For Kane and the others, moving around the wrecked Batarian ship was a struggle in more than one way. Some corridors were blocked by debris or remnant fires. The lifts couldn't work half of the time, even with the backup power sources brought from the Koenig's relatively-meager stores. And the Batarians themselves were not helpful captives.
After an inspection of the team looking through what was left of the engineering area, Kane walked back toward the bow of the raiding ship. Wediks and Shepard were still there with two other officers: Ensign Hajar and one of Shepard's people, a dark-haired officer she'd introduced as Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko. "Have you found anything yet?" Kane asked.
Hajar spoke first from a computer panel. "I'm still trying this data reconstruction program, but I don't hold out much hope. Their data wiping program is thorough to the point of physical data removal."
"I am hoping to find something in the access memory buffers," said Wediks from another station, which he was working on with his omnitool.
"And what about the ship itself?"
Hajar shook her head. "The ship's a total loss. That power overload and the resulting secondary explosions caused too much structural damage. We would need a cruiser-scale structural integrity field to risk any sort of sublight or FTL velocities."
"But I might be able to do something with the communications gear." Alenko was operating one of the consoles. Like Shepard he was in Systems Alliance standard issue battle armor, but without the white N7 designation present. "It looks like it was also damaged in the fight. But that's worked in our favor."
"Oh?" Shepard asked. "In what way?"
"Because the power overload fried out the connection between the comm system memory and the main computers. When they ran their data wipe process, it didn't carry into the memory."
Shepard walked over to him. "But wouldn't that mean that the overload also fried the system memory?"
"Only partly." Shepard and Kane could see Alenko visibly sorting through data sectors, some functional and some corrupted. "The wiring burned out first. So there's still some data left in the system memory I can use. Maybe some comm activity…" One of the icons on his omnitool display flashed green. "There. I've got something. It looks like an audio transmission that hadn't been cleared from memory yet."
"Can you put it on?" Kane asked.
"Let me see…" Alenko started pressing more keys. "Here."
The guttural tones of Batarian speech started crackling over the bridge speakers. After a moment the auto-translators kicked in. "...targets in this side of the cluster. Allow me to move closer to the Humans' trade lanes! The prizes…"
"The prizes do not merit the risk. At this juncture we cannot afford to alienate our trading partners by drawing attention, and we certainly cannot jeopardize the upcoming talks with the Multiversal Alliance. The Minister will have our eyes ripped from our heads if we ruin his plan."
"But my men are restless. We haven't claimed prizes for over a month."
"They will have to wait. If things go as planned, many prizes will come to them, and their portions from our contributions to the slave markets back home will be great enough that we'll all move up in caste. Your only worry at this point is to protect the latinum deposits. Let us worry ab-…" The voice dissolved into static-laden gibberish for a moment before the file ceased running.
"Well, that certainly sounds ominous," Shepard said. She looked toward Kane. "A plan involving the negotiations with your Alliance."
"I'll report it to the Koenig immediately." Kane was frowning. "But I have another problem."
"How are they going to react when this ship doesn't check in?" Shepard nodded. "From the way it sounds, they might assume the captain decided to take matters into his own hands and move closer to the major trading lanes in this cluster. That won't make them happy."
Kane nodded. "Which means they'll be sending searchers when check-ins don't come on time." Kane pressed a hand to the side of his combat helmet. "Kane to Koenig. We've got some updates for you, and some bad news."
With the meetings over Barnes headed back to his preserve in Engineering. With Hajar over on the Batarian ship his second, Lieutenant (j.g.) Ana Poniatowski, was working her off-shift time. The slight Polish girl with honey-colored hair didn't show any fatigue while covering the scant battle damage they had incurred. "The shield generators passed the post-battle inspection," she said while Barnes was tapping keys at the Engineering Master Systems Display. "I am a little worried about what looks like some stress damage on the port impulsor's power conduit."
Barnes brought up the relevant section. "Go ahead and assign a DC team to look it. And send Lang and Zeroll to check up on the starboard aft torpedo launcher. Our last diagnostic put up some warning flags I want them to look into."
"Yes sir." As Poniatowski said that she looked up with some confusion. "What is…?"
Barnes turned his head to follow what Poniatowski was looking at. The starboard-side entrance to main engineering had opened, and the Quarian girl they'd picked up was already stepping through the door. Barnes let out a little groan of frustration before making his way over to where she was leaning over to inspect one of the control surfaces. "Hey!" he called out. "You, over there, Tali-whatever it was!"
The Quarian turned to face him. "Tali'Zorah," she corrected.
"Yes, whatever." Barnes stepped up to just outside of her personal space. "This is Main Engineering. I can't just have you wandering around here on a grand tour, I've got a ship to run."
"I know, and I'm here to help," she said. "I'm an engineer too."
"Really? A fully trained engineer?" Barnes couldn't quite keep the skepticism out of his voice. "And in what fields? With what systems? Do you know how to keep a naqia reactor operating? Have you trained with plasma coolant lines? Do you know how warp drives work?"
"I've seen the diagrams on the extranet…"
"Yeah, I figured." Barnes shook his head. "I get it, I mean, you're fascinated with engineering, always reading stuff online about reactors and engines and vehicles. But I don't care how many net pages you've studied, kid, you don't have the education or training to work in here, and I've got enough work to do without you getting in the way."
"I have training, you ignorant…" Even with her face obscured by the glassy plate covering it, it wasn't hard for Barnes to imagine a generic humanoid face twisted with irritation and frustration. "My people live with this every day! I've learned how to run starships since I was a child!"
"There's a difference between patching up a bulkhead and fixing a plasma feed or a power conduit, kid." Barnes got closer. "Now, I'm busy, so I need you to go. Get up to the mess hall, get yourself some grub, go check up on your buddy, whatever. Just stay out of trouble."
Tali's body tensed with frustration. She let it out with a sharp, "Bosh'tet!" and a string of Quarian curses as she turned and left Main Engineering.
Barnes made sure she was out the door before walking away, causing the door to close as he did. Poniatowski looked up from where she had finished delegating the engineering and damage-control teams. "Maybe you were a little harsh?" she asked.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But you've got to be that way with kids who think they know more than they actually do. Give them an inch and they take the mile."
"'Inch'? 'Mile'?"
"Centimeter and kilometer." Barnes shook his head. "Anyway, let's get back to it."
Victus entered Zack's office with measured steps. The Turian general nodded to him. "Commander, you had something to report?"
"Yes sir." Zack motioned to a chair, one he'd replicated to be easier for Turians to sit in. "General, have you heard anything from your superiors?"
"The Citadel Council hasn't responded to my report. Palaven Command has. But my instructions are merely to be ready to support whatever course of action is decided upon by the other authorities. The Hierarchy has few interests in this region of space. Our presence is at the request of the Council."
"So you've got no new directives?"
"I do not. And I haven't received any news on a ship being sent out to take custody of the pirate vessel."
Zack nodded. "I haven't heard anything either," he said. "I even relayed Kane's last report. I sent it straight to Admiral Maran. But all I get back from Defense Command is to support whatever decisions the Citadel and the M4P2 governments decide upon."
"It would appear our superiors are uncertain of how they want to handle this information." Victus turned thoughtful. "It makes sense. Everyone wants the negotiations with the Hegemony to succeed. Your Alliance, the Citadel, Palaven… nobody will want to risk ruining that with an incursion into Batarian-held territory."
"But we're still quite a distance from the recognized Batarian claims in the Verge," Zack noted. "Even if these pirates are working for the Hegemony, or Hegemony officials, I can't see how dealing with them will undermine the talks."
"The Batarians are sensitive and prickly, Commander. It's easy to offend them."
"They're also slavers, and that offends me," Zack said. He was frowning. "So, General, what should we do? Like I said, I'm following your lead on this. We can't just sit here. Sooner or later, someone in this gang is going to be looking for their ship. They'll have to, if that signal was accurate."
"I'm in agreement."
"We don't have room for prisoners," Zack continued. "We can't kill them…"
"Technically, Commander, we can," Victus said in correction. "As pirates and raiders, they are subject to execution in the field if caught in the act."
Zack's jaw clenched at that. His head lowered for a moment. The thought within him was if he could do such a thing. Just… kill people out of hand. Not in a combat situation, not when it was killing an enemy before they could kill him, or those he was responsible for. It would be the cold-blooded execution of helpless prisoners.
A dark thought quickly echoed in his head, with his voice. As if they'd think twice about killing you after you surrendered. They'd only spare you to put a chip in your head and sell you as a slave.
"I'm not saying we should," Victus said. "But we may have to. If the Batarians realize their ship was taken by our forces, they'll move to avoid further compromising their operations."
"And they may also rush whatever plan they've got involving the talks." A sick feeling came to Zack. "Could they be planning an attack on the Aurora? If they've refitted ships with this technology…"
"I think that might be too brazen an act. The Batarians know how everyone else would see it." Victus shook his head. "Although if you can send a warning to them, go ahead."
"I've already sent them a message with the recovered audio file. I also sent it to Maran's with Kane's report." Zack put his hands together on the desk. "But that still leaves us with a big problem. That ship. We either have to destroy it and make it look like an accident…"
"...or we have to hide it."
"Hide it," repeated Zack. After another moment of thinking on it, he reached to a button on his desk. "Carrey to bridge."
"Bridge here, sir," answered an Alakin voice. Ensign Driik had clearly assumed a bridge watch to give Apley some time off-shift.
"Call all senior officers to the conference room, we're having an emergency meeting in fifteen minutes' time."
"I'll inform them right away, sir."
Experience on the Koenig so far had been frustrating for Tali. Every instinct she had demanded that she be doing something for the ship, something to ensure it was going to keep working. It was the impulse of a lifetime that she could not easily ignore. Laying on her assigned bed in the infirmary, Tali let Barnes' words stew in her mind. That smug bosh'tet. How can people with so much technology be so small-minded?!
True, she knew little about the actual mechanics of warp drive flight, and the electro-plasma system used for the primary power conduits was not the kind of thing you'd find on a Quarian ship, but the underlying mechanics of the latter were still easy to understand, and for the former… well, she could grasp enough, couldn't she? And she wasn't even asking to work on the warp FTL drive either! Just something to do, something she could do and was trained to do.
"Well, I can see someone is frustrated," an accented voice remarked. Tali turned and faced Doctor Opani through the purple hue of her face plate. Internal systems adjusted to let Tali see the actual color of what was around her. The dark teal complexion, the dark purple hair, the purple spots… the Dorei were unlike any other species she'd seen before, on the extranet or in person. "How are you?"
"I am better than Kon." Tali looked at her friend, still unconscious on the nearby biobed. "Has he gotten an infection?"
"I believe so, going by his body's internal reactions. And I've consulted with Citadel medical databases on Quarian treatment . I think my regimen of medicines and anti-bacterials will control the infection and keep it from spreading." Opani settled onto the bed opposite from Tali. "I am fascinated by your species," she admitted. "But I'm also quite sad for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Your immune systems forcing you to live your lives in those suits. The way this galaxy treats your people." Opani shook her head. "It saddens me that your people cannot enjoy the simple pleasures I have known my whole life."
"Maybe if we could find a homeworld…" Tali lifted her legs up onto the bed and rested her elbows near her knees. "We do what we have to in order to survive."
"I can understand that." Opani curled her legs under her. "So, what is bothering you? It's not hard to see you are frustrated."
"It's that fire-headed jerk you have running Engineering," Tali spat. "I went to him to help and he he threw me out. He treated me like I knew nothing about how to keep a ship running, like I was some inexperienced child."
"Maybe he's worried that you don't know enough about our technology?" Opani suggested. "I am certainly a physician, and I have surgical training, but I would never fail to step aside in a matter that demanded a medical specialist. That would be irresponsible of me."
"I am willing to learn."
"Learning takes time."
"I know! But…" Tali sighed. "You must understand, Doctor, that I grew up on a ship. Quarian children are taught from the time we are young to do what we can to help keep our ships working. We get taught how to fix bulkheads, replace air filters, rewire power systems and equipment, anything that might be necessary for us to know in a ship-wide emergency." Opani was now studying Tali's face plate intently, as if to discern the expression hidden beneath the plate. "Every instinct I have is urging me to help maintain this ship."
Opani contented herself with a single nod of her head. Some Humans might have responded by setting their hand on Tali's arm or shoulder. Opani had been around Humans enough to contemplate it, although most Dorei cultures had more intricate rules about physical contact between people in such contexts due to their contact-based psionics.
"I'm not stupid," Tali protested. "I know there are systems on this ship I could not work on without learning more about them. But I'm a trained engineer and there are plenty of things I could easily help with, if only that arrogant engineer would let me."
"You're referring to Lieutenant Barnes?"
"The one with the red hair? Yes."
Opani nodded. "To be honest, I'm not sure if even Lieutenant Derbely, our usual Chief Engineer, would have accepted your help. She is just as protective of the ship as Barnes is."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Tali demanded. "Everything I've been raised to do is telling me to find work on this ship while I am here. I'm not supposed to sit around like a small child!"
"I understand it is frustrating, Tali'Zorah. Perhaps if you took the time to read more about our tech…"
The tone of the ship's intercom stopped her, with an Alakin voice speaking afterward. "All senior officers please report to the conference room. Commander Carrey has called an emergency meeting. I repeat…"
"I must go," Opani said, sliding off the bed to her feet. Sensing Tali was not appeased by the reading suggestion, she added, "I will speak with Lieutenant Barnes about this. Maybe he has work that he feels is safe for you, work you can do that will make him trust you."
"That is all you can do, I suppose," Tali lamented. "Thank you, Doctor Opani."
Opani nodded once before walking to the infirmary exit.
The senior officers of the Koenig, General Victis, Captain Vidinos, and Nisia gathered on time in the small conference room on the ship, with Kane, Shepard, and the others visible on a holo-monitor from the battered bridge of the Batarian ship. "There's absolutely no chance we can tow this ship," Hajar said. "There's too much structural damage."
Barnes shook his head. "Even if there wasn't, I'd be against it. Our tractor beam can tow a mass that size for maybe an hour or two before we burn it out."
"Wouldn't that be enough?" Sherlily leaned forward. "We can tow it into interstellar space, maybe drop a specialized beacon so we know where we left it? Another ship can pick it up once someone decides what to do."
"Maybe." Magda looked from her colleague to Zack. "But let's be clear here. We have no idea what the capabilities of these Batarian ships are. They've gotten shield technology, weapon technology, and computer programming from other universes. The sensors on this ship looked standard, but that doesn't mean the sensors used on other ships in this group are. And most M4P2 sensor suites could possibly track the remnant radiation of a warp trail, especially one influenced by an operating tractor beam."
"In other words, we could give away that the ship was taken," Zack said.
"Exactly. At this point I don't think we can take anything for granted about these people. Unless we can find out for certain what they've been getting off the black market..."
"We've tried everything with the prisoners, but nobody's talking." Commander Shepard crossed her arms. "And they act more like military personnel than pirates."
"That's not a surprise, Commander Shepard. Many of these Batarian criminal organizations use Batarians trained by their government for military service," Victus said, looking at the screen.
"That's convenient," Kane remarked. "The Hegemony must have a lot of veterans they can talk into becoming pirates on their behalf."
Victus answered, "It's long been suspected, but we have no proof, and we're not likely to get any."
"We could destroy the vessel," Lediks proposed. "The anti-matter reactor core they installed has numerous flaws we could exploit."
"And what would we do with the crew?" Apley asked.
"We have no room for them on your ship, Lieutenant. The obvious solution is to leave them on their vessel."
"You mean blow up helpless prisoners." Opani glared daggers at the Salarian on the screen. "That is monstrous!"
"No, Doctor, it's expedient," Vidinos retorted. "And advisable. They're pirates and slavers and by interstellar law they can be executed in the field for those crimes, if necessary."
Opani opened her mouth to continue her argument, but she stopped. A strained, haunted look came to her face.
"Maybe there's an alternative," Sherlily said. "What if we tractored them deeper into the asteroid field?"
Magda shook her head. "Without knowing how sophisticated their sensor systems are, I can't tell you if they'd pick up trace gravitons or not. Or traces of our impulsor drives. Even if they couldn't find the other ship, they'd know it was tractored away. Unless we can cloak and hope the cloaking field absorbs the trace radiation…"
"Cloaking and running the tractor beam? Nope, not happening," Barnes said, shaking his head. "The gravitons will mess up the cloaking field. I might be able to buffer the drive for a bit, keep it from leaving as strong a trail, but that's all I can promise you."
"I don't like killing prisoners who surrendered," Shepard said. "We're better than that."
"Isn't Human history full of occasions when Humans did that to each other?" The question was from Vidinos. "And I know what your people did on Torfan, Shepard. Don't try to climb on any moral high ground, because Humans don't have it."
"I wasn't on Torfan," Shepard retorted. "And it doesn't change the fact that killing prisoners goes against interstellar law."
"You are in error, Commander." Lediks was speaking again. "The interstellar law under Council rules clearly stipulates that pirates and slavers are subject to summary field execution."
"Hostis universalis," Zack murmured. When a few people looked his way, he clarified, "It's a legal term I heard during a command officer conference a couple of months ago. We were being reminded that under existing interstellar law in most universes, pirates and slavers can be considered hostis universalis, 'enemies of all', and we have no legal obligations toward them. We can leave them to die in their broken ships if taking them would risk our crews." Zack frowned. "A few captains and legal experts even made the argument that we could just shoot them, if we wanted."
"Then it's clear all of our governments are in agreement. Let's stop wasting time."
"Before we render a decision, I want to know more about what we have recovered." Victus looked to the screen.
This time it was Kaiden Alenko who spoke. "Ensign Hajar helped me recover more data from their comm systems' access memory. I think that I might be able to provide coordinate data on where some of the transmissions were being directed."
"Then we could possibly find one of their bases," Zack said, pleased. "Maybe even their main base."
"That was my thought as well. We're still running data reconstruction over here…"
Alenko was interrupted by a tone over the Koenig's intercom. "Bridge to Conference Room," chirped Ensign Driik.
Zack tapped a button on the plain gray plastic table they were seated at. "Carrey here."
"Sir, we have a ship approaching on long range sensors. It's using a warp drive field, approximately Warp 5 in velocity. Power signature and readings are not in the database. But it could be a Batarian ship. The mass readings, if accurate, indicate the vessel is of cruiser capability."
That caused Zack to frown. "Damn," he said. "What's their ETA?"
"Fifty minutes."
"Keep me informed and have the transporter station prepare to evacuate the ship of our personnel. Carrey out." He looked to the others. "We're out of time."
"I'll have our people prep for immediate extraction," Shepard said. "Ensign Hajar is going to standby to enact any plans you have in their engineering sections. Signing off."
The team on the enemy vessel disappeared from the screen. The conference room went quiet. "It appears we have a decision to make, Commander," Victus said.
Zack nodded. They did have a decision to make. And it was the kind of decision he never wanted to face.
Personal Log: Commander Zachary Carrey, 10 August 2642. I have twenty minutes left. Twenty minutes in which I have to decide whether to condemn the prisoners we've taken to prevent their compatriots from knowing we're onto them.
I never expected to make these kinds of decisions. I never wanted to. I wish Victus would order us to blow up the Batarian ship and be done with it. But he's leaving me that decision. I think he's testing me to see what I'll do. If I'll do the "right thing" or not.
What is the right thing? I mean, these people aren't innocent. They're pirates. Worse, they're slavers. They would put control implants into every member of my crew if they got the chance. I shouldn't give a damn if they die. I'm not sure I actually do, in fact.
But… killing them for expediency, blowing them up after they surrendered… I don't know. It's one thing if their ship blew up while we were fighting. But this is an execution. And it feels…
...it feels like murder.
The sound of his door chime sounded as Zack finished his log. "Enter."
He had hoped it would be General Victus, coming to give him an order. But instead it was Doctor Opani who stepped in. "Commander."
"Doctor." He nodded. "What can I do for you?"
"Our Quarian guest, Tali'Zorah. She deeply wants to help the engineering crew. It's… cultural."
Zack nodded. "Well, she can go to Tom, I'm sure he'll…"
"He turned her down," Opani said. The expression on her face showed how unsettled she was at the moment. "And since you are friends I am certain you knew how he would respond."
"Yeah. The truth is, Doctor, this isn't the best time." He frowned. "And you know it."
Opani remained silent for a moment. Her blue eyes lowered for a moment before she focused on him.
"You seemed to give up on arguing against the 'kill them all' option," Zack noted. "I expected you to fight longer."
"Maybe I should have. But…" Opani shook her head. "I don't want to be merciful to the likes of those slavers. They've caused too much suffering."
"Including to you."
Opani's eyes widened.
"I'm sorry," Zack said. "But your file mentions it. I… I can't imagine what it was like."
"It was Hell," Opani rasped. Old pain showed on her face, the pain and horror of what had once been done to her. "I was trapped in pure Hell."
"And yet you are against blowing these people up," Zack said.
"I don't know… I am, but I know what they do, and so I'm…" Opani's eyes teared up. She flopped into one of the open chairs across from his desk. "I am a healer. I am supposed to support continued life, not death. But what they do to people, slavery, it is a death, a living death… oh Deity, what am I supposed to do?"
"Nothing," Zack murmured, even as he thought on what she said. "It's my decision. I have to make it." He looked at his reflection. The thought of what was going on weighed him down. He looked to Opani again.
He had no gifts. He couldn't read minds, sense feelings, or whatever it was that Meridina was teaching Lucy and Robert. But he didn't need those to understand what her experiences had done to Opani. "A living death," he murmured.
For a moment he envisaged not doing anything. He saw the Batarian raiders find that they'd been discovered. They would run, reorganize, abandon one base to take up another… and then they would eventually attack, with who knew what kind of weapons and technology. Some people would die, and others would be dragged off to Batarian space to be turned into slaves. To go through what Opani had suffered, or what he'd seen on the faces of slaves from C1P2 back in the day.
He couldn't know that would be the result. But the thought of it, the risk, was too much.
It didn't make it any easier for Zack when he reached for his omnitool. "Carrey to Hajar."
After a moment Hajar responded. "Hajar here. Sir…"
"Get it done. Now. We're almost out of time."
There was a short pause. "Say again, sir?"
Zack knew what she meant. Hajar didn't like the decision. She was undoubtedly hoping he would specify something else. "Set off their reactor, Hajar. Blow up the ship. That is a direct order."
For several seconds there was a pause. A very subdued "Yes sir" replied. "Hajar out."
Zack looked at Opani. She was returning the look. "Do you think you did the right thing?" Opani asked.
His silence was answer enough.
Zack stepped onto the bridge a few minutes later. Apley moved to the helm to let Zack take his chair. Victus was already present and standing with Lediks, Vidinos, and Shepard near the chair. "Commander." Victus nodded. "I see you made the decision. Thank you for not making me force the issue."
"You're welcome, General." Zack's reply was flat, emotionless. He tapped the key on his command chair to activate communications. "Carrey to Hajar. Are you done?"
"I just finished. One flaw in their system is in the deuterium injectors for their reaction chamber, they can't handle an increased reaction rate that the system is safely rated for. They'll blow in a couple of minutes, at best, which will lead to a build-up of anti-deuterium in the reaction chamber until containment is overloaded. It should cause the near-vaporization of much of the ship and it should look like a mechanical accident, engineer negligence."
"Confirm that everything's going according to plan, then?"
"So far so good. Reaction material levels are increasing. I'm already seeing signs of the deuterium injectors overstraining." For a moment there was nothing. "Okay, injector 1 just failed. And the only reason I know that is from my own scans… the Batarians' safety systems are completely inadequate and I need beamout now. Now now!"
"Magda!"
"Transporter Station has her, Commander. She's beaming over now," Magda confirmed.
Zack sighed with relief.
The holo-viewer lit up a moment later as the Batarian ship was destroyed from within, the victim of the out-of-control antimatter reaction caused by their sabotage.
"Hajar cut that too close," Shepard muttered.
"She underestimated how badly the Batarian ship's systems would react," Lediks added. "This should help support the ruse."
"I've already cloaked the ship," Magda said. "The Batarian ship is still nearly ten minutes out at their current warp speed. I can't tell you if they detected the explosion."
"Will it work?" Zack asked. "What we did?"
"I'm scanning what's left now. I don't think there's any debris big enough to confirm they were hit by weapons. Maybe they'll identify weapons hits if they recover the right piece of debris and subject it to close analysis in a metallurgical lab."
"Not likely," Sherlily remarked.
"No." Magda turned in her seat to face Zack. "I recommend that the helm keep us a safe distance away to make sure that stray micro-asteroids don't give away our presence."
"Ap?"
"Already moving."
Zack said nothing more while his ship changed position. He was too busy with his own thoughts, his feelings, and the awful spectacle he had just witnessed. I just killed prisoners. I left those men to die.
"Commander."
Zack turned his head and looked to General Victus. "General?"
"I know it asked a lot of you. But you did what you had to do. Our situation demanded it."
I did what I had to do flashed through Zack's mind. It was a nice phrase, he guessed. If only it hadn't felt so wrong. He still wasn't sure it was necessary. And it felt so callous, so plain… who knew how people could apply the phrase to something terrible and wrong.
"It was duty, Commander," Victus continued. "I appreciate the cost for you."
"Thank you," was all Zack could say.
Silence filled the bridge until the appointed time came. The ship that dropped out of warp was at least four hundred meters long and twenty meters from top to bottom. The rear of the ship looked like it had been completely rebuilt, which explained the two warp nacelles in the rear section. The pylons lifted the nacelles just above the dorsal hull of the gray and dark red ship.
"The sensor traces I'm getting are definitely not from M4P2 systems," Magda said. "And this one is also using impulsor drives. For the weapon emplacements I'd say they're also of Ferengi origin."
Zack watched the ship remain near the cloud of fine debris left by the destruction of the first ship. "Anything else?"
"They're still just scanning." Magda kept examining her instruments. "They're being thorough. But I'm not seeing anything that would give up what's happened. They're not taking samples. Wait… now I'm detecting a transmission."
"Intercept it," Zack ordered immediately.
"I'm doing so now. Apley, I'll transmit coordinates to you, move us to that spot so I can get a better fix."
"Maneuvering us now."
Apley's hands moved over the controls with precision. Koenig followed her unsuspecting quarry with the care of a hunting cat slipping through high grass. Asteroids big enough to be noticed if deflected off their invisible hull were avoided as much as possible and their speed tightly regulated.
Magda's focus was entirely on her screens. Colored light from her displays danced over her brown eyes as she used the Koenig's sensors and communications systems to pluck the offending signal from subspace.
The bridge remained completely quiet while these two did their work. Zack noted it and approved, and he could see that Victus did too.
Magda's attention shifted to another of her screens. "I'm getting an energy spike. They're engaging their warp drive."
With a flash of light the Batarian ship elongated and vanished.
"Did you get enough?" he asked Magda.
"I'm not sure. I can give you a general vicinity. But it's not in the direction they're going."
Lediks was the first to respond. "They may be resuming a prior patrol."
"I've still got them on sensors, Warp 5.5." Apley looked back. "Sir, I can catch up to them."
"No. No, I think tracking the signal is the better bet." Zack looked to Magda. "Anything?"
"I can give you a general vicinity," she said. "I'm already running calculations to narrow the field."
"Relay heading and coordinates to the helm. Apley, take us out when you're ready."
"Aye sir" came from two sources. Moments later, the Koenig went to warp.
There was no change in the atmosphere of the Aurora conference room. Robert couldn't quite believe it, either, given how the only thing that could be agreed upon was that neither side had given up anything of substance.
"The Batarian claim to the space around the Ren'kharam Relay is two centuries old," am Rimhar insisted. "Your new colonies have directly infringed upon that space."
"There were no indications of any prior claim when those colonies were established," Onaran replied. "Is it not general practice in M4P2 to place beacons outlining such claims?"
"The Ren'kharam Relay only connects to Batarian relays. Our claim was self-evident. You cannot hold it against us that we did not anticipate the use of non-relay travel capable of reaching the region."
"Nor can you blame our people for settling worlds where no prior use was evident." Onaran was remaining reserved, but it was clear he was tired of the fruitless back-and-forth with the obstructive Batarian diplomat. "We acted in good faith."
"If someone plants a house on your land and insists he saw no sign of it being owned, would you simply hand it over?" asked am Rimhar.
"If I could be sure of his good faith, I would work with him on a solution beyond base demands…"
Onaran never finished, as he was interrupted by Benezia. "The hour has grown late." She looked over the two. "It is best if we retired for the day. The session can resume tomorrow. We shall reconvene in fourteen hours."
"Agreed, Matriarch," Onaran said.
"Agreed." Minister am Rimhar stood up. "We shall return to our vessel."
"Of course, Minister." Robert didn't bring up the security escort that was ready to follow him. He simply nodded and watched the Batarians walk out. Once they were gone he turned to Onaran. The Dorei man had clearly been drained of any energy or enthusiasm by the long, fruitless session. "This doesn't seem like any negotiation."
"It is a tactic, I expect. They have started with maximum conditions to posture." Onaran shook his head. "It is frustrating. But I have faith it will improve."
Robert looked back to the door that am Rimhar had left from. He didn't have the same feeling. For all of his bluster, am Rimhar didn't feel like he was posturing. Robert got the sense that he was planning more than was evident. "I'm not sure," he said to Onaran. "I think am Rimhar has another agenda."
"Is that with the benefit of your Gift, Captain?"
Had another person, especially a Human, asked that, Robert would have been inclined to consider it as sarcasm. But Onaran wasn't being sarcastic. The Dorei included people like him, people who could exercise the "life force" powers that Meridina had taught him in, and accepted the uses of said abilities.
So he nodded. "I'm sure of it. There's something going on here that isn't obvious."
"If this entire negotiation is a Batarian intrigue, it will have to be something worth the cost they will incur once their deception is revealed."
An electronic tone sounded and a blue light started to flash above Robert's left hand. Jarod's voice came over the comms. "Jarod to Dale."
Robert touched the light and brought the blue-colored omnitool to life, assuming the form of the familiar multidevices they had stopped using so recently. "Dale here," he said in reply.
"We've received a transmission from the Koenig. You're going to want to see this."
"Where?"
"The Bridge Conference Room. And you might want to bring Secretary Onaran."
Onaran heard that. His head tilted slightly.
"We're on our way," Robert answered.
The entire senior staff had assembled in the bridge-side Conference Room by the time Robert and Onaran had finished going over the latest reports from the Koenig. Robert sat back in his chair for a moment and considered the implications.
Julia spoke first on them. "The Batarians have links to the Multiversal black market now. There's no telling what sort of technology they can buy through it."
"And since the buyers are officially 'pirates', the Hegemony will deny all knowledge of what's happened. They'll play up the new technology as seized from the pirates." Robert sighed loudly. "I knew am Rimhar had something up his sleeve."
"Do you think he knows?" asked Onaran.
"He's one of the higher ups in the Hegemony, isn't he? What are the odds he doesn't know something." Robert shook his head. "The only question is how much he knows, and how these talks figure into the Batarians' actual plans. For all we know he might even be the Minister mentioned by the pirates."
Julia said, "Whatever they're doing, it's going to happen soon given the way they talked about it."
"It's got to be something more than a new wave of pirate attacks." Locarno looked from her to Robert and then to Jarod. "Even with new technology, the Batarians are still at a disadvantage."
"What is Commander Carrey doing now?" Onaran asked.
Jarod was the first to answer. "According to his last update, they're still tracking down the source of Batarian transmissions in that area. General Victus is considering attempting an attack, if the target is soft enough."
"Given their location in the galaxy, could Zack call in reinforcements by jump drive?"
"The spatial aspect isn't good. Maybe some ships on outer frontiers. But they're at the far end of the Verge, in the heart of Beta Quadrant. They can't call in any heavy fleet units."
"Still, at least he has that possibility." Robert tapped his hands on the table. "Okay, we know they're up to something, we don't know what they're doing or how. I want everyone on the ship to be on the lookout. Discretely. We can't let this spook the Batarians."
"I'll start going over their comm activity," Jarod said.
"And I will make sure Security is alert to anything further out of the ordinary," added Meridina.
"Good. With that done… let's call it a night, everyone." Robert rubbed at his tired eyes. "Whatever happens, we're going to be busy tomorrow."
After an inspection of the team looking through what was left of the engineering area, Kane walked back toward the bow of the raiding ship. Wediks and Shepard were still there with two other officers: Ensign Hajar and one of Shepard's people, a dark-haired officer she'd introduced as Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko. "Have you found anything yet?" Kane asked.
Hajar spoke first from a computer panel. "I'm still trying this data reconstruction program, but I don't hold out much hope. Their data wiping program is thorough to the point of physical data removal."
"I am hoping to find something in the access memory buffers," said Wediks from another station, which he was working on with his omnitool.
"And what about the ship itself?"
Hajar shook her head. "The ship's a total loss. That power overload and the resulting secondary explosions caused too much structural damage. We would need a cruiser-scale structural integrity field to risk any sort of sublight or FTL velocities."
"But I might be able to do something with the communications gear." Alenko was operating one of the consoles. Like Shepard he was in Systems Alliance standard issue battle armor, but without the white N7 designation present. "It looks like it was also damaged in the fight. But that's worked in our favor."
"Oh?" Shepard asked. "In what way?"
"Because the power overload fried out the connection between the comm system memory and the main computers. When they ran their data wipe process, it didn't carry into the memory."
Shepard walked over to him. "But wouldn't that mean that the overload also fried the system memory?"
"Only partly." Shepard and Kane could see Alenko visibly sorting through data sectors, some functional and some corrupted. "The wiring burned out first. So there's still some data left in the system memory I can use. Maybe some comm activity…" One of the icons on his omnitool display flashed green. "There. I've got something. It looks like an audio transmission that hadn't been cleared from memory yet."
"Can you put it on?" Kane asked.
"Let me see…" Alenko started pressing more keys. "Here."
The guttural tones of Batarian speech started crackling over the bridge speakers. After a moment the auto-translators kicked in. "...targets in this side of the cluster. Allow me to move closer to the Humans' trade lanes! The prizes…"
"The prizes do not merit the risk. At this juncture we cannot afford to alienate our trading partners by drawing attention, and we certainly cannot jeopardize the upcoming talks with the Multiversal Alliance. The Minister will have our eyes ripped from our heads if we ruin his plan."
"But my men are restless. We haven't claimed prizes for over a month."
"They will have to wait. If things go as planned, many prizes will come to them, and their portions from our contributions to the slave markets back home will be great enough that we'll all move up in caste. Your only worry at this point is to protect the latinum deposits. Let us worry ab-…" The voice dissolved into static-laden gibberish for a moment before the file ceased running.
"Well, that certainly sounds ominous," Shepard said. She looked toward Kane. "A plan involving the negotiations with your Alliance."
"I'll report it to the Koenig immediately." Kane was frowning. "But I have another problem."
"How are they going to react when this ship doesn't check in?" Shepard nodded. "From the way it sounds, they might assume the captain decided to take matters into his own hands and move closer to the major trading lanes in this cluster. That won't make them happy."
Kane nodded. "Which means they'll be sending searchers when check-ins don't come on time." Kane pressed a hand to the side of his combat helmet. "Kane to Koenig. We've got some updates for you, and some bad news."
With the meetings over Barnes headed back to his preserve in Engineering. With Hajar over on the Batarian ship his second, Lieutenant (j.g.) Ana Poniatowski, was working her off-shift time. The slight Polish girl with honey-colored hair didn't show any fatigue while covering the scant battle damage they had incurred. "The shield generators passed the post-battle inspection," she said while Barnes was tapping keys at the Engineering Master Systems Display. "I am a little worried about what looks like some stress damage on the port impulsor's power conduit."
Barnes brought up the relevant section. "Go ahead and assign a DC team to look it. And send Lang and Zeroll to check up on the starboard aft torpedo launcher. Our last diagnostic put up some warning flags I want them to look into."
"Yes sir." As Poniatowski said that she looked up with some confusion. "What is…?"
Barnes turned his head to follow what Poniatowski was looking at. The starboard-side entrance to main engineering had opened, and the Quarian girl they'd picked up was already stepping through the door. Barnes let out a little groan of frustration before making his way over to where she was leaning over to inspect one of the control surfaces. "Hey!" he called out. "You, over there, Tali-whatever it was!"
The Quarian turned to face him. "Tali'Zorah," she corrected.
"Yes, whatever." Barnes stepped up to just outside of her personal space. "This is Main Engineering. I can't just have you wandering around here on a grand tour, I've got a ship to run."
"I know, and I'm here to help," she said. "I'm an engineer too."
"Really? A fully trained engineer?" Barnes couldn't quite keep the skepticism out of his voice. "And in what fields? With what systems? Do you know how to keep a naqia reactor operating? Have you trained with plasma coolant lines? Do you know how warp drives work?"
"I've seen the diagrams on the extranet…"
"Yeah, I figured." Barnes shook his head. "I get it, I mean, you're fascinated with engineering, always reading stuff online about reactors and engines and vehicles. But I don't care how many net pages you've studied, kid, you don't have the education or training to work in here, and I've got enough work to do without you getting in the way."
"I have training, you ignorant…" Even with her face obscured by the glassy plate covering it, it wasn't hard for Barnes to imagine a generic humanoid face twisted with irritation and frustration. "My people live with this every day! I've learned how to run starships since I was a child!"
"There's a difference between patching up a bulkhead and fixing a plasma feed or a power conduit, kid." Barnes got closer. "Now, I'm busy, so I need you to go. Get up to the mess hall, get yourself some grub, go check up on your buddy, whatever. Just stay out of trouble."
Tali's body tensed with frustration. She let it out with a sharp, "Bosh'tet!" and a string of Quarian curses as she turned and left Main Engineering.
Barnes made sure she was out the door before walking away, causing the door to close as he did. Poniatowski looked up from where she had finished delegating the engineering and damage-control teams. "Maybe you were a little harsh?" she asked.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But you've got to be that way with kids who think they know more than they actually do. Give them an inch and they take the mile."
"'Inch'? 'Mile'?"
"Centimeter and kilometer." Barnes shook his head. "Anyway, let's get back to it."
Victus entered Zack's office with measured steps. The Turian general nodded to him. "Commander, you had something to report?"
"Yes sir." Zack motioned to a chair, one he'd replicated to be easier for Turians to sit in. "General, have you heard anything from your superiors?"
"The Citadel Council hasn't responded to my report. Palaven Command has. But my instructions are merely to be ready to support whatever course of action is decided upon by the other authorities. The Hierarchy has few interests in this region of space. Our presence is at the request of the Council."
"So you've got no new directives?"
"I do not. And I haven't received any news on a ship being sent out to take custody of the pirate vessel."
Zack nodded. "I haven't heard anything either," he said. "I even relayed Kane's last report. I sent it straight to Admiral Maran. But all I get back from Defense Command is to support whatever decisions the Citadel and the M4P2 governments decide upon."
"It would appear our superiors are uncertain of how they want to handle this information." Victus turned thoughtful. "It makes sense. Everyone wants the negotiations with the Hegemony to succeed. Your Alliance, the Citadel, Palaven… nobody will want to risk ruining that with an incursion into Batarian-held territory."
"But we're still quite a distance from the recognized Batarian claims in the Verge," Zack noted. "Even if these pirates are working for the Hegemony, or Hegemony officials, I can't see how dealing with them will undermine the talks."
"The Batarians are sensitive and prickly, Commander. It's easy to offend them."
"They're also slavers, and that offends me," Zack said. He was frowning. "So, General, what should we do? Like I said, I'm following your lead on this. We can't just sit here. Sooner or later, someone in this gang is going to be looking for their ship. They'll have to, if that signal was accurate."
"I'm in agreement."
"We don't have room for prisoners," Zack continued. "We can't kill them…"
"Technically, Commander, we can," Victus said in correction. "As pirates and raiders, they are subject to execution in the field if caught in the act."
Zack's jaw clenched at that. His head lowered for a moment. The thought within him was if he could do such a thing. Just… kill people out of hand. Not in a combat situation, not when it was killing an enemy before they could kill him, or those he was responsible for. It would be the cold-blooded execution of helpless prisoners.
A dark thought quickly echoed in his head, with his voice. As if they'd think twice about killing you after you surrendered. They'd only spare you to put a chip in your head and sell you as a slave.
"I'm not saying we should," Victus said. "But we may have to. If the Batarians realize their ship was taken by our forces, they'll move to avoid further compromising their operations."
"And they may also rush whatever plan they've got involving the talks." A sick feeling came to Zack. "Could they be planning an attack on the Aurora? If they've refitted ships with this technology…"
"I think that might be too brazen an act. The Batarians know how everyone else would see it." Victus shook his head. "Although if you can send a warning to them, go ahead."
"I've already sent them a message with the recovered audio file. I also sent it to Maran's with Kane's report." Zack put his hands together on the desk. "But that still leaves us with a big problem. That ship. We either have to destroy it and make it look like an accident…"
"...or we have to hide it."
"Hide it," repeated Zack. After another moment of thinking on it, he reached to a button on his desk. "Carrey to bridge."
"Bridge here, sir," answered an Alakin voice. Ensign Driik had clearly assumed a bridge watch to give Apley some time off-shift.
"Call all senior officers to the conference room, we're having an emergency meeting in fifteen minutes' time."
"I'll inform them right away, sir."
Experience on the Koenig so far had been frustrating for Tali. Every instinct she had demanded that she be doing something for the ship, something to ensure it was going to keep working. It was the impulse of a lifetime that she could not easily ignore. Laying on her assigned bed in the infirmary, Tali let Barnes' words stew in her mind. That smug bosh'tet. How can people with so much technology be so small-minded?!
True, she knew little about the actual mechanics of warp drive flight, and the electro-plasma system used for the primary power conduits was not the kind of thing you'd find on a Quarian ship, but the underlying mechanics of the latter were still easy to understand, and for the former… well, she could grasp enough, couldn't she? And she wasn't even asking to work on the warp FTL drive either! Just something to do, something she could do and was trained to do.
"Well, I can see someone is frustrated," an accented voice remarked. Tali turned and faced Doctor Opani through the purple hue of her face plate. Internal systems adjusted to let Tali see the actual color of what was around her. The dark teal complexion, the dark purple hair, the purple spots… the Dorei were unlike any other species she'd seen before, on the extranet or in person. "How are you?"
"I am better than Kon." Tali looked at her friend, still unconscious on the nearby biobed. "Has he gotten an infection?"
"I believe so, going by his body's internal reactions. And I've consulted with Citadel medical databases on Quarian treatment . I think my regimen of medicines and anti-bacterials will control the infection and keep it from spreading." Opani settled onto the bed opposite from Tali. "I am fascinated by your species," she admitted. "But I'm also quite sad for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Your immune systems forcing you to live your lives in those suits. The way this galaxy treats your people." Opani shook her head. "It saddens me that your people cannot enjoy the simple pleasures I have known my whole life."
"Maybe if we could find a homeworld…" Tali lifted her legs up onto the bed and rested her elbows near her knees. "We do what we have to in order to survive."
"I can understand that." Opani curled her legs under her. "So, what is bothering you? It's not hard to see you are frustrated."
"It's that fire-headed jerk you have running Engineering," Tali spat. "I went to him to help and he he threw me out. He treated me like I knew nothing about how to keep a ship running, like I was some inexperienced child."
"Maybe he's worried that you don't know enough about our technology?" Opani suggested. "I am certainly a physician, and I have surgical training, but I would never fail to step aside in a matter that demanded a medical specialist. That would be irresponsible of me."
"I am willing to learn."
"Learning takes time."
"I know! But…" Tali sighed. "You must understand, Doctor, that I grew up on a ship. Quarian children are taught from the time we are young to do what we can to help keep our ships working. We get taught how to fix bulkheads, replace air filters, rewire power systems and equipment, anything that might be necessary for us to know in a ship-wide emergency." Opani was now studying Tali's face plate intently, as if to discern the expression hidden beneath the plate. "Every instinct I have is urging me to help maintain this ship."
Opani contented herself with a single nod of her head. Some Humans might have responded by setting their hand on Tali's arm or shoulder. Opani had been around Humans enough to contemplate it, although most Dorei cultures had more intricate rules about physical contact between people in such contexts due to their contact-based psionics.
"I'm not stupid," Tali protested. "I know there are systems on this ship I could not work on without learning more about them. But I'm a trained engineer and there are plenty of things I could easily help with, if only that arrogant engineer would let me."
"You're referring to Lieutenant Barnes?"
"The one with the red hair? Yes."
Opani nodded. "To be honest, I'm not sure if even Lieutenant Derbely, our usual Chief Engineer, would have accepted your help. She is just as protective of the ship as Barnes is."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Tali demanded. "Everything I've been raised to do is telling me to find work on this ship while I am here. I'm not supposed to sit around like a small child!"
"I understand it is frustrating, Tali'Zorah. Perhaps if you took the time to read more about our tech…"
The tone of the ship's intercom stopped her, with an Alakin voice speaking afterward. "All senior officers please report to the conference room. Commander Carrey has called an emergency meeting. I repeat…"
"I must go," Opani said, sliding off the bed to her feet. Sensing Tali was not appeased by the reading suggestion, she added, "I will speak with Lieutenant Barnes about this. Maybe he has work that he feels is safe for you, work you can do that will make him trust you."
"That is all you can do, I suppose," Tali lamented. "Thank you, Doctor Opani."
Opani nodded once before walking to the infirmary exit.
The senior officers of the Koenig, General Victis, Captain Vidinos, and Nisia gathered on time in the small conference room on the ship, with Kane, Shepard, and the others visible on a holo-monitor from the battered bridge of the Batarian ship. "There's absolutely no chance we can tow this ship," Hajar said. "There's too much structural damage."
Barnes shook his head. "Even if there wasn't, I'd be against it. Our tractor beam can tow a mass that size for maybe an hour or two before we burn it out."
"Wouldn't that be enough?" Sherlily leaned forward. "We can tow it into interstellar space, maybe drop a specialized beacon so we know where we left it? Another ship can pick it up once someone decides what to do."
"Maybe." Magda looked from her colleague to Zack. "But let's be clear here. We have no idea what the capabilities of these Batarian ships are. They've gotten shield technology, weapon technology, and computer programming from other universes. The sensors on this ship looked standard, but that doesn't mean the sensors used on other ships in this group are. And most M4P2 sensor suites could possibly track the remnant radiation of a warp trail, especially one influenced by an operating tractor beam."
"In other words, we could give away that the ship was taken," Zack said.
"Exactly. At this point I don't think we can take anything for granted about these people. Unless we can find out for certain what they've been getting off the black market..."
"We've tried everything with the prisoners, but nobody's talking." Commander Shepard crossed her arms. "And they act more like military personnel than pirates."
"That's not a surprise, Commander Shepard. Many of these Batarian criminal organizations use Batarians trained by their government for military service," Victus said, looking at the screen.
"That's convenient," Kane remarked. "The Hegemony must have a lot of veterans they can talk into becoming pirates on their behalf."
Victus answered, "It's long been suspected, but we have no proof, and we're not likely to get any."
"We could destroy the vessel," Lediks proposed. "The anti-matter reactor core they installed has numerous flaws we could exploit."
"And what would we do with the crew?" Apley asked.
"We have no room for them on your ship, Lieutenant. The obvious solution is to leave them on their vessel."
"You mean blow up helpless prisoners." Opani glared daggers at the Salarian on the screen. "That is monstrous!"
"No, Doctor, it's expedient," Vidinos retorted. "And advisable. They're pirates and slavers and by interstellar law they can be executed in the field for those crimes, if necessary."
Opani opened her mouth to continue her argument, but she stopped. A strained, haunted look came to her face.
"Maybe there's an alternative," Sherlily said. "What if we tractored them deeper into the asteroid field?"
Magda shook her head. "Without knowing how sophisticated their sensor systems are, I can't tell you if they'd pick up trace gravitons or not. Or traces of our impulsor drives. Even if they couldn't find the other ship, they'd know it was tractored away. Unless we can cloak and hope the cloaking field absorbs the trace radiation…"
"Cloaking and running the tractor beam? Nope, not happening," Barnes said, shaking his head. "The gravitons will mess up the cloaking field. I might be able to buffer the drive for a bit, keep it from leaving as strong a trail, but that's all I can promise you."
"I don't like killing prisoners who surrendered," Shepard said. "We're better than that."
"Isn't Human history full of occasions when Humans did that to each other?" The question was from Vidinos. "And I know what your people did on Torfan, Shepard. Don't try to climb on any moral high ground, because Humans don't have it."
"I wasn't on Torfan," Shepard retorted. "And it doesn't change the fact that killing prisoners goes against interstellar law."
"You are in error, Commander." Lediks was speaking again. "The interstellar law under Council rules clearly stipulates that pirates and slavers are subject to summary field execution."
"Hostis universalis," Zack murmured. When a few people looked his way, he clarified, "It's a legal term I heard during a command officer conference a couple of months ago. We were being reminded that under existing interstellar law in most universes, pirates and slavers can be considered hostis universalis, 'enemies of all', and we have no legal obligations toward them. We can leave them to die in their broken ships if taking them would risk our crews." Zack frowned. "A few captains and legal experts even made the argument that we could just shoot them, if we wanted."
"Then it's clear all of our governments are in agreement. Let's stop wasting time."
"Before we render a decision, I want to know more about what we have recovered." Victus looked to the screen.
This time it was Kaiden Alenko who spoke. "Ensign Hajar helped me recover more data from their comm systems' access memory. I think that I might be able to provide coordinate data on where some of the transmissions were being directed."
"Then we could possibly find one of their bases," Zack said, pleased. "Maybe even their main base."
"That was my thought as well. We're still running data reconstruction over here…"
Alenko was interrupted by a tone over the Koenig's intercom. "Bridge to Conference Room," chirped Ensign Driik.
Zack tapped a button on the plain gray plastic table they were seated at. "Carrey here."
"Sir, we have a ship approaching on long range sensors. It's using a warp drive field, approximately Warp 5 in velocity. Power signature and readings are not in the database. But it could be a Batarian ship. The mass readings, if accurate, indicate the vessel is of cruiser capability."
That caused Zack to frown. "Damn," he said. "What's their ETA?"
"Fifty minutes."
"Keep me informed and have the transporter station prepare to evacuate the ship of our personnel. Carrey out." He looked to the others. "We're out of time."
"I'll have our people prep for immediate extraction," Shepard said. "Ensign Hajar is going to standby to enact any plans you have in their engineering sections. Signing off."
The team on the enemy vessel disappeared from the screen. The conference room went quiet. "It appears we have a decision to make, Commander," Victus said.
Zack nodded. They did have a decision to make. And it was the kind of decision he never wanted to face.
Personal Log: Commander Zachary Carrey, 10 August 2642. I have twenty minutes left. Twenty minutes in which I have to decide whether to condemn the prisoners we've taken to prevent their compatriots from knowing we're onto them.
I never expected to make these kinds of decisions. I never wanted to. I wish Victus would order us to blow up the Batarian ship and be done with it. But he's leaving me that decision. I think he's testing me to see what I'll do. If I'll do the "right thing" or not.
What is the right thing? I mean, these people aren't innocent. They're pirates. Worse, they're slavers. They would put control implants into every member of my crew if they got the chance. I shouldn't give a damn if they die. I'm not sure I actually do, in fact.
But… killing them for expediency, blowing them up after they surrendered… I don't know. It's one thing if their ship blew up while we were fighting. But this is an execution. And it feels…
...it feels like murder.
The sound of his door chime sounded as Zack finished his log. "Enter."
He had hoped it would be General Victus, coming to give him an order. But instead it was Doctor Opani who stepped in. "Commander."
"Doctor." He nodded. "What can I do for you?"
"Our Quarian guest, Tali'Zorah. She deeply wants to help the engineering crew. It's… cultural."
Zack nodded. "Well, she can go to Tom, I'm sure he'll…"
"He turned her down," Opani said. The expression on her face showed how unsettled she was at the moment. "And since you are friends I am certain you knew how he would respond."
"Yeah. The truth is, Doctor, this isn't the best time." He frowned. "And you know it."
Opani remained silent for a moment. Her blue eyes lowered for a moment before she focused on him.
"You seemed to give up on arguing against the 'kill them all' option," Zack noted. "I expected you to fight longer."
"Maybe I should have. But…" Opani shook her head. "I don't want to be merciful to the likes of those slavers. They've caused too much suffering."
"Including to you."
Opani's eyes widened.
"I'm sorry," Zack said. "But your file mentions it. I… I can't imagine what it was like."
"It was Hell," Opani rasped. Old pain showed on her face, the pain and horror of what had once been done to her. "I was trapped in pure Hell."
"And yet you are against blowing these people up," Zack said.
"I don't know… I am, but I know what they do, and so I'm…" Opani's eyes teared up. She flopped into one of the open chairs across from his desk. "I am a healer. I am supposed to support continued life, not death. But what they do to people, slavery, it is a death, a living death… oh Deity, what am I supposed to do?"
"Nothing," Zack murmured, even as he thought on what she said. "It's my decision. I have to make it." He looked at his reflection. The thought of what was going on weighed him down. He looked to Opani again.
He had no gifts. He couldn't read minds, sense feelings, or whatever it was that Meridina was teaching Lucy and Robert. But he didn't need those to understand what her experiences had done to Opani. "A living death," he murmured.
For a moment he envisaged not doing anything. He saw the Batarian raiders find that they'd been discovered. They would run, reorganize, abandon one base to take up another… and then they would eventually attack, with who knew what kind of weapons and technology. Some people would die, and others would be dragged off to Batarian space to be turned into slaves. To go through what Opani had suffered, or what he'd seen on the faces of slaves from C1P2 back in the day.
He couldn't know that would be the result. But the thought of it, the risk, was too much.
It didn't make it any easier for Zack when he reached for his omnitool. "Carrey to Hajar."
After a moment Hajar responded. "Hajar here. Sir…"
"Get it done. Now. We're almost out of time."
There was a short pause. "Say again, sir?"
Zack knew what she meant. Hajar didn't like the decision. She was undoubtedly hoping he would specify something else. "Set off their reactor, Hajar. Blow up the ship. That is a direct order."
For several seconds there was a pause. A very subdued "Yes sir" replied. "Hajar out."
Zack looked at Opani. She was returning the look. "Do you think you did the right thing?" Opani asked.
His silence was answer enough.
Zack stepped onto the bridge a few minutes later. Apley moved to the helm to let Zack take his chair. Victus was already present and standing with Lediks, Vidinos, and Shepard near the chair. "Commander." Victus nodded. "I see you made the decision. Thank you for not making me force the issue."
"You're welcome, General." Zack's reply was flat, emotionless. He tapped the key on his command chair to activate communications. "Carrey to Hajar. Are you done?"
"I just finished. One flaw in their system is in the deuterium injectors for their reaction chamber, they can't handle an increased reaction rate that the system is safely rated for. They'll blow in a couple of minutes, at best, which will lead to a build-up of anti-deuterium in the reaction chamber until containment is overloaded. It should cause the near-vaporization of much of the ship and it should look like a mechanical accident, engineer negligence."
"Confirm that everything's going according to plan, then?"
"So far so good. Reaction material levels are increasing. I'm already seeing signs of the deuterium injectors overstraining." For a moment there was nothing. "Okay, injector 1 just failed. And the only reason I know that is from my own scans… the Batarians' safety systems are completely inadequate and I need beamout now. Now now!"
"Magda!"
"Transporter Station has her, Commander. She's beaming over now," Magda confirmed.
Zack sighed with relief.
The holo-viewer lit up a moment later as the Batarian ship was destroyed from within, the victim of the out-of-control antimatter reaction caused by their sabotage.
"Hajar cut that too close," Shepard muttered.
"She underestimated how badly the Batarian ship's systems would react," Lediks added. "This should help support the ruse."
"I've already cloaked the ship," Magda said. "The Batarian ship is still nearly ten minutes out at their current warp speed. I can't tell you if they detected the explosion."
"Will it work?" Zack asked. "What we did?"
"I'm scanning what's left now. I don't think there's any debris big enough to confirm they were hit by weapons. Maybe they'll identify weapons hits if they recover the right piece of debris and subject it to close analysis in a metallurgical lab."
"Not likely," Sherlily remarked.
"No." Magda turned in her seat to face Zack. "I recommend that the helm keep us a safe distance away to make sure that stray micro-asteroids don't give away our presence."
"Ap?"
"Already moving."
Zack said nothing more while his ship changed position. He was too busy with his own thoughts, his feelings, and the awful spectacle he had just witnessed. I just killed prisoners. I left those men to die.
"Commander."
Zack turned his head and looked to General Victus. "General?"
"I know it asked a lot of you. But you did what you had to do. Our situation demanded it."
I did what I had to do flashed through Zack's mind. It was a nice phrase, he guessed. If only it hadn't felt so wrong. He still wasn't sure it was necessary. And it felt so callous, so plain… who knew how people could apply the phrase to something terrible and wrong.
"It was duty, Commander," Victus continued. "I appreciate the cost for you."
"Thank you," was all Zack could say.
Silence filled the bridge until the appointed time came. The ship that dropped out of warp was at least four hundred meters long and twenty meters from top to bottom. The rear of the ship looked like it had been completely rebuilt, which explained the two warp nacelles in the rear section. The pylons lifted the nacelles just above the dorsal hull of the gray and dark red ship.
"The sensor traces I'm getting are definitely not from M4P2 systems," Magda said. "And this one is also using impulsor drives. For the weapon emplacements I'd say they're also of Ferengi origin."
Zack watched the ship remain near the cloud of fine debris left by the destruction of the first ship. "Anything else?"
"They're still just scanning." Magda kept examining her instruments. "They're being thorough. But I'm not seeing anything that would give up what's happened. They're not taking samples. Wait… now I'm detecting a transmission."
"Intercept it," Zack ordered immediately.
"I'm doing so now. Apley, I'll transmit coordinates to you, move us to that spot so I can get a better fix."
"Maneuvering us now."
Apley's hands moved over the controls with precision. Koenig followed her unsuspecting quarry with the care of a hunting cat slipping through high grass. Asteroids big enough to be noticed if deflected off their invisible hull were avoided as much as possible and their speed tightly regulated.
Magda's focus was entirely on her screens. Colored light from her displays danced over her brown eyes as she used the Koenig's sensors and communications systems to pluck the offending signal from subspace.
The bridge remained completely quiet while these two did their work. Zack noted it and approved, and he could see that Victus did too.
Magda's attention shifted to another of her screens. "I'm getting an energy spike. They're engaging their warp drive."
With a flash of light the Batarian ship elongated and vanished.
"Did you get enough?" he asked Magda.
"I'm not sure. I can give you a general vicinity. But it's not in the direction they're going."
Lediks was the first to respond. "They may be resuming a prior patrol."
"I've still got them on sensors, Warp 5.5." Apley looked back. "Sir, I can catch up to them."
"No. No, I think tracking the signal is the better bet." Zack looked to Magda. "Anything?"
"I can give you a general vicinity," she said. "I'm already running calculations to narrow the field."
"Relay heading and coordinates to the helm. Apley, take us out when you're ready."
"Aye sir" came from two sources. Moments later, the Koenig went to warp.
There was no change in the atmosphere of the Aurora conference room. Robert couldn't quite believe it, either, given how the only thing that could be agreed upon was that neither side had given up anything of substance.
"The Batarian claim to the space around the Ren'kharam Relay is two centuries old," am Rimhar insisted. "Your new colonies have directly infringed upon that space."
"There were no indications of any prior claim when those colonies were established," Onaran replied. "Is it not general practice in M4P2 to place beacons outlining such claims?"
"The Ren'kharam Relay only connects to Batarian relays. Our claim was self-evident. You cannot hold it against us that we did not anticipate the use of non-relay travel capable of reaching the region."
"Nor can you blame our people for settling worlds where no prior use was evident." Onaran was remaining reserved, but it was clear he was tired of the fruitless back-and-forth with the obstructive Batarian diplomat. "We acted in good faith."
"If someone plants a house on your land and insists he saw no sign of it being owned, would you simply hand it over?" asked am Rimhar.
"If I could be sure of his good faith, I would work with him on a solution beyond base demands…"
Onaran never finished, as he was interrupted by Benezia. "The hour has grown late." She looked over the two. "It is best if we retired for the day. The session can resume tomorrow. We shall reconvene in fourteen hours."
"Agreed, Matriarch," Onaran said.
"Agreed." Minister am Rimhar stood up. "We shall return to our vessel."
"Of course, Minister." Robert didn't bring up the security escort that was ready to follow him. He simply nodded and watched the Batarians walk out. Once they were gone he turned to Onaran. The Dorei man had clearly been drained of any energy or enthusiasm by the long, fruitless session. "This doesn't seem like any negotiation."
"It is a tactic, I expect. They have started with maximum conditions to posture." Onaran shook his head. "It is frustrating. But I have faith it will improve."
Robert looked back to the door that am Rimhar had left from. He didn't have the same feeling. For all of his bluster, am Rimhar didn't feel like he was posturing. Robert got the sense that he was planning more than was evident. "I'm not sure," he said to Onaran. "I think am Rimhar has another agenda."
"Is that with the benefit of your Gift, Captain?"
Had another person, especially a Human, asked that, Robert would have been inclined to consider it as sarcasm. But Onaran wasn't being sarcastic. The Dorei included people like him, people who could exercise the "life force" powers that Meridina had taught him in, and accepted the uses of said abilities.
So he nodded. "I'm sure of it. There's something going on here that isn't obvious."
"If this entire negotiation is a Batarian intrigue, it will have to be something worth the cost they will incur once their deception is revealed."
An electronic tone sounded and a blue light started to flash above Robert's left hand. Jarod's voice came over the comms. "Jarod to Dale."
Robert touched the light and brought the blue-colored omnitool to life, assuming the form of the familiar multidevices they had stopped using so recently. "Dale here," he said in reply.
"We've received a transmission from the Koenig. You're going to want to see this."
"Where?"
"The Bridge Conference Room. And you might want to bring Secretary Onaran."
Onaran heard that. His head tilted slightly.
"We're on our way," Robert answered.
The entire senior staff had assembled in the bridge-side Conference Room by the time Robert and Onaran had finished going over the latest reports from the Koenig. Robert sat back in his chair for a moment and considered the implications.
Julia spoke first on them. "The Batarians have links to the Multiversal black market now. There's no telling what sort of technology they can buy through it."
"And since the buyers are officially 'pirates', the Hegemony will deny all knowledge of what's happened. They'll play up the new technology as seized from the pirates." Robert sighed loudly. "I knew am Rimhar had something up his sleeve."
"Do you think he knows?" asked Onaran.
"He's one of the higher ups in the Hegemony, isn't he? What are the odds he doesn't know something." Robert shook his head. "The only question is how much he knows, and how these talks figure into the Batarians' actual plans. For all we know he might even be the Minister mentioned by the pirates."
Julia said, "Whatever they're doing, it's going to happen soon given the way they talked about it."
"It's got to be something more than a new wave of pirate attacks." Locarno looked from her to Robert and then to Jarod. "Even with new technology, the Batarians are still at a disadvantage."
"What is Commander Carrey doing now?" Onaran asked.
Jarod was the first to answer. "According to his last update, they're still tracking down the source of Batarian transmissions in that area. General Victus is considering attempting an attack, if the target is soft enough."
"Given their location in the galaxy, could Zack call in reinforcements by jump drive?"
"The spatial aspect isn't good. Maybe some ships on outer frontiers. But they're at the far end of the Verge, in the heart of Beta Quadrant. They can't call in any heavy fleet units."
"Still, at least he has that possibility." Robert tapped his hands on the table. "Okay, we know they're up to something, we don't know what they're doing or how. I want everyone on the ship to be on the lookout. Discretely. We can't let this spook the Batarians."
"I'll start going over their comm activity," Jarod said.
"And I will make sure Security is alert to anything further out of the ordinary," added Meridina.
"Good. With that done… let's call it a night, everyone." Robert rubbed at his tired eyes. "Whatever happens, we're going to be busy tomorrow."