Reap the Whirlwind

Lugok’s face became a twisted grimace of disgust. “You mock me,” he said. “You mock our dead. Have you no honor?”

Karumé shot back, “Have you no common sense? All the evidence points to one attacker for all three incidents.”

“The Federation would not be the first to make a false-flag attack on its own to hide a strike against another,” Lugok said.

Puffed up with indignation, Jetanien boomed in reply, “Preposterous! Your ship in orbit has monitored every being in a Starfleet uniform on the planet since it arrived. How could we have perpetrated such an atrocity without being detected?”

The portly Klingon shook his index finger angrily at them. “Absence of evidence is hardly proof of i

“With what weapons?” asked Karumé. “They have barely enough small arms to outfit a handful of peace officers.”

A bitter smile brought no levity to Lugok’s ma

“Technically, it’s not our colony,” Karumé said. “It refused the protectorate treaty, so we have no jurisdiction.”

Lugok harrumphed. “The presence of your Starfleet vessel robs that claim of credibility.”

Beside her, Jetanien made some dry scraping sounds with his beak. It was an affectation that she had learned was used to express a

“Ambassador,” said Jetanien, “I propose we end this charade. We both know what attacked our survey teams and the colonists.”

“What I know,” retorted Lugok, “is that the battle cruiser veS’Hov is on its way to discourage any further acts of aggression by Starfleet—or its pathetic civilian proxies.”

Adopting an equally combative tone, Jetanien replied, “Then it’s only fair to warn you that the Starship Endeavour will be arriving at Gamma Tauri in less than twenty hours—to discourage your people from taking any rash actions.”

“Splendid, more guns,” Karumé interjected, shaming both ambassadors to silence. “That’ll solve everything.”

Captain Kutal marched onto his bridge with long strides and a short fuse. “Enough excuses,” he snapped at his first officer. “Ohq’s had six hours to make repairs. Are we ready or not?”

Commander BelHoQ left an auxiliary tactical station to fall in beside the captain. “We have the backup sensor array func—”

“Yes or no?” Kutal glowered at BelHoQ. “Are we ready?”

BelHoQ struggled to suppress the snarl that was tugging at his mouth. “We can navigate,” he said.

“That’s a yes,” Kutal said, dropping into his chair. “Helm, contact spaceport control. Tell them we’re leaving.”

As the helm officer began the departure protocol, BelHoQ stepped closer to the captain and advised him in a low voice, “Our main sensor array is still down, sir. We’ll be at a disadvantage if we go into battle without it.”

Regarding him with narrowed eyes, Kutal asked, “How long to get it working?”

“At least fifteen hours,” BelHoQ said.

Kutal growled and faced forward. “We have to go now. Fix it on the way.” At the forward console, the helmsman turned his chair to face the captain, who barked, “What is it?”

“The dockmaster reports a malfunction clearing moorings,” the young pilot said. “Docking clamps have lost power on the station’s side, and the supply umbilicals won’t release.”

The captain ignored his first officer’s accusatory stare and issued orders quickly. “Tell them to release the clamps manually. Have Ohq send teams EVA to clear the umbilicals.”

Lieutenant Krom, the second officer, turned from the ship’s status console to report, “Pressure spike in umbilicals three, four, nine, and eleven, Captain. Power surge in life support.”

Immediately, the overhead lights flickered, then paled. The gentle hum of the ship dropped to a low moan and then went silent. Kutal’s jaw clenched as he waited for someone—anyone—to speak. “In the name of Fek’lhr,” he shouted, “someone report!”

The first officer joined Krom and watched the console light up with warning signals. “Multiple pump malfunctions,” he said. “Reflow valves jamming open…” Both sets of doors at the aft end of the bridge slid open. “Portals opening ship-wide—”

“Seal off the cargo deck,” Kutal ordered, to prevent the lower decks of the ship from being vented into space.

BelHoQ answered, “Only interior hatches are opening, sir. Outer doors secure.”

Kutal decided he’d had enough. He slapped the button on the arm of his chair and opened a cha

Ohq’s reply squawked from the speaker. “Engineering here!”

“What’s going on down there?”

The chief engineer sounded terrified and irritated. “Power spikes, probably a computer virus or—” He stopped. Over the comm Kutal heard Ohq talking in angry whispers to someone else before he finished, “Overpressure in the main recycling tank!”

The bridge crew traded confused looks. Kutal directed a questioning glance at BelHoQ. “Overpressure in the what?”

He got his answer in the form of a deep boom followed by a low whoosh—and a gag-inducing stench. In the stuttering light he saw a cascade of dark sludge rush out of the lavatory in the port corridor. From the starboard head came a putrid spray of liquid-chemical waste and fluid excrement. It was a steady eruption: twin geysers of fetid slime coating the deck ankle deep and pouring down the passageways into every compartment, including the bridge.

Overpowered by the grotesque odor, Kreq and Krom doubled over and added their emesis to the deepening mess that defiled the bridge of the Zin’za. Tonar turned his back on his comrades and vomited across his tactical console.

BelHoQ looked down at the ship’s status monitor, then back at the captain. “Every lavatory on every deck, sir.” He coughed and struggled to breathe. “Apparently, the spaceport’s waste system is backing up into ours.”

Though Kutal was seething with a blood fury unlike any he had ever felt before, his voice was deathly quiet as he said to BelHoQ, “Seize the port. Find the saboteurs. Kill them. Now.”

“I thought you said we didn’t have time,” BelHoQ replied.

Kutal shot him a murderous glare. “We’ll make the time.”

The Klingon soldiers’ boots were still coated with foul-smelling wet filth as they stormed through the Borzha II spaceport, rounding up anyone and everyone who wasn’t one of their own.

BelHoQ was in charge of the siege, and he orchestrated it with brutal efficiency. His men left no compartment unsearched, no locker unopened. A skeleton crew had been left aboard the Zin’za with the captain, freeing most of the ship’s more than four hundred perso

“Please,” mewed Bohica, the spaceport’s pathetic weakling of an administrator. “There’s no need to hold all these people, is there? The galley staff hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“I’ve eaten in your commissary,” BelHoQ said. “I assure you, they have done many things wrong.”

Scores of civilians were dragged past, kicking, protesting their i

So far the search process had consumed nearly four hours of his time. More than eight hundred people lived and worked aboard the spaceport, and few had come willingly when his men had begun rounding them up in the cargo bay for mass detention.

Content to direct the operation from the administrator’s office, BelHoQ was having second thoughts about permitting Bohica to remain as a fair witness to the proceedings. For one thing, the man was an inveterate whiner. “This is outrageous,” Bohica complained, standing in front of what had been, until four hours ago, his own desk. “This was not part of our agreement! If even one of my people is harmed, my world will have to rethink its decision to let you use our port!”