Finish the "Star Trek" story: "The Pelleri Conundrum"

Cafe Society
81

*Captain’s Log, supplemental. A day later, the Klingons have still not responded to my hail. Cmdr. Collins is working closely with Chief Engineer Fisher and Science Officer Nkembe to modify the lateral sensor array; Fisher has privately assured me that he will let me know if any of the proposed modifications endanger the ship or jeopardize our mission in any way. The situation on Pelleri Prime continues to deteriorate, and multilateral negotiations remain suspended.

In light of Vice Adm. Rostow’s involvement, I have sent a complete report to the personal attention of the Starfleet Chief of Staff. She knows me slightly, and I hope that her intervention will clarify if Rostow and Collins are acting in the best interests of the Federation.*

“Captain, we’re being hailed from the capital,” Ens. Gutierrez said from Ops. “It’s Medh, the Lord Chancellor… he’s asking to speak with you.”

“Put him on,” Xiang said, doing her best to conceal her surprise.

The captain had met the Lord Chancellor, the Sovereign’s chief advisor, during the negotiations earlier that week. They had sat next to each other at two of the elaborate meals in the palace, and Medh had struck Xiang as a reasonable man, inclined to ally his people with the Federation. He had said, however, not in so many words and with utmost tact, that the Sovereign was leaning in another direction.

He now appeared on the Bridge main viewscreen, clearly upset. “Capt. Xiang, forgive the intrusion.”

“Not at all,” she replied. “It’s good to hear from you, Lord Chancellor. To what do I owe the honor?”

“I will be blunt, Captain, given the circumstances. The rebels are approaching the city, and it appears unlikely that our forces will be able to stop them. I’m convinced that they have had the active and clandestine support of offworlders - not the Federation, I know, but someone else. The Sovereign is preparing to leave the palace for a secret command post elsewhere, and I will be leaving with him shortly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” She waited for what she suspected would come next.

Medh mopped his brow. “I’m calling to ask that you immediately intervene in this… crisis. Militarily and diplomatically. If you do, and the rebels are defeated, His Majesty has authorized me to offer the Federation exclusive trading and basing rights in our star system. We would also agree to submit an application for membership in the Federation, on whatever basis the Federation Council recommends, within the next two Terran years.”

Xiang was taken aback. This was more than the diplomats in San Francisco had dreamed of… but at what cost?

“Pardon me, Captain,” Gutierrez said quietly. “There’s another incoming signal from the surface.”

“Let me… think about this for a little bit, Lord Chancellor,” Xiang said. “I assure you I will give very careful consideration to your request.”

He nodded. “Of course. I must go now, but I’ll call you in, let us say, ten minutes. Events are moving swiftly, Captain, and if you cannot help us, I will be forced to recommend to His Majesty that we make the same or a similar offer to another government.”

*No pressure, Evelyn, really. * “I understand. Ten minutes, then.” She closed the connection using her chair’s comm controls.

“Now who’s calling, Ensign?” she asked Gutierrez.

“The rebel leader, ma’am. Jolee.”

She smiled grimly. “Put him on…”

82

“Ms. Jolee?”
“Grand General and President for Life Jolee,” announced the figure on the screen, a scruffy personage indeed, “commands you attention!”
Great, thought Xiang. Another figure, scruffier still, appeared.
The Pellerian wore pieces of what appeared to be a varity of uniforms, including a selection of cutlery that appeared to be used and unwashed, as was the General.
“Captain Xiang,” she announced without preamble, “I wish for my planet to join the Federation.”
“A pleasure to meet you, General.” began Xiang. “I was under the impression that the King was controlling the government.”
Jolee spat. “He will pretend to, for a few hours more. Accept our membership now, for it will cost far more later!”
“Er, ‘cost’, General?”
Jolee frowned angrily. Xiang thought she might bark as well. “Do you think I spend my forces time and treasure to run this planet out of the goodness of my heart? We have been oppressed by the government, and it is time to do ysome oppressing of our own!”
Xiang sighed.
“It would appear,” Fisher explained, “that your Cardassian friend obtained a large amount of dilythium, not terribly difficult on this planet, heated it to plasma, probably with the ship’s phasers, and waited for the Klingon’s orbit to bring him nearby.”
“That’s still a lot of dilythium, to cover any orbit.” mused Collins. “But he didn’t have to cover everything, when the Klingon manuvered to avoid the plasma, the heat of his thrusters could be detected.”
“Exactly,” smiled the engineer. “Sheket could ‘spray’ the plasma towards the planet. If the Klingon came in contact with it, the dilythium would change energy states and radiate energy. If he moved to avoid it, he would still be detected.”
“So we need to…borrow…some dilythium from the planet.” Collins frowned. “The Captain will never go for it.”

83

After another ten minutes’ meandering discussion with the erratic, borderline-megalomaniacal Jolee, Xiang excused herself - saying she needed to talk to Starfleet Command - and broke the connection after agreeing to talk again in two hours.

“What a nut,” Cmdr. Ross grunted. “And he’s going to depose the Sovereign?”

“Looks like it, John,” Xiang said. She had no intention of contacting Starfleet Command just yet. “I take the Lord Chancellor at his word. If they could have suppressed this uprising by now, they would have. I suspect that the Sovereign, having fled the capital, won’t be coming back anytime soon. Not as a free man, that is.”

The First Officer nodded. “So what do we do now?”

Xiang drummed her fingers on the arm of the center chair. “Accept both their offers.”

He stared at her. “Um… a little inconsistent, aren’t they?”

She shrugged. “Not really. Think about it. Obviously both sides can’t win this insurgency, but both want to eventually join the Federation. I’m not going to stand in their way. We’re not going to intervene on behalf of the government, of course - the Prime Directive would never permit that - but we can certainly encourage both to forge stronger ties to the Federation. That’s what we came here to do in the first place, after all.”

“Yes, but…”

Gutierrez spoke up. “The Lord Chancellor is hailing us again, Captain.”

“As expected. Can you locate the source of the signal, Ensign?”

“Yes, I think so…” The young Latina woman’s fingers danced across the Ops console. “About 1,200 kms from the capital. It’s a forested region, mostly. No indication of any settlements.”

“Just the place for the secret command post he mentioned.” She turned to the Tactical post. “Mr. T’Parel, run a more intensive scan of the region. I’d like a clearer picture of the Sovereign’s spiderhole, and his military assets there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The Bridge doors parted, and Cmdr. Jeremie Collins and Lt. Cmdr. John Fisher, the Franklin’s Chief Engineer, walked in. “If you have a moment, Captain…?” Collins said tentatively, an engineering PADD in hand.

“Not right now,” Xiang said, smiling. “Let me have a word with the Lord Chancellor, and then we’ll talk. Onscreen, Mr. Gutierrez…”

84

Jolee gasped for breath after his tirade and reached for a pot of mauloh. He poured a large cup and dropped in a crystal of rimalli spice. “Don’t you think that’s too much rimalli?” whispered Krit. “Don’t lecture me on being a leader, boy!” growled Jolee as he swiped the air. His eyes darted to and fro as if looking for hidden enemies. He bounded to his feet and lurched towards Krit. Krit stepped back expecting a blow, but warily relaxed as Jolee’s mood pendulumed yet again. Jolee put his arm around Krit comradely and whispered with a smile, “Pr’keeln and that Federation will learn who the real power is, eh, Krit?” He slumped a bit and his mood changed again to one of sadness. “All those people dieing because Pr’keeln let his dragons loose and forced us to dig up its mess.” Jolee spat in anger and tossed his cup against the wall. “Find out how the people are doing Krit,” slurred Jolee as he ran out of steam and collapsed on the couch.

Krit left the mining office, now the President’s chambers, and went to the radio room. Jolee was a grizzled charismatic figure, when not delusional on rimalli. He’d made many friends in the army and later in the mines over his career, some with his charisma, some with his dealing of rimalli. He’d kicked the habit these last couple of years, but now the pressures of leadership had gotten him hooked again. His bursts of energy and fanaticism had served to rally his old commrades and ignite a following, but Krit didn’t know how long Jolee could last. More importantly, the open-minded Krit had been able to read Yoshel’s journals and scrolls and had been shocked to find that the dragons were perhaps not what they appeared to be. Yoshel had been a Ranger in the army and had made detailed notes about the dragon’s appearances. The most telling was a day he had been able to track it with his telescope. He drew pictures that showed the dragon as a pointy arrow-headed thing with two cylinders on the side. Hardly an animal looking thing. And he drew the dragon’s breath not as coming from the front where a mouth should be but coming from the cylinders on the side. And what was most disturbing was that through a slit at the front he drew the faces of two men. It looked like the window in a battlewagon. Could the dragon really be a flying battlewagon? This was corroborated by a letter in Yoshel’s journal from Shir’reeve Blankoos. It was two years old and told of then law-apprentice Blankoos visit to Shir City. He made a long nature trek that season and wrote that he stumbled open a great plain with strange battlewagons. They had stick-like legs and cylinders all over them. He even saw one lift off into the air and disappear over the horizon in a shimmering blue light.

Jolee began to mumble in his sleep. He always awakened soon afterwards with a vision. While not as strong as the Elder Seers, his visions still had enough truth to get them decisive victories over the royal forces ranged against them. The more accurate predictions came from his relationship with the other Seers. Most were old miners (odd, that) but their predictions came true.

85

Xiang closed the channel, having spoken first to the Lord Chancellor and then, separately, to Krit, who described himself as the rebel leader Jolee’s “senior aide.” The Lord Chancellor was displeased that the Franklin would not immediately be lobbing photon torpedoes at the insurgent forces moving ever closer to the capital, but had assured the captain that he would take her proposal to the Sovereign at the earliest possible opportunity. He did not again mention turning for help to another one of the alien ships still orbiting Pelleri Prime.

After that, Krit had apologized for Jolee’s being “indisposed” (for that, at least, was how the universal translator rendered the word), listened carefully, asked a few questions and promised to give Jolee a full report.

It was half an hour before Xiang could turn to Collins and Fisher, who’d been patiently waiting on the Bridge. Xiang said, “It just occurred to me. The Lord Chancellor traveled 1,200 km in just over ten minutes. How could he possibly do that, given what we know of Pelleri technology?”

“Well… we don’t actually know that he was in the capital when he first established contact, Captain,” Collins mused. “You didn’t pinpoint the origin of that signal, did you, Mr. Gutierrez?”

“No, ma’am.” The Ops officer looked abashed. “It came in on a Pelleri government channel, but I can’t be sure of its actual point of transmission.”

“It’s all right, Ensign,” Xiang said. “You weren’t asked to check that. Let’s assume he was in the capital, though. How could he get all the way to the royal hideout so fast?”

“By transporter,” Fisher said. “But the Pelleri don’t have transporters or equivalent technology. It’s far above their tech level.”

“Maybe the Klingons gave him a lift,” the First Officer said. “But why?”

“I’m glad you brought that up, sir,” Collins said. “We have a proposal to find the Klingon ship, Captain, but it presents certain… difficulties.”

“Let’s hear it,” Xiang said.

86

“We determined that Gul Sheket heated a large amount of dilythium to plasma and sprayed it from high orbit.”
Collins smiled. Shut up and smile, Fisher had said. Let me do the talking.
“The plasma would change energy states if it encountered an object in orbit. He didn’t have to cover an entire sector, just enough to make the Klingon manuver. He would be able to see his thrusters fire.”

“He didn’t need dilythium,” interruped MKenbe. “A large mass of anything homogeneous could be vaporized, sprayed towards the planet, and disruption of a vessel passing through it could be observed with our instrumentation. His Science Officer was lazy.”

“Or Sheket just enjoyed stealing tons of dilythium.” Collins interjected.
Fisher winced.

“Granite or silicon would do,” continued MKembe. “We could bring up large quanities of sand from a remote area.”
“With permission from the owners, of course, Si…Captain.” Collins spoke again.
Fisher pinched the bridge of his nose.

87

“No, I don’t think so,” Xiang said after a long pause. “I doubt the Klingons would be dumb enough to go through another vaporized-dilithium cloud, even if we were to create one. ‘Fool me once’ and all that. They’ve probably changed their orbit; I would if I were them. And if it’s synchronous, they’d never pass through such a cloud anyway.”

“But…” Collins began to say.

Xiang shook her head. “Lastly, given the upheavals among the Pelleri right now, asking for permission to remove a substantial chunk of their real estate - even granite or silicon - might not be taken the right way. I’m sorry, I won’t authorize it.”

It was about what Nkembe had expected. The Science Officer said, “We’ll continue the ongoing asychronous tachyon sensor sweeps, then, ma’am.”

“Please do. And if the three of you come up with another proposal, I’ll be all ears. Cmdr. Ross, you have the Bridge. I’ll be in my quarters.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The First Officer took the center chair as Fisher wryly asked Collins and Nkembe, “Now what?”

88

The First Officer took the center chair as Fisher wryly asked Collins and Nkembe, “Now what?”

“There is another option,” Collins began "and it doesn’t violate the prime directive. “It does, however, put a substantial drain on our shields”

89

Thread break

Please see: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8364457#post8364457

90

Two days later…

Xiang strode from her Ready Room in response to Cmdr. Ross’s call. “Where are they?” she asked.

“There, Captain,” Collins said, pointing to a pulsing light on the Tactical display. “Definitely Klingon, probably a Nor’krek-class bird of prey, judging from the readings.”

“Good. Definitely our tactical inferior. The tachyon sweeps worked?”

“It took some time,” Science Officer Nkembe said, a little smugly, “but they worked.”

The Captain grinned. “Well done, Mr. Collins, Mr. Nkembe.”

“Thank you, ma’am. Orders?”

Xiang took her seat. She’d already given a lot of thought to this. “Prepare a salvo of three photon torpedoes. Bracket the Klingon ship with two torpedoes, each with dampened-yield warheads, calibrated to knock down their cloaking field. Then I want one fired just after the others, its warhead on locked standby, set for limpet mode with an active transceiver. I want to be able to track the bird of prey if they remodulate their cloaking frequencies, and I want them to know it’s there.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Collins said, quickly inputting the orders. “Done. Torpedoes prepped and ready.”

“Sound the Red Alert,” Xiang said. “Battle stations.” The Bridge status lights began to blink red and the klaxon sounded. She narrowed her eyes. “Fire.”

The torpedoes shot out from the Franklin’s forward launchers, unerringly racing towards the still-invisible Klingon warship, a thousand kilometers away. Two torpedoes exploded on either side of it, bringing it vividly into view as its cloak collapsed. The third, concealed in the twin fireballs of the other torpedoes, raced in. Telemetry confirmed that it had latched itself to the bird of prey’s hull.

“We’re being hailed,” Lt. Babb said from Ops.

“Onscreen,” Xiang said.

A wild-eyed Klingon appeared on the main viewer. He spat, “I am Khotok, captain of the Vegh’gar. What is the meaning of this outrageous attack? The Klingon Empire and the Federation are at peace, or so I have been told!”

“We are,” Xiang said calmly. “But you had the chance to respond to my hail several days ago, and chose not to. I warned you then that, if I didn’t hear from you, I would assume that you are on a mission that was contrary to Federation interests, and would act accordingly.”

“But…”

She shook her head curtly. “You had your chance to talk then, sir. That time has passed. Now I have a proposition for you. Accept it, and we can go forward as friends. Decline it, and I will have no choice but to destroy your vessel with the torpedo I’ve now attached directly to your hull.”

The Klingon blanched and turned slightly offscreen, as if checking with a subordinate. He turned back and glowered at Xiang. “You’re bluffing.”

“Am I? The Klingon Empire was not invited to this conference, and remaining cloaked and unannounced in planetary orbit is typically regarded as an act of war. I suspect the Pelleri would welcome the destruction of a hostile ship sent by their historic oppressors. It’s no bluff, Khotok.”

He growled deep in his throat, clearly frustrated. Finally he said, “What, then, is your… proposition?”

Xiang leaned back in her chair. “Here’s how I see things…”

Captain’s Log, supplemental. It’s been only a month since our arrival in Pelleri orbit, but the situation has changed enormously. The Sovereign has abdicated the throne and gone into exile with the royal family. The former chancellor-turned-provisional president, Medh, has reached a peace accord with the Sime rebels, who have been brought into a power-sharing agreement until elections can be held and a new constitution written. The provisional government has asked for Federation assistance, and will probably eventually apply for UFP membership.

In her quarters, Xiang poured a glass of kanar for her First Officer and Chief of Security. Pelleri Prime rotated slowly past, dominating the starscape outside the viewports. The Franklin was now alone in orbit, but for a handful of Pelleri interplanetary craft. The other interstellar governments’ ships, their bids refused, were long gone.

“Let me guess: Sheket’s gift?” Ross asked, swirling the kanar in his glass.

Xiang nodded. “It seemed appropriate that we toast a successful mission with it, in his absence.”

“And in the absence of the Klingons,” Collins said, raising her glass.

“Yes, that too,” Xiang laughed, as they toasted each other and drank. She frowned. “You know, I’ve never taken to kanar, I have to admit.”

“Oh, I don’t mind it that much, in moderation,” Ross said. “I’ve drunk worse.”

Xiang waved them into chairs. “Well, Mr. Collins, it appears that I misjudged you from the outset. I’m glad we were able to get past that.”

The Security chief smiled. “Likewise, Captain. My orders from Vice Adm. Rostow were pretty restrictive, and of course I could tell you very little at the outset. I can see why you reacted as you did. I would have done the same, in your shoes. The Stellar Vengeance plan alone…” She shook her head.

“I understand. I should have expected it of Sheket.”

Ross said, “As espionage gambits go, that was a biggie. And finding out that the Klingons were here against the orders of their own government–”

“If they really were,” Xiang said, raising an eyebrow.

“–only muddied the waters further. They obviously wanted access to the dilithium here while still keeping their role hidden. Good thing Adm. Ellington was in our corner all along.”

“Right you are, John,” the Captain said. “Friends in high places never hurt. I’m glad that the Chief of Staff, Rostow and Ellington were finally able to see eye to eye.”

“So what’s next?” Collins asked, taking another sip from her kanar and finding that she rather liked it.

Xiang picked up a PADD. “Our orders just arrived. Finally - finally! - we get the refit at Cirdan that we were supposed to have in the first place. And a new port warp nacelle, I think.”

“And the Pelleri?”

“The Kearsarge is on its way here with Amb. Basilio, who’ll help them make the transition to democracy and maybe eventual Federation membership, now that they’ve made that decision for themselves. We can only hope for the best.”

“All in all, not a bad day’s work,” Ross said.

“Agreed. A good day for a great ship, I’d say.” She lifted her glass. “To the Franklin!”

“The Franklin!” they echoed her, and drank.

THE END.

91

Closed at the request of the OP.