Star Trek Hunter
Episode 17: Terms of Surrender
Scene 9: The Buzz

17.9
The Buzz
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The radio transmitter near the top of Mt. Kur at'la Kiur was extremely simple. It had two modes - on and off. The on position created a slight increase in static on a narrow band of radio channels - channels that already carried significant local static because of the volcano the transmitter was on top of.

The bajoran resistance had developed a number of unique code systems designed to make use of this kind of simple technology for very detailed messaging. While the available binary codes included an alphabet, the codes also included a large vocabulary of words and phrases tailored for intelligence gathering. Using these, very detailed reports could be generated and transmitted with a very small number of binary codes.

Pivin could activate the remote for this transmitter by tensing her right buttock for 30 seconds. This would cause a steady tone to be transmitted, alerting Pomm and Oarama Irons, listening inside the cloaked Prodigal Sum, that a message would follow. Pivin could then control the transmitter by flexing her right buttock, which she could do quite rapidly without being noticed, allowing her to send a very large amount of information in less than a minute.

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"Have provided intelligence federation goal assimilate Romulan Senate," Pomm translated. "Traced same to Romulan Star Navy Supreme Commander Sela. Same responsible for attack on Vulcan. Sela now in command of remainder of Tal Shiarr - weak. Imperial Intelligence Control strong influence on Romulan Senate. Tal Shiarr and IIC remain bitter rivals. Navy has discovered potential bio-weapon on Gamorlan. Creating labs to experiment contain local. Saketh enslaved innocent primary food source."

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"What does all that mean?" Tactical Specialist Dasare Eba had transferred from the U.S.S. Hunter to the R.R.C. Prodigal Sum when the two craft had been clamped to a mined-out asteroid in the A Boo star system.

"Oarama and I have been running Pivin for nine years," said Pomm. "When you run a spy that long, you develop a kind of shorthand. She had to provide the romulans intelligence of some value to make her cover story stick. The romulans will soon be able to verify that the federation negotiators are trying to entice the Romulan Senate into joining the federation. But Pivin was able to trace where this information went to find out who is running things behind the scenes. The Romulan Senate and the Praetorian Guard definitely executed this operation, but the Romulan Star Navy is behind it. It goes all the way up to the navy's Supreme Commander, a romulan/human hybrid named Sela. Who knows what kind of pressure the navy brought to bear on the senate not only to take Vulcan, but to do it alone.

"The Romulan Star Navy can plead innocence and ignorance to the federation in the capture of Vulcan, and we can't prove they were behind it. But now we know they were," Pomm continued.

"She also told us that the Tal Shiarr are still operative and in rivalry with Imperial Intelligence Control," Oarama added. "The Tal Shiarr – the military spy agency – are now fully under the control of the navy. Imperial Intelligence Control is a civilian spy agency and they report directly to the senate. Star Fleet Intelligence wasn't sure whether any of the Tal Shiarr structure had survived the Dominion War. Now we know the Tal Shiarr survived – through weakened and no longer a law unto themselves."

"Finally, she gave us a report on two worlds near the Dead Zone on the other side of romulan space," said Pomm. "Apparently the Romulan Star Navy has found something on Gamorlan that could be used as a biological weapon. Biological weapons are not difficult to make, so whatever they've found, it must be really nasty. They are setting up labs on the planet so they can contain it there until they figure out how to handle it. The other planet is Saketh. She is telling us Saketh has an indigenous pre-warp civilization. The navy has enslaved that population and is farming that world as a primary food source for the romulan colonies in the old empire. They're probably mining it for resources as well since they have a ready source of slaves."

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Dasare was surprised. "That is a lot of information for such a short transmission. Are you certain?"

"We've known about Sela for quite some time," Oarama replied. "She's been clawing her way to the top of the navy for decades. A strategic thinker. She has gone far in a culture that despises hybrids. She is very good at what she does. And she hates humans."

"Okay… I will relay this information back to the Hunter."

"Are they within your telepathic range?" asked Oarama.

"Rumi selected us for, among other things, telepathic ability and range. I can't reach all the way to the Hunter, but Ranni is stationed about halfway in between in an interceptor, along with one of our pilots. She can relay the message on to Rumi, who will brief Justice Irons."

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A******A
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"So THAT's their game! Such naivety," Sela rubbed her hands together. "They sacrificed Vulcan in the hopes they could split the Romulan Senate from the Romulan Star Empire!" She stood up suddenly, started pacing. "No – there has to be more to their plan than that. It can't be that simple."

Sela was in her office on the I.R.W. Bestia. One-way windows (that appeared to be blank walls on the other side) allowed her to view the bridge and an adjoining conference room to one side and open space off the starboard bow of the battlegod to the other. Admiral Ekot, commander of the First Battle Group, had joined Sela in her office along with Commander Hundeeth, Sela's favorite analyst – on whom she had relied for decades.

"Let's go through this again," said Sela. "Hundeeth, you told me there have been no significant changes in the traffic patterns around Vulcan over the past two years."

Commander Hundeeth shook his head slowly. "Not the kind you might expect. But if you look over the past eleven years, starting with the destruction of Romulus, there are definite trends. The changes are incremental, but the cumulative change is very significant. Nearly 60% of commerce that had gone through Vulcan had been re-routed through Cun Ling over the past decade. Now that Vulcan has fallen, all commerce in that region goes through Cun Ling and that system still has excess capacity to handle an increase of 20% above that." Hundeeth took a breath. "Also, beginning about a decade ago, a large number of Vulcan artifacts have been removed. Some of them have been moved to new permanent installations on Earth or various Vulcan outposts. Others have become traveling exhibits. And I have the demographic estimates from Imperial Intelligence Control – we just received them."

"Federation demographics have become almost impossible to come by over the past 10 years," Sela observed. "Accurate demographics are the cornerstone of what they think of as a free society."

"This may be the reason they have made that information so difficult to obtain," said Hundeeth. "IIC estimates the population of Vulcan is now about two and a half billion, which falls about a half-billion short of our expectations. But the Internal Intelligence Control's population estimate indicates that there are less than a billion vulcans on Vulcan. Almost 400 million of the population is human and the remainder, nearly a billion, are hybrids, with a very large number of children."

Sela and Admiral Ekot looked shocked. "Who knew there were so many?" Ekot asked.

"Where have all the vulcans gone?" asked Sela.

Hundeeth took a deep breath. "Apparently they went to the colonies. They spread out all over the federation. But most of them probably went to Earth."

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"Humans!" Sela exclaimed. "We thought we were taking the bulk of the vulcan population. We didn't even get half of them! What we got was a planet full of humans! Always turning up when you least expect them!"

"Should we encourage the Senate to join the federation?" asked Admiral Ekot.

"That is a very good question, Admiral," Sela replied. "If we had almost all the vulcan population, we could refuse - well - instruct the Senate to refuse. The federation would not risk the vulcan species. But we don't have enough of them to pose an existential threat to the vulcans. The federation might refuse food aid, which they would not refuse to a member world. And membership carries other advantages. Romulans would eventually have to be allowed to serve openly in Star Fleet."

"But there is a real risk they could turn Senate," Ekot mused.

"A far more real risk, given all the humans on that planet," Sela said. "The vulcans are far more human now than we had realized. And the refugees from Romulus are much, much softer than the rest of the empire – more vulnerable because they've never been allowed to settle down anywhere for the past decade. They're still stalwart enough that vulcans couldn't turn them. But humans just might."

"You seem to give the humans much credit," said Ekot.

"The humans built the federation founded on a coalition with the Vulcan High Command and the Andorian Empire – historic enemies. Humans managed to forge an alliance with the Klingon Empire – in a thousand years of space flight, the klingons never had allies before. The humans fought off the borg three times, chased the Dominion back into the Gamma Quadrant and helped reinvent the Cardassian Empire in their own image. And just in the past few weeks they have broken the backbone of the orion slaving syndicate and dealt a devastating blow to the Nausicaan Collective. It is very, very foolish to underestimate them."

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17.9