Chapter Four
The Lesson
"Your Highness?" Lt. Ann Anderson's voice from Tactical snatched Hoshi's attention. She was amazed at how cowed that voice had become. She hoped that Mayweather, in his efforts to carry out her orders, had not broken more in the woman than she had intended.
"What is it?" she asked, turning her chair to the right, to her ten o'clock position.
"One ship, the Vindicator, has broken station and has resumed course for Earth. Speed … warp 5.4." She concluded, impressed.
Hoshi turned the chair back to face forward. "He's pressing his ship. He probably feels it's worth it." Privately, she wondered if she should order the commander of that ship to stand down. Better not. He was already disobeying orders, though she was still certain that this stand off had been nothing to the Fleet but an evaluating pause. If it came to a direct order, and he did not back down, it would lead to an unfortunate and unavoidable conclusion. He would either be seen as able to challenge her openly, which she could not afford, or she would have to destroy him.
She relished neither option.
"What's his E.T.A.?"
Lt. Tina Parker had already computed that. "Three hours, nine minutes – if his engines don't blow up first."
Hoshi looked back to her Communications Officer. "Ms. Anderson, alert Engineering to prepare for battle within three hours. Ms. Winters, link to Starfleet Datanet. I want everything about Captain Tocari and the records of the primary crew." She settled back in her chair. "This could get very interesting."
xx
"Captain Matthew Tocari," Hoshi read a few minutes later. "He looks like a competent sort," she mused to no one in particular as the datafile appeared on the huge screen before them.
Actually, he was more than competent. The man had an impressive list of accomplishments that spoke of personal dynamic ability and ruthlessness rare even among Imperials. He was a martinet, an unforgiving ruler who demanded nothing but the best from those under him. Stern and domineering, he was just the type she had expected to be the first to challenge her reign.
Just as well. She doubted she would ever have made him an Admiral.
She spent the next few minutes looking over the records of his crew. This was a better option. She could do something with this lot.
But first there was something that was even more pressing. "Winters, are you still monitoring Imperial communications below?" Even as she asked the question with deceptive mildness, she smiled inwardly. Winters was good enough to have been doing so without having to have been told, and she was hardly likely to say 'no'.
"There is considerable cross-chatter. Some points of opposition are appearing, but on the whole the Imperial forces are regrouping and exhibiting a loyal stance."
"Too good to be believed, would you say?"
"Yes, your Excellency, I would."
"Among those who are against me, do they seem to have a center?"
"We've found one; in Seattle, Washington."
They were presently in geosynchronous orbit over San Francisco. Hoshi did a mental calculation and didn't like the result. A weapon strike from their position would bring the attack in from too low on the horizon to ensure that there would be no collateral damage.
She did not intend for this show of power to injure innocents. The wholesale destruction of unnumbered lives, especially when it could easily be avoided, was MacNamara's policy and would send the wrong message to her people.
"Mr. Stewart, increase orbit to the maximum effective range of our torpedoes, but do not move any closer to Seattle. I don't want anyone alerted."
"Yes, your Majesty."
She watched as the Earth seemed to withdraw from beneath them. "Miss Winters, when we're in position, open a channel to the surface. I want a transmission that will blanket the planet."
"Yes, your Highness."
She turned to Anderson at Tactical. "Set the torpedo yield to full power." She intended the target building to go up in a spectacular, awesome display just as the Admiralty building had done.
"Yes, your Majesty," Ann obeyed carefully.
x
After a very brief interval, Winters announced. "Channel Open, your Highness."
Hoshi took a deep breath, held it for a moment and then let it out silently. She did not want to have to do this, but there was little choice.
"This is Empress Sato aboard the Imperial Flagship Defiant. While it is my hope that the change in power may be accomplished peaceably for the good of the Empire, there are some who would resist this change and must be educated. Resistance to my law will be punished; obedience to my rule will be just as swiftly rewarded. I trust you will all find enlightenment." Hoshi signaled to Winters to close the channel. She raised her hand toward Stewart, and brought it down.
A single torpedo leaped from the bottom of the huge saucer, sped down into the atmosphere of Earth, slammed into a building in the north quadrant of Seattle.
x
Photon torpedoes had been used, with one exception, exclusively in space combat against ships equipped with energy shields and hull plating over a meter thick, polarized to ward off the effect of destructive energies unleashed against them. The residential building this torpedo expended its payload of antimatter against was masonry over a steel infrastructure inside a city, not a shielded battleship in the depths of space.
The flash overwhelmed the sensors, and the screen rapidly dimmed to avoid blinding everyone who beheld it. The titanic explosion was visible even under normal magnification covering the entire city as those on the bridge stared in horror. The target building was annihilated but the crater that was left in its place was a kilometer wide!
A monstrous cloud erupted from the site as the blast sent a shock wave of superheated air rushing outward in all directions at nearly sonic speed. So hot was this firestorm, 5,000 degrees at its epicenter, that everything combustible and everything deemed 'incombustible' burst instantly into flame. The conflagration consumed everything in an eight kilometer diameter in the first two seconds as superheated air expanded in a visible wave from the point of impact.
Rupturing natural gas lines added their own fuel to the inferno, the explosions visible in brief flashes within the huge field of flame.
The concussive force, now no longer superheated but still a devastating power, instantly blew apart every structure from nine to fourteen kilometers around.
As those on the bridge watched in horror the devastation spread. From fourteen kilometers out from the blast buildings toppled like rows of dominoes about the city, leveling everything within a twenty kilometer radius.
The rising cloud of pulverized earth, from a crater a kilometer wide and deep, rose toward the stratosphere and rained super-hot lava and debris over the city. The cloud mercifully obscured everything from the ship as it spread to cover the conflagration, but on the surface the sun would be hidden for hours.
Even the outlying areas far from the epicenter, which had escaped the spreading destruction, with buildings only shattered or fractured rather than flattened, faced fallout they could not defend against. Already the super-hot fragments created and spread fires in parts of the city that had 'escaped' the initial cataclysmic destruction.
Seattle was obliterated.
x
Hoshi leapt to her feet with a shriek: "ANDERSON!"
The woman literally jumped out of her seat, backing away toward the monitor. "Your Majesty, I'm sorry! You specified 'full power'!"
Hoshi stared at the trembling woman, so appalled she was unable to speak. If she had a phaser in her hand–!
She turned to the burning city. Within the inner eight kilometer ring there was nothing but fire. The inferno spread as the shock wave winds brought the fire into the flattened and smashed ring. Soon it would encroach upon the toppled structures, even as smaller fires from ruptured gas lines and burning debris engulfed parts of the city that had been spared the cataclysmic force of the blast. Firefighting crews, even if they still existed, would not challenge the conflagration for days.
"Full power?" Hoshi managed to force a whisper through a throat tight with horror.
"The standard yield this ship uses for a payload is 3 ounces of antimatter. When you specified 'full power', the computer armed the torpedo from the antimatter magnetic stores with ten pounds."
Hoshi had not thought her blood could grow colder, but it did. "We hit that city with fifty times what we …." She turned toward the Science Station where Tina Parker sat, her face white. "How many?"
"Your Majesty, sensors cannot give an accurate reading," the woman temporized, "and historical data is –."
"GUESS!"
"Between 2 to 2.5 million in the inner fire zone, possibly 4 to 6 million in the inner concussive ring," she said flatly, shock stealing her tone.
Hoshi clutched the arm of her chair, and needed Travis' help to sit back down. As she collapsed into the chair, she watched the spreading flame that had once been Seattle. She looked up at Travis, but could not speak aloud. "I have to… have to…."
"Your Majesty, take this advice: No apology."
"I have …" she tried again, her voice choked with revulsion and disgust at what she had caused. "This isn't…" she couldn't think, shock overwhelmed her.
"No. Anything you can say in your condition will only weaken your position. Right now, unexpected though this was, they're afraid of you." She looked up at him, naked horror on her face.
"I didn't want them to …."
She fell back in the seat, closed her eyes and put her head back, suddenly wishing for the high backed Captain's chair on Enterprise, praying to forget as the scene that played over and over again on her dark eyelids.
She felt Travis' hand on her arm, and when she opened her eyes again the message in his was clear. She allowed him to help her up, and tried to move slowly, steadily, tried not to stumble as he escorted her off her bridge.
xx
The turbolift descended three and a half decks on manual control when Hoshi twisted the handle of the support column and the car halted. She stood with hands pressed to her eyes, trying to regain her composure.
She couldn't.
"I've just murdered …" she whispered, "five million people." There was nothing Travis could say, so he didn't try. "Five… million… people!"
"Your Majesty?" Travis inquired carefully
Hoshi turned to him, and when she lowered her hands she was sure he saw in her eyes the awful horror that she'll never escape. She stepped to him, put her face against his chest, losing sight of everything but the blood red before her. She closed her eyes, and as she felt Travis' hands tentatively touch her back, she began to cry.