Captain's Blood

26

S.S. CALYPSO, STARDATE 57488.3

Beverly Crusher was insistent. “We have no choice, Jean-Luc! We have to warn them. It’s the last chance we have to stop the war.”

“And it could be just the thing that starts it,” Picard argued.

Crusher threw her padd on the fold-down chart table in the Titan’s yacht, still docked with the Calypso. He, McCoy, and Scott were seated at the table. Crusher, Riker, Worf, and La Forge were standing around it.

“If we do nothing, Jean-Luc, it’s going to start anyway. So what do we have to lose?”

Picard matched her throwing of the padd by banging his fist on the table. “I will not gamble with the lives of billions of people simply because I don’t know what else to do!”

“How about a measured warning?” Riker suggested, and Picard understood he was trying to find a middle ground. “I could get word to the commanders I deal with in the Romulan Fleet.”

“But what could they do in less than a day?” Picard asked.

Worf snorted in derision. “They would evacuate their friends and family from likely target zones, then applaud the destruction of Remus.”

“We have no time left for diplomatic initiatives,” Picard said. “Even if we had tried that from the beginning, there are too many factions on Romulus, too many differing opinions on how Remus should be handled. And there’d be no way to tell if Tal Shiar operatives were manipulating the message.”

“There is another possibility,” Worf suggested. Picard and everyone else in the passenger cabin looked at the resolute Klingon. “The Titan will arrive in less than six hours. That will give us approximately ten hours to attack and disable the three Reman warbirds that the Tal Shiar hope will launch a counterattack on Romulus.”

“Now that’s a Klingon for you,” McCoy said. “Stop a civil war by starting an interplanetary one.”

Worf growled under his breath. “Our attacks on the warbirds will not be an act of war. It will be a preemptive strike to preserve peace.”

Picard knew they didn’t have time for McCoy and Worf to start a debate that was in reality an argument neither could win, so he intervened at once. “That still does nothing for the millions of Remans who will be killed when their communes are destroyed at the Hour of Opposition. And in the confusion that would certainly arise between a Starfleet vessel attacking Reman ships…” Picard locked eyes with the two verbal combatants. “…followed by explosions in Reman communities, there is a very good chance that interplanetary war could be triggered.”

“Then why don’t we find the bombs,” La Forge said, “or whatever it is that the Tal Shiar are going to use to destroy the communes? No bombs. No destruction. No reason for the crews of the warbirds to take revenge.”

“Unfortunately,” Picard said to clarify their situation, “Norinda did not specifically say that bombs would be used. Life-support systems might be poisoned. Ships might be deliberately crashed into the surface domes. Power plants could be sabotaged. The food and water supplies. We just wouldn’t know what we were searching for.”

“But surely there’s nothin’ wrong with at least makin’ the attempt?” Scott asked. “We don’t have all the answers, but we do have some. We know the three communities that have been targeted, the ones linked to the warbirds Atranar, Braul, and Vortral. With the Titan’s sensors, we’d have a very good chance o’ spottin’ the most likely means of mass destruction.” He listed them on his fingers. “Antimatter bomb. Fusion. Fission. And if we pick th’ proper orbit so we’re equidistant from all three communities at th’ Hour of Opposition, then we can certainly protect them from missiles, torpedoes, or crashing spacecraft.”

No one objected right away, and Picard took that as a good sign.

Then La Forge added his support. “Captain, I agree with Scotty. It’s a place to start.”

“Very well,” Picard said, looking around at his team. “Do we have any way of accessing the Romulan Central Information Net? Is there a Reman equivalent? Anything that would give us maps and specifications for the three communes so the Titan will be able to identify anything out of the ordinary?”

Riker seemed confident he could access the necessary information as part of a general request for trade data. He knew the people to contact on Romulus, which by now was only a few minutes distant by warp.

“Then let’s get started,” Picard said, and dismissed the group to begin their work.

Scott was right; the attempt had to be made.

Even if it was too little and too late.