Chapter 13: Back in the KSSR
“Flew from Beta Rigel VI TOAC
Didn't get to bed last night,
All the way my bat'leth was on my knee,
Man, I've had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the KSSR,
You don't know how lucky you are, boys:
Back in the KSSR!” – Romanticistic Rock band “The Quin-tles”, 2262
Didn't get to bed last night,
All the way my bat'leth was on my knee,
Man, I've had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the KSSR,
You don't know how lucky you are, boys:
Back in the KSSR!” – Romanticistic Rock band “The Quin-tles”, 2262
War Without Hate
Patrick Ch’O’Leary was asleep when the USS Malcolm Reed hit the mine. The first he knew of it was when he collided with the ceiling of his quarters and woke up to discover that artificial gravity had failed entirely as had many of the air filtration systems on his deck. “With a scratchy thought and a throbbing headache, I pulled on a jumpsuit as best I could in zero Gs and clambered out into the corridor.” He quickly navigated the chaotic ship to engineering, arriving just in time to plant his feet on the ground with the restoration of normal gravity plating. The situation was dire.
“We had struck something – the bridge didn’t know what yet. All we knew was that it had taken us from Warp 2 to stationary in normal space while ripping a whole in the starboard side and damaging both nacelle struts. We were dead in the water.” Warp travel was the least of O’Leary’s problems. The rapid collapse of the ship’s warp bubble had caused major buckling in the outer decks, and one of the port-side fusion reactors was dangerously close to an overload. The atmosphere was venting from deck ten, and while the rupture could be sealed, the internal bulkheads were too damaged to hold it closed. The ship was crippled.
The Malcolm Reed had just finished another minelaying operation on the edge of the Triangle. Cartwright had chosen to take a shorter route along the edge of the Azure Nebula to conduct a study of forming stars, while taking advantage of the Nebula’s subspace currents to gather extra speed on the return journey to Starbase 19. It was a well-travelled route by Starfleet vessels, so much so that it had gathered the nickname “Azure Alley”. There was no expectation of attack of any kind: most of the Klingon attack groups were operating far further into the triangle and closer to the Mastocal sector. While initially the bridge crew of the Reed thought they had been caught by a more adventurous Klingon captain, analysis of sensor records from just before the attack – themselves damaged by the power outage to the main computer – revealed something much worse. They had struck a gravitic mine.
The Gravitic mine is a mean weapon. Unlike Starfleet fusion proximity mines, Gravitic mines are built around using high-density plasma, powerful automatic sensors and a micro-warp core. Their key target is vessels at warp speed, using power subspace fields to rip them back into normal space, causing immense external and internal damage in the process. The faster a vessel is travelling, the worse the damage sustained: when the Derf Class Tender USS Ankara struck a mine at Warp 6.1 in 2263, its warp field collapsed so catastrophically that the debris was spread in a straight line across two AUs. The Malcolm Reed had been lucky; Ch’O’Leary was able to restore engine power in less than a day, and the vessel limped along at Warp 0.8 until it was rescued by the USS Kirov, which towed her back to Starbase 24. She was only one of sixteen vessels that struck Gravitic mines in the first week of October 2261; and one of three that were still space worthy afterwards.
Klingon research on gravitic mines shares the same origin point as their research on stasis field weaponry: the need to develop more efficient power production to make up for the acute shortages of dilithium and pergium within the Empire. The original intention of a “gravitic reactor” was to use a “subspace slingshot” as an “interdimensional turbine”. However, experiments in the 2250s found that the reactors tended to tear themselves – and the power collection satellites – apart when turned on. The conflict between House Kahnrah and Voggra (the patrons of the gravitic reactor) showed inadvertently that gravitic forces had powerful effects on subspace fields: two or three positioned together acts as a “sieve” that would shatter a subspace field with micro wormholes immediately.
While the mines were not used during T’Kuvma’s war, they were seized upon by Sturka in the aftermath to protect imperial facilities from internal foes: lacking the industrial base for their mass production, very gravitic fields were sown before 2260. The occupation of Enolian space and the usurpation of civil government on Tandar, however, gave the Empire access to facilities that could handle the creation of gravitic weapons on a mass scale. Now, with Klingon trade fractured and power projection flagging, Imperial Navy Command had to do something to strike back.
There was as much spite behind this as there was strategy. Too many vessels returning from raids had been lost to Starfleet mines for the Imperial Navy to ignore it. In July, a raid into the Baker’s Dozen was completely wiped out by a Starfleet minefield; all four I-2s (the most expensive and advanced vessel in the Klingon arsenal) were destroyed within 45 minutes of each other passing through part of the Parowan Asteroid Field. In another incident, a D7 chasing down rebels near the Alshanai Rift struck two mines at once, immolating itself in a fireball that was spotted on Starbase K-5’s subspace sensors.[1] Imperial Navy Command was furious – Sturka especially. The Empire simply could not afford to lose warships this way, either materially or politically. The gravitic mine allowed for a cheap, widespread, and effective response across the entire disputed area – and one the Klingons knew that Starfleet couldn’t immediately counter.
To a large extent, the mutual minelaying campaigns initially caused a total stalemate. Starfleet minefields were too dense and sensitive for Klingon minesweeping. Gravitic minefields, while sparse, were impossible to enter with an active subspace field. Active countermeasures were few and far between. The Imperial Navy had next to no minesweeping capability. Like Starfleet, they could use photon bursts and polaron sweeps to detonate mines and clear lanes, but they lacked the sensor capability or technological knowhow to build any equivalents to the “Liverpool” sweep pods that Starfleet was rapidly outfitting many ships with across the tactical fleet.[2]
In many cases, the best way for Klingon ships to clear mines was for a group of crewpersons to leave their vessel and detonate the mines with a disruptor rifle.[3] It worked – most of the time – but it was not a solution. Attempts to copy Starfleet trawling techniques had more success, but the lack of engineering knowledge on most Klingon ships meant capable officers who could manage such operations were few and far between. Much to Sturka’s frustration, many of those who did have experience minesweeping had no interesting in taking part in such “glory-free” work.
Minelaying, however, was much easier to organise and execute. The Klingons had over a two centuries of minelaying experience by the 2260s, though mostly as a defensive tactic to prevent attacks on orbital naval bases and shipyards. That had been the original purpose of the gravitic mine: but they rapidly evolved into offensive weapons. It was not a difficult change of strategy. Gravitic mines, as opposed to their fusion equivalents were small: they did not carry large warheads, instead relying on gravimetric forces and micro-wormholes to do most of the damage to a starship. They could be stowed in the cargo bays of larger ships or the fuel decks of smaller ones: some Birds of Prey would bolt them underneath their wings, releasing them with explosive charges when they arrived at their destination. This ease of deployment made it incredibly difficult for Starfleet to track the location of and density of minefields: any Klingon privateer could sow a gravitic field large enough to block a space lane if they were smart enough about it.
By October 18th all vessels operating in the disputed area off major space lanes were ordered to limit speed to Warp 2.5; on the 28th of October, the convoy control ship S.S. Star of Micronesia would strike a gravitic mine well within the bounds of the supposedly clear Barolia-SB10 space lane, losing three automated grain transports in the process. Even itinerant smugglers – usually then most adept at avoiding blockade and patrols – were being caught out by the Klingon minelayers. Qiv Grathak had taken his tramp freighter across the disputed area over a hundred times by 2261, through piracy, war and blockade, but even he could not escape the gravitic mine. “Escaping from the Barolia debacle, I thought that the worst was behind me. As always, however, the Klingons had other ideas. One of their dastardly mines – horrific little things that you can’t spot with your sensors – caught me on the way out. I’m lucky that I was running on lower power, but it still ripped a gash along the side of the Lucky Uvanda that you can still see today.”[4]
The gravitic mines effectively shut down border traffic for the rest of October: it was simply too dangerous. The Merchant Mariner’s association and the Board of Trade were apoplectic: even Th’rhahlat, normal avoidant of any direct criticism of the Stellar Service, would tear into Fleet Admirals Luteth and Ch’Shukar during a weekly staff meeting. “I do not ask for much that I do not think you can deliver,” he would tell them. “Which is why I won’t ask you to fix this. I will simply assume that you have already found a solution.”
Starfleet Command was really at a loss. Intelligence analysis had never considered minelaying to be a plausible Klingon strategy. It seemed too subtle and roundabout to fit into the Klingon way of warfare, and as such even awareness of their technological intent was discarded by analysts. That blind spot – grounded in fatal cultural assessments made in the last century – would hamper Starfleet for the rest of the cold war. Right now, it meant that Tactical Command’s staff had to scramble for a response, based on nothing but a few cursory studies in the 2240s and a lot of conjecture.[5]
As always, the Corps of Engineers would come through to save the day. SCE’s Axanar staff had performed minesweeping experiments before T’Kuvma’s War. Their study of gravitic technology – however limited – had led to some surprising conclusions, but they had hit a brick wall due to lack of information to conduct further tests. The onset of gravitic minelaying sent alarm bells up and down the chain of command. Tom Marrone, still chief of staff at Axanar, caught wind of rumours that the USS Idraxis had salvaged an abandoned raptor-type vessel near M’talas Prime. Calling in some favours, Marrone had the ship moved to Axanar, hoping that the ship still had some gravitic mines aboard.
The gamble paid off. five mines were on board, all with faulty warheads: perfect for dummy sweep runs. These tests, performed through the first week of November 2261, made clear that the existing Liverpool pods – while a viable method of minesweeping – could not counter the “subspace magnetism” of the gravitic mine. However, if a vessel operated without a high-power subspace field, it could close range with a gravitic mine for deactivation or detonation operations. As such, Marrone concluded that minesweepers based around fusion-powered – or even fission-powered starships could be the answer. The USS John Adams – a Franklin class starship that had been mothballed in the 2170s – was reactivated by the Axanar yard. After some difficulties (including the Adams ramming an inert mine when her helm console froze up), Marrone’s teams managed to successfully sweep and deactivate two of the mines in the test zone. The findings were viewed with some scepticism in Federation Central. fusion-powered warp drives were slow, inefficient, and unsafe, and no one really wanted to send people out in fusion-powered vessels unless they really needed to. More evidence was needed. The John Adams would make a further field test against a collection of located mines in the Vota Star Cluster. Again, she would manage to locate, mark and detonate the mines with concentrated phaser fire. On her return to Axanar, she and the SCE transport Archimedes would stumble into an unmarked minefield. Despite a glancing hit on the Archimedes by one mine, the Adams would manage to clear a path through, with no casualties on either vessel. Fusion-based sweeping had been vindicated.
The first dedicated minesweeping conversions would be conducted on two Magee class ships at the Axanar yards – the subspace field replacements improved their performance overall, and their compact spaceframe allowed them to sweep in all quarters at the same time. It would take time for further conversions as Operations scoured the mothball yards for available ships – time that Klingon Command didn’t have. As much as Rittenhouse could bombard Operations and Commodore Marrone with demands for minesweepers now, overhauls and refits would not produce a substantial number of operational vessels until early 2262.[6]
In the meantime, The Imperial Navy would press their advantage in every quarter. The rapid professionalisation of the fleet had been met with technological leaps across every sector. Many of these breakthroughs had existed since the early 2250s, scattered and poorly exploited due to the collapse of central authority. L’Rell’s rise had allowed scientists and engineers to demonstrate and sell their designs to the Army, Navy and government, which exploited their work to great ends with little regard for quality control, peer review or generally safety.[7] High power beam disruptors and nacelle pulse cannons allowed older designs to keep up with newer Starfleet ones; the Su’Vat yards managed to develop a complete keel-up retrofit of the D4 that would keep the cruiser in service for at least a decade more, and make it more than a match for even the Tracey and Shepard class starships.[8]
Most terrifying was the deployment of “Kash-Ro” Standoff warp torpedoes. Originally intended as mine-clearing devices, the torpedoes could be fired from a range of nearly 5 light years away; travelling as fast as warp 5 in short periods, they could evade jamming signals before ejecting a sphere of smaller explosives that detonated as one, clearing a gap in minefields with ease. The technology seemed far beyond Klingon achievements, so much so that Starfleet refused to believe in their existence until early November.[9] It was a brute force solution the Klingon minesweeping gap, but it worked; trade across the border at Barolia was reopened; exports of raw minerals increased, with middlemen like the Son’a facilitating the sale of Klingon goods as far afield as the Thallonians and Cardassians.[10] The balance of payments crisis was not resolved overnight, but the disaster on the horizon was averted by the tireless work of the Imperial Navy. Good news for Sturka and the modernists; less so for L’Rell – or Starfleet.
The “Kash-Ro” weapons were beginning to concern Command. Beyond unravelling the resource denial campaign, the potential of these weapons – which could be accelerated as fast as Warp seven or eight – was frightening. A great deal of Klingon Command’s strategy was built around keeping the Imperial Navy at arm’s length with the DESRONs and minefields, where the agility and competence of Starfleet crews could counter the numbers of the Klingon fleet. It was an uphill race, however. The I-2 and I-3 Destroyers – fresh off the production line and entirely built with postwar technology – were more than a match for the Hermes and Engle one on one, and two or three could overwhelm a Larson or a McNair class.[11] New Klingon cruisers like the D10 were entering service en masse by the end of the year too, while the next generation of Starfleet cruisers – authorised in early 2261 for production by Tycho and Vickers-Armstrong – were not going to arrive in strength until the 2263 at the earliest. Some stopgaps like the Farragut class light cruiser were making up for losses, but numbers weren’t the biggest frustration for Rittenhouse and his commanders.
Since the debacle at Caleb IV, the Federation Council had restructured Starfleet’s existing rules of engagement to prevent a repeat of the disaster. By restricting the deployment of significant forces up to the armistice line and restricting any actions beyond the line not authorised by the security council, Th’rhahlat hoped to rein in the sort of poorly thought through aggression that had led to 2nd Fleet’s decimation. It was a logical and easy political win that prioritised the defensive role of Starfleet, while still allowing methods like the minelaying and anti-piracy sweeps to continue.
Now, though, as the Klingons adjusted to and learnt their way around the new rules, the restrictions were beginning to bite. Klingon privateers were operating from illegal bases within prohibited zones or attacking neutral convoys on the other side of the armistice line. Kash-Ro salvos could be fired from orbital launchers on the far side of the border, and even though their travel time to targets was measured in days, they could impact minefields without any chance of intercept. Despite the best intentions of Paris, the political impact of the rules of engagement was also growing. Where Starfleet could not deal with piracy, the Imperial Navy capitalised by proving itself a “earnest broker” to neutral parties where Klingon Command could not go. Starfleet seemed like a dishonest party, demanding adherence to its traffic laws and regulations while halting anti-piracy activity at arbitrary lines in the middle of space.
“So long as the council continues to enforce impossible and, frankly, dangerous rules of engagement, we can’t deliver on our promises. I am told the political realities prevent these rules from being adjusted to support our goals. The political realties can be changed; our strategic goals cannot.”[12] A further note to Rittenhouse would stress the paradox. “They ask me to deal with orion privateers but prevent me from going to Orion. They ask me to mine Klingon trade lanes but won’t let me mine on the trade lanes. They ask me to deal with the Kash-Ro’s but won’t let me look for them. They ask me to back up our diplomatic promises but then throttle me with the prime directive. And then they blame me for it!”[13]
The rules of engagement were a frustrating red line for Rittenhouse, but despite his protests – and supporting statements from Shukar, Chief of Staff Mehkan and Broadhurst, they were not as bad as he said they were. The limitations on activity within the disputed area were tight but were not impossible; similar restrictions after would not prevent Chrisjen Paris from amping up defensive strategy after the Kobax crisis, and the existing ones had still allowed Operation En Passant to deliver it's killer blow coreward of Mardikian. What they did interfere with was Rittenhouse’s aggressive approach, and his desire to attack the Klingons at the root even if it was diplomatically and politically inadvisable. Plans to mine the approaches to Mastocal and Kuvat – and even to make trade interdiction raids into the fringes of Klingon space – were appealing and would have probably been very effective; but they were anathema to the way the Federation operated in peacetime.
Nevertheless, Rittenhouse persisted in making his case to the council, gathering the backing of Shukar and senior political like Sh’Belulos and Yunav of Aurelia to support his case. Sh’Belulos was eager to support Rittenhouse, angling to replace Broadhurst as the Admiral’s political patron. Rittenhouse was their darling, in theory; both dogmatically pro Federation and diametrically opposed to Th’rhahlat’s “Moddy coddling” around foreign affairs and aid. Rittenhouse was happy to be wanted, especially when it got him in front of the security council with an argument to change the engagement restriction – which he got, thanks to a backroom deal between Yunav and Broadhurst.[14]
There were other pressing issues for the council, however. The hearing on November 22nd would be delayed by an unscheduled speech by the President. Further authorisation for counter operations in the disputed area would have to wait, much to the consternation of Rittenhouse. He and his staff – alongside some members of Nogura’s office, including Peter Toussaint – would end up waiting for the Security Council in the Hernandez Room, watching the transports out of San Francisco spaceport. The discomfortable silence of the room ate at Toussaint, while ended up scrolling through news reports on his padd while they waited for Shukar to return from Paris. It was he who saw the news first, standing up in shock as he read the headline aloud.
President Byss Th’rhahlat – the assured winner of the 2262 election – had announced his intention to resign at the end of 2261. From January 1st, 2262, until September 10th, 2262 – the date of the General Election – the UFP would be in the hands of Peter Broadhurst.
The Passage of our Duties
President Th’rhahlat was not well by November. It had not been obvious at first – the fatigue and sleeplessness were just thought to be the symptoms of high office, even late nights turned into early mornings, and hollow, Prussian blue bags filled beneath his eyes. By late 2260 he began to have slight balance issues, along with spells of severe dizziness. The president’s physician made a critical discovery in March 2261; his lungs were deteriorating rapidly, along with parts of his nervous system and cerebral cortex. Initial hopes that he may simple have a hidden but curable cancer were dashed when, in June 2261, he was diagnosed with Chal’kuun’s Syndrome.
Chal’kuun’s – treatable and well understood in the 24th century – remained a mystery in the 2260s. The degenerative disease, found in Andorians, Aenar and some Rigellians, breaks down motor neuron function at a slow but steady pace, exhibiting the usual symptoms of Alzheimer's and Wuner’s Disorder but without the rapid onset of the latter. The syndrome had been identified as a genetic disorder by the mid-23rd century, but beyond that, very little was known. Normal cures and [15]treatments for motor neuron disease were ineffective, and lung rejuvenation therapies receded or broke down after treatment ended.
It is clear now that the Presidents intense and constant transporter use exacerbated the deterioration of his cell structure and DNA that Chal’Kuun’s causes. That breakthrough – made in 2266, thanks in large part to Th’rhahlat bequeathing his body and medical records to the San Francisco School of XenoMedicine – was still years away in 2261. All his doctors could say for certain was that the strain of being President of the Federation would only exacerbate his condition, and that his priority now – as he moved into long term pallative and support care over the next few years – was to limit personal and professional stress as much as possible.
Th’rhahlat resisted, at first, naturally hesitant to hand the reins of power over mid-term. “My work is not done,” he would tell his husband and wives in a private meeting. “There is so much left to do, we all know that.” This was certainly true: even with his illness, the president had never ceased to press the topic of reform wherever he could, challenging even the Charterites in his desire to modernise the Articles of the Federation. But he was tired; his work hours were shorter, and he struggled to keep up with the increasing weight of foreign policy crises and the internal scuffles of the Council.
Who would replace Th’rhahlat? There was no question of going across the aisle for a successor; Sh’Belulos remained obstinate and unpopular within the security council; Masters and Batarian, while popular enough within the cabinet and the OSF-P, would struggle to gain the confidence of the full council. As always, the prospect of Sarek stepping in was mooted, before being shot down by the Vulcan himself. Some – including Th’rhahlat would suggest Wescott, but despite his popularity with the voters, he remained inexperienced with high office.
Peter Broadhurst was no one’s first choice. He was brash, difficult to work with, and ill at ease with the work of consensus building. The OSF-P did not like him, turned away by his firebrand foreign policy views. The cabinet tolerated him because he usually agreed with them, but remained incredibly apprehensive about whether they’d take orders from him. But the Federation Council could tolerate him: and the voters liked him. “All voters like a winner, especially a winner with a snarky remark and a bullish attitude,” remarked A.R. Vale, author, and constitution affairs advocate. “They love a president who looks like they should be in a holofilm. And Broadhurst looked like that. Most annoyingly, he sounded like that.”[16]
The Security Council understood stability was key now more than ever. The Klingon Empire’s reaction to the embargo was still in its infancy; beyond the counter-mining operation, secondary activities like piracy, arms smuggling, and slavery continued throughout the border area, and beyond. Starfleet Intelligence records from autumn 2261 suggest that Klingon covert operations had penetrated beyond M’talas Prime and were “taking advantage of residual dissent remaining after the 2256 war.”[17] The resource denial campaign and it’s economic aftershocks had rippled across the UFP, and even if the damage had mainly been inflicted on the empire, many of the less economically resistant worlds within the treaty zone had been knocked off balance by the sudden scarcity of natural resources.
“Black Week”, as the first market spike had been retroactive dubbed, had been weathered reasonably well in the frontier colonies thanks to alleviatory measures – but in less focal places, it had dramatic consequences. Within the Altair system, the fluctuating supplies of raw materials needed for the Altair IV’s Castrodinium trade would cause civil strife, firing the starting gun on the escalation of tensions that lead to the outbreak of the 3rd Altair War in early 2263. Broadhurst looked like the right man to steady the tiller at this moment. He was strong-willed enough to hold the course until the September 2262 election, and dogmatic enough to be accepted by the reformist wing of the council that propped up the government. More importantly, he wanted the job. He was certainly not Th’rhahlat’s first choice but was the accepted one. The two had a closed meeting on November 20th. After 45 minutes, Broadhurst left with a grim smile on his face. The UFP had a new president – or, at the very least, would in the new year.
Had the Galactic High Commissioner expected this? He certainly says he didn’t until he was informed of the nomination. His own correspondence doesn’t suggest any overt ambitions for replacing Th’rhahlat at that time. Certainly, Broadhurst was angling his career towards a presidential campaign, though much of the evidence suggests he was aiming more at the 2266 election than the 62 cycle. Was he aware of Th’rhahlat’s illness? Almost certainly: foreign policy was almost entirely run out of Shanghai by midsummer 2261: Broadhurst was shrewd enough to know that something was wrong, but if he’d known the extend of the syndrome, he would have altered his practices to compensate: he almost certainly would not have been bombarding the president with late night conference calls over Altair and Tandar.
But now he knew, his demeanour changed entirely. The future premier – dubbed the “President non-elect” by the less sympathetic parts of the press – would begin picking his cabinet immediately, drawing many future unionists in alongside some significant radicals from the OSF-P like Yurada of New Paris who had been left out of the previous government. This “ministry of all talents” was derided as a “jack of no trades” as well, even though Broadhurst’s broad tent was an inherently (and uncharacteristically) safe and sensible way for a soon-to-be unelected head of state to solidify his mandate with the voters. There was a reason that he chose 60% of his cabinet from the elected elements of the council instead of the civil service: to remind the voters that he was responsible to them – at some point.
Some didn’t buy it. Wescott found his well-wishing through the council incredibly off-putting. “A week ago, he’d been lecturing us from the pulpit, and now he was going around cap-in-hand as a man of the people. And worse, a lot of people bought it.” The voters – already keen on the bullish, defiant preacher of a politician – seemed only to grow more enamoured with him across December, much to the consternation of his peers in cabinet and council. “Handshakes and baby-kissing makes up for a slim policy portfolio,” noted Ambassador Umos.[18] “Nobody likes a show-off,” added UEMP Heumer. “Especially a slimy show-off.” The vulture-like collecting of aides, attachés and experts from the dying Th’rhahlat administration to Broadhurst’s office in Shanghai was, by mid-December, beginning to have a serious effect on the business of government as many tried to ensure that they would still have a job in the new year.[19] This attitude – putting his own way of governing above the concept of good government in the first place – was a grim omen of what was to come under Broadhurst.
As Broadhurst whipped up support for his future premiership, Th’rhahlat eased into the fact that his time was dwindling. I search of an understanding of his mortality; he disappeared up into the Scottish Highlands – his first natural love on Earth - for a week at the end of November. He came back having found a god – Christian God, to be exact. Despite the dominance of overt atheism on earth (which would pass 50% for the first time in the 2258 census), traditional religions – whether they were grudging modernisers like the Catholic church, adaptive monoliths like the post-atomic iteration of Sunni Islam or the nearly unchanged practice of Shinto in east Asia – remained popular, especially amongst off-world colonists who maintained their parents’ traditional practices, and more spiritual alien species. Most religions adapted. By 2260, the Catholic Church had an Archbishop of Mars, and a Denobulan Cardinal.
Th’rhahlat came down from his contemplation on the hills (“Like Moses up the mountain”, as Wescott dryly noted) as a Progressive Unitarian-Presbytarian: a sect of evangelical Christianity that was the most popular amongst the Anglophone colonies of United Earth.[20] Most people greeted the news with amusement: Broadhurst congratulated the president on “his new reading group”, while a less kind editorial from Tycho Post wondered if Th’rhahlat “would be including witch-burnings and organised bigotry in his reform bill.” While many viewed his newly-found faith as a joke – or a dangerous sign of instability – it seemed to calm the president and put him at ease with his own decline.
There were other quirks that came with this too. He started beginning his day with a quiet moment of prayer, which was foreign to almost all his staffers. He started visiting the Panthéon and L’Église Saint-Augustin, less to take part in mass and more to enjoy his own contemplation in the same space. “It’s the same God,” he once told a journalist, much to the visible annoyance of the Catholic father standing next to him. Other quirks began to leak in over the December, as his agreed resignation date of January 1st closed on him. It is possible that the winter months and the stress of the situation in the disputed area began to get to him, his mind began to slip further: or that the as-yet-unknown link between Chak’luuns and transporter use was exacerbated by constant medical visits to San Francisco.
His spirituality began to leak further into public life; he ended a speech on December 12th with “God bless the Federation,” which left journalists perplexed. At a security council meeting on the 18th, he would remind the assembled ambassadors of their “God given duty…to protect the liberty of the UFP for generations to come”, leaving Ambassdor Garv to mutter “which God exactly are we talking about, Mister President?” In his last public appearance as President, he would speak to assembled journalists on December 28th, after a meeting with various members of the Suliban and Efrosian refugee community that had settled across France and the Low Countries.
With pressure building for more defensive allocations over FEDAC spending, Th’rhahlat stepped up on last time to defend his ant-slavery policy. Tensions were running high; Ambassador Sh’Belulos had criticism the ambition of FEDAC’s recent policy plan for “overstating the extent of Orion Slavery” and “undermining post-war recovery in favour of bleed-heart sentientarian aid.” When the Laikan Scroll pressed Th’rhahlat on these comments, he turned on Sh’Belulos with the fiery passion of the pulpit.
“The Ambassador for Andoria has no idea of the sacrifices that have been made, past and present, for her God-given-right to complain about our obligations to sentient life. We were not brought to life to indulge in our own passions but do good work; to do noble work; to honour the sacrifices of our ancestors and of our obligation to the life of our worlds to come! The passing of our duties not to be scorned by anyone, especially not by leaders and decisionmakers. If Ambassador Sh’Belulos wishes to do good for the people of the Federation, she should do more than castigate, and remember the…the duty we have to our fellow sentient under God!”
With the press pool stunned by his anger, he began to mutter under his breath; eventually, the microphones began to pick up the quiet, strained notes of Battle Hymn of the Republic as he paced on the stage. The words “as he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free,” were heard clearly before the president wheeled and walked away from the press. The moment was so odd that the press struggled to make much hay of it, focusing instead on the righteous outburst instead of the unclear musical interlude.
And so, at 00:01 hours Paris time, Byss Th’rhahlat’s Presidency ended. He had walked out of the palace for the last time three days earlier. Broadhurst would enter a mere four hours after his term begun, “pouncing like a sehlat on prey in the dawn light”.[21] There was business to be done, and fast; after thirty minutes alone in the Presidential office, Broadhurst would beam back to Shanghai for one last breakfast. He would be interrupted, however, but an urgent message from Starfleet.
A third transport to San Francisco brought him to his first meeting with Admiral Shukar as President; an auspicious moment for the two of them. Shukar had managed to avoid Broadhurst as much as possible since he’d become Commander, Starfleet. Despite similar views on defensive posture, Shukar found the new President deeply unpalatable. “He thinks the fight is the important bit, not the threat,” he would tell Nogura. “Even when he won’t be doing the actual fighting.”[22] Th’rhahlat had mollified their animosity, but he was gone now: they would simply have to deal with each other. The antipathy was almost immediate; the Commander, Starfleet would address him as “High Commissioner”, because (having flown back across the international date line), he was technically not President for another seven hours.[23]
Once this snub was cleared up, Shukar would bring up a transmission from the Disputed Area. A Convoy of eight Federation Merchant Marine vessels out of Barolia had been halted by Klingon warships on December 29th. The convoy commodore had been arrested and charged with a large collection of customs violations by Klingon authorities; the cargo of Deuterium, Dilithium, Pergium impounded by the Imperial Navy. The justification, provided by the obstinate Klingon Commander to the stunned commodore, was that the convoy was passing through Klingon space “without presenting the correct passage papers required by the Imperial Control Region, thus rendering his cargo forfeit.”[24]
Broadhurst seemed non-plussed by the incident, remarking that “it seemed typical of those ridge-headed bastards.” Shukar then went on to bring up a proclamation from the Tandaran government, issued a mere forty hours later, stating that “The Tandaran Polity was now a member of the Imperial Control Region” and ordering all Federation business and traffic out of their space until they could acquire the correct papers and permits. A Tellarite vessel that had not complied in time had been attacked and destroyed; the Hermes Class scout USS Arakan had not heard the proclamation due to an ion storm; she had been attacked by three Tandaran patrol craft and a Klingon D4-A cruiser before she escaped into neutral space. Finally, a pre-agreed trade mission by the S.S. Harvey Milk into rump Enolian space had been intercepted by the Imperial Navy, who turned the Harvey Milk away with a firm reminder that they were entering the “Imperial Control Region illegally.” The transmission to the Milk also came with a ‘helpful’ map of the ICR, which appeared to include a large area of disputed, neutral and treaty zone space.
Broadhurst digested the information quickly, nodding over Shukar’s shoulder as the information appeared on the situation room screens. Eventually, after a moment’s contemplation he turned to Shukar and said, “what the hell is the Imperial Control Region?”
“They Will Not Bury Us!”
It is, in a lot of ways, still unclear as to what the intention of the Imperial Control Region was. Diplomatically, it did very little to endear the Klingons to the neutral powers. It was an organisation built on coercion from the bottom up; follow the Empire’s strict rules of trade, navigation, and taxation, or suffer the consequences. It was certainly no defensive alliance, or free trade area. The security guarantees were nothing more than an extortion racket; protection from pirates and raiders who were almost all carrying Imperial excursion guarantees in the first place.[25]
Tariff barriers and customs controls increased with its conception, acting to ensure that as much business as possible within the region was under the heel of Qo’noS. So, it is distinctly possible that it was created to coherently organise the client states and external vassals of the Empire together. The concept of structuring the informal Klingon Empire was not a particularly new one. Many previous Emperors and chancellors had inducted vassals into closer unions with Qo’noS or withdrawn sovereignty from client states to expand their own domains.[26]
However, what L’Rell aimed for with the ICR was much less traditional. In many senses, it could be read as a quiet mirror of the Federation Treaty Zone, aiming less at securing planets and territory and more at clarifying control over interstellar spatial regions. It presented a similar set of trade regulations, travel requirements, but with the knife-twist of being enforced through the barrel of the disruptor. The carrot of access to the mass markets of the Klingon empire came with the brutal stick of the Imperial Navy and its unsatiable need for anchorages, bases, and raw resources to maintain its continued expansion.[27] In this way, it is possible that it was created by the military regime for their own political goals; to maintain their own influence and power by directly involving them in the economic and political instruments of Klingon power.
However, the Imperial Navy was already cementing its control over the political sphere by 2262. Sturka’s position as L’Rell’s enforcer and the expansion of the military bureaucracy had already sidelined traditional power structures in the high council; the collapse of the state treasury in Summer 2261 and the military’s role in re-establishing economic confidence had given them a massive stake in financial decision-making. The ICR may have extended their reach into the Disputed Area and given their extortion of Klingon and neutral traders a legal veneer, but it was nothing new in that regard. In many cases, the restrained activity of the Navy to support the Region’s rules – limited to opportunistic customs impounding and the legal authorisation to bully mining prospectors and the odd smuggler – seems to suggest a general disinterest in their new zone of authority, even amongst the most stalwart career officers.[28]
Thus, the ICR being a tool of Sturka’s marital bureaucracy seems suspect. The connection seems to have been formed the Anti-Klingon propaganda of the 2260s and 70s, which coupled the flexing of Imperial Power by the Navy directly with the bureaucratic authority of the ICR, even when the two were very distinct in objectives. What the ICR did was legitimise the new order L’Rell had tried to establish in interstellar space after 2257. It was more symbolic and propagandistic than anything else – a visible, understandable, and enforceable political counterweight to the Federation Treaty Zone’s reach into distant quarters of the galaxy. As the Treaty Zone gave Starships authority to act far from the UFP, the ICR would give D7s the authority to apprehend Suliban refugees in distant systems or force Starfleet vessels out of neutral ships.
The more one looks at it, however – especially with the benefit of non-governmental Klingon sources – it is increasingly apparent that L’Rell supported and encouraged the ICR because it was a cost-free way of shoring up her own position. The “mother” of the Klingon Empire – as powerful an image as she projected – was, by early 2262, struggling to maintain the total control she had maintained in the years immediately after the war. The Great Houses – cowed by internal purge, threats from below and the looming strength of the Federation – had recovered enough to begin asking for more seats at the table, threatening the tenuous balance of power between Chancellor, military bureaucracy, and aristocracy.
The collapse of the darsek had only further infuriated the houses: mauled by the Raktajino Revolution, hindered by Federation Embargo and daylight robbed by the military, the “good of the empire” was increasingly a hypothetical concept to them. The ICR offered the perfect opportunity to legitimise the more casual acts of political expansion the Great Houses indulged in, while maintaining semi-overt political control over them.[29] Their desire to keep raiding Federation and neutral targets – exacerbated by the economic collapse of late summer 2261 – was now “Imperial policy” within certain bounds, controlled and managed by the limitations of the control region.
For the people, the boon of the ICR was clear: the Empire was standing up for itself against the dastardly and petty Federation and acting for the goodwill of the innocents of the quadrant. Support was immense, spurred on by building resentment over the economic warfare the UFP had committed itself to.[30] Mass politics – even in the Klingon sense – has always adored the ability of a government to strike back hard during a time of perceived weakness, especially in a way that infuriates the opposing party; with the ICR certainly did.
Broadhurst, a week after his quiet inauguration as the 18th President of the United Federation of Planets, would condemn the zone as an “article of oppression” to the Federation Council. “We do not condemn the Klingon right to exist. We do not condemn their right to govern themselves. We do not condemn their right to form alliances or form trade agreements. We condemn the use of the might of arms to dictate policy. We condemn their trampling over the self-determination of independent powers. And we condemn the extension of exploitation and slavery under the veneer of collective defence. This…. supreme security area is no more than a blatant attempt to extend the boundaries of the Qo’noS Regime into neutral and Federation space, on the expectation that we will bow to the supreme might of the Klingon soldier. And that, councillors, is an assumption that will not stand.”[31]
The press would latch onto his final sentences, with the New York Times and the Telav Yi News running with “Klingon power will not stand.” It was the San Francisco Herald’s headline – “President condemns Supreme Klingon Security Regime” that stuck in the public mind, however. Within days the ICR was being referred to as the “KSSR” – a satirical acronym born of the 20th century Soviet Union. The comparison was not entirely accurate – despite despotic tendencies, the Soviet Union never evolved into an aristocracy built-in military conquest and total exploitation – but the name stuck. Broadhurst – not a particularly big fan of the USSR in the first place – embraced the analogy, which fit with his own personal comparisons between the current crisis and the ideological conflicts of 20th-century Earth.
The fact was that the outraged and overblown reaction of the Federation encouraged the Klingons. It spoke of fear to them, rightly – fear of what Klingon power represented. Their own nebulous understanding of what it meant was cemented together by the simple fact that the Earthers did not like it. Zym, Son of T’ai, would comment that the whole stunt paid dividends in the short term for L’Rell. “It felt right to rile the humans up like this. They so poorly understood what power meant to us that they assumed we saw the galaxy in the same stark lines they did.” More than the gravitic mine and the Kash-Ro, the ICR infuriated the Federation because it was equally diplomatically nebulous as they were.
The Imperial Control Region was exactly what everyone wanted it to be, in the end. To the Federation, it was another sign that the Klingon bogeyman wasn’t going anywhere, and that their tendrils of power were much deeper – and much more nefarious – than previously imagined. For the Klingons, it gave a veneer of diplomatic and political authority to the violent and unrestrained actions of the Imperial Navy and Intelligence services. It made the occupation of the Enolian homeworld legal; it made the Klingon Governor of Tandar a mere “advisor”. It made the Suliban slave trade a mere internal matter of Imperial puppet governments, and pirate bases in the Nausicaa region protected military installations. And, crucially, it legitimised the rebels of Acamar in their ascent to power.
Acamar is one of the unluckier places in galactic history, though not through any fault of its own. It lies halfway along the Argelius-Barolia space lane, at the bottom of the Argelian approaches where subspace currents are still strong enough to take a ship at six times its rated warp speed along the “Orion Highway”. As such, it had been a hub of commerce since the planet first gained warp drive, and a centre of travel for the Hiromi sector.[32] This was good for Acamarian people: it was bad, however, for their politics. Acamarian society is – or was - deeply stratified by clan allegiances that go back centuries. Some of it is ethnic; some is religious; some is based on ancient tradition, and some of fictionalised histories. In many senses, the origins of the clan system do not particularly matter: what does it that the disputes, blood fueds and wars between the Acamarian clans have divided their people for longer than anyone can remember. Even the invention of faster than light travel and contact with other worlds did nothing by encourage and exacerbate the divides in their society.
Contact with the Federation helped, as did the expansion of the Treaty Zone around their space; but the disunited nature of their politics kept Acamar isolated from galaxy, unable to write formal treaties or represent itself in interstellar politics. The interference of other powers – from the Vulcan Intelligence Corps and Andorian Guard through to the Orion Syndicate – made thing worse, as the larger powers attempted to co-opt Acamar for their own purposes. As late as 2230, a Klingon noble titling himself as “Prince Gosk of Acamar” attempted to establish himself as petty king of the planet in a strange military campaign that ended in the farce of him being smuggled off planet, shaved and painted green so he could be disguised as an Orion.[33]
The mid-2250s saw the first serious period of stabilisation in over a century, as power concentrated around the Sovereign Ruling Council: a body of clan leaders located in the northern continent that claiming a mandate to govern the Acamarian Sovereignty. They were by no means democrats: their system was built around an aristocracy of elders and technocrats, but the Ruling Council were more liberal – in a relative sense – than their opponents, and much more willing to do business with off-worlders: any off-worlders. Acamar became a hotbed of spies, traders and playboys, who enjoyed the luxury of life within the treaty zone without the complications of Federation law or Starfleet authority. Beyond the walls of the nightclubs, however, the violence of the clan wars continued unabated; while one side might have worn formal uniforms and called themselves the “Government Army,” it remained clan against clan; family against family.
The threat of Klingon invasion during the 2256-57 war had caused panic on Acamar, and the Ruling Council’s crackdowns on civil liberties and local autonomy erased much of the support the fringe clan groups had for their new “central government”. In the aftermath of the general war, these breakaway clans began to align themselves together. Some, like clan Tre-Usla had serious political ideas; others like the Vu-Ka simply wanted to be on top of the pile. A fair few were simply bandits or mercenaries for hire, who found the more traditional views of the fringe groups more appealing than the bland, autocratic, and increasingly cash-poor Ruling Council.
The Acamarian Sovereignty, aware of domestic threats to its power structure, scrambled for external aide. Suspicious of the Klingons, its diplomats approached the Federation. While unwilling to provide military aid, the Barreuco government was happy to turn over industrial fabricators in exchange for some cursory treaty stipulations, and a handshake agreement not to support any Klingon overtures towards the planet. The fabricators would be delivered in august 2258, with the promise that they would be used for the benefit of “all the people of Acamar.” As one might expect, this never came to be. Instead, the fabricators were used to prop up the Sovereign Council and their allies or reprogrammed to make phaser and laser rifles.
The repression only intensified though 2259. Even as relations with the UFP warmed, the government army pushed further into the foothills of the northeastern continent, taking the war to the civilian population of the Tree-Lesta and Vu-Ka clans. Federation observers grew increasingly troubled with the conduct of the war but struggled to convince the Ruling Council to change tack: many of the Acamarian leaders were flippant about any crimes committed, easily blaming the lower clans and commanders for actions they had signed off on. The Th’rhahlat administration quickly ascertained the complications of backing the ruling council. It was, however, hesitant to change support to the chauvinistic and disunity opposition groups. “I don’t like them, but I also think that we can fix them,” Broadhurst would tell President Th’rhahlat after returning from Acamar in Summer 2259. “They’re our people on the planet now. If we change sides, we’ll only look ridiculous.”[34] Broadhurst had been involved in the original 2257 negotiations as an independent mediator: his reputation had been staked on the viability and certainty of a deal with the ruling council.[35]
The debacle at Caleb IV and the semi-dominance of the Imperial Navy in 2260 only exacerbated planetary tensions. Afraid to lose access to the vital Acamarian trade lanes, the Federation agree to further industrial aid, while the oppositional clans turned to terrorism and insurgent warfare in the mountains and cities of the northeastern and equatorial continents. Towards the end of the years the Tre-Usla won a stunning victory against government forces in the city of Xupa that rolled the army out of the mountain provinces. The rebels would seize the opportunity to declare a new government in Xupa, bringing together many of the opposition clans under the “Banner of Gathering Unity”.[36]
Better known in the 24th century as “The Gatherers”, the BGU would manage to push the government forces out of the northeastern continent by mid-2261, capturing significant arms caches and the support of much of the population. Their politics was disparate, but the core tenets – opposition to the ruling council, anti-federation involvement and high traditionalism – was popular amongst the rural clans, and many traditionally neutral families flocked to their banner. The Federation mission on the planet’s concern grew as government forces struggled to match the BGU or their politics. The lightning success of the “Northern Field Army” under Arch-General Vylat seemed unstoppable in the capital city, even as the BGU’s forces struggled to break through the poorly armed but well-motivated government militias outside of the spaceport city of Nubuura.[37]
Anti UFP sentiment surged, even when the rebels didn’t. The capture of two Industrial fabricators in a facility outside Nubuura seemed to prove that the “Feds” were backing the government to the hilt. It did not matter that the machines had been gutted and reprogrammed by the government army in a clear violation of the Broadhurst treaty; it mattered that a fabricator with “UFP” emblazoned on the side was churning out bombs and phaser rifles.
Federation-owned business concerns were attacked; bricks and stones were thrown at the ambassador’s car; the marines on the embassy gate were doubled. When a car bomb blew up outside the compound on First Contact Day 2261, the Ambassador would demand action from the Ruling Council, which responded by rounding up three dozen suspected rebels and executing them. “That was not what I asked for,” Ambassador T’Sov would tell them. Further bombs would be detonated at other facilities in the next six weeks – including one aboard the TOAC carrier S.S. Pride of Denobula. Unbeknownst to the Ruling Council and Starfleet, the sophisticated explosives and detonators used in the campaign had come straight from Imperial Intelligence, on the direct orders of Sturka himself.
The BGU had first gone to the Klingons for support after the Xupa declaration. Imperial Intelligence – eager to undermine the Treaty Zone, had happily sent them all the disruptors they had wanted. The BGU had, however, turned down the offer for “advisors”, hesitant of letting a foreign power interfere their dealings. The stagnation of their offensive halfway through 2261, however, made further Klingon support tantalising. The Death of Arch-General Vylat at the battle of Zuio pass removed the main obstacle to further arms. The more radical clans, having seized control of the BGU after Vylat’s death, struggled to match his tactical skill. Klingon disruptors – and, perhaps, a few companies of Imperial Marines – might do the trick for them.[38]
The possibility of regime change on Acamar was tantalising to the Imperial Chancellory. Control of Acamar would give the Klingon Empire a massive advantage over the Federation: a proxy beyond the Axanar line; bases within arm’s reach of Argelius, the Rigel Colonies & Orion; and control over critical trade lanes in the region. Deployment of Kash-Ro missiles to the system would allow the Klingons to threaten Starbases across the entire disputed area with sudden attack.[39] Recording meetings of L’Rell’s inner circle at the time point towards a coherent plan for seizing Acamar; or, at the very least, re-aligning it to Klingon interests. Zym, Son of T’ai, insists in his memoirs that L’Rell did not want to turn the planet into a puppet of the Empire, or even construct military installations in its space.
This may be true – it certainly fits with L’Rell’s own codes on interactions with foreign powers – but the bureaucracy of the Imperial Navy was of a completely different mind.[40] Whether or not the decision was made by the Chancellor – or made independently by the High Command and then retroactively authorised by L’Rell – is unclear. By the time the first Klingon advisors arrive on Acamar, however, it is almost entirely a project of the Chancellery, with documentation and planning all passing straight through L’Rell’s office.[41]
Destabilising Acamar for eventual Imperial takeover had several facets. Outside of arms supply and “advisors”, the Imperial Navy took steps to escalate piracy within the region, undercutting the revenue streams of the Ruling Council. Escalating attacks on trade would seem Orion and Elasi pirates enter the system itself to prey on trade, leaving their traditional hunting grounds on the edge of the Paulson Nebula. Worse, the BGU had managed to attract various adventuring types – from all corners of the galaxy, including the Federation – who relished the chance to fight, kill and pirate in the semi-lawless region. The Ruling Council lacked modern picket vessels to match the pirates: desperate for aid, in February 2262 they turned to the Federation with a formal request for military assistance and training.
Despite his longstanding links to Acamar, President Broadhurst was hesitant. The formalisation and hardening of General Order One – the Prime Directive, as it was now known – seemed to imply that the handing over of military equipment to the Ruling Council might be a violation of Federation law.[42] However, the warp-capability of the Acamarians was well established, as was their technological development in other regions. The Federation Council, while not entirely enthused with the prospect of sending weapons to a third party, was more worried about economic damage in the region than anything else: within reason, of course. The council authorisation from February 2nd explicitly authorises the sale of military equipment so long as:
It was a raw deal for the Acamarians, in many senses. Starfleet was happy to pass over six obsolete cruisers, for the good they would do. Two Franklin class (USS Adams and Piper) and four Powhatan class (USS Iroquois, Oshawa, Sioux, and Narragansett), all dating back to the Romulan War, were quickly retrofitted with modern phasers and power plants from the 2230s, before being towed out from the Axanar yard and handed over on February 28th. The two Franklin class vessels were even, fatefully, equipped with Duotronic sensors and “Liverpool” Minesweeping pods. For what it was worth, the Ruling Council kept to their side of the bargain: the ships were not used within planetary space, even as the Generals of the government army pleaded for orbital bombardments to stop to advances of BGU forces. The ruling council, pleased as they were to re-open their trade lanes, were not about to risk the wrath of a Starfleet Task Force. The patrol ships were an external matter: the ground war was different.
The BGU, obviously, felt differently. They were outraged by the open arms deal between the government and the UFP. It stank of overt interference and Imperialist puppeteering by the Federation, which was clearly biding its time before it could subsume Acamar into itself. With their own forces stalled within reach of the major population centres of the planet, it seemed like victory was about to snatched from beyond their grasp buy the “Feds”. Demands for further arms and for the promised “advisors” to arrive in increased numbers grew, supported by the local leadership in the Imperial Navy. Admiral Korok – victor of the First Battle of Caleb IV – was a staunch advocate of further involvement on Acamar,and lobbied hard for the deployment of at least one Marine battlegroup to the planet to “protect our interests.”[43] Korok – also a massive advocate of the Kash-Ro missile programme – viewed the system as the perfect place to strategically deploy the newest iterations of the weapons as a powerful prestige symbol, capable of threatening Federation trade lanes and colonies from afar.
L’Rell was, it seems, hesitant to throw more support behind the BGU. If Imperial Intelligence was to be believed, Starfleet was now directly involved in the conflict, and certain to send advisors (or even ground troops) to the planet. While involvement in places like Tandar or Enolia could be justified by their closeness to the Empire, Acamar was distant: beyond even the “Line of T’Kuvma”, or the maximum extent of the Klingon territory in the mid-22nd Century. It was so beyond Klingon ambition that they had agreed to a stipulation in 2257 armistice banning any Klingon military installations within that region of space, beyond the “Axanar Line”.[44] While the Imperial Chancellery understood the importance of undermining, absolute involvement – especially with troops on the ground – may have represented a serious degree of escalation: on paper, at least.
The fact remains that it is difficult to understand how much the military escalation was considered an escalation by Qo’noS. Klingon diplomatic theory – as much as it can be called that – quantifies the use of force very differently to how the Federation does. While human IR theory – and its successors in Zakdorn meta-relations – views the use of force as a form of escalation. In contrast, Klingons view how one applies military power as the form of escalation. In the context of Acamar, this meant that the deployment of Klingon troops may not have been perceived as an escalation by the Empire, because the Federation had already applied military force on a larger scale through the arms embargo and Operation Kadis-Khot.[45] Even if that had been economic warfare – something the Klingons still did not entirely understand as a diplomatic tactic to prevent a general war – it was still on a larger scale than the deployment of troops and a supply base to Acamar.
The hole in this theory, of course, is that the Federation was extremely clear that Acamar was a red line. The diplomatic channels between the two powers were limited, yes, but Broadhurst and Jarg Igov (his successor as Interstellar Affair’s Commissioner) had been incredibly clear about the growing importance of Acamar.[46] It is certain that L’Rell didn’t take the diplomatic particularly seriously – certainly Roger’s attempts to make their governments’ assertions clear to Kuvec were met with little more than derison. Federation red lines had been crossed before and would be crossed again – considering how absurdly restrictive they were, they would almost certainly have to be if anything was to be done.
The internal pressures to ignore Federation warnings were significant too. Sturka and his acolytes in the armed forces were eager to get to grips with the UFP on their own turf; control of Acamar would allow the navy to shorten its own internal lines and bring the home advantage to bear on Starfleet light-years from Qo’noS. More importantly, Acamar had emerged as an entirely military project, without significant involvement or political patronage from any of the Great Houses.[47] Its success was another careful part of the balancing act between the old and new orders: it’s failure could tip power either way with drastic consequences. Newer evidence from the Kor family archives suggests that escalation was seen as an acceptable inevitability by L’Rell, corroborating her advisor Zym’s belief that “there was no way to keep everyone happy but to keep up the pressure on Acamar.”[48]
L’Rell would approve escalated arms shipments in mid-February 2262; military advisors – in the form of heavy chemical artillery, atmospheric aircraft and three companies of Imperial Marine Infantry – would arrive on the planet by the end of march, smuggled in aboard unmarking freighters carrying stolen Koberian registries. One of the transports would even be stopped by the USS Hood but released without inspection. The Kash-Ro missiles, however, would stay, vetoed directly by L’Rell herself.
The Klingon deployment was almost entirely complete before Starfleet knew it was happening. SI managed to achieve a singular breakthrough in SIGNIT that allowed them to read – if only briefly – Imperial Navy decrypts for about 12 days after April 1st. The results were not good. Support for the BGU was not expected – the embassy and attaché’s on Acamar had suspected Klingon involvement since the car bombing in August 2261, and the brief capture of a Klingon advisor by a pro-Sovereign militia in January had confirmed their presence planet side.[49] The prospect of this level of military deployment, however, was beyond their wildest expectations.
There was – and still is, in many circles – a consistent view that the Klingon Empire was fundamentally incapable of subtlety and subterfuge. A great deal of this is simply bigotry masked by IR language, based on the misunderstandings of Klingon bluster, arrogance, and overzealous drinking. You do not build an interstellar empire on drinking songs and ballads; you build it, to quote an ancient Terran, on Blood and Iron – and a great deal of subtlety. The concept that nearly a battalion’s worth of crack Klingon troops would be smuggled onto Acamar and deployed into the battle line behind sensors masking screens was beyond the limiting thinking of Starfleet Intelligence. The thought had occurred to many – including Ch’Shukar – but he was convinced by SI’s arguments that if the Klingons pulled the stunt, they would be found out.[50] How was SI to know that almost all its field agents in the Acamar sector had been compromised, or that their own transmissions were being read by Imperial Intelligence and the MIS? SI was not even aware that their Klingon counterparts had a SIGNIT department until 2263. [51]
SI’s decrypts would be confirmed by secondary reports on fleet movements by N’Garriez’s Botcktok Whigs, who had been raising the alarm in the Acamar sector for months by this point. It was too little, too late, however: the formed and detailed SI briefing on Klingon escalation on Acamar was delivered to President Broadhurst on April 15th at around 9:45 Paris time. Roughly 25 standard minutes earlier, BGU forces on Acamar open up on government positions only 12 day’s march from the Capital with a furious hurricane barrage. By the time Broadhurst stepped out of the meeting at 11:00, the Government Army had been broken in the field by the Imperial Marines, supported by mercenaries and BGU shook troops.
Broadhurst and Starfleet Command knew none of this: the SI briefing had been grim listening, but the situation did not appear dire; as far as they knew, there were only about 250 Klingons on the whole planet, instead of the actual count of nearly 5,500: and SI knew nothing of the Imperial Engineer Corp’s construction works outside the Nubuura spaceport. The main concern on the President’s mind was the new flash on his desk that had brought the entire city to a halt.
President Th’rhahlat was dead.
To Vindicate our Rights
Byss Th’rhahlat’s retirement had been short. After ending his term, he and his partners had moved to Scotland; two of them had teaching jobs at the Universities of Strathclyde and St. Andrews, and the opportunity to move away from the stress of Parisian society to the comparable calm of the Scottish central belt was seen as a good sign by his physicians. Despite his terminal diagnosis, Th’rhahlat was determined to keep working in some way; a guest teaching position at Strathclyde’s Political Science department was accepted with relish, and even his limited appearances at the university in the three months before his death were remembered by all who attended his lectures and seminars. His relationship with Progressive Unitarianism was strengthened too, with regular Sunday services becoming a feature of his calendar.
He seemed to rally a little in March, alongside the weather; Scotland’s typically grim winter breaking into spring a month earlier than usual. On April 13th he would travel to Edinburgh to see his doctor, who concluded that the degeneration in his lungs had slowed down noticeably. He would deliver a long lecture to the University of Edinburgh the next day. The Gordon Brown lecture theatre was packed to the seams; students and faculty were sitting and standing in the aisles and corridors, with some even cramming themselves two or three at a time into packed rows of chairs. Eyewitnesses describe his speech as being surprisingly eloquent, lacking the stammers, lack of direction and loss of focus that many had noted in later presidential appearances. He seemed closer to his healthy self and relished the opportunity to answer a myriad of questions from the undergraduates.
His final question – on how he understood his political legacy – was met with a moment of silence from Th’rhahlat before he answered. “I hope that we have learned that while we are stronger together, that strength does not justify our use of military might. Instead, that our strength is there to vindicate our rights – and the rights of all sentient people across the galaxy.” The standing ovation at the end of the talk would last for five minutes. Th’rhahlat would dine with the Chancellor of the University that evening, before retiring to his accommodation in the New College. He passed away peacefully that night.
Th’rhahlat’s death was met with muted shock. Everyone had known he wasn’t well, but most had expected him to live on for another half-decade at least. Business in Paris was suspended for a week; tributes were collected at the Palais, the Andorian Embassy and St. Giles’ Cathedral. The Suliban community of Paris, with whom he had celebrated Federation Day less than a year ago, would go into full mourning for him, with an uplifting parade along the Champs-Elysée on the 19th. Broadhurst would honour his colleague and friend that night, meeting mourners outside the Palais before giving an impromptu speech to assembled press. “He was the greatest of all of us. He was determined, righteous, and determined to deliver the best possible future for as many people as possible. He believed in this Union. He believed in our hopes and dreams. He believed in us.”
By the evening of the 19th, the sovereign forces on Acamar had almost entirely collapsed. As organised and (reasonably) well-armed as the Government forces were, they were nothing compared to the Imperial Klingon Marines. Arguably the best soldiers in the galaxy in 2262, the Imperial Marines eschewed many of the typical Klingon tactics of mass rushes and wave attacks; with small parties of well-armed and well led infantry approaching silently to destroy enemy positions with mass firepower in close combat. With a large Quch’Ha complement and general disregard for many tradition attitudes towards battlefield honour, their attacks on Acamarian positions were swift and brutal. Two entire banners (equivalent to a battalion) of Regional Guards would cease to exist within the first 12 hours of the attack; one unit of the Acamarian Regular Army would be destroyed in a manner of minutes when it was caught in the open by the marine light cavalry, with their troops massacred from ground and air as Klingon fighter-bombers strafed the fleeing troops.
Within six standard days, most of the 2nd (Tunaldui) Army had been destroyed or sent back fleeing in disorder by the well trained and well led BGU forces. While the government forces had held their own in other parts of the planet – most crucially in the loyalist Ny-Lesteal provinces – the crucial front protecting the capital had been overrun completely. The fact that the advance was led by a combination of Klingon Marines and the ex-FGF mercenaries of the “Lang Brigade” was not lost on the Acamarian Sovereign Government, who seemed to spend as much time recriminating the Federation Ambassador as they were destroying their documents.
The Ruling Council would flee the capital on April 26th, declaring it an open city. Ambassador T’Sov and her staff would evacuate on the 29th, as rioters began to approach the embassy compound. Her transport – S.S. Senegal Beauty – would be stopped by one of the Franklin class ships, now flying the flag of the Gathering Unity. She would be let past, but only after her crew and passengers were roughed up by a boarding party – including an officer of Imperial Intelligence.
Shukar and Rittenhouse reacted the news with consternation. Beyond the technological concerns of losing the patrol ships to Klingon “advisors”, there was now a pro-Klingon government deep within the treaty zone, and along a major trade route towards Barolia. Broadhurst – who’s diplomatic reputation was now on the line – pushed for rapid support for the remaining pro-ruling council forces.
“The fall of the Acamarian government is an unconscionable tragedy for the intergalactic community and challenges the security and stability of the entire Treaty Zone,” he would tell the council in an emergency session. “Our goal now should not be to inflict further violence on the Acamar people, but to ensure that their rights are protected, and to support free, fair and equitable government in both quadrants.”[52]
The language was popular with the press and the pubic, who were equally shocked that the Klingon “invasion” of Acamar had slipped in under Starfleet’s nose. Pushback from the council, however, was severe and swift. The civil war on Acamar had been an entirely internal matter, as far as they knew: unless Klingon intervention could be proved comprehensively, Starfleet was restricted by the re-interpretation of General Order One. Despite their own concerns over the capability of Kash-Ro missiles being deployed, the possibility of severe escalation was too much.[53]
In many senses, it appears that the council was overtly contracting its own rulings on Acamar from earlier in the year, but the rationales were consistent. The desire of the Security council to avoid being dragged into a larger, more dangerous proxy war on Acamar was strong and well intentioned, but their sedate attitude to deliberation was restricting. They were acting on information and briefings that were weeks, if not months out of date, and despite multiple offers from Starfleet for more detailing briefings, they refused to increasing their frequency or length. So, until they said otherwise, Broadhurst had direct orders from the Federation Security Council not to interfere with business on Acamar itself.[54]
Shukar would be summoned to the Palais, where the President would demand an immediate Starfleet response. The Commander, Starfleet – aggrieved and irritated at being dragged out of a full summit of the Admiralty – was in no mood for Broadhurst’s grandstanding, and bluntly told him that unless the Acamarian government agreed to abide by their predecessors’ treaties, there was little he could do without the full authorisation of the Security Council. When Broadhurst demanded that he at least get the purchased vessels back, Shukar reiterated his previous statement. The President, infuriated by the Admiral’s obstinance, asked if there was anything Starfleet could do to counter Klingon dominance of Acamar. Shukar replied, “it depends on whether you can get a council majority, mister president.”
There were options available, from a blockade to a peacekeeping operation planet side – but Broadhurst could do nothing without a majority vote in both the Security Council and the general council itself, and he had neither. Shukar knew that when he entered room; but he also knew that there were activities the Starfleet could – and actively was – taking to stabilise the situation. Convoy escorts were being supplemented, as was anti-piracy patrol in the region. Starfleet Intelligence was already in direct contact with elements of the exile government still on Acamar, who were already eager to pass on information on the BGU to Federation. DESRON 5 had broken off minelaying ops to scout the Korvat-Acamar space lanes from a distance, ready to shadow any Imperial force that violated the 2257 armistice by establishing a base on Acamar. 52nd Expeditionary Brigade had been moved to Condition three, with preparations for movement and deployment underway.
These were subtle measures, designed to negate and weaken any Klingon move and prepare Starfleet to react to any Klingon move. They were not proactive, or particularly aggressive; Shukar understood that the Tactical forces in the region still lacked the strength and training to match the Imperial Navy without prior preparation.[55] But Broadhurst didn’t want subtle and flexible reaction. He needed to cover for the diplomatic disaster quickly to save face internally and externally. As he understood it, a subtle reaction to the crisis would only make the Federation look weak, and “prey-like” to the “Imperial predator”. Broadhurst was equally concerned about the possibility of Kash-Ro’s being deployed to Acamar too, well aware of how they could command space for a dozen light-years in every direction – if intelligence assessments were to be believed.”[56]
From Shukar’s point of view, Broadhurst’s haste could be lethal. Any action – no matter how unprepared, so long as it was decisive in some way – would remind the Klingon Empire that the Federation had the strength to stand up for itself and open the opportunity for the diplomats to do their work on an equal stage. But overextension was an even greater risk than perceived weakness. The Imperial Navy had pounced on that in 2259, and the defeat in detail and Caleb IV had left 2nd Fleet so weak that it had only recovered in a March 2262. Shukar wasn’t about to put the same formation on the line again with the full authority of the security council and the powers that gave him.[57] Broadhurst knew that was impossible and refused to take Shukar’s arguments at face value. Between the logic of Starfleet’s rules of engagement and his own persistent paranoia, the paranoia was always going to win. Broadhurst would, after much argument, audible from outside the Presidential chambers, give Shukar a direct order to develop a plan to recover the sold vessels.
Forty minutes after he arrived in Paris, Shukar walked out of the President’s Office as an Admiral without Portfolio. Three minutes later, Admiral Rittenhouse – on Earth for the full staff conference – was summoned to Paris. Fifteen minutes after that, he walked out of the office as the new Commander, Starfleet, carrying in his hands direct orders to seize the six vessels back from the Acamarians. A shocked Dai Mehkan – long suffering Chief of Staff of the Starfleet since 2256 – would meet his new counterpart at the main transporter station at the Presidio, having already seen Shukar arrive and leave without saying a word. “I’ve got Blue Jackie’s job now,” Rittenhouse told them through a fierce handshake. “And we’ve got a job to do at Acamar.”[58]
[1] Intriguingly enough, the explosion would be visibly seen on Starbase K-5 in 2293, on the same day that the Khitomer Accords were signed.
[2] Attempts to duplicate the Liverpool Pod were made, including the seizure of a Starfleet shuttlecraft in December 2261, but the inability of the Empire to produce high quality duotronic parts made copying the pod impossible until the end of the decade.
[3] There are apocryphal records of some Klingons attempting to clear minefields by throwing bladed weapons – most likely mek’leth’s and bat’leths – at mines. The viability of such a tactic seems limited, but the author would not put it past the Klingons to try.
[4] Qiv Grathak, I Don’t Like to Call it a Living, (Tellar: Givesh & Yop, 2301)
[5] Toki Huan, “The Minesweeper’s Lost Victory?”
[6] V’Loss, Anti-Piracy warfare between 2245 and 2280.
[7] Vu’lek, The Economics of The Era of L’Rell and Sturka, (Paris; Klingon-Federation Publishing, 2350)
[8] Moffek, The New Warriors of Kahless
[9] Mk’Namazt, The Interspatial Ballistic Missiles: From Kash-Ro to the Obisidao (Olympus Mons; Pen and Sword, 2345.)
[10] Contact with Cardassia was reasonably limited in the 2260s. Starfleet had encountered Cardassian vessels on half a dozen occasions since the mid-2250s, while civilian traders and travellers had interacted with the Federation since the charter had been signed. Politically, however, both governments were deeply disinterested in each other.
[11] The McNair class light cruiser was as Marvick upgrade to the Malachowski class; the life extension programme would improve the power plant of the vessel, increasing their firepower and range of the ship. They would remain in service until the late 2280 before being replaced by the Okinawa class.
[12] Rittenhouse to Broadhurst, November 4th 2261.
[13] Rittenhouse to Broadhurst, November 10th 2261. Rittenhouse’s constant barrage of correspondence to Broadhurst survives almost entirely – as do Broadhurst’s scathing notes and laconic replies.
[14] Yunav – who would later go on to help form the Unionist party – was always less of a firebrand than Sh’Belulos on Originalism. Many cite this moment as where the original split within the conservatives began.
[15] Seb Cousins, Our Lost Disraeli: The Life and Times of Byss Th’rhahlat (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2300)
[16] AR Vale, Out of the Wilderness, (Paris; Midan Valerié, 2280)
[17] Starfleet Intelligence, Report on Anti-Federation activity (Imperial Intelligence/MIS), SD 2/2551.2
[18] Umos to Vale, Out of the Wilderness
[19] E’yk, The Broadhurst Conundrum
[20] The Church of England’s decision to not acknowledge any off-world diocese was critical to their decline in the 22nd century. The King of Canada, of course, remains the head of the church; and defender of the faith.
[21] Richard Ch’Rella, The End of Indecision: Federation Politics from Richard Morville to Lorna McClaren (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2290)
[22] Peraa Zh’tyvohr, Blue Jackie: The Biography of Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar, 2188-2296 (Andoria: Laikan Historical Press, 2300)
[23] There is no circumstance in which this was true: Paris Time (GMT+1) was, and still is, considered universal for all legal timestamps.
[24] Sikorsky, The Lion and the Pack Mule:
[25] “Excursion guarantee” is the Klingon term for the legal authorisation for commerce raiding, given by the Imperial Chancellery to captains. It is comparable with the old earth letter of marque.
[26] Wald Bav Mar’Gott, Savage Klingon Peace in the Beta Quadrant (Starfleet: Starfleet Press, 2316)
[27] Avan al Gov, The Imperial Navy, 2240-2293. (San Francisco; Starfleet Press, 2345)
[28] Ekor, son of Rellen, Annals of our Century: Durak to Kesh. Translated by Curzon Dax, (Paris: Memory Alpha, 2306.)
[29] Robson, To Prevent Hell.
[30] Buq of Rigel IV, Our People Under Kahless; travellers in the Klingon Empire (Luna; Tranquillity Pres,, 2340)
[31] Hansard: FC Deb 10 Jan 2262 vol.152
[32] Alicandu, The Last Great Orion Empire, (Rigel IV; The Rigellian Historicadum, 2276)
[33] Nkomi Ngilu, Acamar since the Industrial Revolution (Khartoum; Sunar Press, 2330)
[34] Broadhurst to Th’rhahlat in Robson, To Prevent Hell.
[35] Robson, To Prevent Hell.
[36] Ngilu, Acamar since the Industrial Revolution
[37] Xanus Kellye, The Last Blood Feud: Acamar, 2240-2275. (London: Tranquillity Press, 2326)
[38] Kellye, The Last Blood Feud
[39] It is worth remembering that the stagnation and later failure of Stand-off missiles did not seem possible in early 2262 – in fact, there was a genuine concern that “high warp torpedoes” would transform warfare completely. Only the failures of the Mark IV and V Kash-Ro would make the limitations of the weapons clear.
[40] Chancellor L’Rell had resisted all attempts to establish permanent military control over states that had not submitted to the Empire after defeat on the battlefield: She accepted that the Enolians had fought – and lost – against unbeatable odds, so their conquest was “honourable”. She did resist, however, attempts to bring Tandar completely into the Empire, even after the Bregat Massacre. The contrived and haphazard Imperial control over the polity would only contribute to the instability that would end in the brutal Tandaran Civil War.
[41] Zym, Son of T’ai, Recollections
[42] The political interpretation of the Prime Directive, as exemplified in the Sulu Doctrine, was not universal in the 23rd century. In fact, many legal scholars argued that such an interpretation would be a violation of several articles of the Federation Charter.
[43] Mar’Gott, Savage Klingon Peace
[44] The armistice technically banned Klingon installations within the disputed region of space completely, but Klingon officials generally perceived the “Axanar Line” as the official red-line within Federation thinking.
[45] TK Robson & E.P. Zhuirhead, Towards a General Theory on Klingon Foreign Policy, (Starfleet; Starfleet Historical Review, 2285)
[46] H.W. Rogers, Left to the Diplomats, (New York: New World Press, 2304)
[47] Terry M. Shull, The Boss: The High Council of the Klingon Tsar. (London: Memory Alpha, 2305)
[48] Suzie P. Torres, The Mother: the lost life of Chancellor L’Rell (HarperCollin-Ch’Rell, 2312) & Zym, Recollections
[49] The militia had intended to hand the captured officer – Colonel Rynor of the Imperial Marine Light Cavalry – over to the government, but a mob, infuriated by the recent terror bombing of the region by BGU forces, would break into the prison Rynor was being held in and hang him the street. The town would be levelled by the BGU two months later.
[50] Peraa Zh’tyvohr, “Blue Jackie”
[51] Quentin Hawk, The Official History of Starfleet Intelligence
[52] Emergency Session of the Security Council of the United Federation of Planets, 28th April 2262
[53] Hansard, Private Session of the Federation Security Council, FSC(P) Q 29 April 2262 vol.14
[54] Privita Masego, Three Months in Summer: The Acamar Crisis, (Nairobi; Vanderbilt Imprint, 2330)
[55] Enuak Yuiqui, Though Arms We Need: Starfleet Command goes to war, 2256-2273.
[56] These assessments – based off of poorly translated Klingon test records and misunderstanding of the capabilities of stasis technology and Klingon warhead power – were entirely incorrect.
[57] Zh’tyvohr, Blue Jackie
[58] Sikorsky, Felix, The Lion and the Pack Mule:
Patrick Ch’O’Leary was asleep when the USS Malcolm Reed hit the mine. The first he knew of it was when he collided with the ceiling of his quarters and woke up to discover that artificial gravity had failed entirely as had many of the air filtration systems on his deck. “With a scratchy thought and a throbbing headache, I pulled on a jumpsuit as best I could in zero Gs and clambered out into the corridor.” He quickly navigated the chaotic ship to engineering, arriving just in time to plant his feet on the ground with the restoration of normal gravity plating. The situation was dire.
“We had struck something – the bridge didn’t know what yet. All we knew was that it had taken us from Warp 2 to stationary in normal space while ripping a whole in the starboard side and damaging both nacelle struts. We were dead in the water.” Warp travel was the least of O’Leary’s problems. The rapid collapse of the ship’s warp bubble had caused major buckling in the outer decks, and one of the port-side fusion reactors was dangerously close to an overload. The atmosphere was venting from deck ten, and while the rupture could be sealed, the internal bulkheads were too damaged to hold it closed. The ship was crippled.
The Malcolm Reed had just finished another minelaying operation on the edge of the Triangle. Cartwright had chosen to take a shorter route along the edge of the Azure Nebula to conduct a study of forming stars, while taking advantage of the Nebula’s subspace currents to gather extra speed on the return journey to Starbase 19. It was a well-travelled route by Starfleet vessels, so much so that it had gathered the nickname “Azure Alley”. There was no expectation of attack of any kind: most of the Klingon attack groups were operating far further into the triangle and closer to the Mastocal sector. While initially the bridge crew of the Reed thought they had been caught by a more adventurous Klingon captain, analysis of sensor records from just before the attack – themselves damaged by the power outage to the main computer – revealed something much worse. They had struck a gravitic mine.
The Gravitic mine is a mean weapon. Unlike Starfleet fusion proximity mines, Gravitic mines are built around using high-density plasma, powerful automatic sensors and a micro-warp core. Their key target is vessels at warp speed, using power subspace fields to rip them back into normal space, causing immense external and internal damage in the process. The faster a vessel is travelling, the worse the damage sustained: when the Derf Class Tender USS Ankara struck a mine at Warp 6.1 in 2263, its warp field collapsed so catastrophically that the debris was spread in a straight line across two AUs. The Malcolm Reed had been lucky; Ch’O’Leary was able to restore engine power in less than a day, and the vessel limped along at Warp 0.8 until it was rescued by the USS Kirov, which towed her back to Starbase 24. She was only one of sixteen vessels that struck Gravitic mines in the first week of October 2261; and one of three that were still space worthy afterwards.
Klingon research on gravitic mines shares the same origin point as their research on stasis field weaponry: the need to develop more efficient power production to make up for the acute shortages of dilithium and pergium within the Empire. The original intention of a “gravitic reactor” was to use a “subspace slingshot” as an “interdimensional turbine”. However, experiments in the 2250s found that the reactors tended to tear themselves – and the power collection satellites – apart when turned on. The conflict between House Kahnrah and Voggra (the patrons of the gravitic reactor) showed inadvertently that gravitic forces had powerful effects on subspace fields: two or three positioned together acts as a “sieve” that would shatter a subspace field with micro wormholes immediately.
While the mines were not used during T’Kuvma’s war, they were seized upon by Sturka in the aftermath to protect imperial facilities from internal foes: lacking the industrial base for their mass production, very gravitic fields were sown before 2260. The occupation of Enolian space and the usurpation of civil government on Tandar, however, gave the Empire access to facilities that could handle the creation of gravitic weapons on a mass scale. Now, with Klingon trade fractured and power projection flagging, Imperial Navy Command had to do something to strike back.
There was as much spite behind this as there was strategy. Too many vessels returning from raids had been lost to Starfleet mines for the Imperial Navy to ignore it. In July, a raid into the Baker’s Dozen was completely wiped out by a Starfleet minefield; all four I-2s (the most expensive and advanced vessel in the Klingon arsenal) were destroyed within 45 minutes of each other passing through part of the Parowan Asteroid Field. In another incident, a D7 chasing down rebels near the Alshanai Rift struck two mines at once, immolating itself in a fireball that was spotted on Starbase K-5’s subspace sensors.[1] Imperial Navy Command was furious – Sturka especially. The Empire simply could not afford to lose warships this way, either materially or politically. The gravitic mine allowed for a cheap, widespread, and effective response across the entire disputed area – and one the Klingons knew that Starfleet couldn’t immediately counter.
To a large extent, the mutual minelaying campaigns initially caused a total stalemate. Starfleet minefields were too dense and sensitive for Klingon minesweeping. Gravitic minefields, while sparse, were impossible to enter with an active subspace field. Active countermeasures were few and far between. The Imperial Navy had next to no minesweeping capability. Like Starfleet, they could use photon bursts and polaron sweeps to detonate mines and clear lanes, but they lacked the sensor capability or technological knowhow to build any equivalents to the “Liverpool” sweep pods that Starfleet was rapidly outfitting many ships with across the tactical fleet.[2]
In many cases, the best way for Klingon ships to clear mines was for a group of crewpersons to leave their vessel and detonate the mines with a disruptor rifle.[3] It worked – most of the time – but it was not a solution. Attempts to copy Starfleet trawling techniques had more success, but the lack of engineering knowledge on most Klingon ships meant capable officers who could manage such operations were few and far between. Much to Sturka’s frustration, many of those who did have experience minesweeping had no interesting in taking part in such “glory-free” work.
Minelaying, however, was much easier to organise and execute. The Klingons had over a two centuries of minelaying experience by the 2260s, though mostly as a defensive tactic to prevent attacks on orbital naval bases and shipyards. That had been the original purpose of the gravitic mine: but they rapidly evolved into offensive weapons. It was not a difficult change of strategy. Gravitic mines, as opposed to their fusion equivalents were small: they did not carry large warheads, instead relying on gravimetric forces and micro-wormholes to do most of the damage to a starship. They could be stowed in the cargo bays of larger ships or the fuel decks of smaller ones: some Birds of Prey would bolt them underneath their wings, releasing them with explosive charges when they arrived at their destination. This ease of deployment made it incredibly difficult for Starfleet to track the location of and density of minefields: any Klingon privateer could sow a gravitic field large enough to block a space lane if they were smart enough about it.
By October 18th all vessels operating in the disputed area off major space lanes were ordered to limit speed to Warp 2.5; on the 28th of October, the convoy control ship S.S. Star of Micronesia would strike a gravitic mine well within the bounds of the supposedly clear Barolia-SB10 space lane, losing three automated grain transports in the process. Even itinerant smugglers – usually then most adept at avoiding blockade and patrols – were being caught out by the Klingon minelayers. Qiv Grathak had taken his tramp freighter across the disputed area over a hundred times by 2261, through piracy, war and blockade, but even he could not escape the gravitic mine. “Escaping from the Barolia debacle, I thought that the worst was behind me. As always, however, the Klingons had other ideas. One of their dastardly mines – horrific little things that you can’t spot with your sensors – caught me on the way out. I’m lucky that I was running on lower power, but it still ripped a gash along the side of the Lucky Uvanda that you can still see today.”[4]
The gravitic mines effectively shut down border traffic for the rest of October: it was simply too dangerous. The Merchant Mariner’s association and the Board of Trade were apoplectic: even Th’rhahlat, normal avoidant of any direct criticism of the Stellar Service, would tear into Fleet Admirals Luteth and Ch’Shukar during a weekly staff meeting. “I do not ask for much that I do not think you can deliver,” he would tell them. “Which is why I won’t ask you to fix this. I will simply assume that you have already found a solution.”
Starfleet Command was really at a loss. Intelligence analysis had never considered minelaying to be a plausible Klingon strategy. It seemed too subtle and roundabout to fit into the Klingon way of warfare, and as such even awareness of their technological intent was discarded by analysts. That blind spot – grounded in fatal cultural assessments made in the last century – would hamper Starfleet for the rest of the cold war. Right now, it meant that Tactical Command’s staff had to scramble for a response, based on nothing but a few cursory studies in the 2240s and a lot of conjecture.[5]
As always, the Corps of Engineers would come through to save the day. SCE’s Axanar staff had performed minesweeping experiments before T’Kuvma’s War. Their study of gravitic technology – however limited – had led to some surprising conclusions, but they had hit a brick wall due to lack of information to conduct further tests. The onset of gravitic minelaying sent alarm bells up and down the chain of command. Tom Marrone, still chief of staff at Axanar, caught wind of rumours that the USS Idraxis had salvaged an abandoned raptor-type vessel near M’talas Prime. Calling in some favours, Marrone had the ship moved to Axanar, hoping that the ship still had some gravitic mines aboard.
The gamble paid off. five mines were on board, all with faulty warheads: perfect for dummy sweep runs. These tests, performed through the first week of November 2261, made clear that the existing Liverpool pods – while a viable method of minesweeping – could not counter the “subspace magnetism” of the gravitic mine. However, if a vessel operated without a high-power subspace field, it could close range with a gravitic mine for deactivation or detonation operations. As such, Marrone concluded that minesweepers based around fusion-powered – or even fission-powered starships could be the answer. The USS John Adams – a Franklin class starship that had been mothballed in the 2170s – was reactivated by the Axanar yard. After some difficulties (including the Adams ramming an inert mine when her helm console froze up), Marrone’s teams managed to successfully sweep and deactivate two of the mines in the test zone. The findings were viewed with some scepticism in Federation Central. fusion-powered warp drives were slow, inefficient, and unsafe, and no one really wanted to send people out in fusion-powered vessels unless they really needed to. More evidence was needed. The John Adams would make a further field test against a collection of located mines in the Vota Star Cluster. Again, she would manage to locate, mark and detonate the mines with concentrated phaser fire. On her return to Axanar, she and the SCE transport Archimedes would stumble into an unmarked minefield. Despite a glancing hit on the Archimedes by one mine, the Adams would manage to clear a path through, with no casualties on either vessel. Fusion-based sweeping had been vindicated.
The first dedicated minesweeping conversions would be conducted on two Magee class ships at the Axanar yards – the subspace field replacements improved their performance overall, and their compact spaceframe allowed them to sweep in all quarters at the same time. It would take time for further conversions as Operations scoured the mothball yards for available ships – time that Klingon Command didn’t have. As much as Rittenhouse could bombard Operations and Commodore Marrone with demands for minesweepers now, overhauls and refits would not produce a substantial number of operational vessels until early 2262.[6]
In the meantime, The Imperial Navy would press their advantage in every quarter. The rapid professionalisation of the fleet had been met with technological leaps across every sector. Many of these breakthroughs had existed since the early 2250s, scattered and poorly exploited due to the collapse of central authority. L’Rell’s rise had allowed scientists and engineers to demonstrate and sell their designs to the Army, Navy and government, which exploited their work to great ends with little regard for quality control, peer review or generally safety.[7] High power beam disruptors and nacelle pulse cannons allowed older designs to keep up with newer Starfleet ones; the Su’Vat yards managed to develop a complete keel-up retrofit of the D4 that would keep the cruiser in service for at least a decade more, and make it more than a match for even the Tracey and Shepard class starships.[8]
Most terrifying was the deployment of “Kash-Ro” Standoff warp torpedoes. Originally intended as mine-clearing devices, the torpedoes could be fired from a range of nearly 5 light years away; travelling as fast as warp 5 in short periods, they could evade jamming signals before ejecting a sphere of smaller explosives that detonated as one, clearing a gap in minefields with ease. The technology seemed far beyond Klingon achievements, so much so that Starfleet refused to believe in their existence until early November.[9] It was a brute force solution the Klingon minesweeping gap, but it worked; trade across the border at Barolia was reopened; exports of raw minerals increased, with middlemen like the Son’a facilitating the sale of Klingon goods as far afield as the Thallonians and Cardassians.[10] The balance of payments crisis was not resolved overnight, but the disaster on the horizon was averted by the tireless work of the Imperial Navy. Good news for Sturka and the modernists; less so for L’Rell – or Starfleet.
The “Kash-Ro” weapons were beginning to concern Command. Beyond unravelling the resource denial campaign, the potential of these weapons – which could be accelerated as fast as Warp seven or eight – was frightening. A great deal of Klingon Command’s strategy was built around keeping the Imperial Navy at arm’s length with the DESRONs and minefields, where the agility and competence of Starfleet crews could counter the numbers of the Klingon fleet. It was an uphill race, however. The I-2 and I-3 Destroyers – fresh off the production line and entirely built with postwar technology – were more than a match for the Hermes and Engle one on one, and two or three could overwhelm a Larson or a McNair class.[11] New Klingon cruisers like the D10 were entering service en masse by the end of the year too, while the next generation of Starfleet cruisers – authorised in early 2261 for production by Tycho and Vickers-Armstrong – were not going to arrive in strength until the 2263 at the earliest. Some stopgaps like the Farragut class light cruiser were making up for losses, but numbers weren’t the biggest frustration for Rittenhouse and his commanders.
Since the debacle at Caleb IV, the Federation Council had restructured Starfleet’s existing rules of engagement to prevent a repeat of the disaster. By restricting the deployment of significant forces up to the armistice line and restricting any actions beyond the line not authorised by the security council, Th’rhahlat hoped to rein in the sort of poorly thought through aggression that had led to 2nd Fleet’s decimation. It was a logical and easy political win that prioritised the defensive role of Starfleet, while still allowing methods like the minelaying and anti-piracy sweeps to continue.
Now, though, as the Klingons adjusted to and learnt their way around the new rules, the restrictions were beginning to bite. Klingon privateers were operating from illegal bases within prohibited zones or attacking neutral convoys on the other side of the armistice line. Kash-Ro salvos could be fired from orbital launchers on the far side of the border, and even though their travel time to targets was measured in days, they could impact minefields without any chance of intercept. Despite the best intentions of Paris, the political impact of the rules of engagement was also growing. Where Starfleet could not deal with piracy, the Imperial Navy capitalised by proving itself a “earnest broker” to neutral parties where Klingon Command could not go. Starfleet seemed like a dishonest party, demanding adherence to its traffic laws and regulations while halting anti-piracy activity at arbitrary lines in the middle of space.
“So long as the council continues to enforce impossible and, frankly, dangerous rules of engagement, we can’t deliver on our promises. I am told the political realities prevent these rules from being adjusted to support our goals. The political realties can be changed; our strategic goals cannot.”[12] A further note to Rittenhouse would stress the paradox. “They ask me to deal with orion privateers but prevent me from going to Orion. They ask me to mine Klingon trade lanes but won’t let me mine on the trade lanes. They ask me to deal with the Kash-Ro’s but won’t let me look for them. They ask me to back up our diplomatic promises but then throttle me with the prime directive. And then they blame me for it!”[13]
The rules of engagement were a frustrating red line for Rittenhouse, but despite his protests – and supporting statements from Shukar, Chief of Staff Mehkan and Broadhurst, they were not as bad as he said they were. The limitations on activity within the disputed area were tight but were not impossible; similar restrictions after would not prevent Chrisjen Paris from amping up defensive strategy after the Kobax crisis, and the existing ones had still allowed Operation En Passant to deliver it's killer blow coreward of Mardikian. What they did interfere with was Rittenhouse’s aggressive approach, and his desire to attack the Klingons at the root even if it was diplomatically and politically inadvisable. Plans to mine the approaches to Mastocal and Kuvat – and even to make trade interdiction raids into the fringes of Klingon space – were appealing and would have probably been very effective; but they were anathema to the way the Federation operated in peacetime.
Nevertheless, Rittenhouse persisted in making his case to the council, gathering the backing of Shukar and senior political like Sh’Belulos and Yunav of Aurelia to support his case. Sh’Belulos was eager to support Rittenhouse, angling to replace Broadhurst as the Admiral’s political patron. Rittenhouse was their darling, in theory; both dogmatically pro Federation and diametrically opposed to Th’rhahlat’s “Moddy coddling” around foreign affairs and aid. Rittenhouse was happy to be wanted, especially when it got him in front of the security council with an argument to change the engagement restriction – which he got, thanks to a backroom deal between Yunav and Broadhurst.[14]
There were other pressing issues for the council, however. The hearing on November 22nd would be delayed by an unscheduled speech by the President. Further authorisation for counter operations in the disputed area would have to wait, much to the consternation of Rittenhouse. He and his staff – alongside some members of Nogura’s office, including Peter Toussaint – would end up waiting for the Security Council in the Hernandez Room, watching the transports out of San Francisco spaceport. The discomfortable silence of the room ate at Toussaint, while ended up scrolling through news reports on his padd while they waited for Shukar to return from Paris. It was he who saw the news first, standing up in shock as he read the headline aloud.
President Byss Th’rhahlat – the assured winner of the 2262 election – had announced his intention to resign at the end of 2261. From January 1st, 2262, until September 10th, 2262 – the date of the General Election – the UFP would be in the hands of Peter Broadhurst.
The Passage of our Duties
President Th’rhahlat was not well by November. It had not been obvious at first – the fatigue and sleeplessness were just thought to be the symptoms of high office, even late nights turned into early mornings, and hollow, Prussian blue bags filled beneath his eyes. By late 2260 he began to have slight balance issues, along with spells of severe dizziness. The president’s physician made a critical discovery in March 2261; his lungs were deteriorating rapidly, along with parts of his nervous system and cerebral cortex. Initial hopes that he may simple have a hidden but curable cancer were dashed when, in June 2261, he was diagnosed with Chal’kuun’s Syndrome.
Chal’kuun’s – treatable and well understood in the 24th century – remained a mystery in the 2260s. The degenerative disease, found in Andorians, Aenar and some Rigellians, breaks down motor neuron function at a slow but steady pace, exhibiting the usual symptoms of Alzheimer's and Wuner’s Disorder but without the rapid onset of the latter. The syndrome had been identified as a genetic disorder by the mid-23rd century, but beyond that, very little was known. Normal cures and [15]treatments for motor neuron disease were ineffective, and lung rejuvenation therapies receded or broke down after treatment ended.
It is clear now that the Presidents intense and constant transporter use exacerbated the deterioration of his cell structure and DNA that Chal’Kuun’s causes. That breakthrough – made in 2266, thanks in large part to Th’rhahlat bequeathing his body and medical records to the San Francisco School of XenoMedicine – was still years away in 2261. All his doctors could say for certain was that the strain of being President of the Federation would only exacerbate his condition, and that his priority now – as he moved into long term pallative and support care over the next few years – was to limit personal and professional stress as much as possible.
Th’rhahlat resisted, at first, naturally hesitant to hand the reins of power over mid-term. “My work is not done,” he would tell his husband and wives in a private meeting. “There is so much left to do, we all know that.” This was certainly true: even with his illness, the president had never ceased to press the topic of reform wherever he could, challenging even the Charterites in his desire to modernise the Articles of the Federation. But he was tired; his work hours were shorter, and he struggled to keep up with the increasing weight of foreign policy crises and the internal scuffles of the Council.
Who would replace Th’rhahlat? There was no question of going across the aisle for a successor; Sh’Belulos remained obstinate and unpopular within the security council; Masters and Batarian, while popular enough within the cabinet and the OSF-P, would struggle to gain the confidence of the full council. As always, the prospect of Sarek stepping in was mooted, before being shot down by the Vulcan himself. Some – including Th’rhahlat would suggest Wescott, but despite his popularity with the voters, he remained inexperienced with high office.
Peter Broadhurst was no one’s first choice. He was brash, difficult to work with, and ill at ease with the work of consensus building. The OSF-P did not like him, turned away by his firebrand foreign policy views. The cabinet tolerated him because he usually agreed with them, but remained incredibly apprehensive about whether they’d take orders from him. But the Federation Council could tolerate him: and the voters liked him. “All voters like a winner, especially a winner with a snarky remark and a bullish attitude,” remarked A.R. Vale, author, and constitution affairs advocate. “They love a president who looks like they should be in a holofilm. And Broadhurst looked like that. Most annoyingly, he sounded like that.”[16]
The Security Council understood stability was key now more than ever. The Klingon Empire’s reaction to the embargo was still in its infancy; beyond the counter-mining operation, secondary activities like piracy, arms smuggling, and slavery continued throughout the border area, and beyond. Starfleet Intelligence records from autumn 2261 suggest that Klingon covert operations had penetrated beyond M’talas Prime and were “taking advantage of residual dissent remaining after the 2256 war.”[17] The resource denial campaign and it’s economic aftershocks had rippled across the UFP, and even if the damage had mainly been inflicted on the empire, many of the less economically resistant worlds within the treaty zone had been knocked off balance by the sudden scarcity of natural resources.
“Black Week”, as the first market spike had been retroactive dubbed, had been weathered reasonably well in the frontier colonies thanks to alleviatory measures – but in less focal places, it had dramatic consequences. Within the Altair system, the fluctuating supplies of raw materials needed for the Altair IV’s Castrodinium trade would cause civil strife, firing the starting gun on the escalation of tensions that lead to the outbreak of the 3rd Altair War in early 2263. Broadhurst looked like the right man to steady the tiller at this moment. He was strong-willed enough to hold the course until the September 2262 election, and dogmatic enough to be accepted by the reformist wing of the council that propped up the government. More importantly, he wanted the job. He was certainly not Th’rhahlat’s first choice but was the accepted one. The two had a closed meeting on November 20th. After 45 minutes, Broadhurst left with a grim smile on his face. The UFP had a new president – or, at the very least, would in the new year.
Had the Galactic High Commissioner expected this? He certainly says he didn’t until he was informed of the nomination. His own correspondence doesn’t suggest any overt ambitions for replacing Th’rhahlat at that time. Certainly, Broadhurst was angling his career towards a presidential campaign, though much of the evidence suggests he was aiming more at the 2266 election than the 62 cycle. Was he aware of Th’rhahlat’s illness? Almost certainly: foreign policy was almost entirely run out of Shanghai by midsummer 2261: Broadhurst was shrewd enough to know that something was wrong, but if he’d known the extend of the syndrome, he would have altered his practices to compensate: he almost certainly would not have been bombarding the president with late night conference calls over Altair and Tandar.
But now he knew, his demeanour changed entirely. The future premier – dubbed the “President non-elect” by the less sympathetic parts of the press – would begin picking his cabinet immediately, drawing many future unionists in alongside some significant radicals from the OSF-P like Yurada of New Paris who had been left out of the previous government. This “ministry of all talents” was derided as a “jack of no trades” as well, even though Broadhurst’s broad tent was an inherently (and uncharacteristically) safe and sensible way for a soon-to-be unelected head of state to solidify his mandate with the voters. There was a reason that he chose 60% of his cabinet from the elected elements of the council instead of the civil service: to remind the voters that he was responsible to them – at some point.
Some didn’t buy it. Wescott found his well-wishing through the council incredibly off-putting. “A week ago, he’d been lecturing us from the pulpit, and now he was going around cap-in-hand as a man of the people. And worse, a lot of people bought it.” The voters – already keen on the bullish, defiant preacher of a politician – seemed only to grow more enamoured with him across December, much to the consternation of his peers in cabinet and council. “Handshakes and baby-kissing makes up for a slim policy portfolio,” noted Ambassador Umos.[18] “Nobody likes a show-off,” added UEMP Heumer. “Especially a slimy show-off.” The vulture-like collecting of aides, attachés and experts from the dying Th’rhahlat administration to Broadhurst’s office in Shanghai was, by mid-December, beginning to have a serious effect on the business of government as many tried to ensure that they would still have a job in the new year.[19] This attitude – putting his own way of governing above the concept of good government in the first place – was a grim omen of what was to come under Broadhurst.
As Broadhurst whipped up support for his future premiership, Th’rhahlat eased into the fact that his time was dwindling. I search of an understanding of his mortality; he disappeared up into the Scottish Highlands – his first natural love on Earth - for a week at the end of November. He came back having found a god – Christian God, to be exact. Despite the dominance of overt atheism on earth (which would pass 50% for the first time in the 2258 census), traditional religions – whether they were grudging modernisers like the Catholic church, adaptive monoliths like the post-atomic iteration of Sunni Islam or the nearly unchanged practice of Shinto in east Asia – remained popular, especially amongst off-world colonists who maintained their parents’ traditional practices, and more spiritual alien species. Most religions adapted. By 2260, the Catholic Church had an Archbishop of Mars, and a Denobulan Cardinal.
Th’rhahlat came down from his contemplation on the hills (“Like Moses up the mountain”, as Wescott dryly noted) as a Progressive Unitarian-Presbytarian: a sect of evangelical Christianity that was the most popular amongst the Anglophone colonies of United Earth.[20] Most people greeted the news with amusement: Broadhurst congratulated the president on “his new reading group”, while a less kind editorial from Tycho Post wondered if Th’rhahlat “would be including witch-burnings and organised bigotry in his reform bill.” While many viewed his newly-found faith as a joke – or a dangerous sign of instability – it seemed to calm the president and put him at ease with his own decline.
There were other quirks that came with this too. He started beginning his day with a quiet moment of prayer, which was foreign to almost all his staffers. He started visiting the Panthéon and L’Église Saint-Augustin, less to take part in mass and more to enjoy his own contemplation in the same space. “It’s the same God,” he once told a journalist, much to the visible annoyance of the Catholic father standing next to him. Other quirks began to leak in over the December, as his agreed resignation date of January 1st closed on him. It is possible that the winter months and the stress of the situation in the disputed area began to get to him, his mind began to slip further: or that the as-yet-unknown link between Chak’luuns and transporter use was exacerbated by constant medical visits to San Francisco.
His spirituality began to leak further into public life; he ended a speech on December 12th with “God bless the Federation,” which left journalists perplexed. At a security council meeting on the 18th, he would remind the assembled ambassadors of their “God given duty…to protect the liberty of the UFP for generations to come”, leaving Ambassdor Garv to mutter “which God exactly are we talking about, Mister President?” In his last public appearance as President, he would speak to assembled journalists on December 28th, after a meeting with various members of the Suliban and Efrosian refugee community that had settled across France and the Low Countries.
With pressure building for more defensive allocations over FEDAC spending, Th’rhahlat stepped up on last time to defend his ant-slavery policy. Tensions were running high; Ambassador Sh’Belulos had criticism the ambition of FEDAC’s recent policy plan for “overstating the extent of Orion Slavery” and “undermining post-war recovery in favour of bleed-heart sentientarian aid.” When the Laikan Scroll pressed Th’rhahlat on these comments, he turned on Sh’Belulos with the fiery passion of the pulpit.
“The Ambassador for Andoria has no idea of the sacrifices that have been made, past and present, for her God-given-right to complain about our obligations to sentient life. We were not brought to life to indulge in our own passions but do good work; to do noble work; to honour the sacrifices of our ancestors and of our obligation to the life of our worlds to come! The passing of our duties not to be scorned by anyone, especially not by leaders and decisionmakers. If Ambassador Sh’Belulos wishes to do good for the people of the Federation, she should do more than castigate, and remember the…the duty we have to our fellow sentient under God!”
With the press pool stunned by his anger, he began to mutter under his breath; eventually, the microphones began to pick up the quiet, strained notes of Battle Hymn of the Republic as he paced on the stage. The words “as he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free,” were heard clearly before the president wheeled and walked away from the press. The moment was so odd that the press struggled to make much hay of it, focusing instead on the righteous outburst instead of the unclear musical interlude.
And so, at 00:01 hours Paris time, Byss Th’rhahlat’s Presidency ended. He had walked out of the palace for the last time three days earlier. Broadhurst would enter a mere four hours after his term begun, “pouncing like a sehlat on prey in the dawn light”.[21] There was business to be done, and fast; after thirty minutes alone in the Presidential office, Broadhurst would beam back to Shanghai for one last breakfast. He would be interrupted, however, but an urgent message from Starfleet.
A third transport to San Francisco brought him to his first meeting with Admiral Shukar as President; an auspicious moment for the two of them. Shukar had managed to avoid Broadhurst as much as possible since he’d become Commander, Starfleet. Despite similar views on defensive posture, Shukar found the new President deeply unpalatable. “He thinks the fight is the important bit, not the threat,” he would tell Nogura. “Even when he won’t be doing the actual fighting.”[22] Th’rhahlat had mollified their animosity, but he was gone now: they would simply have to deal with each other. The antipathy was almost immediate; the Commander, Starfleet would address him as “High Commissioner”, because (having flown back across the international date line), he was technically not President for another seven hours.[23]
Once this snub was cleared up, Shukar would bring up a transmission from the Disputed Area. A Convoy of eight Federation Merchant Marine vessels out of Barolia had been halted by Klingon warships on December 29th. The convoy commodore had been arrested and charged with a large collection of customs violations by Klingon authorities; the cargo of Deuterium, Dilithium, Pergium impounded by the Imperial Navy. The justification, provided by the obstinate Klingon Commander to the stunned commodore, was that the convoy was passing through Klingon space “without presenting the correct passage papers required by the Imperial Control Region, thus rendering his cargo forfeit.”[24]
Broadhurst seemed non-plussed by the incident, remarking that “it seemed typical of those ridge-headed bastards.” Shukar then went on to bring up a proclamation from the Tandaran government, issued a mere forty hours later, stating that “The Tandaran Polity was now a member of the Imperial Control Region” and ordering all Federation business and traffic out of their space until they could acquire the correct papers and permits. A Tellarite vessel that had not complied in time had been attacked and destroyed; the Hermes Class scout USS Arakan had not heard the proclamation due to an ion storm; she had been attacked by three Tandaran patrol craft and a Klingon D4-A cruiser before she escaped into neutral space. Finally, a pre-agreed trade mission by the S.S. Harvey Milk into rump Enolian space had been intercepted by the Imperial Navy, who turned the Harvey Milk away with a firm reminder that they were entering the “Imperial Control Region illegally.” The transmission to the Milk also came with a ‘helpful’ map of the ICR, which appeared to include a large area of disputed, neutral and treaty zone space.
Broadhurst digested the information quickly, nodding over Shukar’s shoulder as the information appeared on the situation room screens. Eventually, after a moment’s contemplation he turned to Shukar and said, “what the hell is the Imperial Control Region?”
“They Will Not Bury Us!”
It is, in a lot of ways, still unclear as to what the intention of the Imperial Control Region was. Diplomatically, it did very little to endear the Klingons to the neutral powers. It was an organisation built on coercion from the bottom up; follow the Empire’s strict rules of trade, navigation, and taxation, or suffer the consequences. It was certainly no defensive alliance, or free trade area. The security guarantees were nothing more than an extortion racket; protection from pirates and raiders who were almost all carrying Imperial excursion guarantees in the first place.[25]
Tariff barriers and customs controls increased with its conception, acting to ensure that as much business as possible within the region was under the heel of Qo’noS. So, it is distinctly possible that it was created to coherently organise the client states and external vassals of the Empire together. The concept of structuring the informal Klingon Empire was not a particularly new one. Many previous Emperors and chancellors had inducted vassals into closer unions with Qo’noS or withdrawn sovereignty from client states to expand their own domains.[26]
However, what L’Rell aimed for with the ICR was much less traditional. In many senses, it could be read as a quiet mirror of the Federation Treaty Zone, aiming less at securing planets and territory and more at clarifying control over interstellar spatial regions. It presented a similar set of trade regulations, travel requirements, but with the knife-twist of being enforced through the barrel of the disruptor. The carrot of access to the mass markets of the Klingon empire came with the brutal stick of the Imperial Navy and its unsatiable need for anchorages, bases, and raw resources to maintain its continued expansion.[27] In this way, it is possible that it was created by the military regime for their own political goals; to maintain their own influence and power by directly involving them in the economic and political instruments of Klingon power.
However, the Imperial Navy was already cementing its control over the political sphere by 2262. Sturka’s position as L’Rell’s enforcer and the expansion of the military bureaucracy had already sidelined traditional power structures in the high council; the collapse of the state treasury in Summer 2261 and the military’s role in re-establishing economic confidence had given them a massive stake in financial decision-making. The ICR may have extended their reach into the Disputed Area and given their extortion of Klingon and neutral traders a legal veneer, but it was nothing new in that regard. In many cases, the restrained activity of the Navy to support the Region’s rules – limited to opportunistic customs impounding and the legal authorisation to bully mining prospectors and the odd smuggler – seems to suggest a general disinterest in their new zone of authority, even amongst the most stalwart career officers.[28]
Thus, the ICR being a tool of Sturka’s marital bureaucracy seems suspect. The connection seems to have been formed the Anti-Klingon propaganda of the 2260s and 70s, which coupled the flexing of Imperial Power by the Navy directly with the bureaucratic authority of the ICR, even when the two were very distinct in objectives. What the ICR did was legitimise the new order L’Rell had tried to establish in interstellar space after 2257. It was more symbolic and propagandistic than anything else – a visible, understandable, and enforceable political counterweight to the Federation Treaty Zone’s reach into distant quarters of the galaxy. As the Treaty Zone gave Starships authority to act far from the UFP, the ICR would give D7s the authority to apprehend Suliban refugees in distant systems or force Starfleet vessels out of neutral ships.
The more one looks at it, however – especially with the benefit of non-governmental Klingon sources – it is increasingly apparent that L’Rell supported and encouraged the ICR because it was a cost-free way of shoring up her own position. The “mother” of the Klingon Empire – as powerful an image as she projected – was, by early 2262, struggling to maintain the total control she had maintained in the years immediately after the war. The Great Houses – cowed by internal purge, threats from below and the looming strength of the Federation – had recovered enough to begin asking for more seats at the table, threatening the tenuous balance of power between Chancellor, military bureaucracy, and aristocracy.
The collapse of the darsek had only further infuriated the houses: mauled by the Raktajino Revolution, hindered by Federation Embargo and daylight robbed by the military, the “good of the empire” was increasingly a hypothetical concept to them. The ICR offered the perfect opportunity to legitimise the more casual acts of political expansion the Great Houses indulged in, while maintaining semi-overt political control over them.[29] Their desire to keep raiding Federation and neutral targets – exacerbated by the economic collapse of late summer 2261 – was now “Imperial policy” within certain bounds, controlled and managed by the limitations of the control region.
For the people, the boon of the ICR was clear: the Empire was standing up for itself against the dastardly and petty Federation and acting for the goodwill of the innocents of the quadrant. Support was immense, spurred on by building resentment over the economic warfare the UFP had committed itself to.[30] Mass politics – even in the Klingon sense – has always adored the ability of a government to strike back hard during a time of perceived weakness, especially in a way that infuriates the opposing party; with the ICR certainly did.
Broadhurst, a week after his quiet inauguration as the 18th President of the United Federation of Planets, would condemn the zone as an “article of oppression” to the Federation Council. “We do not condemn the Klingon right to exist. We do not condemn their right to govern themselves. We do not condemn their right to form alliances or form trade agreements. We condemn the use of the might of arms to dictate policy. We condemn their trampling over the self-determination of independent powers. And we condemn the extension of exploitation and slavery under the veneer of collective defence. This…. supreme security area is no more than a blatant attempt to extend the boundaries of the Qo’noS Regime into neutral and Federation space, on the expectation that we will bow to the supreme might of the Klingon soldier. And that, councillors, is an assumption that will not stand.”[31]
The press would latch onto his final sentences, with the New York Times and the Telav Yi News running with “Klingon power will not stand.” It was the San Francisco Herald’s headline – “President condemns Supreme Klingon Security Regime” that stuck in the public mind, however. Within days the ICR was being referred to as the “KSSR” – a satirical acronym born of the 20th century Soviet Union. The comparison was not entirely accurate – despite despotic tendencies, the Soviet Union never evolved into an aristocracy built-in military conquest and total exploitation – but the name stuck. Broadhurst – not a particularly big fan of the USSR in the first place – embraced the analogy, which fit with his own personal comparisons between the current crisis and the ideological conflicts of 20th-century Earth.
The fact was that the outraged and overblown reaction of the Federation encouraged the Klingons. It spoke of fear to them, rightly – fear of what Klingon power represented. Their own nebulous understanding of what it meant was cemented together by the simple fact that the Earthers did not like it. Zym, Son of T’ai, would comment that the whole stunt paid dividends in the short term for L’Rell. “It felt right to rile the humans up like this. They so poorly understood what power meant to us that they assumed we saw the galaxy in the same stark lines they did.” More than the gravitic mine and the Kash-Ro, the ICR infuriated the Federation because it was equally diplomatically nebulous as they were.
The Imperial Control Region was exactly what everyone wanted it to be, in the end. To the Federation, it was another sign that the Klingon bogeyman wasn’t going anywhere, and that their tendrils of power were much deeper – and much more nefarious – than previously imagined. For the Klingons, it gave a veneer of diplomatic and political authority to the violent and unrestrained actions of the Imperial Navy and Intelligence services. It made the occupation of the Enolian homeworld legal; it made the Klingon Governor of Tandar a mere “advisor”. It made the Suliban slave trade a mere internal matter of Imperial puppet governments, and pirate bases in the Nausicaa region protected military installations. And, crucially, it legitimised the rebels of Acamar in their ascent to power.
Acamar is one of the unluckier places in galactic history, though not through any fault of its own. It lies halfway along the Argelius-Barolia space lane, at the bottom of the Argelian approaches where subspace currents are still strong enough to take a ship at six times its rated warp speed along the “Orion Highway”. As such, it had been a hub of commerce since the planet first gained warp drive, and a centre of travel for the Hiromi sector.[32] This was good for Acamarian people: it was bad, however, for their politics. Acamarian society is – or was - deeply stratified by clan allegiances that go back centuries. Some of it is ethnic; some is religious; some is based on ancient tradition, and some of fictionalised histories. In many senses, the origins of the clan system do not particularly matter: what does it that the disputes, blood fueds and wars between the Acamarian clans have divided their people for longer than anyone can remember. Even the invention of faster than light travel and contact with other worlds did nothing by encourage and exacerbate the divides in their society.
Contact with the Federation helped, as did the expansion of the Treaty Zone around their space; but the disunited nature of their politics kept Acamar isolated from galaxy, unable to write formal treaties or represent itself in interstellar politics. The interference of other powers – from the Vulcan Intelligence Corps and Andorian Guard through to the Orion Syndicate – made thing worse, as the larger powers attempted to co-opt Acamar for their own purposes. As late as 2230, a Klingon noble titling himself as “Prince Gosk of Acamar” attempted to establish himself as petty king of the planet in a strange military campaign that ended in the farce of him being smuggled off planet, shaved and painted green so he could be disguised as an Orion.[33]
The mid-2250s saw the first serious period of stabilisation in over a century, as power concentrated around the Sovereign Ruling Council: a body of clan leaders located in the northern continent that claiming a mandate to govern the Acamarian Sovereignty. They were by no means democrats: their system was built around an aristocracy of elders and technocrats, but the Ruling Council were more liberal – in a relative sense – than their opponents, and much more willing to do business with off-worlders: any off-worlders. Acamar became a hotbed of spies, traders and playboys, who enjoyed the luxury of life within the treaty zone without the complications of Federation law or Starfleet authority. Beyond the walls of the nightclubs, however, the violence of the clan wars continued unabated; while one side might have worn formal uniforms and called themselves the “Government Army,” it remained clan against clan; family against family.
The threat of Klingon invasion during the 2256-57 war had caused panic on Acamar, and the Ruling Council’s crackdowns on civil liberties and local autonomy erased much of the support the fringe clan groups had for their new “central government”. In the aftermath of the general war, these breakaway clans began to align themselves together. Some, like clan Tre-Usla had serious political ideas; others like the Vu-Ka simply wanted to be on top of the pile. A fair few were simply bandits or mercenaries for hire, who found the more traditional views of the fringe groups more appealing than the bland, autocratic, and increasingly cash-poor Ruling Council.
The Acamarian Sovereignty, aware of domestic threats to its power structure, scrambled for external aide. Suspicious of the Klingons, its diplomats approached the Federation. While unwilling to provide military aid, the Barreuco government was happy to turn over industrial fabricators in exchange for some cursory treaty stipulations, and a handshake agreement not to support any Klingon overtures towards the planet. The fabricators would be delivered in august 2258, with the promise that they would be used for the benefit of “all the people of Acamar.” As one might expect, this never came to be. Instead, the fabricators were used to prop up the Sovereign Council and their allies or reprogrammed to make phaser and laser rifles.
The repression only intensified though 2259. Even as relations with the UFP warmed, the government army pushed further into the foothills of the northeastern continent, taking the war to the civilian population of the Tree-Lesta and Vu-Ka clans. Federation observers grew increasingly troubled with the conduct of the war but struggled to convince the Ruling Council to change tack: many of the Acamarian leaders were flippant about any crimes committed, easily blaming the lower clans and commanders for actions they had signed off on. The Th’rhahlat administration quickly ascertained the complications of backing the ruling council. It was, however, hesitant to change support to the chauvinistic and disunity opposition groups. “I don’t like them, but I also think that we can fix them,” Broadhurst would tell President Th’rhahlat after returning from Acamar in Summer 2259. “They’re our people on the planet now. If we change sides, we’ll only look ridiculous.”[34] Broadhurst had been involved in the original 2257 negotiations as an independent mediator: his reputation had been staked on the viability and certainty of a deal with the ruling council.[35]
The debacle at Caleb IV and the semi-dominance of the Imperial Navy in 2260 only exacerbated planetary tensions. Afraid to lose access to the vital Acamarian trade lanes, the Federation agree to further industrial aid, while the oppositional clans turned to terrorism and insurgent warfare in the mountains and cities of the northeastern and equatorial continents. Towards the end of the years the Tre-Usla won a stunning victory against government forces in the city of Xupa that rolled the army out of the mountain provinces. The rebels would seize the opportunity to declare a new government in Xupa, bringing together many of the opposition clans under the “Banner of Gathering Unity”.[36]
Better known in the 24th century as “The Gatherers”, the BGU would manage to push the government forces out of the northeastern continent by mid-2261, capturing significant arms caches and the support of much of the population. Their politics was disparate, but the core tenets – opposition to the ruling council, anti-federation involvement and high traditionalism – was popular amongst the rural clans, and many traditionally neutral families flocked to their banner. The Federation mission on the planet’s concern grew as government forces struggled to match the BGU or their politics. The lightning success of the “Northern Field Army” under Arch-General Vylat seemed unstoppable in the capital city, even as the BGU’s forces struggled to break through the poorly armed but well-motivated government militias outside of the spaceport city of Nubuura.[37]
Anti UFP sentiment surged, even when the rebels didn’t. The capture of two Industrial fabricators in a facility outside Nubuura seemed to prove that the “Feds” were backing the government to the hilt. It did not matter that the machines had been gutted and reprogrammed by the government army in a clear violation of the Broadhurst treaty; it mattered that a fabricator with “UFP” emblazoned on the side was churning out bombs and phaser rifles.
Federation-owned business concerns were attacked; bricks and stones were thrown at the ambassador’s car; the marines on the embassy gate were doubled. When a car bomb blew up outside the compound on First Contact Day 2261, the Ambassador would demand action from the Ruling Council, which responded by rounding up three dozen suspected rebels and executing them. “That was not what I asked for,” Ambassador T’Sov would tell them. Further bombs would be detonated at other facilities in the next six weeks – including one aboard the TOAC carrier S.S. Pride of Denobula. Unbeknownst to the Ruling Council and Starfleet, the sophisticated explosives and detonators used in the campaign had come straight from Imperial Intelligence, on the direct orders of Sturka himself.
The BGU had first gone to the Klingons for support after the Xupa declaration. Imperial Intelligence – eager to undermine the Treaty Zone, had happily sent them all the disruptors they had wanted. The BGU had, however, turned down the offer for “advisors”, hesitant of letting a foreign power interfere their dealings. The stagnation of their offensive halfway through 2261, however, made further Klingon support tantalising. The Death of Arch-General Vylat at the battle of Zuio pass removed the main obstacle to further arms. The more radical clans, having seized control of the BGU after Vylat’s death, struggled to match his tactical skill. Klingon disruptors – and, perhaps, a few companies of Imperial Marines – might do the trick for them.[38]
The possibility of regime change on Acamar was tantalising to the Imperial Chancellory. Control of Acamar would give the Klingon Empire a massive advantage over the Federation: a proxy beyond the Axanar line; bases within arm’s reach of Argelius, the Rigel Colonies & Orion; and control over critical trade lanes in the region. Deployment of Kash-Ro missiles to the system would allow the Klingons to threaten Starbases across the entire disputed area with sudden attack.[39] Recording meetings of L’Rell’s inner circle at the time point towards a coherent plan for seizing Acamar; or, at the very least, re-aligning it to Klingon interests. Zym, Son of T’ai, insists in his memoirs that L’Rell did not want to turn the planet into a puppet of the Empire, or even construct military installations in its space.
This may be true – it certainly fits with L’Rell’s own codes on interactions with foreign powers – but the bureaucracy of the Imperial Navy was of a completely different mind.[40] Whether or not the decision was made by the Chancellor – or made independently by the High Command and then retroactively authorised by L’Rell – is unclear. By the time the first Klingon advisors arrive on Acamar, however, it is almost entirely a project of the Chancellery, with documentation and planning all passing straight through L’Rell’s office.[41]
Destabilising Acamar for eventual Imperial takeover had several facets. Outside of arms supply and “advisors”, the Imperial Navy took steps to escalate piracy within the region, undercutting the revenue streams of the Ruling Council. Escalating attacks on trade would seem Orion and Elasi pirates enter the system itself to prey on trade, leaving their traditional hunting grounds on the edge of the Paulson Nebula. Worse, the BGU had managed to attract various adventuring types – from all corners of the galaxy, including the Federation – who relished the chance to fight, kill and pirate in the semi-lawless region. The Ruling Council lacked modern picket vessels to match the pirates: desperate for aid, in February 2262 they turned to the Federation with a formal request for military assistance and training.
Despite his longstanding links to Acamar, President Broadhurst was hesitant. The formalisation and hardening of General Order One – the Prime Directive, as it was now known – seemed to imply that the handing over of military equipment to the Ruling Council might be a violation of Federation law.[42] However, the warp-capability of the Acamarians was well established, as was their technological development in other regions. The Federation Council, while not entirely enthused with the prospect of sending weapons to a third party, was more worried about economic damage in the region than anything else: within reason, of course. The council authorisation from February 2nd explicitly authorises the sale of military equipment so long as:
- Said equipment was not currently in operational use by the Federation Starfleet or the combined defence forces of the Federation.
- Said equipment would not be used within the orbital space or atmosphere of the planet Acamar.
- Said equipment could be withdrawn by the Federation Starfleet at any time.
It was a raw deal for the Acamarians, in many senses. Starfleet was happy to pass over six obsolete cruisers, for the good they would do. Two Franklin class (USS Adams and Piper) and four Powhatan class (USS Iroquois, Oshawa, Sioux, and Narragansett), all dating back to the Romulan War, were quickly retrofitted with modern phasers and power plants from the 2230s, before being towed out from the Axanar yard and handed over on February 28th. The two Franklin class vessels were even, fatefully, equipped with Duotronic sensors and “Liverpool” Minesweeping pods. For what it was worth, the Ruling Council kept to their side of the bargain: the ships were not used within planetary space, even as the Generals of the government army pleaded for orbital bombardments to stop to advances of BGU forces. The ruling council, pleased as they were to re-open their trade lanes, were not about to risk the wrath of a Starfleet Task Force. The patrol ships were an external matter: the ground war was different.
The BGU, obviously, felt differently. They were outraged by the open arms deal between the government and the UFP. It stank of overt interference and Imperialist puppeteering by the Federation, which was clearly biding its time before it could subsume Acamar into itself. With their own forces stalled within reach of the major population centres of the planet, it seemed like victory was about to snatched from beyond their grasp buy the “Feds”. Demands for further arms and for the promised “advisors” to arrive in increased numbers grew, supported by the local leadership in the Imperial Navy. Admiral Korok – victor of the First Battle of Caleb IV – was a staunch advocate of further involvement on Acamar,and lobbied hard for the deployment of at least one Marine battlegroup to the planet to “protect our interests.”[43] Korok – also a massive advocate of the Kash-Ro missile programme – viewed the system as the perfect place to strategically deploy the newest iterations of the weapons as a powerful prestige symbol, capable of threatening Federation trade lanes and colonies from afar.
L’Rell was, it seems, hesitant to throw more support behind the BGU. If Imperial Intelligence was to be believed, Starfleet was now directly involved in the conflict, and certain to send advisors (or even ground troops) to the planet. While involvement in places like Tandar or Enolia could be justified by their closeness to the Empire, Acamar was distant: beyond even the “Line of T’Kuvma”, or the maximum extent of the Klingon territory in the mid-22nd Century. It was so beyond Klingon ambition that they had agreed to a stipulation in 2257 armistice banning any Klingon military installations within that region of space, beyond the “Axanar Line”.[44] While the Imperial Chancellery understood the importance of undermining, absolute involvement – especially with troops on the ground – may have represented a serious degree of escalation: on paper, at least.
The fact remains that it is difficult to understand how much the military escalation was considered an escalation by Qo’noS. Klingon diplomatic theory – as much as it can be called that – quantifies the use of force very differently to how the Federation does. While human IR theory – and its successors in Zakdorn meta-relations – views the use of force as a form of escalation. In contrast, Klingons view how one applies military power as the form of escalation. In the context of Acamar, this meant that the deployment of Klingon troops may not have been perceived as an escalation by the Empire, because the Federation had already applied military force on a larger scale through the arms embargo and Operation Kadis-Khot.[45] Even if that had been economic warfare – something the Klingons still did not entirely understand as a diplomatic tactic to prevent a general war – it was still on a larger scale than the deployment of troops and a supply base to Acamar.
The hole in this theory, of course, is that the Federation was extremely clear that Acamar was a red line. The diplomatic channels between the two powers were limited, yes, but Broadhurst and Jarg Igov (his successor as Interstellar Affair’s Commissioner) had been incredibly clear about the growing importance of Acamar.[46] It is certain that L’Rell didn’t take the diplomatic particularly seriously – certainly Roger’s attempts to make their governments’ assertions clear to Kuvec were met with little more than derison. Federation red lines had been crossed before and would be crossed again – considering how absurdly restrictive they were, they would almost certainly have to be if anything was to be done.
The internal pressures to ignore Federation warnings were significant too. Sturka and his acolytes in the armed forces were eager to get to grips with the UFP on their own turf; control of Acamar would allow the navy to shorten its own internal lines and bring the home advantage to bear on Starfleet light-years from Qo’noS. More importantly, Acamar had emerged as an entirely military project, without significant involvement or political patronage from any of the Great Houses.[47] Its success was another careful part of the balancing act between the old and new orders: it’s failure could tip power either way with drastic consequences. Newer evidence from the Kor family archives suggests that escalation was seen as an acceptable inevitability by L’Rell, corroborating her advisor Zym’s belief that “there was no way to keep everyone happy but to keep up the pressure on Acamar.”[48]
L’Rell would approve escalated arms shipments in mid-February 2262; military advisors – in the form of heavy chemical artillery, atmospheric aircraft and three companies of Imperial Marine Infantry – would arrive on the planet by the end of march, smuggled in aboard unmarking freighters carrying stolen Koberian registries. One of the transports would even be stopped by the USS Hood but released without inspection. The Kash-Ro missiles, however, would stay, vetoed directly by L’Rell herself.
The Klingon deployment was almost entirely complete before Starfleet knew it was happening. SI managed to achieve a singular breakthrough in SIGNIT that allowed them to read – if only briefly – Imperial Navy decrypts for about 12 days after April 1st. The results were not good. Support for the BGU was not expected – the embassy and attaché’s on Acamar had suspected Klingon involvement since the car bombing in August 2261, and the brief capture of a Klingon advisor by a pro-Sovereign militia in January had confirmed their presence planet side.[49] The prospect of this level of military deployment, however, was beyond their wildest expectations.
There was – and still is, in many circles – a consistent view that the Klingon Empire was fundamentally incapable of subtlety and subterfuge. A great deal of this is simply bigotry masked by IR language, based on the misunderstandings of Klingon bluster, arrogance, and overzealous drinking. You do not build an interstellar empire on drinking songs and ballads; you build it, to quote an ancient Terran, on Blood and Iron – and a great deal of subtlety. The concept that nearly a battalion’s worth of crack Klingon troops would be smuggled onto Acamar and deployed into the battle line behind sensors masking screens was beyond the limiting thinking of Starfleet Intelligence. The thought had occurred to many – including Ch’Shukar – but he was convinced by SI’s arguments that if the Klingons pulled the stunt, they would be found out.[50] How was SI to know that almost all its field agents in the Acamar sector had been compromised, or that their own transmissions were being read by Imperial Intelligence and the MIS? SI was not even aware that their Klingon counterparts had a SIGNIT department until 2263. [51]
SI’s decrypts would be confirmed by secondary reports on fleet movements by N’Garriez’s Botcktok Whigs, who had been raising the alarm in the Acamar sector for months by this point. It was too little, too late, however: the formed and detailed SI briefing on Klingon escalation on Acamar was delivered to President Broadhurst on April 15th at around 9:45 Paris time. Roughly 25 standard minutes earlier, BGU forces on Acamar open up on government positions only 12 day’s march from the Capital with a furious hurricane barrage. By the time Broadhurst stepped out of the meeting at 11:00, the Government Army had been broken in the field by the Imperial Marines, supported by mercenaries and BGU shook troops.
Broadhurst and Starfleet Command knew none of this: the SI briefing had been grim listening, but the situation did not appear dire; as far as they knew, there were only about 250 Klingons on the whole planet, instead of the actual count of nearly 5,500: and SI knew nothing of the Imperial Engineer Corp’s construction works outside the Nubuura spaceport. The main concern on the President’s mind was the new flash on his desk that had brought the entire city to a halt.
President Th’rhahlat was dead.
To Vindicate our Rights
Byss Th’rhahlat’s retirement had been short. After ending his term, he and his partners had moved to Scotland; two of them had teaching jobs at the Universities of Strathclyde and St. Andrews, and the opportunity to move away from the stress of Parisian society to the comparable calm of the Scottish central belt was seen as a good sign by his physicians. Despite his terminal diagnosis, Th’rhahlat was determined to keep working in some way; a guest teaching position at Strathclyde’s Political Science department was accepted with relish, and even his limited appearances at the university in the three months before his death were remembered by all who attended his lectures and seminars. His relationship with Progressive Unitarianism was strengthened too, with regular Sunday services becoming a feature of his calendar.
He seemed to rally a little in March, alongside the weather; Scotland’s typically grim winter breaking into spring a month earlier than usual. On April 13th he would travel to Edinburgh to see his doctor, who concluded that the degeneration in his lungs had slowed down noticeably. He would deliver a long lecture to the University of Edinburgh the next day. The Gordon Brown lecture theatre was packed to the seams; students and faculty were sitting and standing in the aisles and corridors, with some even cramming themselves two or three at a time into packed rows of chairs. Eyewitnesses describe his speech as being surprisingly eloquent, lacking the stammers, lack of direction and loss of focus that many had noted in later presidential appearances. He seemed closer to his healthy self and relished the opportunity to answer a myriad of questions from the undergraduates.
His final question – on how he understood his political legacy – was met with a moment of silence from Th’rhahlat before he answered. “I hope that we have learned that while we are stronger together, that strength does not justify our use of military might. Instead, that our strength is there to vindicate our rights – and the rights of all sentient people across the galaxy.” The standing ovation at the end of the talk would last for five minutes. Th’rhahlat would dine with the Chancellor of the University that evening, before retiring to his accommodation in the New College. He passed away peacefully that night.
Th’rhahlat’s death was met with muted shock. Everyone had known he wasn’t well, but most had expected him to live on for another half-decade at least. Business in Paris was suspended for a week; tributes were collected at the Palais, the Andorian Embassy and St. Giles’ Cathedral. The Suliban community of Paris, with whom he had celebrated Federation Day less than a year ago, would go into full mourning for him, with an uplifting parade along the Champs-Elysée on the 19th. Broadhurst would honour his colleague and friend that night, meeting mourners outside the Palais before giving an impromptu speech to assembled press. “He was the greatest of all of us. He was determined, righteous, and determined to deliver the best possible future for as many people as possible. He believed in this Union. He believed in our hopes and dreams. He believed in us.”
By the evening of the 19th, the sovereign forces on Acamar had almost entirely collapsed. As organised and (reasonably) well-armed as the Government forces were, they were nothing compared to the Imperial Klingon Marines. Arguably the best soldiers in the galaxy in 2262, the Imperial Marines eschewed many of the typical Klingon tactics of mass rushes and wave attacks; with small parties of well-armed and well led infantry approaching silently to destroy enemy positions with mass firepower in close combat. With a large Quch’Ha complement and general disregard for many tradition attitudes towards battlefield honour, their attacks on Acamarian positions were swift and brutal. Two entire banners (equivalent to a battalion) of Regional Guards would cease to exist within the first 12 hours of the attack; one unit of the Acamarian Regular Army would be destroyed in a manner of minutes when it was caught in the open by the marine light cavalry, with their troops massacred from ground and air as Klingon fighter-bombers strafed the fleeing troops.
Within six standard days, most of the 2nd (Tunaldui) Army had been destroyed or sent back fleeing in disorder by the well trained and well led BGU forces. While the government forces had held their own in other parts of the planet – most crucially in the loyalist Ny-Lesteal provinces – the crucial front protecting the capital had been overrun completely. The fact that the advance was led by a combination of Klingon Marines and the ex-FGF mercenaries of the “Lang Brigade” was not lost on the Acamarian Sovereign Government, who seemed to spend as much time recriminating the Federation Ambassador as they were destroying their documents.
The Ruling Council would flee the capital on April 26th, declaring it an open city. Ambassador T’Sov and her staff would evacuate on the 29th, as rioters began to approach the embassy compound. Her transport – S.S. Senegal Beauty – would be stopped by one of the Franklin class ships, now flying the flag of the Gathering Unity. She would be let past, but only after her crew and passengers were roughed up by a boarding party – including an officer of Imperial Intelligence.
Shukar and Rittenhouse reacted the news with consternation. Beyond the technological concerns of losing the patrol ships to Klingon “advisors”, there was now a pro-Klingon government deep within the treaty zone, and along a major trade route towards Barolia. Broadhurst – who’s diplomatic reputation was now on the line – pushed for rapid support for the remaining pro-ruling council forces.
“The fall of the Acamarian government is an unconscionable tragedy for the intergalactic community and challenges the security and stability of the entire Treaty Zone,” he would tell the council in an emergency session. “Our goal now should not be to inflict further violence on the Acamar people, but to ensure that their rights are protected, and to support free, fair and equitable government in both quadrants.”[52]
The language was popular with the press and the pubic, who were equally shocked that the Klingon “invasion” of Acamar had slipped in under Starfleet’s nose. Pushback from the council, however, was severe and swift. The civil war on Acamar had been an entirely internal matter, as far as they knew: unless Klingon intervention could be proved comprehensively, Starfleet was restricted by the re-interpretation of General Order One. Despite their own concerns over the capability of Kash-Ro missiles being deployed, the possibility of severe escalation was too much.[53]
In many senses, it appears that the council was overtly contracting its own rulings on Acamar from earlier in the year, but the rationales were consistent. The desire of the Security council to avoid being dragged into a larger, more dangerous proxy war on Acamar was strong and well intentioned, but their sedate attitude to deliberation was restricting. They were acting on information and briefings that were weeks, if not months out of date, and despite multiple offers from Starfleet for more detailing briefings, they refused to increasing their frequency or length. So, until they said otherwise, Broadhurst had direct orders from the Federation Security Council not to interfere with business on Acamar itself.[54]
Shukar would be summoned to the Palais, where the President would demand an immediate Starfleet response. The Commander, Starfleet – aggrieved and irritated at being dragged out of a full summit of the Admiralty – was in no mood for Broadhurst’s grandstanding, and bluntly told him that unless the Acamarian government agreed to abide by their predecessors’ treaties, there was little he could do without the full authorisation of the Security Council. When Broadhurst demanded that he at least get the purchased vessels back, Shukar reiterated his previous statement. The President, infuriated by the Admiral’s obstinance, asked if there was anything Starfleet could do to counter Klingon dominance of Acamar. Shukar replied, “it depends on whether you can get a council majority, mister president.”
There were options available, from a blockade to a peacekeeping operation planet side – but Broadhurst could do nothing without a majority vote in both the Security Council and the general council itself, and he had neither. Shukar knew that when he entered room; but he also knew that there were activities the Starfleet could – and actively was – taking to stabilise the situation. Convoy escorts were being supplemented, as was anti-piracy patrol in the region. Starfleet Intelligence was already in direct contact with elements of the exile government still on Acamar, who were already eager to pass on information on the BGU to Federation. DESRON 5 had broken off minelaying ops to scout the Korvat-Acamar space lanes from a distance, ready to shadow any Imperial force that violated the 2257 armistice by establishing a base on Acamar. 52nd Expeditionary Brigade had been moved to Condition three, with preparations for movement and deployment underway.
These were subtle measures, designed to negate and weaken any Klingon move and prepare Starfleet to react to any Klingon move. They were not proactive, or particularly aggressive; Shukar understood that the Tactical forces in the region still lacked the strength and training to match the Imperial Navy without prior preparation.[55] But Broadhurst didn’t want subtle and flexible reaction. He needed to cover for the diplomatic disaster quickly to save face internally and externally. As he understood it, a subtle reaction to the crisis would only make the Federation look weak, and “prey-like” to the “Imperial predator”. Broadhurst was equally concerned about the possibility of Kash-Ro’s being deployed to Acamar too, well aware of how they could command space for a dozen light-years in every direction – if intelligence assessments were to be believed.”[56]
From Shukar’s point of view, Broadhurst’s haste could be lethal. Any action – no matter how unprepared, so long as it was decisive in some way – would remind the Klingon Empire that the Federation had the strength to stand up for itself and open the opportunity for the diplomats to do their work on an equal stage. But overextension was an even greater risk than perceived weakness. The Imperial Navy had pounced on that in 2259, and the defeat in detail and Caleb IV had left 2nd Fleet so weak that it had only recovered in a March 2262. Shukar wasn’t about to put the same formation on the line again with the full authority of the security council and the powers that gave him.[57] Broadhurst knew that was impossible and refused to take Shukar’s arguments at face value. Between the logic of Starfleet’s rules of engagement and his own persistent paranoia, the paranoia was always going to win. Broadhurst would, after much argument, audible from outside the Presidential chambers, give Shukar a direct order to develop a plan to recover the sold vessels.
Forty minutes after he arrived in Paris, Shukar walked out of the President’s Office as an Admiral without Portfolio. Three minutes later, Admiral Rittenhouse – on Earth for the full staff conference – was summoned to Paris. Fifteen minutes after that, he walked out of the office as the new Commander, Starfleet, carrying in his hands direct orders to seize the six vessels back from the Acamarians. A shocked Dai Mehkan – long suffering Chief of Staff of the Starfleet since 2256 – would meet his new counterpart at the main transporter station at the Presidio, having already seen Shukar arrive and leave without saying a word. “I’ve got Blue Jackie’s job now,” Rittenhouse told them through a fierce handshake. “And we’ve got a job to do at Acamar.”[58]
[1] Intriguingly enough, the explosion would be visibly seen on Starbase K-5 in 2293, on the same day that the Khitomer Accords were signed.
[2] Attempts to duplicate the Liverpool Pod were made, including the seizure of a Starfleet shuttlecraft in December 2261, but the inability of the Empire to produce high quality duotronic parts made copying the pod impossible until the end of the decade.
[3] There are apocryphal records of some Klingons attempting to clear minefields by throwing bladed weapons – most likely mek’leth’s and bat’leths – at mines. The viability of such a tactic seems limited, but the author would not put it past the Klingons to try.
[4] Qiv Grathak, I Don’t Like to Call it a Living, (Tellar: Givesh & Yop, 2301)
[5] Toki Huan, “The Minesweeper’s Lost Victory?”
[6] V’Loss, Anti-Piracy warfare between 2245 and 2280.
[7] Vu’lek, The Economics of The Era of L’Rell and Sturka, (Paris; Klingon-Federation Publishing, 2350)
[8] Moffek, The New Warriors of Kahless
[9] Mk’Namazt, The Interspatial Ballistic Missiles: From Kash-Ro to the Obisidao (Olympus Mons; Pen and Sword, 2345.)
[10] Contact with Cardassia was reasonably limited in the 2260s. Starfleet had encountered Cardassian vessels on half a dozen occasions since the mid-2250s, while civilian traders and travellers had interacted with the Federation since the charter had been signed. Politically, however, both governments were deeply disinterested in each other.
[11] The McNair class light cruiser was as Marvick upgrade to the Malachowski class; the life extension programme would improve the power plant of the vessel, increasing their firepower and range of the ship. They would remain in service until the late 2280 before being replaced by the Okinawa class.
[12] Rittenhouse to Broadhurst, November 4th 2261.
[13] Rittenhouse to Broadhurst, November 10th 2261. Rittenhouse’s constant barrage of correspondence to Broadhurst survives almost entirely – as do Broadhurst’s scathing notes and laconic replies.
[14] Yunav – who would later go on to help form the Unionist party – was always less of a firebrand than Sh’Belulos on Originalism. Many cite this moment as where the original split within the conservatives began.
[15] Seb Cousins, Our Lost Disraeli: The Life and Times of Byss Th’rhahlat (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2300)
[16] AR Vale, Out of the Wilderness, (Paris; Midan Valerié, 2280)
[17] Starfleet Intelligence, Report on Anti-Federation activity (Imperial Intelligence/MIS), SD 2/2551.2
[18] Umos to Vale, Out of the Wilderness
[19] E’yk, The Broadhurst Conundrum
[20] The Church of England’s decision to not acknowledge any off-world diocese was critical to their decline in the 22nd century. The King of Canada, of course, remains the head of the church; and defender of the faith.
[21] Richard Ch’Rella, The End of Indecision: Federation Politics from Richard Morville to Lorna McClaren (Khartoum; Andorian Political Annals, 2290)
[22] Peraa Zh’tyvohr, Blue Jackie: The Biography of Admiral Ryn Ch’Shukar, 2188-2296 (Andoria: Laikan Historical Press, 2300)
[23] There is no circumstance in which this was true: Paris Time (GMT+1) was, and still is, considered universal for all legal timestamps.
[24] Sikorsky, The Lion and the Pack Mule:
[25] “Excursion guarantee” is the Klingon term for the legal authorisation for commerce raiding, given by the Imperial Chancellery to captains. It is comparable with the old earth letter of marque.
[26] Wald Bav Mar’Gott, Savage Klingon Peace in the Beta Quadrant (Starfleet: Starfleet Press, 2316)
[27] Avan al Gov, The Imperial Navy, 2240-2293. (San Francisco; Starfleet Press, 2345)
[28] Ekor, son of Rellen, Annals of our Century: Durak to Kesh. Translated by Curzon Dax, (Paris: Memory Alpha, 2306.)
[29] Robson, To Prevent Hell.
[30] Buq of Rigel IV, Our People Under Kahless; travellers in the Klingon Empire (Luna; Tranquillity Pres,, 2340)
[31] Hansard: FC Deb 10 Jan 2262 vol.152
[32] Alicandu, The Last Great Orion Empire, (Rigel IV; The Rigellian Historicadum, 2276)
[33] Nkomi Ngilu, Acamar since the Industrial Revolution (Khartoum; Sunar Press, 2330)
[34] Broadhurst to Th’rhahlat in Robson, To Prevent Hell.
[35] Robson, To Prevent Hell.
[36] Ngilu, Acamar since the Industrial Revolution
[37] Xanus Kellye, The Last Blood Feud: Acamar, 2240-2275. (London: Tranquillity Press, 2326)
[38] Kellye, The Last Blood Feud
[39] It is worth remembering that the stagnation and later failure of Stand-off missiles did not seem possible in early 2262 – in fact, there was a genuine concern that “high warp torpedoes” would transform warfare completely. Only the failures of the Mark IV and V Kash-Ro would make the limitations of the weapons clear.
[40] Chancellor L’Rell had resisted all attempts to establish permanent military control over states that had not submitted to the Empire after defeat on the battlefield: She accepted that the Enolians had fought – and lost – against unbeatable odds, so their conquest was “honourable”. She did resist, however, attempts to bring Tandar completely into the Empire, even after the Bregat Massacre. The contrived and haphazard Imperial control over the polity would only contribute to the instability that would end in the brutal Tandaran Civil War.
[41] Zym, Son of T’ai, Recollections
[42] The political interpretation of the Prime Directive, as exemplified in the Sulu Doctrine, was not universal in the 23rd century. In fact, many legal scholars argued that such an interpretation would be a violation of several articles of the Federation Charter.
[43] Mar’Gott, Savage Klingon Peace
[44] The armistice technically banned Klingon installations within the disputed region of space completely, but Klingon officials generally perceived the “Axanar Line” as the official red-line within Federation thinking.
[45] TK Robson & E.P. Zhuirhead, Towards a General Theory on Klingon Foreign Policy, (Starfleet; Starfleet Historical Review, 2285)
[46] H.W. Rogers, Left to the Diplomats, (New York: New World Press, 2304)
[47] Terry M. Shull, The Boss: The High Council of the Klingon Tsar. (London: Memory Alpha, 2305)
[48] Suzie P. Torres, The Mother: the lost life of Chancellor L’Rell (HarperCollin-Ch’Rell, 2312) & Zym, Recollections
[49] The militia had intended to hand the captured officer – Colonel Rynor of the Imperial Marine Light Cavalry – over to the government, but a mob, infuriated by the recent terror bombing of the region by BGU forces, would break into the prison Rynor was being held in and hang him the street. The town would be levelled by the BGU two months later.
[50] Peraa Zh’tyvohr, “Blue Jackie”
[51] Quentin Hawk, The Official History of Starfleet Intelligence
[52] Emergency Session of the Security Council of the United Federation of Planets, 28th April 2262
[53] Hansard, Private Session of the Federation Security Council, FSC(P) Q 29 April 2262 vol.14
[54] Privita Masego, Three Months in Summer: The Acamar Crisis, (Nairobi; Vanderbilt Imprint, 2330)
[55] Enuak Yuiqui, Though Arms We Need: Starfleet Command goes to war, 2256-2273.
[56] These assessments – based off of poorly translated Klingon test records and misunderstanding of the capabilities of stasis technology and Klingon warhead power – were entirely incorrect.
[57] Zh’tyvohr, Blue Jackie
[58] Sikorsky, Felix, The Lion and the Pack Mule: