This choice: Continue reading "Double Double" • Go Back...Chapter #29Double Double (4) by: Seuzz   Chapter 4
CAPTAIN'S LOG, STARDATE 4925.2
The Hood has completed its mission to T'nufo, and successfully destroyed a meteor swarm that threatened to devastate the length and breadth of the planet's largest and most densely inhabited island. We depart T'nufo with the warmly expressed gratitude of its government and people. But we take even greater satisfaction in the job that we performed.
As we are currently without assignment, I have ordered a course to the Alpha Cygnus system, where we can refurbish and take on fresh supplies.
Joaquin Martinez, captain of the U.S.S. Hood, clicked the log recording off, and with eyes closed let the silence of his cabin briefly wash over him. He had a Scotch poured from his private stock, and he leaned back in his chair. After the muscles in his shoulders had fully relaxed, he snapped open a channel to the ship's musical library. As the second movement of Krynnick's "Nebula" Symphony began to softly play, he closed his eyes again and let his mind drift back to the first time he'd heard it. It was at a concert performance on Mars, and he'd let Althea talk him into attending it for their second date, even though he didn't have the least taste for neo-classical music ...
The intercom whistled, and Martinez grunted an oath as he sat up. "Yes," he said, then realized he had only shut off the music channel, and scrambled to find the right button. His expression was tight as Paultic's face appeared on his monitor.
"Sorry to interrupt your concert, sir," the communications officer said. "But I have a priority call from Admiral Strauss at Starbase Three."
"Put it through." Martinez made a mental note to confront Paultic with the mounting evidence that the lieutenant had been eavesdropping upon the captain's private channels.
Abruptly, Paultic's lean face was replaced with that of Admiral Strauss.
The commander of Starbase Three had always reminded Martinez of a Terran anteater, probably on account of his bulbous nose and dark, beady eyes. But then, few of Starfleet's senior officers were likely to win a beauty contest.
"Good to see you, Joaquin," the admiral said. "You're looking well."
"Thank you sir, you too. What can I do for you?"
"Well," said Strauss, "I've got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?"
Martinez bit his tongue: he hated these kind of games. "The bad news, I suppose, Admiral. Might as well take my medicine first."
The admiral chuckled.
"All right, then. It seems that the Romulans are getting a little frisky. Our outposts are reporting lots of military movement hard up against the Neutral Zone. At least they haven't actually crossed it. Yet."
"I see." Martinez kept a poker face. "What's Starfleet's assessment of the situation?"
The admiral shrugged. "Your guess is as good as ours."
Martinez sniffed to himself, then accepted the implied invitation to speculate.
"Could be they're trying bait us," he said. "Get us do something which they can then escalate. Or they're just testing our reflexes."
The admiral nodded. "Either way, we want to be prepared.
Then he seemed to puff up, and a little steel came into his voice.
"It's Starfleet's view," he said, "that the Romulans want to see how much force we can bring up at a moment's notice. The thing is, we'd rather not tell them." He smiled.
"Sir?"
"We think they're trying to gauge and calculate what they would face if they ever did come across the Neutral Zone. But," he continued, "as we don't want them coming at us with more than we can handle, we don't want them knowing just how much we could throw back at them. For that reason," he concluded, "we are not planning to respond to this ... provocation ... in force. Or, not as much force as we could respond to it with."
He smiled again, and waited for Martinez's reply.
The captain of the Hood felt a ripple of unease crawl up his spine. "Permission to speak candidly, sir?" he said.
Strauss grinned. "You sure as hell better."
Martinez took a deep breath as he marshaled his thoughts. A candid response would be worse than no response, if he couldn't make himself clear.
"I understand Starfleet's thinking," he said, and silently added, Insofar as you can call it "thinking." "But," he said aloud, "it might just be too, er ... cute." He watched the admiral for a response, and when the other only smiled and inclined his head, he continued. "If we offer a muted response to their present movements, what's to stop them from just coming across the Neutral Zone with the force they've assembled? Or to conclude that they can safely come across any time? A response that is too measured, too ... "
"Weak?" suggested the admiral wryly.
"Not my word, sir. But a response that is too measured may seem to them too weak. Yes, it may lead them to underestimate us. But it may also be a temptation."
Admiral Strauss chuckled.
"Give Starfleet a little credit, Joaquin," he said. "Don't worry that we won't be trying to deter them. We just don't want it to look like we're assembling a counter-force. We just want them to look over the border and see nothing worse than a couple of first-class starships casually cruising nearby, as though the Neutral Zone is of no concern. But which can be brought together at a moment's notice into a force capable of blasting their strike force into dust."
The admiral's eyes narrowed with amusement. "We want them to think that we don't have to respond, that the starships routinely patrolling the area are themselves capable of stopping any cross-border thrust."
Joaquin cocked his own eyebrow in turn. "I thought you wanted them to underestimate us," he said.
"We want them to underestimate what we can assemble, by thinking that the very capable forces we have on hand are the only ones we have."
It still sounded too cute by half, but Martinez surrendered to plain inevitability. "I assume," he said "that the Hood is to be one of the ships that is ... casually cruising about the neighborhood?"
"Yes. We're sending you to Gamelon Two. That's close enough to the Neutral Zone that the Hood can move quickly to help blunt any Romulan incursion—and close enough that the Romulans will know you're in the area. It's also a colony planet, so it will just look like you're making a routine call."
Martinez nodded again. "And what's the good news?"
"That is the good news! It's a lovely planet, Joaquin, almost completely unspoiled. Not much night life or entertainment, of course, but—"
"Shore leave," Martinez interjected.
Strauss chuckled again.
"I don't know how long this drill is going to last, captain, so they will have lots of time to relax. Just don't let them get too relaxed. You may have to move out at a moment's notice."
"Sir, you implied that you wanted more than one starship in the sector. May I ask who else will be out there?"
"It will be you, the Enterprise and the Potemkin. Jim Kirk will be in command if you need to come together in force."
Martinez nodded. He was perfectly confident of his own abilities, but he recognized that Kirk, though a peer in rank, was his superior in reputation.
"I'm sending you an intelligence file," the admiral continued, "giving you everything that we know about the Romulan forces. Numbers, dispositions, ship classes. Even the names of the commanders."
"Thank you, sir."
After the admiral's visage faded, Martinez signaled the helm and gave Bodrick a new course and speed. Then, after snapping off the comms, he leaned back far enough that he could prop a boot on the desk as he studied the decrypted file Starbase Three had transmitted. He rubbed his chin as he mulled it.
Intelligence reported that seven birds of prey had warped into the sector over a short period of time. It was particularly noteworthy that one of the ships was the Ka'frah, a new, state-0f-the-art vessel, commanded by one T'bak, the younger brother of a powerful Romulan senator. The presence of such a commander suggested no casual exercise.
Still, it wasn't a force likely to cause more than mischief—not with only seven warbirds. A ship like the Hood could handle three birds of prey, so long as her commander wasn't stupid enough to get himself surrounded by enemies dipping in and out from behind their cloaks, and Martinez did not consider himself a stupid man. Three Constitution-class starships under competent command could handle seven birds of prey with ease. The Romulans would know that, too.
Yes, Martinez thought, once they got wind of the Hood, the Enterprise, and the Potemkin being in the area, they would more likely think better of starting trouble.
Only one thing gave him pause, and that was Starfleet's intelligence profile of T'bak. He was reputedly a hothead, and Martinez wondered if the usual niceties that went into weighing odds and outcomes were likely to enter into the calculations of such a commander.
And the more he thought about it, the more puzzled he became. If the Romulans intended to pick a fight, or to exploit a perceived weakness—which is what Martinez's instincts told him they were doing—why wouldn't they entrust their task force to a more seasoned commander? If, on the other hand, they intended only a test or a feint ... Well, again, why entrust their fleet to a rogue torpedo like this T'bak fellow?
Martinez felt a headache coming on as he reflected that although the Romulans were obsessive and masterful players of politico-military chess, they didn't only practice it against outsiders. There was every possibility that T'bak was being maneuvered permanently off the board by some hostile Senatorial clique that didn't want to dirty its hands with his murder. If given a task force strong enough to risk battle, but not strong enough to prevail, someone like T'bak might be trusted to act recklessly and destroy himself.
Which would be bad for T'bak, but also bad for any Federation vessels that had to fire the actual phaser shots.
Soon exhausted by the intricacies of Romulan chess, Martinez pushed the matter into the back of his mind, and numbed the forefront with the Scotch he had poured earlier.
* * * * *
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