Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code by Christopher L. Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

NX -variant destroyer developed late in the war and intended to replace the smaller Neptune class. But Archer felt the heavily armed design was unnecessary in peacetime.
    As he skimmed the report, Archer noted that Osman was again trying to convince him to name one of the new ships Enterprise . He had resisted reusing the name so soon after his own Enterprise had been decommissioned and placed in the Smithsonian, and there were political fears about offending the Klingons by commemorating a ship that had been a thorn in their side so many times. Besides, the name of Captain sh’Prenni’s Vol’Rala essentially meant Enterprise, so adding another to the fleet could be seen as redundant. Osman’s memo countered that by that logic, it would be impossible to have ships named Intrepid and Dauntless at the same time, for instance. And, she said, the Klingons were too preoccupied with their own problems to care about the name of a Starfleet ship. Given the recent news from Endeavour, the Centaurian admiral may have been more right than she knew. Archer figured he should at least give the idea some consideration. After all, both the Ceres and Poseidon construction proposals extended well into the next decade. Perhaps one of the later ships in whatever class was chosen could be given the name. It might be nice to have a new Enterprise in service after all.
    “Anything else?” Archer asked once he finished glancing over the report.
    “Captain Shumar’s standing by on subspace. He’s got a report on that distress signal from Theta Cygni Twelve.”
    Archer frowned. “And you kept him waiting?”
    Williams looked somber. “From what I gather, it’s not a time-sensitive situation.”
    The admiral took his point. The radio-frequency distress signal had only recently been picked up by a Tellarite freighter passing thirty light-years from Theta Cygni. The system was only sixty light-years from Earth, but in a direction where few Federation or allied ships had yet traveled—which was why it had been necessary to divert Shumar’s Essex nearly thirty-five light-years from its assigned survey route. Whatever had led to the distress signal, the crisis was probably long since over—but to ignore a cry for help was unconscionable.
    Archer opened the channel from Essex . “Captain Shumar. What have you got for me?”
    The bronze-skinned, mustachioed captain looked as stiff as ever as he gave his report in crisp British tones. “Not a pleasant tale, I fear, Admiral. We were far too late to make a difference, of course, but the situation was worse than we could have imagined. The planet was lifeless, devastated by chemical and bacteriological warfare. From the evidence we found, and from the few surviving records, it seems the planet was overrun by a wave of mass insanity. The natives tore each other apart in a genocidal rage, and no one understood why.”
    Archer was stunned. “Could you find any evidence of a medical cause?” he asked.
    “No, sir. The Theta Cygnians were some sort of land-dwelling invertebrates. Remarkable anatomy, judging from the artworks we found, but leaving no skeletons or other hard remains. After thirty years, there’s nothing left to autopsy.”
    “And none of them survived or escaped? If they had the means to send an interstellar distress signal, even by radio . . .”
    “There was evidence of dozens of ships being launched. Amazingly many, in fact, given that their civilization was descending into madness all around them. Nuclear engines, probably like a DY -series sleeper.”
    “Any chance of tracking them down?”
    “Not an easy prospect, Admiral. Theta Cygni burns hot—its stellar wind has probably scattered any ion trails, so it would be difficult to determine their speed or direction. By now, if they haven’t already arrived at their destination, they’re probably coasting in low-power mode, which would make them easy to overlook. It would be one hell of a long shot to find them, sir.”