Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night Page 21

  “I wish us all luck,” Piñiero murmured.

  Bacco started down the stairs, knowing that Piñiero would follow. The president saw that four other individuals sat in the first row of seats, facing the conference table. She assumed, based on their species and the Boslics’ allowance of a single advisor per head of state, that they each played the same role for their government that Piñiero did for the Federation.

  As Bacco reached the floor of the chamber, Piñiero moved off to the side and took a seat beside the other advisors. Triumvir Kortaj stepped forward and bowed her head, which the president recognized as a Boslic sign of respect. Characteristic of her people, smooth but pronounced ridges angled up from the bridge of Kortaj’s nose and above her eyes. Between them, three grooves, joined at their bottom ends like an arrow pointing downward, carved out a distinctive biological feature in the flesh of her forehead. Her eyes flashed an electric red, which precisely matched the color of her long, flowing hair.

  “President Bacco, I am Triumvir Letix Kortaj,” she said. “On behalf of the Boslic government and its people, I welcome you to our world, to our capital, and to our Grand Assembly Chamber.”

  “Thank you, Triumvir Kortaj,” Bacco said. “On behalf of the government and people of the United Federation of Planets, I thank you for your generosity in agreeing to host this summit.”

  Kortaj turned and walked toward the center of the straight side of the table, across from the gathered dignitaries, and Bacco followed. “I’m sure that, even if you’ve never met them in person, you know all of your fellow officials,” the triumvir said. “I thought I’d wait until all of you are present before I—”

  A loud report rang out from behind and above Bacco. She spun around and looked to the upper part of the chamber, scanning the doors for the source of the sound. At the head of a staircase to the left, she saw the burly form of Martok, chancellor of the Klingon Empire, apparently alone. He wore full Klingon regalia: a long, sweeping robe over dark pants and tunic; high, black boots; and twin silver baldrics that crossed over his chest. “Peace or war?” he bellowed, his deep, booming voice easily filling the large space. “Let’s make up our minds and be done talking.” He lifted a thick, gnarled cane in one hand and brought it down on the floor, sending a second bang resounding through the chamber.

  Kortaj immediately started toward the stairs, but then peered back at Bacco for a moment. “If you would please have a seat,” the triumvir said, pointing toward the side of the conference table at which Garan and Rom sat. Bacco moved in that direction, but then stopped to watch as Kortaj addressed the Klingon leader.

  “Chancellor Martok,” she said, bowing her head toward him, and she repeated the words with which she had greeted Bacco.

  Martok tramped down the stairs, swinging his cane out before him and bringing it down noisily on each successive step. When he reached the floor of the chamber and faced Kortaj, he lowered his voice to a respectful tone. “Triumvir Kortaj,” he said, “I thank you for the invitation to your world. Your people are honorable and generous.” He walked past the Boslic and regarded the Breen and Gorn leaders. “But as for these petaQ, I’m not so sure.”

  A cumbersome silence rose in the chamber. Bacco waited, fighting the urge to explain away the chancellor’s behavior. She had spent enough time working with him through the years to recognize Martok’s harsh sense of humor, as well as the way he often utilized it to measure his opponents. Though she wanted to speak up and somehow make this plain to Brex and Sozzerozs, she realized that she risked not only offending the chancellor, but also demonstrating that she believed his behavior inappropriate and truly insulting, thus signaling to the Typhon Pact dignitaries that they should feel affronted.

  Before anybody could say anything else, a hand came down on the end of Martok’s cane. The thick, twisted object resembled a walking stick less than it did a petrified tree branch. The chancellor turned slowly to stare at Kortaj’s hand, and then at the triumvir herself.

  “Chancellor Martok,” she said, “I’m afraid that a condition of my government hosting this summit is that no weapons of any kind are permitted in the Grand Assembly Chamber.”

  At first, Martok said nothing, and Bacco feared that he might challenge the triumvir’s authority. As she considered how she might defuse the situation, though, he said, “A weapon?” He laughed, a short, loud bark. “This is part of the price I have paid for a lifetime of glorious battles. I am merely—” He paused, surely to set up what he would consider another punch line. “—a tired, wounded old man.”

  Kortaj looked Martok in the eye, her hand still on his cane. “Regardless,” she said, “I must impound this.” She pulled at the cane, with which, Bacco did not doubt, the chancellor could beat senseless everyone present. For a long moment, Martok held on to his cane, but then finally he loosened his grip. “Thank you, Chancellor,” Kortaj said. “Now if you and President Bacco would have a seat alongside your allies.”

  Only then did Bacco look around at Garan and Rom, Brex and Sozzerozs, to see how they had reacted to Martok’s entrance. The grand nagus sat with his mouth hanging open, clearly stunned, while the castellan sat calmly beside him. Bacco could not read the domo in his Breen armor, but he remained in his chair. Of all those present, only the imperator had risen to his feet. The president noted Sozzerozs’s posture, the tension in his impressive Gorn musculature, and she wondered how close Martok’s brashness had come to instigating an interstellar incident even before the summit had begun.

  As Bacco and Martok took their places at the conference table, she noticed the chancellor unburdened by even the slightest hint of a limp. Then the president spied another head of state: Praetor Gell Kamemor stood at the top of the central set of stairs, gazing with an air of quiet dignity toward the chamber floor. Two Romulan guards had already stepped aside and taken up positions along the wall behind her. Proconsul Tomalak accompanied her. Bacco wondered how long she had been standing there, and whether she had witnessed any of Martok’s outburst.

  A Boslic guard quickly came down a different set of steps and collected Martok’s cane from Kortaj, which he quickly carried out of the room. Once he had, the Romulan praetor strode down to the chamber floor, the proconsul trailing behind her. At the base of the stairs, Tomalak moved to the first row of seats with the other advisors, while Kortaj again offered her official greeting, this time to the praetor. Once Kamemor had made her way over to Brex and Sozzerozs, the triumvir moved to the middle of the table, and looking across it, spoke to all of the visitors to her world.

  “The Triumvirate of Cort,” she said, giving the official title of the three-person executive panel that ruled the Boslics’ government, as well as the name of their planet, “our Congress, and our people are honored to host this historic summit. We feel particularly privileged to assist in such vital efforts to bring peace and stability to both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.”

  A century ago, Bacco knew, the Romulans had occupied Cort for ten years. Although the Boslics eventually repelled the invaders, they lived under the continued fear that they would again have to face the Empire or some other aggressor. The cultural memories and collective fears of the Boslic people made their resistance to a military alliance—with the Federation or any other nation—all the more impressive. They unwaveringly maintained their independence and neutrality even in the face of the major strategic value of their world’s location in space.

  As Kortaj went on, Bacco wondered why the triumvir had begun to welcome the delegates as a group when clearly three had yet to arrive: the Kinshaya pontifex maxima, one of the Tholian high magistrates, and the Tzenkethi autarch. The president looked to her allies, who also seemed confused by the seemingly premature start of the summit. Bacco waited for Kortaj to pause so that she might ask about the missing dignitaries, but then the triumvir addressed the matter.

  “As I’m sure you have noticed,” she said, peering directly at the heads of state representing the nations of the Khitomer Accords, “sever
al leaders from the Typhon Pact have not arrived. I will ask Praetor Kamemor to speak to this.” Kortaj sat down, and Kamemor stood up.

  “Before I say anything else, I would like to thank everyone here today for their willing participation in this summit,” she said. “It is my firm belief that initiating a dialogue among our worlds is not just a reasonable way to ensure the safety of all our peoples, but the only way.”

  Bacco listened to the praetor’s words, agreed with them, and believed that Kamemor meant what she said. Ever since the Ferengi Alliance and the Cardassian Union had allied with the Federation and the Klingons, the praetor had sought a dialogue with the president and the other Khitomer Accords leaders. Through former Federation ambassador Spock, Kamemor sent word to Bacco that she wished to defuse the seemingly continual escalation of tensions in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The two heads of state exchanged a number of messages in the ensuing months, until the praetor proposed a summit of all the Khitomer Accords and Typhon Pact leaders, advocating that they come together to find a method of cementing a lasting peace. It required some time for all the involved parties to agree to the meeting, and even longer to find a mutually acceptable place and time for the unprecedented conference.

  “I regret that because of certain events,” Kamemor continued, “several of my fellow leaders within the Typhon Pact have chosen not to participate at this time.”

  “And how are we to ‘ensure the safety of all our peoples,’” Castellan Garan said, “if not all parties agree to do so?” Bacco saw the set of the Cardassian’s jaw, and knew that the absence of the three Typhon Pact leaders both troubled and angered her—as it did Bacco herself.

  Chancellor Martok rose, his chair pushing back noisily on the stone floor, his body language suggesting to the president that he intended to leave at once. “It is unfortunate,” he said, “that you did not elect to inform us of this development before we made the long journeys from our homeworlds.”

  “Please, please,” Kamemor said, holding the palms of her hands up to the Khitomer Accords representatives. “While the Kinshaya, the Tholians, and the Tzenkethi have decided not to attend this summit, they have consented to abide by whatever agreements we can negotiate here.”

  “You have their proxies, then?” asked Grand Nagus Rom.

  “In essence, I do,” Kamemor said.

  Bacco peered up at Martok, who had neither left the table nor sat back down. Then she posed a question of her own. “May I ask to what events you refer when you offer them as the reasons for the other Typhon Pact leaders opting to stay away from this summit?”

  “Of course,” Kamemor said. “With respect to the Holy Order of the Kinshaya, while the pontifex maxima initially agreed to take part, the Episcopate pressured her not to involve herself in such a categorically secular, and therefore ‘unholy,’ assembly.”

  Martok grumbled, apparently at just the mention of the Kinshaya. The Klingons had clashed with them repeatedly for many decades, and the Order evidently remained a problem for the Empire. Although the Federation had encountered the Kinshaya infrequently and knew little about them, Bacco understood the extreme religiosity of their culture, lending credence to the praetor’s explanation.

  Kamemor ignored Martok’s exclamation. “The Tholian Assembly informed me that they believed their presence at the summit would prove counterproductive,” she said. “They attributed this to their developing relationship with the people of Andor, and the Tholians’ inadvertent role in the Andorians’ secession from the Federation.”

  Bacco choked back a pointed response of her own at the praetor’s use of the word inadvertent. The Tholians had acted surreptitiously in involving themselves in the search for a solution to the reproductive crisis facing the Andorian people. They also clearly calculated the timing of their revelation that they had provided critical data to Andorian scientists that the Federation had not, which then led directly to Andor’s secession.

  “And the Tzenkethi refuse to speak with the Federation as long as it holds their citizens captive,” Kamemor finished. She sat down again, leaving Martok the only one at the table still standing.

  Bacco joined him. With the Klingon chancellor apparently still on the cusp of leaving, and the summit already stumbling along even before it had really begun, she felt that she needed to say something—to do something. Looking to Martok, she said, “Chancellor, if I may?” Martok appeared to measure her for a second, then took his seat, granting her the floor. Bacco peered across the length of the table. “Praetor Kamemor,” she said, deciding in that moment to take an action that she had mulled for a while, but that her advisors had petitioned against taking. “In the spirit of goodwill, and in an effort to foster positive relationships among all the worlds of the Khitomer Accords and the Typhon Pact, I will release the members of the Tzenkethi military currently in Federation custody. I take this action unilaterally, and without condition.” She turned to the first row of seats in the gallery. “Esperanza, would you please see to it at once?”

  Although the president’s instruction probably surprised her chief of staff, Bacco also knew that Piñiero would do as she’d been asked. “Yes, Madam President,” she said. She immediately rose and headed back up the nearest stairs toward one of the chamber’s exits.

  Bacco peered back over at the three Typhon Pact leaders. “I do this despite recorded evidence that the Tzenkethi harrier crews wantonly attacked a freighter bringing medicine, food, and infrastructural equipment to a displaced population in need,” she said. “But I am releasing the prisoners without reservation because I recognize that one of us must take a first step toward peace if we are ever to reach that destination. I feel that Praetor Kamemor has opened the door for all of us, and I have just stepped through that door. I welcome all of you—” Bacco looked around to include Martok, Garan, and Rom. “—to join me.”

  The president sat down again. For several seconds, nobody spoke. Finally, the Gorn imperator broke the quiet with a series of hisses, which Bacco’s universal translator interpreted into Federation Standard. “Most impressive, Madam President,” Sozzerozs said. “I cannot speak for the Tzenkethi, but for myself and for my people, I thank you.” Bacco acknowledged the imperator with a nod.

  “Now then,” said Triumvir Kortaj, “let us commence as we had planned, with opening statements from each of you.” She looked to Bacco’s end of the table. “Castellan Garan, would you please start?”

  The Cardassian rose and gazed around at both her allies and adversaries. As she started to speak, Bacco realized that the group assembled had already accomplished something. Despite all that had been said already, as well as the unwillingness of the Kinshaya, Tholians, and Tzenkethi to contribute directly to the gathering, Kamemor and Bacco and the others had somehow found their way past those obstacles.

  To the president’s great satisfaction, the summit had truly begun.

  Gell Kamemor walked through the Boslic government complex to the Grand Assembly Chamber, where she made her way down the central stairs and back to the conference table. Most of the heads of state had already returned from their break, she saw, among them Domo Brex and Grand Nagus Rom, who huddled together and spoke animatedly with each other. Each held up his own data tablet for the other to see, occasionally pointing at one of the displays.

  As the praetor sat down, she realized that she felt both exhausted and invigorated. Through nearly four full days of talks that had included conversations, questions, debates, and arguments, she counted the summit as an unqualified success. At times, words had grown heated and tempers had risen, but not one of the dignitaries had abandoned the proceedings, nor even threatened to do so—not even the ever-combustible Klingon chancellor.

  During the course of the gathering, several trade agreements had been reached, but more than anything, issues long the province of military brinkmanship—or worse, of actual military action—had become subjects for discussion. The parties made little progress on matters such as the martial advantage that quan
tum slipstream drive provided the Federation. Imperator Sozzerozs raised a concern about the UFP and the Klingon Empire increasing the imbalance of power by allying with the Cardassians and the Ferengi, while President Bacco objected to the Tholians’ part in doing the reverse by helping drive the Andorians to secede.

  Despite the lack of resolution in such areas, though, Kamemor welcomed the new dialogues, believing them an essential prologue to a durable peace. She also appreciated the unselfish action taken by President Bacco in releasing the Tzenkethi raiders, without making any demands of the Coalition in return. Although Kamemor had not heard from the autarch during the summit, she had contacted Chairwoman Sela, who in turn checked with one of the Tal Shiar operatives stationed within the Federation; the agent confirmed the release of the Tzenkethi harrier crews from UFP custody.

  The idea of Tal Shiar personnel posted secretly on other worlds concerned Kamemor. She appreciated the efficacy, even the necessity, of placing undercover observers among the adversaries of the Empire, but she also understood the potential for diplomatic disaster, which could readily lead to military engagement. Because of the Tal Shiar’s long record of abuses, as well as Sela’s own personal history of antipathy toward the Federation, Kamemor had kept a watchful eye on the chairwoman. Thus far, Sela had demonstrated no propensity for plotting against the UFP, or for supporting anti-UFP sentiment. The chairwoman had even unmasked her own predecessor, as well as the previous praetor, as the perpetrators of the deadly theft of the slipstream drive plans from Utopia Planitia. More recently, Sela had rescued and then released the crew of a lost Starfleet vessel.

  Castellan Garan, the only dignitary not yet back at the table in the Grand Assembly Chamber, appeared at the top of one of the sets of stairs. As she paced down toward the chamber floor, Kamemor saw Grand Nagus Rom pull a small handheld device from within his tailored, olive-colored jacket. Amazed, the praetor watched as Brex accepted a stylus from Rom and affixed his signature to the device. When the castellan resumed her place at the conference table, Rom announced that he and Brex had agreed in principle to a redrawing of the borders between the Ferengi Alliance and the Breen Confederacy, potentially settling a conflict of considerable duration.