"If the Romulans could do it, why couldn't we?"
In the year 2346, K'mpec, Son of Korrd, who was then a junior Councilman on Kronos, challenged then Chancellor Kravokh to honourable combat, blaming Kravokh for allowing the Khitomer Massacre.
The second major Romulan attack in two years, Khitomer's civilian population of 4 000 were slaughtered almost to the last man, woman and child in a cold-blooded, calculated assault that was successfully staged thanks to a Klingon agent on the planet, who transmitted Khitomer's defence codes to a squadron of cloaked Warbirds in orbit.
Unable to activate their surface-based defences – or even call for help, the Klingon colony was helpless. Only two Klingons survived that day, Worf, son of Mogh (K'mpec's close friend who had given his council seat to K'mpec as a reward for loyalty and friendship), and Worf's nursemaid, Kahlest. The Romulan Rei Karansu conquered Khitomer almost without challenge, severely embarrassing the Klingon Empire and at last supplanting the Klingons as the number two power of the Alpha Quadrant.
K'mpec killed Kravokh after a brief duel, and as was his right by Klingon law, he assumed the chancellorship. K'mpec had the unenviable task of bringing the Klingon Empire back into shape by healing the physical and psychological trauma caused by Khitomer. It was a daunting task.
Half the Empire was screaming for Romulan blood. The other half had begun to question if the way of the Warrior was merely the way into an early grave. K'mpec did the only thing he could, and just two months after his ascension, signed the Treaty of Alliance with the Federation.
"I had no other realistic option," K'mpec wrote in his memoirs, "The Empire was in no shape to wage war upon the Romulans. We had just come out of a century of neglecting our military assets. The Great Houses, divided as they were, would have been little help in such a campaign. The thought of war had to be put aside. There were much bigger problems I had to attend to."
K'mpec's back really was to the wall. The Empire's economy was a sad shamble of an economic system. Healthcare, industrial infrastructure, even agriculture had all plummeted to near-poverty levels. The Federation agreed to help K'mpec get his house in order, but only on the condition that the Empire would not attempt to launch any retaliation for Khitomer.
K'mpec would remain in the position of Supreme Chancellor for 21 years, longer than any other Chancellor in history. By the time he died, K'mpec had managed to keep the Empire together and get the Klingons back on their feet, but they were standing on what can be charitably described as a rotten piece of plywood.
Two challengers would eventually emerge to claim K'mpec's seat. The winner, after an almost Romulan level of political intrigue, was Gowron, son of M'rel. Given that Gowron had played a more Romulan style of political maneuvering, I decided to ask a Romulan what he thought about the whole affair.
"It actually came as quite a surprise to me that Gowron rose to such a high station," Senator V'Melek, the "unofficial" Romulan ambassador to the Federation said with a chuckle, "Who was he before that time? Nothing. And I don't use that word as an insult to the man. Certainly, I have much more appropriate words I can apply to a Klingon. But that is the word I can best use to describe Gowron prior to his reign. He was a decidedly middling tactician and a notably poor strategist – as all Klingons are, to be fair. His command of the IKS Bortas is almost not even worth mentioning, having accomplished almost nothing of note. His house was not particularly well respected or wealthy. His only real achievement to that point was how loudly he had barked at the High Council for one matter or another."
The condescension wasn't unexpected from a Romulan, but the idea that Gowron was a nobody was hard to accept, even from a Romulan perspective. I asked V'Melek if there was anything positive he could say about Gowron.
"One thing, and only one thing," he said with that cunning smile of his, "Gowron was incredibly, almost stupendously, lucky."
Gowron's luck ran out almost instantly after taking the Chancellor's robes. Lursa and Be'tor, the sisters of Duras – the man that Gowron had beaten in his challenge for the Chancellorship – produced the unrevealed heir of Duras and renewed their late brother's challenge, eventually dragging the Klingon Empire into a full-blown civil war.
Lursa and Be'tor had not only courted most of the wealthy Great Houses to their cause but were also receiving clandestine material support from the Rei Karansu in the form of rations, ammunition, advanced weapons training, medical supplies, and even enhanced cloaking devices.
"It really shouldn't be so difficult to figure out what our aim was in backing the Duras sisters," V'Melek explained to me, "They were simply puppets on one of our many strings. Neither one of them had any actual strategy or long term plan for their little Empire. They missed their big brother, the poor girls, and thought they could honour his memory by finishing the work he started."
"And what would we get out of handing over some inconsequential logistics? The Klingon Empire would have become a province of Rihannsu Stelam Shiar, we would have had the Federation at our mercy and surrounded on three sides… If I may speak candidly, Kirin, the entire affair would have been quite amusing for us."
In 2367, Gowron formally requested that the Federation intervene in the conflict under the terms of the Treaty of Alliance, but he was refused on the grounds that a Federation intervention would constitute a black-and-white violation of the prime directive. But although the Federation took no official action to help Gowron, a fleet of Starships under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard was able to expose a Romulan Convoy bound for Kronos, causing the Duras sisters to loose a good deal of their political support.
But what did that matter when the KDF was barely holding their own as it was?
"Gowron's mastery of logistics and administration has about as much credibility as a Ferengi Charity Fundraiser," an anonymous Starfleet Intelligence officer scoffed to me, "His KDF was getting its collective ass kicked from one end of the Empire to the other, while the Dur-Ass twins were getting top-shelf Rei Karansu gear for their fleet. So we made the call to drop some gear off to Gowron and give him a fighting chance. If the Romulans could do it, why couldn't we?"
It was a notion shared by more than a few people in the Admiralty, including Blackjack Ashcroft, who proposed the adventure to Aki-Ojisan while the public's eyes were distracted by Picard.
The plan was simple. Blackjack would charter a small flotilla of Tholian cargo ships to deliver a cargo drop to Kronos, just one more out of the hundreds of cargo flotillas that went to and from Kronos every single day, even during the war. The only difference in this case was that Blackjack's flotilla would be loaded up with rations, ammunition, advanced weapons training manuals, medical supplies, and even enhanced sensor packages to break through equally advanced Romulan cloaking devices.
"I gotta give Blackjack his credit for sheer audacity," that Intel Officer tells me, "It was a hell of a plan. By contracting the Tholians, it meant that no Starfleet Officer ever once had to step foot in the Empire, and unlike the Romulans, we didn't need to send our ships or people over to make sure the cargo was being put to good use. It let us maintain the plausible deniability of neutrality, and it kept the heat off Picard long enough to let him do his thing. I know some people say that might be hypocritical considering we didn't do anything when Gowron openly asked us for help. But really, what was a better endgame for the Federation? A Klingon Empire controlled from Romulus? Or someone we could keep on a leash like Gowron?"
"That was probably the most brilliant part of the plan. See, you can't just take a Romulan cloak and slap it into a K'Vort and call it day. You need someone, either a Romulan Engineer or one of the very few Klingons that can read Rihannsu, to make it actually work, and that's if they're lucky."
"But for us? The KDF and Starfleet had been doing joint exercises for decades. At that point, over two-thirds of the Klingon fleet had some kind of Starfleet DNA in their hulls. Our tech was very much plug-and-play. And there are a whole hell of a lot more Klingons who can read English."
It seemed, at least for that moment reader, that Blackjack had made yet another winning call. With the Duras Sisters losing their benefactor, and Gowron making effective use of Blackjack's cargo, the KDF was able to reorganize and win the day, bringing the civil war to a close and solidifying Gowron's reign as Supreme Chancellor.
More importantly to our story, Gowron now had an almost invaluable card in his back pocket to call upon in tough spots. The Tholian pipeline was kept open by Blackjack, who as it turns out was taking a very nice percentage off the top. Over the next decade, a Tholian trading convoy would visit Kronos at least once a month with some manner of Federation cargo aboard.
With his authority as a four-star Admiral and the nature of his discretionary assignment, Blackjack was able to requestion just about anything wanted at the behest of Gowron, and no one ever took a second look at a requestion order with his signature on it.
"You want me be honest, Kirin? We got complacent. Hell, more than that, we got lazy," that same Starfleet Intelligence Guy admits to me, "If anyone in our office, even me, had stopped for two seconds and actually looked at these requisition orders, we might have been able to slam the door shut on the whole thing decades ago. But we didn't. And I don't really have a good reason to offer as to why no one did."
"It was almost instinct. An order would come into Logistics for a shield core, or an industrial replicator, or a crate of torpedo casings. Someone would look at that order, see Blackjack's signature on it, and that was that. Loaded, marked, and sent away."
Complacency. Laziness. The unfathomable notion of questioning a hero like Blackjack. The Klingons like to say that revenge is a dish best served cold. And its very cold in space. I'll add my own saying to that.
Hindsight is the coldest bitch in space.
─•~:~•─
