Vanguard #3: Reap the Whirlwind by David Mack

Author:David Mack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2007-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

18

Despite being transmitted over a subspace channel across several light-years, Klingon Ambassador Lugok’s rage was evident to Federation Envoy Akeylah Karumé. “The Klingon Empire will not let such a brazen act of aggression go unavenged!” Lugok bellowed, his fury verging on apoplexy. He was in as high a state of dudgeon as Karumé had ever seen.

For all of Lugok’s raw volume, Ambassador Jetanien seemed entirely unimpressed. “Ambassador,” the Chelon said with an air of disdainful hauteur, “has it escaped your notice that within hours of your team being attacked, a Starfleet survey team was slaughtered less than a hundred kilometers away? Or that more than three dozen civilian colonists fell victim to an almost identical mass homicide less than fifty kilometers from your people’s own encampment on Gamma Tauri IV?”

“So you claim,” Lugok said. “They could be the victims of an accident. Our people were cut down like beasts!”

Ignoring the instructions she had received from Jetanien before entering his office for the unofficial, “back-channel” meeting with Lugok, Karumé entered the verbal fray. “Quit your posturing,” she berated the Klingon. “There’s no one on this channel but us. What do you really want?”

“We want your people off that planet!”

Jetanien made some low clucking noises inside his beak. “I’m sure that you do.”

Unfazed, Lugok continued, “We want justice for our dead!”

“What, in your estimation,” Jetanien asked, “would constitute justice under these circumstances, Mr. Ambassador? No, wait. Don’t tell me. Public beheadings? Perhaps something more old-fashioned, like a communal stoning?”

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 innocence. Who else had a motive to attack our troops? If it wasn’t your people, it was the colonists!”

“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 manner. “So you’ll do nothing to punish your colonists?”

“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 annoyance. Whether he was irked at her, at Lugok, or at both of them, she had no idea.

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

“What I

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