Disclaimer: Star Trek and all associated characters and situations are the property of CBS studios. Star Trek Online is the creation of Cryptic and Perfect are here used by myself for entertainment purposes only, without permission or intent to profit.
Plans
IKS Ki'tang, Year of Kahless 1032, Day 319, 06:55 Hours
Nita of the House of Morath's Personal Log:
It's been a struggle dealing with my medical isolation. I feel so helpless and alone, so ashamed for my failure. Despair comes easily, but I must not give up! Worse, though is the…longing. The irrepressible base desires and urges. I've always prided myself on my control, on being different than the Orion whores that B'kangder so hates. I've always kept my feelings in check…but these urges are so strong! I need something to distract me, some problem to focus on, or they'll drive me insane!
Nita had trouble sleeping. She tried to blame it on the unfamiliar medical gown, with its various sensors held close to her skin. She would be much more comfortable in her old white tunic, but of course her cell offered no privacy and Paq would be enraged and probably refuse to give her any further care if she tried to pull off his medical sensors. There was also a more troubling reason why she couldn't let herself strip down: because a part of her desperately wanted to be naked for all the wrong reasons. There was a part of her, fueled by the pheromones her body was producing, which wanted nothing more than for her to run her hands over her bare flesh, or let someone else do it instead. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch, an insatiable need, a beast inside her refusing to be tamed, laughing at the efforts she'd taken throughout her training to repress it. It was hard to fight the desire, hard to keep her hands at her sides, hard not to wish that the forcefield would fail and one of the warriors on duty would come bursting in, driven wild with desire.
It was hard, but it was necessary. Nita had suffered enough humiliation in simply failing to complete the Second Rite of Ascension. It would take years of hard work to make up for that disgrace, if she ever did! She did not need to add the further dishonor of having been caught touching herself in her cell like a cheap Orion whore…even if a part of her mind darkly whispered to her that life as an Orion whore surely had its upsides.
Nita suppressed that thought ruthlessly as she heard the door to the brig open. A young Klingon man stepped in front of the forcefield sealing off her cell. He was tall, robust, and swarthy with black hair hanging unbound to his shoulders and a black goatee that had not completely filled in yet. Nita stood and tried to suppress the mental image of this young man with his arms around her, kissing her passionately on the neck. Instead she faced him squarely and said firmly, "Who are you?"
"I am K'Gan, son of Ker," said the young Klingon.
Nita noticed he wasn't wearing a d'k tahg, and that his uniform was otherwise very plain. "You are not a warrior," she observed, curious.
"Not yet," said K'Gan. "My father forged bat'leths, but had no holdings, no House of his own. He could not afford to give me a warrior's training or enter me into the Second Rite, but he taught me how to handle a blade. I will be a warrior someday!"
Nita smiled and looked down, embarrassed by how touching she found his optimism, and how it gave her hope for her own situation. "Someday I too will be a warrior, K'Gan, son of Ker," she said. "I am Nita, daughter of a starship captain."
K'Gan eyed her curiously. "If your father commanded a warship, surely he could have gotten you through the Second Rite of Ascension."
Nita shook her head. "He's not here. He was with Starfleet, but that was before I was born. I've never met him. I have no idea whether or not he's alive."
K'Gan took a step back. "Starfleet!" He took a step back, then shook his head. "Things have certainly changed since the war began."
"They have," said Nita. "But my loyalty is with the House of Morath, and to the Empire! When I am well enough to leave this cell, I will continue to serve them until I am able to fight for them as a warrior."
K'Gan smiled. "Well said, Nita, daughter of a starship captain. Lieutenant Baduk is taking over for Ch'gran as he goes to assist Morath on the Raqtal. Baduk wanted me to go over these with you: plans and schematics for the Ki'tang's systems." He held out a pair of data pads.
"You're going to teach me to be an engineer?" she asked
K'Gan smiled and shook his head. "We will learn together! I only just came aboard myself a few days ago when Morath took on new crew for his ships." He punched a button on the control panel and the forcefield briefly vanished. K'Gan held out one pad and Nita quickly took it. He switched the forcefield back on again immediately, but evidently not quickly enough. He blinked and shook his head, looking a little unsteady on his feet.
Nita bit her lip, embarrassed. "I hope my pheromones didn't hit you too hard!"
K'Gan gave her a roguish smile. "They are strong…but not unpleasant."
Nita decided it would be best if they switched topics. "Right, so these plans…" She tapped her data pad. "I remember the access crawlways from when I was a girl, but I should refresh my memory, especially in regard to what systems can be accessed from each crawlway. I wasn't particularly concerned with that when I was a girl."
"Yes…let's start there," said K'Gan. He pulled up the crawlways on his data pad as well, though he looked somewhat distracted.
They spent the next two hours going over the schematics in detail. Nita refreshed her memory of how to navigate the bird-of-prey's crawlspaces and learned where the access points for the ship's various systems were. They were sitting cross-legged across from each other and were just starting into the layout of the ship's weapons systems when the door to the brig ground open.
K'Gan scrambled to his feet. "Lieutenant Doran!"
"As you were, engineer," Doran replied. She looked to Nita and turned back to K'Gan. "I would like a moment with her alone," she said.
K'Gan nodded. He tapped his data pad. "We'll continue this later," he said.
Nita smiled. "I look forward to it!"
K'Gan smiled as well, then turned and exited the room.
Nita watched him go, then turned to Doran. The Klingon woman was giving her a questioning look. "He's one of the new engineers," she explained. "He was just going over the Ki'tang's systems with me."
"I see," said Doran, though she did not seem entirely convinced that was all that was going on. She shook her head, though, dismissing the issue. "I came here to give you two things," she said. "The first is this." She drew a mek'leth from behind her back. She flipped it around so the handle was facing Nita, then lowered the forcefield and held her breath while Nita took it.
"The blade I trained with," Nita said, turning it over in her hands, amazed
"Yes," Doran said, after she'd re-engaged the forcefield. "You may not yet be a warrior in the eyes of the Klingon Empire, but I will not leave you unarmed with the ship heading into combat. You've practiced with this blade since you were a child. No other weapon could be more truly yours."
Nita smiled, tears in her eyes. She wiped them away quickly and placed the mek'leth reverently under her pillow. "Thank you, Doran," she said, turning back around.
"I'm not finished," said Doran. "The second thing I came to give you is this." She produced a data pad and punched a series of codes into it. Suddenly the schematics display that Nita had been looking at on her own data pad were replaced with a tactical projection of the Ganalda System.
Nita looked it over quickly. "The projected order of battle for the Ganalda System," she said, and read off the list. "The defense force is organized under the overall command of General Drex, son of Martok aboard the Negh'Var-class battleship IKS Rovlaq, with an Orion contingent under the command of Hassan the Undying on the Slavemaster-class battleship OSS Caju and a Gorn contingent under the command of Lieutenant-General Yanass on the Zilant-class battleship GHS Vrah. Total forces: three battleships, five heavy cruisers, four cruisers, nine light cruisers, five frigates, two escorts, and six birds-of-prey." She scrolled through the lists of various classes. "Arrayed against the Federation's Ninth Fleet: estimated at three battleships, two battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, twelve light cruisers, three frigates, eight escorts, and one transport." She looked up. "It looks like it's going to be a close fight, especially if Ganalda Station's defenses aren't very advanced. Is this so I know what I'm getting myself into?"
"Yes, but more than that, and the situation is more desperate than those figures reflect," said Doran. "To start, Ganalda Station's defenses are too weak to render any significant aid. They have not been updated since before the Dominion War and there is no time nor parts available to do it now. Also, since that list was compiled we've received a report that the Gorn battleship Vrah was disabled en-route to the Ganalda System. Command of the Gorn division falls to Captain Trath of the Phalanx-class cruiser Zarassus. That brings the defense fleet down to two battleships. More troublingly the Ninth Fleet has been recently reinforced. Scouting forces sent to the N'Vak System report the arrival of a Federation dreadnought and two additional battleships."
Nita straightened, feeling an edge of fear in her stomach. "With an advantage in numbers and tonnage, this will be a very difficult battle indeed!" Even in a simulation, she wasn't sure she could hope to do much more the inflict heavy losses on the enemy fleet—at the cost of the station and most friendly forces.
Doran nodded. "High Chancellor J'mpok himself is leading a relief force consisting of the dreadnoughts Vo'Quv and Chang, but their cloaks are not powerful enough to fully conceal them. The Federation fleet will detect them and redeploy their forces or call for further reinforcements unless we jam their long-range sensors. That is the role that the IKS Raqtal, the Orion ship Tabedi, and the Gorn ship Zarassus have been assigned by General Drex. With their escorting ships, they will jam the Federation fleet's aft long-range sensors, under the cover of making flank attacks on the Ninth Fleet." She punched another button on her pad and three groups of ships from the defense forces' order of battle were highlighted. "The Raqtal has been assigned two Karmag-class cruisers, one original-configuration K't'inga-class light cruiser, two Norgh-class birds-of-prey, and two B'rel-clas birds-of-prey—including the Ki'tang."
Nita looked over the details on her pad. "That's not enough for a successful flank attack on a force of this size," she said. "Their frigates, escorts, and light cruisers will be able to hold off our attack while their heavy cruisers and battlecruisers tear our ships to ribbons!"
Doran nodded. "True. The odds that our flank attack will succeed or even survive for long are negligible. However, we need only hold out and continue jamming their sensors long enough for J'mpok's relief force to arrive."
Nita looked up and met Doran's gaze. "Why are you showing me all this? I'm not a warrior. Not yet anyway. Jurlek would say I have no right to see any of this."
"Jurlek does not need to know," Doran said firmly. "And while you may not be a warrior in the eyes of the Klingon Empire, you are in my eyes. What's more, you are the highest scoring applicant on the space tactical portion of the Klingon Academy entrance exam in the past five years. I want you to look over this information, study it, and determine the best way to array our flank attack. I will present your recommendations to Morath directly, in private. He knows your record as well as I do. He will not ignore your advice. It will help us secure the victory we and the Empire need, and it will help you secure your place as a warrior in the eyes of every Klingon!"
Nita smiled at that, then frowned, turning back to the tactical data. It was not going to be an easy problem to solve. Even with the need to hold out only long enough for the relief force to arrive, they were going to suffer heavy losses. "I'll take a look," she promised.
Author's Note: I wanted to establish in passing here Nita's rocky relationship with the stereotypical image of the Orion seductress, and how that has, in turn caused her to overcompensate a bit and wind up at odds with her own sexuality. I hope I portrayed that tastefully enough.
Moving on, K'Gan son of Ker is a character from Star Trek Online. He acts as third officer during the Klingon tutorial, becoming the player character's second in command and first tactical bridge officer. His age and background aren't established by the game, and no other sources mention either K'Gan or his father. His position as third officer, according to the Klingon Bird-of-Prey Owner's Workshop Manual, makes him a command officer in training, which would probably make him on the younger side. I took the liberty of making him a young aspiring Klingon from a poor background so that Nita would have someone to relate to. Because most of the non-warrior positions on a bird-of-prey are engineers, I made him a young engineer's mate, taken on to help deal with the huge surge in manpower Morath would need to crew the 200-warrior Raqtal and the 36-warrior Ki'tang.
Here's the first preview of the kinds of forces and tactics soon to come in the Battle of Ganalda IV. One thing will be immediately apparent to anyone even passingly good at math, and that's that the total number of ships involved in what is supposed to be a large, important fleet action is absolutely dwarfed by the massive numbers of ships involved in battles during the Dominion War. Operation Return, for instance, featured a Federation fleet of over 600 ships, outnumbered two-to-one by a massive Dominion-Cardassian armada. The Second Battle of Chin'toka involved the loss of 311 Federation, Romulan, and Klingon ships. But all sides and fleets in the Battle of Galanda IV have combined forces of less than 80 ships. This is a massive reduction in the scale of warfare!
In universe, I can give several reasons to justify this. The first is that the Dominion War was a devastating bloodbath, a meat-grinder that chewed up everyone's military powers, and the combatants of the early 25th Century are still recovering to an extent from the devastation. To some extent, they're simply unable to wage war on that scale again, something backed up, I think by the fact that the majority of ships portrayed and lost in the Dominion war were older designs like the Miranda-class and Excelsior -class, and the B'rel-class on the Klingon side (even though there was talk of those ships supposedly being phased out in favor of the K'vort-class back in TNG). These older ships had been around for half a century or more and it had taken a huge amount of time for the various sides to amass their fleets, only to have the crushed in the enormous battles of the Dominion War. Beyond being incapable of fielding such fleets again, 25th Century military commanders probably just aren't willing to. Again, most of these fleets were older designs, produced and slaughtered in mass. While this kind of starship gore makes for exciting viewing, the human (or alien) toll of a quantity-over-quality war of attrition would have been a terrible lesson to all the powers involved. This accounts for the massive increase in the number of innovative designs on the front lines of 25th Century war, as well as the retirement of older designs to less active roles (as I've mentioned with the Miranda-class USS Nautilus). The new order of the day is quality-over-quantity, and a doctrine of smaller more advanced fleets is the prevailing notion of 25th Century naval theory. In addition, while the capture or defense of Ganalda IV is extremely important to both sides, it is not, perhaps, the most important (Qo'noS for instance, isn't that far from the front lines and would be more important to defend or capture) and both the Klingon Empire and their allies and the Federation have vast territories to patrol and defend, and also have many interests to pursue outside their boarders besides their war with each other (such as helping or raiding the struggling Romulans).
Out of universe, this number is more consistent with the numbers of ships that players will see on either side during the major battles of the story missions. More to the point, I just didn't want to write that big of a battle. Thirty-some ships to a side is still fairly big, but it can be broken down into smaller groups and squadrons to portray the action in a way that's fairly easy to understand. 600 ships verses 1200 is much more abstract. DS9 couldn't even portray anywhere close to that many ships on screen! We hear a lot of characters talk about the importance of staying in or breaking up formations, about how various "wings" of starships are doing well or poorly, but what all of that really means is hard to imagine (how many ships are in a wing anyway?). Also with numbers that huge, it's hard to imagine how a single ship (unless fully plated in several meters of plot armor) could make much of difference. With fleet sizes as small as the ones I'm using here, though, it's much more plausible. Even without the idea of giving a single ship a special strategic function, like I've given the Raqtal, even rank-and-file ships like the Ki'tang can matter. After all, if the Klingons lost a bird-of-prey in Operation return, it meant basically nothing. There were countless more where that came from! But at Galanda IV, if the Klingons lose the Ki'tang, even though it's just one bird-of-prey (and not a very good one at that), that means they've just lost 1/6 th of their total birds-of-prey, and 1/12 of the ships they need to screen their larger warships against enemy escorts. It's much easier to see how a single ship or even a single character can have an impact, which—combined with the better comprehensibility of the battle—makes small fleet actions more dramatic than massive engagements, not less, in my opinion.
But I digress! On to the references! Drex, son of Martok, is...well, Drex, son of Martok, who briefly appeared a couple of times in DS9—first and most notably in "Way of the Warrior" where Worf met and casually disarmed Drex in order to get the attention of his more notable father, General Martok. In non-canon sources, Drex is portrayed as lacking his father's honor and not being on the best of terms with him, though his kinder treatment in Star Trek Online (where he is head of the honorable House of Martok and advised by Worf) seems to indicate that he has improved since his early years. He was also severely injured by the current High Chancellor J'mpok in 2393 while attempting to avenge his father's death the injury took him at least a year to heal. This led to an uneasy truce between the more positionally powerful House of J'mpok (which, after all, holds the High Chancellorship and many favorable alliances), and the superior military of the House of Martok (which The Path to 2409 says could have crushed the House of J'mpok in an open conflict in 2394). It should be considered to be no accident that Drex and his House were tasked with playing the dangerous role of the defense fleet at the Battle of Ganalda IV and the House of J'mpok appointed themselves rescuers. It's a calculated move to weaken the House of Martok by attrition during the battle, while scoring political points by appearing to come to their rescue in a time of need. Of course Drex has some wise councilors on his side, so it can be taken for granted that he did not commit the entirety of his House's forces to the fight here, and with Klingon honor and society being what it is, it is possible that Drex may end up winning more glory from the battle then J'mpok.
Drex's ship is the IKS Rovlaq, which is a name pulled from the Vor'cha-class cruiser that Drex commanded in the Star Trek Destiny novel A Singular Destiny. Here I made it a Negh'Var-class: the largest pre-Bortas'-class ship design in the Klingon fleet short of the massive Vo'Quv-class dreadnoughts. Pre-Bortas'-class being important because the missions of Star Trek Online make it clear that the Bortas' or Bortasqu' class dreadnoughts are designs first fielded in 2409. The Negh'Var-class, of course, was first seen in 2372, where the massive battleship served as Chancellor Gorkon's flagship before being mass produced in the Dominion War.
Hassan the Undying is an Orion Syndicate kingpin who was instrumental in current Syndicate head Melani D'ian's rise to power, and even in exile in 2409 remained powerful enough to command a sizable fleet. Whether he was sent to the Battle of Galanda IV as a favor or a punishment is open to interpretation, as is most of Orion politics. The Slavemaster-class battleship is one of the older large Orion NPC ship designs still occasionally seen in game in Star Trek Online. It's name, the OSS Caju comes from the Orion page on Memory Beta, which says that Caju is the Orion plural word for the "great families" or criminal cartels that rule Orion society.
The Phalanx-class cruiser is the Phalanx-class Gorn science cruiser, which is a perfectly serviceable player ship and NPC support ship, but not exactly first pick for a flagship in a starship slugging contest. The Karmag-class cruisers are ships added in Star Trek Online as modernized versions of an abandoned past warship design, and thus tougher than the un-refit K't'inga-class, but not quite as tough as the drastically-reworked Raqtal.