Chapter Four: Revelations
Captain Payne was worried. Within a week, they had been attacked twice by two different species without any provocations. Why was everyone so aggressive? True, they had come out on top both times but just barely. The way things were going, he was sure he would start loosing people soon. It was only a matter of time. That did not sit well with him but what was he to do? He heard the turbo lift open behind him as his science officer Daniel Tagget walked onto the bridge. "Any progress?" he asked.
"Yes sir," Those were just the words he wanted to hear. He beamed at Tagget but it vanished quickly as Tagget continued, "It's concerning the latest skirmish sir."
"What about that?"
"Lieutenant Gomez was going over the sensor logs from the Gneisenau and the Udaloy when he noticed something strange. Captain Puchenko had mentioned that they had been scanned with tachyon beams. It did not make sense at the time since both the Gneisenau and the Udaloy were not cloaked. So Gomez ran a detailed analysis of the recording and found it had strange harmonics and modulations. He thought it might be a form of communication so he ran more tests which proved his theory"
"Damn! No wonder they didn't reply to our hails."
"There's more sir, Lt Gomez worked on it since the Gneisenau got back and he's finally been able to decipher it."
"Put it on screen." What he saw stunned him. Hurriedly, he called a meeting of all the captains.
There was a furor as the implications of the new findings sunk in. As the group discussed what they should do next, Captain Payne studied each Captain in turn. He'd known most of them for a long time, some even from his Starfleet Academy days. But now, he needed to know them better than ever. He had to know how each one would react to this strange new environment. He'd already seen changes in some of them. Now he wanted to know how each one felt about this situation and how they would react to it. He also wanted to know what they wanted to do. There were some who preferred the straight forward approach; head straight to Earth and meet up with their counterparts of this universe and hope things would turn out ok. Others were more cautious and wanted to take things slower. He saw merit to both sides of the argument but it was ultimately his decision to make. Normally, he would have sided with the bolder ones but in this case he chose to be cautious. The stakes were too high.
Ever since Strike Force Bravo had arrived in this new universe, the Klingon contingent had strangely taken a back seat to their Federation counterpart. This was strange because the Klingons always insisted on being involved in any decision-making regarding all joint operations. It surprised Captain Payne but he never brought it up. In fact, he was glad they were staying out of his way. That was until now. Captain Domak of the IKS Vaj Tlq and Captain TekSha of IKS ToDuj were in his ready room informing him of their decision not to join him on his journey to Earth. Instead, they would head out to what was Klingon territory in their own universe. Payne did not like their plan but he knew there was no way he could stop them short of using force. He did not want to do that. Reluctantly he authorized it, not that the Klingons would have cared.
It took the fleet ten days to make it to the Sol system. They could have gotten there faster but there was no need for the extra speed. Cruising around at top speed demanded lot more resources, something they wanted to conserve. The lack of a starbase support was already showing. The Defiant-class ships were never designed for extended deep space missions plus the repairs to the ships were not up to Starfleet spec and that bothered Payne. If he were to engage someone, he wanted his ships to be in top fighting condition. He would have to make arrangements for fleet support if they were to be stuck here for protracted amount of time; preferably a starbase of some sort.
"Sir, we will be at the edge of the Sol system in 5 minutes."
"Good, signal the fleet to drop out of warp but maintain cloak. They are to proceed to Pluto at impulse and remain in orbit until further orders."
"Yes sir."
"Commander Sato, proceed to the edge of the system and drop us out of warp, then proceed at impulse. I want to gather as much intel as possible. Jacobs, how are we with comm.?"
"Everything's in order sir. The new upgrades are working just fine. We are receiving lots of communication signal."
"Is there anything interesting going on?"
"It depends on what you mean by interesting. There are literarily thousands of channels and it will be a while before I can sort it out."
"How about military channels?"
"We have yet to isolate them sir. I'll inform you as soon as I do so."
In the meantime the Baikonur was also busy collecting other data. The system was filled with numerous ships of all shapes and sizes but what interested them the most were the military ships in orbit around Earth and Mars. There were mainly two types. Both were extremely large. The smaller one was about a thousand meter in length and must have had a mass of at least eight or nine million tons. The larger one was closer to fifteen hundred meter and must have tipped the scale at close to thirty million tons. Both were bristling with numerous weapons platforms. However, their weapons were currently powered down so the passive sensors on the Baikonur couldn't get detailed information on them. Interestingly, like all previous ships they had encountered, these ships also seemed to lack shield generators, which explained their reliance on very thick armor. Nevertheless, they still looked imposing. Something else they noticed was the presence of numerous small one-man fighters supporting these ships. Unlike the Federation, which relied mostly on capital ships, these people seemed to rely extensively on numerous fighters as force multipliers.
It took Ensign Jacobs an hour before he had isolated some interesting channels. "Sir, this one seems interesting. It's called ISN and seems to be one of their main news channels."
"Put it on screen."
ISN proved to be similar to CNN and BBC news channel. It was spewing out lots of information but what caught Payne's attention was the bit about Mars having just declared independence from Earth. The anchor kept going on about the implication of the secession and what actions President Clark would take. He also kept mentioning about a space station called Babylon 5 and how their action had started a chain of events which lead to Mars seceding from Earth Gov. Captain Payne did not like it one bit. It was just their luck to end up in the middle of a civil upheaval. He would have to take his time to find out what exactly was going on before he drew any conclusion.
President Clark's response was swift and decisive. What followed was horrific. Clark ordered his military to attack the Mars colony. Payne could only imagine how those people receiving the orders must have felt like. He would never agree to being part of something like that. True, like all military people, he had sworn to obey orders from his superiors but they had also sworn to defend his people.
The secession of Mars followed by Clark's orders to bomb Mars started a sequence of events that lead to other colonies breaking away from Earth Alliance in quick order, vowing to be independent until President Clark was impeached. Fearing this news would spread like wildfire, Clark covertly clamped down on ISN and all other news outlets, effectively suspending all freedom of speech. This did not go unnoticed.
In the meantime, the orbital bombardment of Mars proceeded with devastating results. As the domed cities were hit from above, there was massive death and destruction. Payne was surprised that so many ships had participated in it. He had been sure that more captains would refuse such an order but obviously Clark had a stronger reign on his military than he had anticipated. He wanted to step in and interfere but he knew this was not the right time. He had already aggravated two species and did not want a third. Not yet anyway. However, that did not mean he could not lend a humanitarian hand to those on the receiving end. He ordered the rest of his fleet to move in under cloak and transport the most severely injured off the planet. His combined fleet could only hold thirty thousand and the transport would take hours but that was better than nothing. When the evacuation was complete, they headed straight for Babylon 5.
The IKS Vaj Tlq and IKS To'Duj had been traveling at high warp to Qo'noS for almost two weeks now. They had passed several inhabited worlds and ships of every description but nothing was going to slow them down. They had one thing in mind and that was to get "home". They weren't sure what they were going to do once they got there. They just wanted to get there.
As they finally approached Qo'noS, neither Captain Domak nor the crew could suppress their anticipation. However, when they pulled up in orbit around Qo'noS they were surprised to see lots of ships in orbit but none had any Klingon life signs onboard. What was going on here? Where were all the Klingons? It never even crossed Domak's mind once that there might not be Klingons in this universe. Irritated, he gruffly ordered his sensor officer to scan the planet. The sensor officer nervously did what he was told and was relieved when he located some Klingon life signs. It was strange though. He could only locate several thousand at the most. Perplexed, he turned to his captain and explained what was going on. Domak immediately ordered an away team assembled. He was going to investigate this himself.
Governor Kellani wasn't a happy man. He used to be a powerful man in the Centauri Empire, but lately he had fallen from grace in the Emperors eyes. He was lucky that his father still held influence in the emperor's court and been able to pull strings otherwise his head would have ended on a pike like so many others. Instead, he had been relegated to this backwater planet that no self-respecting Centauri of his position would have ever visited. Someday he would make Mollari pay for this. He would rip the bastards beating heart out of his chest and shove it down his throat. Oh how he would love to watch the horror in Mollari's eyes. But that would have to wait. For now, he had to bid his time and make the right move when the time came. Until then, he was going to make the most of the situation.
Kellani always had had the passion for hunting big game. Thankfully, that was the one thing this planet had plenty of. Today, he was hosting some minor dignitaries and had arranged a hunt. He didn't really care for their company but if he wanted to get back at Mollari, he had to play this game and play it well. He smiled inwardly as he thought of the day he would have his revenge. It sure was a dish best served cold. Begrudgingly, he shook himself back to reality as his spotters located their quarry. He then gave the orders and the hounds were set loose to chase it down. As he followed the hounds up the hill he quickly realized that he was moving much too fast and had left his guests behind. Normally, he would have slowed down for them but the commotion up ahead told him the hounds had cornered the beasts. There was no sense in waiting for those slow bastards. Let them take their own time. He smoothly dismounted and followed the last 40 feet on foot. As he approached a clearing, he noticed that the hounds were no longer barking. That was a bit odd but he let it slide, that is until he walked out onto the clearing. Three Karvals stood in front of him with his hounds dead at their feet. He could not believe his eyes for a moment. Not only were his hounds dead, these Karvals showed absolutely no sign of fear as he approached them. It was then that he noticed the difference between the Karvals he had been hunting and these. These were fully clothed and had some kind of weapon hanging from their belt. Kellani was a man of action and he did not waste any further time analyzing the situation. He reached for his weapon and brought it up but he was too late. One of the Karvals threw his bloodied knife at him. It caught him at the base of his throat and buried itself down to the hilt. Surprised, he dropped his weapon and tried to pry the knife that was lodged in his throat. It was a futile gesture and he knew it. Already, blood from the wound was pouring down his throat and pooling in his lungs. He was drowning in his own blood. He tried to cough it out but it just made matters worse. Slowly he dropped to his knees and slumped over, gasping for a breath of air before he passed out.
Captain Domak had ordered his away team beamed down to a hillock on the outskirt of the capitol. They had detected some Klingon life-signs and he wanted to investigate it. After re-materialization, he and his team of two warriors quickly scanned the surrounding area. There were no signs of the Klingons they had come in search of. As they moved up the hill expanding their search, they were jumped by a pack of hounds that came crashing through the dense underbrush barking and snapping at their heels. Irritated more than anything else, the three Klingons drew their daqtagh and proceeded to slay the offending animals. It didn't take long. They were about to resume their search when something else stumbled through the brush. It was a medium-built human with a funny hairdo; nothing out of the ordinary really. Domak had known humans most of his life and knew they could be eccentric and impractical. But what happened next caught his attention. The human blurted something alien and swung his weapon that had been hanging from his shoulder. Being a warrior, his reflexes took over. He threw the daqtagh with all the force he could muster and watched it bury itself in the human's throat. There was a mask of horror on his victims face as it realized the gravity of the situation. It clutched the daqtagh with both hands and tried to pry it loose but it was buried too deep and would not budge. It staggered a small distance and finally crumpled to the floor.
Domak was pleased. He had always prided at his skills with a daqtagh and it did not let him down. He was a bit concerned though. Why had the human try to kill them at first sight? Were they at war? It did not quite add up. Perplexed, he walked over to the fallen body and pulled the daqtagh out and wiped it clean before sheathing it. That was when he heard more footsteps approaching. They quickly, retreated behind some cover and waited. It wasn't long before a group of humans showed up leading their mounts. When they saw the fallen body of their comrades, there was a commotion. Domak strained to catch what was being said but it sounded alien to him. Not even the universal translator was able to help. Given the situation, Domak decided that retreat was the best option at the moment. He wanted to know what was going on before he made his next move. God help these humans if they were at war with the Klingons. Although, he wasn't from this reality, he felt it was his obligation to help his brethren.