmly. “I could very well be Andorian or Tellarite for all you know.”
“Please. The only thing more rare than a female Starfleet captain is a non-human one.”
Lightman had to concede the point, but as a stalling tactic countered, “You also assume I’m the captain.”
The Klingon laughed. “I know you’re dead in space, but your attempt to distract me is very nearly working. I could almost like you, you dishonorable targ.”
“Now what did I do to deserve that?” Lightman asked, genuinely offended. “My little cloaked foray across the border? It’s nothing your people haven’t done a thousand times.”
“No, although we did wonder when you’d get around to it. Stole it from the Romulans, did you?”
“Borrowed. Without asking first,” Lightman demurred.
“Tomato, tomahto,” the Klingon said in perfect English. It was Lightman’s turn to be surprised. If I don’t blow you to the hell you deserve, maybe you will eventually learn to mask your ion wake the way we did,” she continued casually.
“I still don’t know why you want to blow me up. I mean, it sounds like you have a specific revenge in mind, not just the general hostility between our people.”
“Lorentos,” the Klingon said. “I seek justice for the horrors perpetrated by the Federation upon the defenseless Lorentian people.”
“Wait, Lorentos? I’ve never been there. I’ve been out here for the last four years, working on... ah... research.” Lightman racked her brains. “Haven’t your people been enslaving the Lorentians to mine dilithium? Starfleet’s been trying to liberate them.”
“Mine it!” the Klingon roared. “When it’s lying --”
She was cut off and muted as full system power abruptly returned. The phasers would need to charge, but --
“Shields up!” Lightman commanded. “Tupeno, I want visual on this Klingon. Helm, prepare a course back to Starbase 7 -- wait for my signal to engage.”
“Visual, ma’am.” Tupeno unmuted the Klingon, an impressive, sleepy-eyed woman who looked far too young to command a ship.
“It seems, captain, your handlers keep you woefully misinformed,” she said softly. “I leave you with this.” A sharp gesture.
“We’re getting a massive download,” Tupeno reported.
“Standard quarantine,” Lightman snapped. “We don’t need any viruses or worms.”
“When you see this, you’ll wish it was only a virus!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name for my report,” Lightman said coldly.
“Kimara,” the Klingon grinned. “Commander, Border Guard. But I’m sure I’ll see you at Lorentos soon enough. We’re just regrouping after that... Romulan thing.” Kimara waved a hand breezily, a strange gesture for a Klingon but one that looked perfectly normal on her. “And you, madam?”
“Captain Caitlynn Lightman, U.S.S. Zumwalt.”
*
Safely back across the Federation border, en route to Starbase 7, the Zumwalt’s senior staff gathered to debrief.
“The Klingons detected us due to our ion wake, just as she said.” Guna poked at the holographic display at the center of the table. “I still don’t know how to fix that, but I’ve got people on it. The shot that disabled us...”
“How badly is the hull damaged?” Lightman asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “It never touched us. The cloak and nacelles created a harmonic resonance field aft of the main hull, and the disruptor frequency hit in the middle of that field and caused a backwash that wiped out our systems.”
“Did Kimara know it would do that?”
Guna shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Dumb luck, then.” Lightman tapped her fingers. “Tupeno, Rh’khis, what about that download?”
Rh’khis reached across with her prehensile tail to switch the display to video. “No virus or other digital threat. It’s just video -- lots of it. The contents are disturbing.”
They watched the images, apparently taken with a helmet- or shoulder-mounted cam, of a pitched battle. Klingons fought beside indigo-skinned Lorentians, against armor-clad Federation Marines and Starfleet ground forces. As the scenes shifted, a city was destroyed by orbital, presumably ship-based, phaser pulses.
“The Klingons conscripted Lorentians into their army?” Lightman asked, confused. Official reports were that Federation forces were on a liberation mission. But this looked more like killing than liberating.
“No, look,” Tupeno said, fast-forwarding to a quieter moment.
A Lorentian woman, hefting a Klingon disruptor, talked to a mixed group of soldiers. She was giving them orders -- orders the Klingons on screen took without question. “We have intelligence that they’ll attack again tonight, fresh warriors from another starship that’s just arrived. While we’ve got no relief. But since we know they’re coming, we can ambush --”
Lightman reached over and turned it off. “This could be scripted.”
“Doctor?” Rh’khis said, deferring to the ship’s CMO, Angie Menezes.
“Granted I haven’t got a lot to go on, never having met a Lorentian myself, but body language and tone seem to imply she’s spontaneous and sincere.” Menezes shook her head. “I’d say it’s real.”
“So we’re slaughtering Lorentians, not saving them from the Klingons?”
“It appears so, Captain,” Rh’khis agreed.
Lightman tabbed the intercom control on the table. “Ensign Jones, change of course. We’re diverting to Lorentos immediately, best speed.”
“Lorentos, best speed, aye, ma’am,” Jones replied. The stars out the viewport veered just slightly.
“Kino, when you return to the bridge, engage the cloak. Guna, I want you monitoring from Main Engineering. Fix our ion wake issue. You’re all dismissed.”
*
Cait tried to look casual as she dialed Vice-Admiral Keith Allyn’s personal commcode. Coffee cup in one hand, leaning back against her chair, silver hair loose around her shoulders. Hair down always worked in the Academy, anyway, she thought.
After a full minute of ringing, during which she sipped the lukewarm water in her coffee cup out of having nothing better to do, the screen flickered and Keith Allyn appeared.
“Caity! What the hell are you calling for -- I thought you were MIA.” His short-cropped red hair and beard were a sight for sore eyes, and she told him so.
“And I’m not MIA. The mission is classified.” She shifted her eyes away and back. “I’m secure on my end, are you on yours?”
“Yes, of course. You know me, Mr. Paranoid.”
“Admiral Paranoid, I thought.” Her lips turned up a bit at the corners.
“Smartass. So what’s up?”
“Lorentos.”
“The Klingons are making a lot of noise about withdrawing and leaving us to our ‘unjust slaughter’. Were you rerouted there?”
“I’m... diverting. We had some intelligence that something was fishy, and I want to confirm it.”
“Going against orders? Caity, that doesn’t sound like you.”
“I know,” she smiled. “Of the two of us, you were always the maverick.”
“And look where it got me. Desk jockey.” Keith spread his arms as if he were surveying his domain -- all 200 square feet of office space. “Can I ask why you’ve gone rogue?”
“Give a girl orders to steal and then test a Romulan cloaking device, and... well, I’m testing it. Just in a different part of the galaxy than I was assigned.” Cait leaned toward the video pickup. “Keith, there is a genocide happening on Lorentos. And it’s being perpetrated by the Federation. I don’t think this is a matter of a few people on the ground getting out of hand. Most of the ships in orbit are being run by perfectly reputable captains who can control their crews. I think it goes higher than that. I think there are cut orders to slash and burn.”
Keith frowned, his large brows drawing together. “You’re the most sane person I know. And I know you check everything out thoroughly. But Cait... corruption at the top of the food chain?”
She shook her head. “I know. It sounds crazy. But... all these years and nothing more than a few skirmishes with the Klingons, insults slung over the fence with the Romulans... then last year, all of a sudden, we’re landing troops on Lorentos and investing ninety percent of the fleet there? How’s that for crazy?”
“Damn, Caity. So you’ve got your hair down. What do you want me to do?”
She chuckled grimly. “Guess that trick doesn’t work anymore.”
“Oh, it still works. I just know what it means.” He winked.
“Fair enough. I don’t know what you can do to find out who’s behind this. And why. But we need more information, we need to know who’s doing this... so we can stop them.”
“That’s pretty vague, Cait.”
“Everything about this is vague, Keith, except the death tolls.”
He nodded. “I’ll do what I can. And I’ll keep my comm on secure in case you ever want to call to check in.”
“I will when I can. Thanks, Keith. I’ll owe you a drink or three if I ever make it back to Earth.”
“Stay safe, Caity.”
She thumbed off the connection and sat back, just sipping her water and staring at the blank screen for a good minute. Then she sighed, and set back to work. They’d be at Lorentos soon, and she was going on a humanitarian mission.
*
“Obviously there’s no guarantee we’ll avoid an attack,” Lightman said, strapping a phaser to her hip, “but since they’ve just been hit, odds are good these people will be left alone for a while. Doctor, you have everything you need?”
Menezes nodded briefly.
“Your sidearm?”
“Captain, I’ve told you before I am not going to--”
“Phasers have a stun setting, Doctor.”
Menezes muttered beneath her breath, but accepted the phaser Lightman held out to her.
“Okay people, let’s go. And if anyone asks, we stole these things from Starfleet.” She glanced around meaningfully at the medtechs and security guards in their assorted off-duty clothing; they returned the gaze uneasily. Maybe her boot-cut jeans and leather jacket threw them off, but they’d be practical in the Lorentian foothills they were beaming into.
A moment later, the first wave of the away team materialized into the post-sunset dimness outside the refugee camp.
“Who goes?” a voice called out immediately, in the Klingon language.
“Friends,” Lightman returned. “We have food, medical supplies, and a doctor in the next group.”
A frightfully skinny Lorentian male stepped closer, the large muzzle of his Klingon disruptor leading the way. His indigo skin nearly blended into the darkening sky. “That’s a Starfleet transporter you’re using, not Klingon. Why should I assume you’re a friend?”
“Federation transporter,” she corrected. “Not everyone out here is a lemming, following official policy off the cliff. Some of us like to find out for ourselves what’s going on.” She flipped a ration pack across the dozen meters separating them. “We may have... borrowed some things from Starfleet, though.”
The man still didn’t look convinced, but other refugees were starting to gather behind him, many of them children. “You have more food?”
Lightman nodded Alva forward. The gynoid hefted two large crates and carried them to the man’s feet. “More than that if you need it. And a doctor.”
The man glanced back at the group behind him. “All right, you can come in. But no funny business, or you’re all dead before you can blink.”
The group started forward, carrying crates and cases of supplies. Lightman flipped open her communicator and buzzed the ship. “Next group, go.” She waited until the medical group had beamed down, then walked the doctor over to the man.
“I’m Cait,” she told him. “This is Angie, our doctor.”
He nodded. “I’m just the guard, let me take you to our... well, she was the mayor before our city was obliterated. We have several doctors as well, but we’ve run short on supplies so...”
“Thank you.”
They passed the camp’s makeshift hospital, a burrow in the side of a hill which was slightly more stable than the tents and lean-tos under the scrubby conifers, and Menezes broke off to lend what aid she could.
“Are you the doctor?” a man with age-yellowed hair asked her as she approached.
“Yes, and you are?”
“Tangis. Chief of Staff, Artross City Hospital. Or what’s left of it.” He snorted. “Don’t suppose you know anything about Lorentian anatomy?”
“Not a damn thing,” Menezes said boldly, “but if you have bones, I can set them. If you have bleeding wounds, I can bind them.”
“Good enough.” Tangis took off into the burrow, apparently expecting Menezes to follow.
The learning curve wasn’t steep, the Lorentians following the general bipedal hominid anatomy with a few internal placement changes, but stopping to explain her equipment slowed progress. Tangis and the surgeons on his staff still used steel scalpels and threaded sutures. If they’d had anything left to inject, they’d have used hypodermic needles, but anything that could be used up already had been; Menezes refrained from asking about sanitizing procedures and simply handed out large bottles of antiseptic to everyone she met.
Over patients in a large, open-air surgery, she slowly gained the trust of the doctors by proving her “chops”. Eventually they stabilized the worst of the patients, saving organs, amputating limbs when necessary, treating deep phaser burns with the portable dermal regenerator. That last was a favorite of the Lorentian doctors, and Menezes decided she could stand to sacrifice one of them to the cause when she left.
“You know, you’re not so bad for a human,” Tangis said.
“Not all of us are. Doctors, of course, are superior to others,” she grinned. Tangis laughed, the first she’d heard from any Lorentian. “But it just takes one bad egg, one bad decision to plunge our whole race into trouble. The whole Federation.”
“So your group is going to buck the trend and save us all?” Tangis asked.
“We’re going to try,” she shrugged. “At least, that’s what the -- what Cait says. And she’s in charge.”
Tangis nodded, apparently deep in thought. “You’re not the first rebel humans to come here, Angie.”
Menezes looked up sharply from the kit she’d been organizing. “What do you mean?”
“There’s another of your kind here. We’ve been keeping her around for a while. She’s been taking video, and someday, she says, she’ll get home and show it to everyone, and then the war will stop.” Tangis shook his head. “I didn’t think she’d survive, but if you folks are here, and you have transporters...”
“Where is she?” Menezes said softly. “My -- um, Cait needs to know.”
*
Cait, as it turned out, had already found the “other rebel human.”
“Mori Ekelund, Intrepid Girl Reporter, at your service,” the short pile of matted hair and dirty clothes grinned up at Lightman.
“Are you sure you’re human?” she asked in disbelief.
“Are you sure you’re not Starfleet?” Mori retorted. “I mean, come on. We all know you’re Starfleet. We just don’t know if you’re here as spies, or if you’re really a whole starship gone rogue.”
Lightman sighed. “Starship gone rogue. Who slipped?”
“Oh please. You’re doing a textbook first contact, Captain.” Mori pushed a dreadlock away from her eye. “You can’t fool me, I did three years at the Academy before they drummed me out for... discipline issues.”
“Discipline issues I can believe. That you got into the Academy to begin with...”
“Don’t let my current stench fool you. I used to be a perfectly respectable Earth girl. I just... had a higher calling. Speaking of which, do you mind taking some footage back with you? It’s mostly stuff blowing up, but I have some great shots of Lorentos before it got all shot up, and interviews before and current with the folks from Artross here. And very clear shots of Federation Marines charging in here to secure the dilithium...”
“It really is good,” the mayor, Masira, interrupted. “If you could show your people this, perhaps it could stop this madness.”
“Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” she sighed. “But we’re going to try. It’s why we’re here.”
Dr. Menezes and Dr. Tangis came up just then. “Oh, you found her,” Tangis said.
Suddenly, around them, the mood shifted. Masira and Tangis both looked up at the sky. “They’re coming,” Masira said. “They’re coming back for another strafing run. You, rebel Starfleet, transport yourselves out of here before it’s too late. My people can find cover, but --”
“Go,” Lightman agreed, snapping her communicator open. “Chief, lock on to all non-Lorentian lifesigns in this area and get us out of here.”
“Hey, wait!” Mori protested, but she was swallowed up in the swirl of dissembling bodies.
Rogue
“I think they’re following us, sir,” Ensign Kino said.
“Is the cloak working properly?” Captain Lightman’s eyes swung over to the Engineering station, where her first officer, Guna, monitored the new cloak.
He gestured helplessly with a tentacled hand. “Seems to be, but maybe we’re leaving a wake or something we don’t know about. It’s never been done -- a cloak on a regular warp drive, I mean. The Romulans use a quantum singularity drive and --”
He was cut short as a Klingon disruptor volley slammed into their unshielded aft quarter. People and loose objects tossed about the bridge. Lights flickered, then died. The red alert klaxon sounded automatically until the captain regained her feet and slammed a hand against the button to turn it off. “Status!”
Guna swore wetly, his facial tentacles knotting under the pressure. “Overloaded every system, cloak’s down along with everything else. I’m going below,” he said, already moving for the corridor door.
Lightman sat down and braced herself for another shot. It never came.
“Tupeno. Communications is a priority. I suspect the Klingon wants to gloat.”
“They could just board, our shields--”
“Kino, shouldn’t you be working on getting our weapons back up?”
“I have communications,” Ensign Tupeno reported.
“You’re kidding. Already?” Lightman narrowed her eyes at the gynoid. “We don’t even have main lights back.”
“My systems weren’t shorted out,” Tupeno said innocently. “Audio-only at the moment, but the Klingon commander is hailing.”
“Open channel.”
“Need some help, human?” The rough, surprisingly female Klingon voice came disconcertingly out of Tupeno’s rosebud mouth.
Lightman answered, in fluent Klingon, “No, I’m good.”
The channel was quiet nearly long enough that Lightman though the Klingon had closed it. Finally, she answered. “Your bravado surprises me, human.”
“You assume I’m human,” Lightman said calmly. “I could very well be Andorian or Tellarite for all you know.”
“Please. The only thing more rare than a female Starfleet captain is a non-human one.”
Lightman had to concede the point, but as a stalling tactic countered, “You also assume I’m the captain.”
The Klingon laughed. “I know you’re dead in space, but your attempt to distract me is very nearly working. I could almost like you, you dishonorable targ.”
“Now what did I do to deserve that?” Lightman asked, genuinely offended. “My little cloaked foray across the border? It’s nothing your people haven’t done a thousand times.”
“No, although we did wonder when you’d get around to it. Stole it from the Romulans, did you?”
“Borrowed. Without asking first,” Lightman demurred.
“Tomato, tomahto,” the Klingon said in perfect English. It was Lightman’s turn to be surprised. If I don’t blow you to the hell you deserve, maybe you will eventually learn to mask your ion wake the way we did,” she continued casually.
“I still don’t know why you want to blow me up. I mean, it sounds like you have a specific revenge in mind, not just the general hostility between our people.”
“Lorentos,” the Klingon said. “I seek justice for the horrors perpetrated by the Federation upon the defenseless Lorentian people.”
“Wait, Lorentos? I’ve never been there. I’ve been out here for the last four years, working on... ah... research.” Lightman racked her brains. “Haven’t your people been enslaving the Lorentians to mine dilithium? Starfleet’s been trying to liberate them.”
“Mine it!” the Klingon roared. “When it’s lying --”
She was cut off and muted as full system power abruptly returned. The phasers would need to charge, but --
“Shields up!” Lightman commanded. “Tupeno, I want visual on this Klingon. Helm, prepare a course back to Starbase 7 -- wait for my signal to engage.”
“Visual, ma’am.” Tupeno unmuted the Klingon, an impressive, sleepy-eyed woman who looked far too young to command a ship.
“It seems, captain, your handlers keep you woefully misinformed,” she said softly. “I leave you with this.” A sharp gesture.
“We’re getting a massive download,” Tupeno reported.
“Standard quarantine,” Lightman snapped. “We don’t need any viruses or worms.”
“When you see this, you’ll wish it was only a virus!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name for my report,” Lightman said coldly.
“Kimara,” the Klingon grinned. “Commander, Border Guard. But I’m sure I’ll see you at Lorentos soon enough. We’re just regrouping after that... Romulan thing.” Kimara waved a hand breezily, a strange gesture for a Klingon but one that looked perfectly normal on her. “And you, madam?”
“Captain Caitlynn Lightman, U.S.S. Zumwalt.”
*
Safely back across the Federation border, en route to Starbase 7, the Zumwalt’s senior staff gathered to debrief.
“The Klingons detected us due to our ion wake, just as she said.” Guna poked at the holographic display at the center of the table. “I still don’t know how to fix that, but I’ve got people on it. The shot that disabled us...”
“How badly is the hull damaged?” Lightman asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “It never touched us. The cloak and nacelles created a harmonic resonance field aft of the main hull, and the disruptor frequency hit in the middle of that field and caused a backwash that wiped out our systems.”
“Did Kimara know it would do that?”
Guna shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Dumb luck, then.” Lightman tapped her fingers. “Tupeno, Rh’khis, what about that download?”
Rh’khis reached across with her prehensile tail to switch the display to video. “No virus or other digital threat. It’s just video -- lots of it. The contents are disturbing.”
They watched the images, apparently taken with a helmet- or shoulder-mounted cam, of a pitched battle. Klingons fought beside indigo-skinned Lorentians, against armor-clad Federation Marines and Starfleet ground forces. As the scenes shifted, a city was destroyed by orbital, presumably ship-based, phaser pulses.
“The Klingons conscripted Lorentians into their army?” Lightman asked, confused. Official reports were that Federation forces were on a liberation mission. But this looked more like killing than liberating.
“No, look,” Tupeno said, fast-forwarding to a quieter moment.
A Lorentian woman, hefting a Klingon disruptor, talked to a mixed group of soldiers. She was giving them orders -- orders the Klingons on screen took without question. “We have intelligence that they’ll attack again tonight, fresh warriors from another starship that’s just arrived. While we’ve got no relief. But since we know they’re coming, we can ambush --”
Lightman reached over and turned it off. “This could be scripted.”
“Doctor?” Rh’khis said, deferring to the ship’s CMO, Angie Menezes.
“Granted I haven’t got a lot to go on, never having met a Lorentian myself, but body language and tone seem to imply she’s spontaneous and sincere.” Menezes shook her head. “I’d say it’s real.”
“So we’re slaughtering Lorentians, not saving them from the Klingons?”
“It appears so, Captain,” Rh’khis agreed.
Lightman tabbed the intercom control on the table. “Ensign Jones, change of course. We’re diverting to Lorentos immediately, best speed.”
“Lorentos, best speed, aye, ma’am,” Jones replied. The stars out the viewport veered just slightly.
“Kino, when you return to the bridge, engage the cloak. Guna, I want you monitoring from Main Engineering. Fix our ion wake issue. You’re all dismissed.”
*
Cait tried to look casual as she dialed Vice-Admiral Keith Allyn’s personal commcode. Coffee cup in one hand, leaning back against her chair, silver hair loose around her shoulders. Hair down always worked in the Academy, anyway, she thought.
After a full minute of ringing, during which she sipped the lukewarm water in her coffee cup out of having nothing better to do, the screen flickered and Keith Allyn appeared.
“Caity! What the hell are you calling for -- I thought you were MIA.” His short-cropped red hair and beard were a sight for sore eyes, and she told him so.
“And I’m not MIA. The mission is classified.” She shifted her eyes away and back. “I’m secure on my end, are you on yours?”
“Yes, of course. You know me, Mr. Paranoid.”
“Admiral Paranoid, I thought.” Her lips turned up a bit at the corners.
“Smartass. So what’s up?”
“Lorentos.”
“The Klingons are making a lot of noise about withdrawing and leaving us to our ‘unjust slaughter’. Were you rerouted there?”
“I’m... diverting. We had some intelligence that something was fishy, and I want to confirm it.”
“Going against orders? Caity, that doesn’t sound like you.”
“I know,” she smiled. “Of the two of us, you were always the maverick.”
“And look where it got me. Desk jockey.” Keith spread his arms as if he were surveying his domain -- all 200 square feet of office space. “Can I ask why you’ve gone rogue?”
“Give a girl orders to steal and then test a Romulan cloaking device, and... well, I’m testing it. Just in a different part of the galaxy than I was assigned.” Cait leaned toward the video pickup. “Keith, there is a genocide happening on Lorentos. And it’s being perpetrated by the Federation. I don’t think this is a matter of a few people on the ground getting out of hand. Most of the ships in orbit are being run by perfectly reputable captains who can control their crews. I think it goes higher than that. I think there are cut orders to slash and burn.”
Keith frowned, his large brows drawing together. “You’re the most sane person I know. And I know you check everything out thoroughly. But Cait... corruption at the top of the food chain?”
She shook her head. “I know. It sounds crazy. But... all these years and nothing more than a few skirmishes with the Klingons, insults slung over the fence with the Romulans... then last year, all of a sudden, we’re landing troops on Lorentos and investing ninety percent of the fleet there? How’s that for crazy?”
“Damn, Caity. So you’ve got your hair down. What do you want me to do?”
She chuckled grimly. “Guess that trick doesn’t work anymore.”
“Oh, it still works. I just know what it means.” He winked.
“Fair enough. I don’t know what you can do to find out who’s behind this. And why. But we need more information, we need to know who’s doing this... so we can stop them.”
“That’s pretty vague, Cait.”
“Everything about this is vague, Keith, except the death tolls.”
He nodded. “I’ll do what I can. And I’ll keep my comm on secure in case you ever want to call to check in.”
“I will when I can. Thanks, Keith. I’ll owe you a drink or three if I ever make it back to Earth.”
“Stay safe, Caity.”
She thumbed off the connection and sat back, just sipping her water and staring at the blank screen for a good minute. Then she sighed, and set back to work. They’d be at Lorentos soon, and she was going on a humanitarian mission.
*
“Obviously there’s no guarantee we’ll avoid an attack,” Lightman said, strapping a phaser to her hip, “but since they’ve just been hit, odds are good these people will be left alone for a while. Doctor, you have everything you need?”
Menezes nodded briefly.
“Your sidearm?”
“Captain, I’ve told you before I am not going to--”
“Phasers have a stun setting, Doctor.”
Menezes muttered beneath her breath, but accepted the phaser Lightman held out to her.
“Okay people, let’s go. And if anyone asks, we stole these things from Starfleet.” She glanced around meaningfully at the medtechs and security guards in their assorted off-duty clothing; they returned the gaze uneasily. Maybe her boot-cut jeans and leather jacket threw them off, but they’d be practical in the Lorentian foothills they were beaming into.
A moment later, the first wave of the away team materialized into the post-sunset dimness outside the refugee camp.
“Who goes?” a voice called out immediately, in the Klingon language.
“Friends,” Lightman returned. “We have food, medical supplies, and a doctor in the next group.”
A frightfully skinny Lorentian male stepped closer, the large muzzle of his Klingon disruptor leading the way. His indigo skin nearly blended into the darkening sky. “That’s a Starfleet transporter you’re using, not Klingon. Why should I assume you’re a friend?”
“Federation transporter,” she corrected. “Not everyone out here is a lemming, following official policy off the cliff. Some of us like to find out for ourselves what’s going on.” She flipped a ration pack across the dozen meters separating them. “We may have... borrowed some things from Starfleet, though.”
The man still didn’t look convinced, but other refugees were starting to gather behind him, many of them children. “You have more food?”
Lightman nodded Alva forward. The gynoid hefted two large crates and carried them to the man’s feet. “More than that if you need it. And a doctor.”
The man glanced back at the group behind him. “All right, you can come in. But no funny business, or you’re all dead before you can blink.”
The group started forward, carrying crates and cases of supplies. Lightman flipped open her communicator and buzzed the ship. “Next group, go.” She waited until the medical group had beamed down, then walked the doctor over to the man.
“I’m Cait,” she told him. “This is Angie, our doctor.”
He nodded. “I’m just the guard, let me take you to our... well, she was the mayor before our city was obliterated. We have several doctors as well, but we’ve run short on supplies so...”
“Thank you.”
They passed the camp’s makeshift hospital, a burrow in the side of a hill which was slightly more stable than the tents and lean-tos under the scrubby conifers, and Menezes broke off to lend what aid she could.
“Are you the doctor?” a man with age-yellowed hair asked her as she approached.
“Yes, and you are?”
“Tangis. Chief of Staff, Artross City Hospital. Or what’s left of it.” He snorted. “Don’t suppose you know anything about Lorentian anatomy?”
“Not a damn thing,” Menezes said boldly, “but if you have bones, I can set them. If you have bleeding wounds, I can bind them.”
“Good enough.” Tangis took off into the burrow, apparently expecting Menezes to follow.
The learning curve wasn’t steep, the Lorentians following the general bipedal hominid anatomy with a few internal placement changes, but stopping to explain her equipment slowed progress. Tangis and the surgeons on his staff still used steel scalpels and threaded sutures. If they’d had anything left to inject, they’d have used hypodermic needles, but anything that could be used up already had been; Menezes refrained from asking about sanitizing procedures and simply handed out large bottles of antiseptic to everyone she met.
Over patients in a large, open-air surgery, she slowly gained the trust of the doctors by proving her “chops”. Eventually they stabilized the worst of the patients, saving organs, amputating limbs when necessary, treating deep phaser burns with the portable dermal regenerator. That last was a favorite of the Lorentian doctors, and Menezes decided she could stand to sacrifice one of them to the cause when she left.
“You know, you’re not so bad for a human,” Tangis said.
“Not all of us are. Doctors, of course, are superior to others,” she grinned. Tangis laughed, the first she’d heard from any Lorentian. “But it just takes one bad egg, one bad decision to plunge our whole race into trouble. The whole Federation.”
“So your group is going to buck the trend and save us all?” Tangis asked.
“We’re going to try,” she shrugged. “At least, that’s what the -- what Cait says. And she’s in charge.”
Tangis nodded, apparently deep in thought. “You’re not the first rebel humans to come here, Angie.”
Menezes looked up sharply from the kit she’d been organizing. “What do you mean?”
“There’s another of your kind here. We’ve been keeping her around for a while. She’s been taking video, and someday, she says, she’ll get home and show it to everyone, and then the war will stop.” Tangis shook his head. “I didn’t think she’d survive, but if you folks are here, and you have transporters...”
“Where is she?” Menezes said softly. “My -- um, Cait needs to know.”
*
Cait, as it turned out, had already found the “other rebel human.”
“Mori Ekelund, Intrepid Girl Reporter, at your service,” the short pile of matted hair and dirty clothes grinned up at Lightman.
“Are you sure you’re human?” she asked in disbelief.
“Are you sure you’re not Starfleet?” Mori retorted. “I mean, come on. We all know you’re Starfleet. We just don’t know if you’re here as spies, or if you’re really a whole starship gone rogue.”
Lightman sighed. “Starship gone rogue. Who slipped?”
“Oh please. You’re doing a textbook first contact, Captain.” Mori pushed a dreadlock away from her eye. “You can’t fool me, I did three years at the Academy before they drummed me out for... discipline issues.”
“Discipline issues I can believe. That you got into the Academy to begin with...”
“Don’t let my current stench fool you. I used to be a perfectly respectable Earth girl. I just... had a higher calling. Speaking of which, do you mind taking some footage back with you? It’s mostly stuff blowing up, but I have some great shots of Lorentos before it got all shot up, and interviews before and current with the folks from Artross here. And very clear shots of Federation Marines charging in here to secure the dilithium...”
“It really is good,” the mayor, Masira, interrupted. “If you could show your people this, perhaps it could stop this madness.”
“Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” she sighed. “But we’re going to try. It’s why we’re here.”
Dr. Menezes and Dr. Tangis came up just then. “Oh, you found her,” Tangis said.
Suddenly, around them, the mood shifted. Masira and Tangis both looked up at the sky. “They’re coming,” Masira said. “They’re coming back for another strafing run. You, rebel Starfleet, transport yourselves out of here before it’s too late. My people can find cover, but --”
“Go,” Lightman agreed, snapping her communicator open. “Chief, lock on to all non-Lorentian lifesigns in this area and get us out of here.”
“Hey, wait!” Mori protested, but she was swallowed up in the swirl of dissembling bodies.
Kimara's got her own issues, and talking to Lightman was a bit of a last-ditch effort for her. I'm not sure how it's going to work out for her in the end.
