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  “Secure the area,” T’Pol ordered the MACOs via her suit’s transceiver.

  Sergeant Guitierrez and Corporal O’Malley were already in motion, their helmet lights illuminating the crippled vessel’s interior. They moved in opposite directions down an extensively battle-damaged corridor. As T’Pol’s sensitive Vulcan eyes began to adjust to the low light levels, she noticed a number of blackened rents in the exterior walls.

  Stars and the damaged exterior were discernible through the breaches. She shuddered slightly, chilled by the knowledge of the fate that had befallen anyone in this corridor when the hull had torn open. As T’Pol trained her helmet lamp toward her feet, she saw that she was standing on the remnants of a leg. Lifting her foot, she saw a humanoid form. Its eyes, or at least the four of them she could see arranged about its bulbous head, were easily five times the size of those of a Vulcan, and the distal appendages of its four upper limbs were entwined with the gridwork of the bent, twisted deck plates beneath it.

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  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0715-4

  ISBN 978-1-4516-0724-6 (ebook)

  For my wife, Jenny, and my sons, James and William.

  We are about to brave the storm in a skiff made of paper.

  —John Hancock (1737–1793)

  War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

  —G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)

  HISTORIAN’S NOTE

  The bulk of this story takes place during the period spanning June 22, 2156 (ACE), the aftermath of the terror attack on Vulcan (Star Trek: Enterprise—The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor’s Wing) through August 12, 2161, the day of the signing of the United Federation of Planets Charter.

  Content

  Part I: 2156

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part II: 2157-2159

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part III: 2160

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Part IV: 2161

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Part V: 2186

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART I

  2156

  Prologue

  Early in the Month of ta’Krat, Year of Shikahr 8765

  Tuesday, June 22, 2156

  Government District, Central ShiKahr, Vulcan

  IT WAS THE MORNING after the commission of the most heinous crime in Vulcan’s recorded history. T’Pau, administrator of the Confederacy of Vulcan, stood looking out at the stone and glass expanse of Vulcan’s ancient capital city from one of its highest spires.

  The sense of loss she was experiencing threatened to undermine her emotional controls. She sensed that the rest of Vulcan felt the same way. Her entire being vibrated in sympathy with the mood of her people. Her mind, her heart, her katra sang out in mournful wails.

  I grieve with thee, she thought, recalling Surak’s compassionate yet eminently logical words of solace. Words spoken throughout the ages.

  I grieve with all of thee, she thought and ignored the single tear that rolled down her cheek. And for all of thee as well.

  The words were hollow. Her grief had begun to metamorphose into something uglier: blame.

  T’Pau knew that blame was futile, illogical. She was Vulcan, she was in control of her emotions. Yet why did she still seek out someone to blame? The architects of yesterday’s foul act of assassination remained unidentified. No one other than the guilty parties knew who had bombed the Mount Seleya shrine, slaughtering the keeper of Surak’s katra. Whoever had done this vile deed might have even escaped the planet. Or they might be taking refuge in one of Vulcan’s major cities or smaller settlements. T’Pau wanted to lead the search of the desert bazaars of Han-shir, scour every corner of ancient ShiKahr.

  Control.

  Taking a moment to center herself, T’Pau achieved stillness.

  Have I made the right choices? By keeping Vulcan out of the war with the Romulans, I was trying to preserve what Surak made us, she thought. But what of Vulcan’s other actions? Was it right to persuade both Andoria and Tellar to leave the conflict? Earth now stands alone.

  Alone. The sorrow started to overwhelm her controls.

  Have we lost Surak, the Father of All We Became and Might Yet Become, once again and forever? No, his children may never touch his katra, but they shall know him.

  “Administrator.” T’Pau suppressed her startled reaction.

  “T’Rama,” T’Pau said without turning away from the cold tableau of the city. “My staff was supposed to go home for the day. Why are you still here?”


  “When you directed me to dismiss the staff this morning, I was not aware that your order included the head of your security detail as well,” T’Rama said evenly.

  “At the moment, my own safety is the least of my concerns,” T’Pau said. Using the back of her hand, she wiped at the moisture that clung to her cheek before she turned and faced her chief bodyguard.

  “Excellency,” T’Rama said. The young woman’s face was swollen, her eyes moist. “After what happened yesterday, your personal safety is my only concern.”

  T’Pau nodded. “And I am gratified by your vigilance, T’Rama. But it is unnecessary.”

  “Unnecessary?”

  “Go home, T’Rama.

  “Tomorrow we shall see to the needs of the many.”

  ONE

  Thursday, July 22, 2156

  Late in the Month of Soo’jen, Year of Kahless 782

  Qam-Chee, the First City, Qo’noS

  TOO PREOCCUPIED by his own glum musings to speak, Captain Jonathan Archer stood silently in the empty corridor just outside the High Council Chamber. Watching his first officer crossing her arms before her, Archer knew her outer layer of Vulcan calm was a façade; T’Pol was as tense and taut as a snare drum.

  “Do you believe the Klingons will decide to enter the conflict?” T’Pol asked, her words echoing off the polished stone walls despite the quiet tone of her voice.

  Archer cast his gaze about the broad hallway, searching in vain for a place to sit as he considered that all-important question. Turning to face his executive officer, he shrugged.

  “Regardless of what Shran or Krell might tell you,” he said at length, “I’m no warrior. When I took command of Enterprise, I was an explorer. What the hell happened to those days anyway?”

  T’Pol’s protracted silence only made him wonder if he had wasted the last few years of his life pursuing the vain hope of bringing peace and security to this mostly lawless jungle of a galaxy.

  And now it may all come down to whether or not the Klingons will agree to help us beat back the Romulans, Archer thought. Before they set up forward operating bases on even more of our colony worlds, the way they did on Calder II.

  Before they overrun Earth itself.

  The moment stretched until T’Pol surprised him by actually trying to answer his rhetorical question. “As a noted philosopher once said, ‘Life is that which occurs fortuitously while one pursues alternative options.’”

  Archer thought the words sounded vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t quite place them.

  “Surak?”

  “No, Captain,” she said with a small shake of her head. “A Terran musician to whose work Trip—Commander Tucker—introduced me.”

  “So you’re saying I’m a soldier, whether I want to be or not.”

  “We do not always have the luxury of choosing our destinies, Captain. Sometimes they choose us.”

  Despite his gray mood, he felt a mischievous grin tugging gently at his face. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, T’Pol, but that sounds more emotional than logical.”

  “Jonathan, I speak from the logic of personal experience,” she said quietly. Since Trip Tucker’s departure from Enterprise’s crew, T’Pol was the only subordinate who seemed comfortable addressing Archer by his first name.

  “I guess it would be pointless to argue with Vulcan empiricism,” he said.

  She nodded. “Indeed.”

  “I just don’t have to like it.”

  “The universe has never been obliged to shape itself to comport with our likes or dislikes.” She fell silent again but continued gazing at him in a manner he could only describe as expectant, if not downright anxious.

  “Was there something else?” he asked.

  “You never answered my question. Do you think the Klingons will assist us against the Romulans?”

  It occurred to him then that her interest in this question was intensely personal—perhaps as intensely personal as his own. Though Romulus posed a far greater danger to Earth at the moment than it did to Vulcan, T’Pol obviously felt responsible for her homeworld’s decision—perhaps at the cost of Earth’s very existence—to sit out the conflict.

  Will the Klingons help us push the Romulans back? Archer thought. He knew the idea wasn’t absurd on its face. After all, the Klingon Empire had been at loggerheads, or worse, with the Romulan Star Empire for about as long as anyone with knowledge of either society could remember. The mutual antipathy might even have gone all the way back to the time of Klingon-Romulan first contact. Or will M’Rek decide his empire would be better off just letting Earth and Romulus wear each other down for the next few bloody years? At that point, both would be easy pickings—

  The council chamber’s massive wooden door opened with surprising suddenness and rapidity, interrupting Archer’s train of thought. A sweat-and-lilac-tinged draft from the chamber briefly bent the flames in the ceremonial sconces in the cold rock walls. The captain could hear the deep guttural-but-clear cry of the Klingon equivalent of a sergeant at arms, mixed with the distant clatter of heavy boots against time-polished stone. The members of the High Council were filing back into the official chamber far sooner than Archer had expected.

  Not good, he thought. As he led the way toward the open doorway, he said, “T’Pol, I think the Klingons may be about to settle your question definitively.”

  A moment later Archer and his first officer stood at attention once again in the High Council Chamber’s audience area, a broad, flat stretch of stone overlooked by the raised, tiered dais upon which several dozen of the heads of the Klingon Empire’s most influential houses were taking their seats and coming to order.

  As the low growls of conversation faded away into silence, Chancellor M’Rek, the council’s leader, strode to the central dais, where he stopped and faced Archer. Waving away the guards who flanked him and the Chancellor, Fleet Admiral Krell followed M’Rek and came to a stop to the immediate right of the gray-maned eminence. Despite his incongruously smooth forehead, Krell was a portrait of power and barely contained Klingon rage—all of which was clearly directed, like a battery of phase cannons, straight at Archer. The braids of Krell’s long and narrow white beard almost seemed to vibrate with tension.

  The captain had faced the admiral in personal combat a year ago, in this very room. Apparently the successful reattachment of the admiral’s left arm had done little to assuage his resentment toward Archer for having wielded the bat’leth that had sliced off the limb in the first place.

  Does he really intend to take his rage out on the entire human race? Archer wondered, even as he immediately answered his own question. If he advised M’Rek to stay out of the fight, then that’s exactly what he’s done.

  “Jonathan Archer.” Chancellor M’Rek intoned each syllable in a sonorous, ceremonial manner obviously intended to be heard clearly even in the vast hall’s farthest corners. “The High Council has reached a decision with regard to your government’s official request.”

  Archer felt a peculiar sensation of motion deep in his belly, as though his guts were trying to burrow past each other in search of someplace safer than their present locations.

  “Thank you, Chancellor,” he said, mainly to fill the maddening silence.

  “You do not have reason to thank me, Archer,” M’Rek said. “The High Council hereby formally declines to assist your world in its war against the RomuluSngan.”

  Archer thought he was prepared to hear the worst; he thought he could assimilate the bad news with some equanimity and grace.

  His face and neck felt flushed as he realized he had read himself entirely wrong.

  “So that’s it, then?” he said, raising his voice to a near shout that had to be clearly audible even in the gallery’s cheapest seats. “Your High Council ‘formally declines’ to engage with a common enemy?”

  Krell favored Archer with a malicious grin. “I will presume your translation device is in need of maintenance. Until you can attend to that, allow m
e to remove any remaining ambiguity for you: Seek help elsewhere. You will find none from the Klingon High Council, and the Chancellor owes you no explanation beyond that. Have I made matters sufficiently clear to you?”

  Archer ignored Krell, concentrating instead on the Chancellor. “What’s it going to take for us lowly Earthers to prove ourselves worthy of your help, Chancellor?”

  “Captain,” T’Pol said, her hand on his shoulder, gentle yet insistent.

  He shrugged her off and pointed at the fleet admiral. “Would it help if I sliced this guy’s other arm off?”

  “Captain!” T’Pol said, more sharply this time.

  Krell snarled and advanced toward Archer, until M’Rek stopped him by raising his mailed fist and shouting, “Mevyap!”

  “Mind your place, Captain,” said M’Rek into the ensuing anxious silence. “You are a visitor here. Do not presume upon the High Council’s patience by making vainglorious displays.”

  With a strenuous effort of will, Archer reined his emotions in. He tried to recapture some of the calm and peace he had experienced two years earlier when his brain had served as a temporary storage vessel for the living spirit of the Vulcan philosopher Surak. Though Surak’s influence was now little more than a distant whisper, the effort was sufficient to prevent him from committing any further breaches of protocol.

  But he felt no less incensed that the Klingons had decided to throw Earth to the wolves—or to the raptors—just as Vulcan had already done.

  Continuing to ignore Krell, Archer addressed the Chancellor. “Please forgive me, Chancellor. I allowed my emotions to get the better of me.”

  “Perhaps you should have allowed your Vulcan SoS to speak for you, Archer,” Krell said with a chortle.

  Resigned to his universal translator’s occasional glitches, Archer could only wonder what a SoS was. Ignoring what was almost certainly an entirely intentional insult, he finally allowed his gaze to light upon the admiral. “You’re fortunate I didn’t, Krell. You might have wound up losing both your arms.”