A normal man in the position of Captain Anthony Roberts would have felt infuriating frustration at watching his career slip away. Roberts had no time for fretting over his career, however, or over the inadequate defense he could offer the Federation. Nor was he aware of the dire portents spelled out by the fact that he and USS Shieldwall were entrusted to that defense. Perhaps he would have cared two years in the past, or would care again two years in the future, but for now he had room only for hate.
He sat on his bridge, he stared at Romulan space, and he hated
The
USS Shieldwall was, on paper, a carrier escort. In sane times no one would have put her on border duty and expected her to do a scout's job. She had no special sensors with which to scan the Romulan border and see if the "Elfs" were up to trouble. After the war, however, scouts were in short supply. The official duty of the Shieldwall was to fire prodigious amounts of probe drones at anything that looked to be alive and then report back the findings. The Gatling phasers that lined her hull would be poor defense against a Romulan ship of the line, but should be enough against the attrition units Star Fleet Command believed would be all the Romulan Star Empire could afford to risk at the Federation border. Starfleet felt that the loss of the war had broken the Romulan economy and that the loss of Remus would keep it broken for a long time to come. They might be right, and in any event the Romulan government was reportedly falling apart in civil war.
The real scouts would go to the Klingon border. One was even assigned to the Kzinti border should the resurgent kitties revert to form and forget who their friends were. The romulan border, Starfleet reasoned, could be watched by a few old relics and by castoffs like the Shieldwall.
Besides , thought Roberts,
my ship has nothing better to do . The
USS Shield wall , a frontline carrier escort, had no carrier to guard: The
MacArthur was dead, and no replacement was going to be built in the near future.
Roberts did not care why he was at the border, only that he could not cross. Only that he could not kill those that had killed
MacArthur ; those that had pursued and wrecked her fleet as it fled from one bloody rear-guard action after another throughout 8 long months of humiliating retreat. It was not enough that Remus had burned to the ground. No, that was not nearly enough. All the Romulans must be made to pay.
To be sure, the Romulans hated him as well. They wanted everyone involved with Operation Remus dead and they were willing to make any sacrifice to ensure that happened.
They proved that during our retreat, he reflected. No one in history had ever seen a pursuit characterized with such ferocity. It had made Roberts think of them as savages, without ever stopping to wonder how he'd have reacted had someone obliterated his home world. The Romulans wanted them all dead.
Well, they haven't many of us left to kill, and the sooner they come to find me the better. It was a contest he looked forward too. Win or lose, he planned to make sure hell filled up.
These vengeful thoughts blazed out of Roberts's eyes and bothered his crew. Morale was shattered. Most of the crew had no wish to die while doing the wrong job with the wrong ship, and Roberts' hatred was maniacal. They all knew he would not run from any fight they stumbled across. Aboard the
Shieldwall, that mania made finding anything at all a very dangerous prospect.
A "dangerous prospect" came early one morning. The
Shield wall had launched another salvo of probe drones across the border at a cluster of suspected warp signatures that had been hovering just out of reach for days. Just as the drones closed to discrimination range of their targets, the prey again scattered in a flurry of different directions.
"Like trying to sneak up on a cluster of flies," murmured Captain Roberts.
"They are fast patrol boats with no support", stated XO Deargyn in a confident tone. He'd made this comment daily since the contacts first appeared. "We saw it in the war. Nothing else scatters like that when spotted. They're no threat."
"If they are no threat, then why are they here? Why would a flotilla of fast patrol boats pace us all week?" This was Roberts' scripted counter-question. The crew ignored the exchange completely. They knew the XO's next reply and they knew the captain's next question. The exchange had become old.
Robert's eventual reaction was new. "Take us in to 10,000 km of the border, Mr. Slovenki," he ordered the helmsman. "Warp factor 2, if you please."
The pause around the bridge was unmistakable.
"10,000 km of the border, sir, or of the neutral zone?" asked Slovenki, and his tone gave clear indication of which answer he would prefer.
"The neutral zone died with the war," snapped Captain Roberts. "I want us on the border."
The XO shifted his feet nervously. "Sir, our orders…."
"Our orders, Mr. April, are not to cross the border. They don't say a damn thing about how close I can get to it. If those are Romulans on the border then I'll be no closer to it than they are, and if they don't like it they can damn well come and tell me so themselves."
The crew moved to follow his orders, and morale took another steep dive. No one had missed the captain's reversion to the first person pronoun. It was clear this approach toward the border was his mission, his search vengeance, and they were simply stuck with him. The science officer hunched more closely over his scanners, striving to force his instruments to look a little further out than they were designed to do. Since he was looking in the wrong direction he missed what eventually came.
"Captain!" shouted the communications officer in surprise and alarm. "Incoming hail!" The man's face went blank for a moment, while he listened to more of the message, then he turned with relief to face Roberts. "She reports herself as the private freighter Consolation Prize, six weeks out of Bela colony, and bound for the Romulan colony of Praxis with a shipment of quatrotriticali. Her captain is requesting visual communications with you, by name, Captain."
Roberts considered. The presence of a low-class bulk freighter was not a surprise. Trade across the Romulan frontier was legal now -- disgraceful, but legal – and the shattered industrial engine of the normally isolationist Romulan economy was busy snapping up anything it was offered. But that such a freighter should know his name; that was odd.
"Put him on screen."
The face that appeared was female, smeared in grease and dirt, and had a mane of unruly hair restrained by a bandana. Roberts recognized it at once.
"Cat!" he cried in surprise, then rushed ahead without thinking. "I'd heard you were drummed out of the fleet." Immediately he wished he could take the words back, but the smile and the sparkling eyes before him remained unphased, just as they always had when he'd shared late nights at the academy with them.
"I'm a little luckier than you, Anthony, wouldn't you say? They tossed me out for pressing the enemy a little too hard, and now I'm free to run my own life. You they disgrace, but then they just leave you here to rot. Now I ask you, is there any justice in that?"
Roberts would never win a verbal exchange with her. He never had. So it was best just to change the subject. "What are you doing hauling wheat for the Romulans?"
"I don't get to play with military toys anymore, Anthony, so I do what I can. The Romulans can't afford to pay half of what I charge them, but they pay it anyway because they have to. What better revenge could an humble merchant hope for?"
Roberts laughed. Cat really knew how to stick in the knife. She always had. You crossed her once, and she was looking to stick you for the rest of your life. The Romulans had learned that during the war, and so had Starfleet. Unfortunately Starfleet had decided her attacks on the enemy were too extreme and involved 'conduct unbecoming of an officer', and thus they had robbed themselves of one of their best weapons. "Cat, you have to come aboard and have dinner with me."
"That's why I'm here, Anthony. I figured we could relate; one reject to another. Shall I dress for dinner?"
"Don't you dare! Come just as you are!" Cat had never dressed nor cleaned up for anything, including the ceremony giving her command of her first ship, and that impertinence was just the way he liked remembering her. I'll drop shields and have you beamed aboard." he made a cutting motion to his XO, who gave the orders to lower shields. "Shall we say in an hour?"
Cat's smile never moved, her eyes never changed, but it was definitely a different woman that said, "I was thinking more like right now."
The sound of transporters filled the bridge, followed by the sound of disruptor pistols. Only the XO was killed, but the rest of the crew took the hint. Cat laughed at Roberts, two feet from his command chair, with an absurd cutlass pointed at his throat.
"What are you doing?!" he screamed.
"Vengeance!" shouted Cat with glee. "You really should have stood up for me at that inquest, Anthony. You could have saved my career."
Roberts was dumbstruck, but his mind immediately raced back to the thoughts he'd had only moments before.
Cat really knew how to stick in the knife. She always had. You crossed her once, and she was looking to stick you for the rest of your life. "Cat, I wasn't there. You'd got sent off in a screening mission before the battle. I wasn't a witness"
"Who cares where you really were! Who cares what you really saw! You could have spoken the words that would have saved me!"
There was really no reply to that, especially when the one screaming it at you held a cutlass at your throat.
"Captain," cried the quavering voice of his science officer, who was trying to watch his screens without touching anything or angering any of the gunmen standing around him. "The
Consolation Prize is opening exterior cover hatches. She's got guns, sir. And she's launching PF's."
"Those were your PF's hounding us for the last week," realized Roberts out loud. "You've been stalking us."
"That's right, Anthony. Starfleet didn't want me anymore, but Tiger Heart was willing to put me to proper use."
"What is Tiger Heart doing on this side of the Federation?"
"We go where we want, we take what we want." She pressed the cutlass further into his throat. Roberts could feel a trickle of blood begin to seep into his collar. "And what I want right now is your ship. Surrender, Captain, and I'll spare your crew. Refuse me and my gunboats will rip your helpless ship apart and I'll haul your arse over to my bridge so you can watch them all die."
This was ridiculous. He was in command of a Federation warship. PFs were a threat his
Shieldwall had been specifically designed to fight; yet his specialized weapons were worthless because he'd ordered them turned off. Did the rest of the crew even know they were under attack? They had the pirate marines outnumbered. They had the pirate marines outgunned, and yet…
His crew would not fight for him. He could see that now, even as he pondered trying to knock away the cutlass from his throat and snapping Katherine Devoroux's spine in half. They'd lost respect for him. They'd grown used to living in fear, and they were ready to lose.
He gave the order.
Cat's brigands efficiently disarmed and stripped his crew, then hauled them all off to be chained in an empty cargo hold. Her technicians lost no time in strip his ship as well. They cut out everything of value, paying special attention to the Gatlings and the Aegis electronics. It was a happy Cat who came to his cell two days later to laugh at him.
"We're done with your ship, Anthony. Time to take you to your new owners."
"You said we'd be freed," he said glumly. He hadn't really expected her to keep her word on that score, but he'd dared to hope.
"I said your crew would be freed," she countered. "And so they have been. They are floating in space inside a large cargo container. They've got two week's air, and there really are Romancheros who run freight back and forth across the border here. If your crew is lucky someone will find them. But you, my old love, I plan to ransom."
"You're a fool, Cat. You're blinded by hate, and you always were."
I've been blinded by hate too, he reflected,
We all have been. That's the only reason she caught me. But no need to tell her that part. The Romulans had been blinded by hate during their pursuit. He had been blinded by hate during his patrol. She would be blinded by hate for the rest of her life. "The Federation will not negotiate with Tiger Heart. We do not ransom our officers."
"Not the Federation, perhaps," she answered. "But there are those who will."
Her eyes looked past his shoulder as they laughed at him again. He saw with a shiver that they were looking toward Romulan space.
-Herr Burt
Topic: Cat O' Nine Tales (Read 1084 times)