Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️

Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️ Verified account @BaronDestructo · 2d

Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 4.2 - Cards on the Table) #Amalgaverse

Kirk gathers all four guests in the observation lounge and tells them the truth. The cruiser’s engines didn’t fail on their own. They were sabotaged, and whoever did it is sitting in this room.

Zax is on his feet at once. “Sabotage? Then it was ME they meant to kill. Have you any idea what I have endured? I was very nearly devoured by a black hole, and now I learn someone wanted me dead before I even got there.  Is there no end to my suffering?!” As always, the tragedy is entirely about him.

Robespierre is outraged. “I have served the Federation for thirty years, Captain, and I have never been so insulted. You would treat your own guests as criminals? Surely, this is a mistake.”

Milo looks visibly shaken. Lucinda remains unreadable. For a moment, their eyes meet. Then both look away.

Kirk asks where each of them was the night the cruiser’s engines failed.

Lucinda was with Zax of course.  Guarding him is her job. “She never left my side,”Zax confirms warmly.  "My ever-watchful sentinel.”

Robespierre was alone in his quarters, working on matters, he informs them, well above anyone’s clearance. Milo was asleep, and apologizes that nobody can vouch for him.

Before Kirk can press any of them, Data interrupts. A priority message has arrived from Starfleet Command.
Starfleet has checked with the Klingon High Council. The Council has never issued a warrant for Harven Zax. It has never heard of the charges. The document’s authorization and seal are forgeries.

Zax is outraged all over again. “A forgery? Even the charges against me are counterfeit!”

And Data has found something interesting on his own.  Running the ship’s name and her captain against Starfleet’s records, he’s learned that the Vor’nak belongs to the House of Kerath, a powerful Great House.

Whatever Kordath is doing here, he’s doing it for his House alone, using forged Council authority to threaten a Federation starship in violation of the Khitomer Accords. If the High Council found out which House was responsible, the House of Kerath would have a great deal to answer for.

Kirk sits back, and for the first time since the Bird-of-Prey appeared, he smiles. “Well. Now we have something to talk about.”

What do you do?

A) Expose him. Open a channel to every ship in range and accuse the House of Kerath of using a forged warrant to threaten a Federation starship. It could shame Kordath into withdrawing – or provoke him into proving he won’t be intimidated. Either way, you risk making a lifelong enemy of a Great House.

B) Tell him privately. Let Kordath know what you’ve learned and offer him a way to withdraw with his honor intact. It’s cleaner, but he may mistake discretion for weakness.

C) Go to the High Council. Report the House of Kerath’s role in the forgery through official channels and let the Council deal with its own. It’s the proper course, but the Council may not act before the deadline, and Kordath seems to be running out of patience.

Choose!

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Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️ Verified account @BaronDestructo · 1d

Today, I am recommending four essential works by Sakyo Komatsu, a giant of Japanese science fiction.

At the End of the Endless Stream (1966): A mysterious hourglass whose sand never runs out is unearthed from rock sixty million years old, setting off an investigation into the nature of time, higher dimensions, and humanity’s distant future.

Japan Sinks (1973): Scientists discover that the Japanese archipelago is facing a geological catastrophe that threatens to send the entire nation beneath the sea.  As earthquakes and volcanic eruptions intensify, a desperate effort begins to evacuate more than a hundred million people.  A haunting question lies beneath the disaster: what becomes of a people when their homeland disappears?

Virus: The Day of Resurrection (1964): An engineered virus escapes and sweeps the globe, leaving some ten thousand people stranded at research stations in Antarctica as the last of humanity.  Surviving the pandemic turns out to be only the beginning.

The Capital Vanishes (1985): An enormous, mysterious cloud suddenly envelopes Tokyo, severing communications and transportation and effectively removing Japan’s political and economic nerve center from the rest of the country.  As the crisis deepens, the nation must confront the consequence of losing its capital.

Check out the quoted thread for the recommended works of Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester, Bob Shaw, Clifford D. Simak, Algis Budrys, A.E. van Vogt, C.L. Moore, Cordwainer Smith, C.M. Kornbluth, D.G. Compton, Thomas M. Disch, Alice Bradley Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), John Brunner, Judith Merril, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jack Williamson, Katherine MacLean, Fred Saberhagen, Jack Vance, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Pangborn, R.A. Lafferty, William Tenn, Kate Wilhelm, Avram Davidson, James H. Schmitz, Eric Frank Russell, Brian W. Aldiss, Carol Emshwiller, Wilson Tucker, Chad Oliver, Zenna Henderson, Pauline Ashwell, Frederik Pohl, Henry Kuttner, Barrington J. Bayley, James P. Hogan, C.J. Cherryh, Margaret St. Clair, Keith Laumer, Charles L. Harness, Howard Waldrop, Rosel George Brown, Gordon R. Dickson, Robert Sheckley, Fredric Brown, Kit Reed, Joanna Russ, H. Beam Piper, Daniel F. Galouye, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Tom Godwin, Andre Norton, Harry Harrison, Vonda N. McIntyre, John Christopher, John Wyndham, Michael Bishop, Doris Piserchia, Bob Buckley, George Alec Effinger, Olaf Stapledon, John Varley, Miriam Allen deFord, Raymond F. Jones, Suzette Haden Elgin, Richard Cowper, Bruce Sterling, Josephine Saxton, Mack Reynolds, Phyllis Gotlieb, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Sterling E. Lanier, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, George Turner, Octavia E. Butler, Philip José Farmer, Somtow Sucharitkul, Charles Sheffield, Sonya Dorman, Clark Ashton Smith, Norman Spinrad, Naomi Mitchison, Suzy McKee Charnas, Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Preuss, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., George S. Schuyler, Damon Knight, Nancy Kress, E.C. Tubb, John Sladek, Joan D. Vinge, Ward Moore, Marta Randall, Robert L. Forward, Ian Watson, Brian Stableford, Keith Roberts, David R. Bunch, Michael G. Coney, Frank M. Robinson, Christopher Priest, Vernor Vinge, Lee Hoffman, Wilmar H. Shiras, Lucius Shepard, David I. Masson, Mildred Clingerman, Leigh Kennedy, Ernest Hogan, Jack Womack, Kenneth Bulmer, Mark Clifton, Kage Baker, Murray Leinster, Evelyn E. Smith, Kris Neville, Edmond Hamilton, James White, Wyman Guin, Emil Petaja, John Boyd, Christopher Anvil, Alan E. Nourse, T.J. Bass, Colin Kapp, Edmund Cooper, Rog Phillips, Mark S. Geston, James E. Gunn, Walter Tevis, Maureen F. McHugh, John Crowley, George O. Smith, Cherry Wilder, F.L. Wallace, G.C. Edmondson, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Pamela Sargent, Robert F. Young, Fred Hoyle, Eleanor Arnason, A. Bertram Chandler, Charles Eric Maine, Tanith Lee, Kathleen Ann Goonan, J.T. McIntosh, Philip Wylie, Tom Purdom, Richard McKenna, Donald Wandrei, Nelson S. Bond, William Hope Hodgson, A. Merritt, Raymond Z. Gallun, John Taine, Clare Winger Harris, Stanislaw Lem, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Angélica Gorodischer, Kir Bulychev, and Gérard Klein.

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Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️ Verified account @BaronDestructo · 1d

Second Mission: The Delivery (Part 4.3 - Night Moves) #Amalgaverse

Kirk opens a private channel to the Vor’nak, just the two captains, and lays it out.  The High Council never issued a warrant for Harven Zax, so the document Kordath relayed was a forgery.  Also, Kirk knows the Vor’nak belongs to the House of Kerath.  Kirk leaves the question of Kordath’s involvement politely unanswered.  He’s offering an escape route, not demanding a confession.

“Nobody else needs to know,”says Kirk. “Withdraw, and this conversation never happened.”

For a long moment, Kordath says nothing. Then, a nod of grudging respect.  “We will meet again, Kirk.  Perhaps sooner than you think.”

The screen goes dark. Moments later, the Vor’nak engages its cloak and disappears. The immediate threat is gone.  Whether Kordath is gone is another matter.

The Enterprise resumes course, the drop point less than two hours away.  No sooner has it done so than Carter’s voice cuts over the comm: “Captain, I need you in the science lab.  Now.”

He finds her there with Data and Dunsel.  Carter informs him that much of the little robot’s memory cache has been irretrievably corrupted, but they’ve been able to recover one fragment, a few seconds of surveillance footage from the cruiser’s corridor on the night of the sabotage.

She plays it.

The image stutters and breaks into static.  A dark, empty corridor.   Then a door opens, and Lucinda steps out. She looks around, then moves to the sealed door directly across the corridor.  She knocks. The door slides open.  Its occupant, Milo, pokes his head out, glancing down the corridor, then retreats inside.  She follows.  And the door slides shut behind her.  The footage dissolves into static.

“The file’s metadata places this recording in the middle of the cruiser’s night cycle,”Data observes. “Social calls at that hour are statistically uncommon.”

Carter doesn’t have to spell it out.  Lucinda told Kirk she was with Zax the whole night.  The recording says otherwise.

“It puts them together,”says Kirk. “But it doesn’t put either of them in engineering.”

What do you do?

A) Confront Lucinda. Show her the footage and ask her what she was doing in Milo’s quarters.  But she’s a professional who’s just been caught in a lie, and people like that tend to say less, not more.

B) Ask Milo.  He’s nervous and eager to please, and he may tell you what she won’t.  But he and Lucinda are obviously close, and anything you ask him will likely get back to her, tipping your hand.

C) Put it on the big screen. Gather all four guests, play the footage for everyone, and then question Lucinda and Milo in the open. It catches them off-guard, but it shows the saboteur your entire hand.

D) Watch them. Keep the footage to yourselves and discreetly monitor both.  It keeps your advantage, but leaves the question open with the handoff less than two hours away.

Choose!

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