Escalating Tensions

Posted on Mon Aug 31st, 2015 @ 5:52pm by Captain Tim Williams & Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre

Episode: Lost Property
Location: Commanding Officer's Ready Room [Deck 1, USS Highlander]
Timeline: MD01: 1320hrs.

The chime on the captain's door was a soothing presence for Lieutenant Commander Ciaran McIntyre. Lieutenant Commander, he thought. It all seemed like a joke but he'd been wearing the pip for a few hours now and no-one had come by his post to take it off him and mock him.

He held in his hand a PADD full of bad news and the captain was going to want to see it. Without a dedicated intelligence officer, Mac had been given the sorry task of sorting through the plethora of reports and intelligence briefings which came through in Starfleet comm packets. Ninety nine point nine percent of them were general bumph, full of rubbish about wanted criminals and psychological profiles of the alarming number of Starfleet officers who deserted, but occasionally things which were more relevant to the galaxy at large came across his desk. This was one of those times.

"Come on in!" Tim called from inside his office. He'd left the bridge to have a quick bite of lunch in his ready room - the leftover containers that it had been replicated in were still sitting on the table near the under-window couch - and after he'd finished he'd put his feet up in his chair to start mulling over a new holodeck program. He'd finished working on his last holographic car a few weeks ago, and was eager to load another into his old Earth garage program.

Mac stepped over the threshold with an element of trepidation. He always found something wrong by interrupting someone in their inner sanctum. "Do you have a minute sir?"

"Yeah, sure; grab a seat," Tim said, taking his feet off his desk and moving round to the seating area, leaving his PADD listing old earth automobiles on his desk. He quickly grabbed his lunch containers and stuck them in the replicator slot, tapping the button to recycle them shortly before they vanished in the familiar blue haze. "What have you got for me?"

"Nothing good, I'm afraid." Mac took the offered seat on the right hand side of the captain, and passed him the PADD. "More reports of tensions along the Klingon/Gorn border. Looks like there's been a few skirmishes for good measure."

"Yeah, what I'm hearing from Starfleet on that front doesn't make it sound like the situation is going to change much. The Council's pleas to the Klingons to have us mediate talks between them and the Gorn are falling on deaf ears, and neither side wants to back down. If it wasn't for Starfleet holding them back, I'm pretty sure the Klingons would have already launched a full on invasion of Gorn space."

"It seems like they might be preparing to go down that road anyway." McIntyre motioned to one of the flags in the report. "It could just be war games - aggressive stances and all that - but it looks like the Klingons are amassing a fleet around Q'Tal."

"Q'Tal?" Tim asked, trying to rack his brain for memories of the locations of the various Klingon planets. "That's quite far out from their border with us, isn't it? Do you think they might be amassing there to try and hide what they're doing from us?" He reached over to grab a PADD which displayed a map of the local territory to remind himself. Q'Tal was a fair distance from Federation space, but still well within the range of Starfleet's subspace telescopes. Vorn or Maranga would have been better places to get away from the oversight of the Federation, but they were also much further away from Gorn space too.

"It would stand to reason." Mac replied, calling up the PADD's small holographic display, zooming in on the small Klingon fleet in the Q'Tal system. "My guess is they're taking the risk of being picked up, presumably with the get-out of saying they're doing war games, to ensure that they have ships in the area if the chance to attack comes up."

"Are the Gorn likely to attack?" Tim asked. "From what I understand, the two of them have been in a cold war since the seventies, and the with the exception of their losses during the Dominion War, the Klingons have always been able to out-power the Gorn in any straight-up fight."

"Funny you should mention that. The same observatory's picked up fleet movements in Gorn space, around the Saz... sas... sazssg- around a Northerly system." Mac always had trouble with Gorn pronunciation and the Sazssgrerrn system was always the worst. "It looks like they're on a more aggressive footing than the Klingons."

"That is unusual," Tim agreed. It was rather concerning, too. If the Gorn were eager to start a large-scale fight with the Klingons, they'd likely get slaughtered. The Klingons would probably then annex Gorn space, and with the increased territory and military forces would be even harder for the Federation Council to control. "I know the Gorn usually have a decent defence around Sazygren" - Tim didn't even attempt to pronounce it correctly, or pause to acknowledge that he had completely butchered it - "Starfleet have theorised that it might be one of their breeding planets, though the atmosphere is so thick the observatories can't get and readings of the surface. But the forces there have never gotten larger than a simple defensive force."

"Could be what it is, the report says they've found it hard to get a clear read on the exact composition of the fleet. It got me to thinking though," McIntyre was sure that his pet theory couldn't possibly be true, but he also couldn't abide the thought of him being right and not bringing it up. "What if they're not all Gorn ships?"

"Who else could it be?" Tim asked. "The Gorn aren't exactly the most friendly species, and that aside, most other powers that don't like the Klingons would have to either go through their space or ours to get to Sazygren."

McIntyre shrugged. "I have absolutely no idea. It just strikes me that there's a lot of people who would benefit from a weakened Klingon Defence Force."

"You're right there. Quite a lot of people as a matter of fact." The alliance between the Federation and the Klingons always seemed a little odd to Tim. True, it was born out of necessity, and the Klingons were instrumental allies to have when it came to the Romulans and the Dominion, but at the end of the day, their ideology was the complete opposite of each other. The Klingons still annexed new worlds by force to grow their Empire, even if they did it more on the other side of their territory these days than they used to in the days before the Khitomer Accords. It was always a tricky minefield whenever refugees from one of these annexed worlds came to the Federation asking for asylum. "Have you let Starfleet know of your concerns?"

"Not as yet. I don't have any solid basis in fact - just a conspiracy theory really. Seems plausible though, doesn't it?" Mac thought for a moment, scrabbling around for something more worthy. "If I had access to the patrol reports for the region, I might be able to build up a clearer picture."

"I'll see if I can speak with Admiral Gates and get you access."

"I'd appreciate that, sir. Thanks."

"Let me know what you turn up."