“Break orbit, Commander,” Harriman told her. “Go to warp eight when it’s safe to do so.”
She worked the helm, the thrum of the impulse engines rising as they engaged. She looked up at the main viewscreen just once, as the arc of the Koltaari world slipped from sight. Linojj felt a tightness in her belly, a sick, sinking feeling at leaving the peaceful people to the marauding hands of the Romulans. But she also thought once more of her own homeworld, and of the hundreds of other aligned and nonaligned planets in and around the Federation, their billions of inhabitants, and she knew that Captain Harriman was right: Starfleet was not yet prepared to go to war, and if the crew of Enterprisehad attempted to liberate the Koltaari today, the results would have been disastrous—both for the Federation and for the Koltaari.
It might still be disastrous,she thought. War had been coming for a long time, she knew, but it had never been closer than right now. Today, Vokar and the Romulans had begun the countdown.
Minus Ten: Foxtrot
The asteroid hung in space like an afterthought, a barren, craggy rock the universe seemed to have flung together for no particular purpose. Foxtrot XIII, irregularly but unremarkably shaped, bore no conspicuous variations from any of its dozen namesakes. Less than five hundred kilometers along its greatest dimension, it appeared lifeless and alone against the glittering backdrop of stars.
No, not alone, Lieutenant Commander Rafaele Buonarroti saw as he peered at a monitor in one of Enterprise’s cargo holds. On the small viewscreen, a gleam of light had emerged from beyond the asteroid, a distinctive gray-white shape. Enterprisehad been scheduled to rendezvous here with Agamemnon,but Buonarroti would have immediately identified the ship—or at least its class—anyway. The curved engine nacelles of the Odysseusvessels represented an experimental Starfleet design three decades old—a design that, while functional, had been abandoned when theorized efficiencies in warp-field generation had never materialized. Only two of the eight ships built remained in active service, and Buonarroti had heard recent talk that Agamemnonitself might soon be decommissioned. For now, though, the old vessel kept company with the dun, seemingly empty asteroid.
Seemingly empty, Buonarroti knew, but not actuallyempty.
Beside him, Captain Harriman reached down and pressed a touchpad on the detached console into which the monitor was set. The image shifted, bringing Foxtrot XIII and Agamemnoncloser. The old ship measured only about two-thirds as long as Enterprise,Buonarroti recalled from the specs, and carried a corresponding crew complement of approximately five hundred. But despite its smaller size and the still-ultramodern appearance of its bowed nacelles, Agamemnonlooked bulky and boxy to him, particularly when compared with the sleek, streamlined form of Enterprise.
“Are we ready to go once we’re in range, Rafe?” the captain asked, pronouncing Buonarroti’s nickname with a short aand long e: Rah-fee.The two men stood on the other side of the console from the expansive square stage of a cargo transporter. Buonarroti looked up from the monitor and over at Harriman before responding.
“Yes, we’re all set, Captain,” he said, then peered around at the cargo that Enterprisehad hauled here from Space Station KR-3. Throughout the hold, outsized metal containers of various shapes had been stacked high. Security mechanisms, a trio of green lights glowing steadily on each, had been affixed to all of the containers. One light indicated an engaged magnetic lock, the others the active states of sensor and transporter inhibitors. If any cloaked Romulan vessels penetrated the nearby Neutral Zone to gather intelligence—and Starfleet Command believed such reconnaissance to be commonplace these days—then their crews would be able neither to scan the contents of the containers nor to transport them away; the inhibitors obstructed sensors and prevented the containers from being beamed from anywhere but directly atop a transporter pad. “I’ve already received the coordinates from the outpost,” Buonarroti told Harriman, “and I’ve modified the transporter protocols not to record the details of what we beam down.” He paused, then added, “La lotta continua.”
Owing to his appreciation for his heritage, Buonarroti had an affinity for employing Italian phrases. Combined with his slightly drawn-out cadences—common to humans raised in the Alpha Centauri system—it made for a distinctive way of speaking. He remembered, back when he had first been assigned to Enterprise,the captain’s inability to contain a smile whenever Buonarroti had spiced his dialogue with Italian, but Harriman had long ago become accustomed to such verbal idiosyncrasies. Buonarroti had served under the captain for fifteen years now, the last half as his chief engineer.
Now, not only didn’t Harriman smile, but his jaw tightened. “I’m afraid that’s an understatement, Rafe,” he said. A saying Buonarroti used often enough that just about everybody on board understood its meaning, La lotta continuatranslated as The struggle continues.
The captain gazed around the hold at the cargo containers, his expression drawn, his body language hinting at his weariness. The last couple of years had been difficult for all of Starfleet, with the uncertain relations among the Federation, the Romulans, and the Klingons threatening the peace more and more each day. Seven months ago, immediately after the Romulans had taken the world of the Koltaari, Enterprisehad been assigned to Foxtrot Sector to patrol the Federation side of the Neutral Zone and conduct defense-readiness drills at the thirteen outposts in the region. And just nine weeks ago, Enterprisehad been ordered to team with Agamemnonto deliver enhanced weaponry to the outposts and to rotate outpost personnel. Buonarroti knew that Starfleet crews stationed full-time along the Neutral Zone were routinely reassigned to other posts in order to minimize fatigue and stress, a policy Starfleet Command had recently reinforced by choosing to rotate out entire crews from the outposts, at shorter intervals.
The incongruity of the operation, as far as Buonarroti was concerned, lay in the anxiety it had produced in the crew of Enterpriseand, he was sure, in the crew of Agamemnon. Enterpriseferried weapons from Space Station KR-3 to the Foxtrot asteroids and then returned to the starbase with the reassigned outpost crews, while Agamemnondelivered the new crews and also provided special technicians to install the new weapons. The tasks served as constant reminders of the precarious state of interstellar relations, and the repetition of those tasks for each outpost only helped to heighten the feeling of dread aboard ship—probably for no one more so than the captain, Buonarroti thought. Beyond carrying the burdens of his crew, Harriman also must have felt pressure from Starfleet Command; each time Enterprisearrived at KR-3, he would invariably be called into hours of meetings with the top brass. Buonarroti knew of the captain’s experiences with the Romulans through the years, and the engineer was sure that the admirals wanted to make use of whatever the captain had learned as a result of those experiences.
“Well, it sure looks like an impressive amount of firepower,” Buonarroti observed optimistically. Although Starfleet Command had classified the contents of the containers, it had been an open secret that, in recent days, the Federation had been designing and manufacturing improved—and perhaps even new—armaments. He only hoped that the weapons experts on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone performed their jobs better than their counterparts in the Romulan and Klingon Empires, and that if shots eventually did blaze through the darkness of space, the enhanced weaponry would prove decisive for the UFP.