The Balance of Terror

[Cptn Corizon 0]

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

 

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

 

With the Balance of Terror in his grasp, Ah-Windu sat tapping his claws against the glass table top in the Ready Room of the USS Excalibur. The echoes reverberated across the walls making sharp singing noises as the sound waves bounced off the walls.

 

With all the complexities and twists of this…affair… one question continued to daunt the Dameon—just what were the Romulans up to? On the surface, their motives looked as transparent as a Matarian Glass Jelly-Fish…but on the surface they were more opaque than vulcanized obsidian.

 

The three Dominion Warships they had detected leaving orbit had only mucked up the situation more.

 

What in the name of the one could they be hoping to achieve.

 

Always in the darkness of subterfuge and hiding, Ah-Windu had never been one to be in command—directly. He preferred to be in the background carefully orchestrating the actions of others. His tenure as Captain of the Excalibur…the duration of this mission….would continue that way. Some commanding officers, he’d learned both from his experiences during the Dominion War , and at the Academy, liked to be at the very threshold of what was happening, and the event horizon. But not Ah-Windu. Not because he was afraid, not because he would put himself in danger…but because one can not think clearly in the heat of battle.

 

His entire professional life had been spent planning for and preventing the very situation he found himself mucked up in; and it was certainly not someplace he waned to find himself in the midst. And if he…and for that matter the Federation planned to survive this, he would have to know exactly what tools were at his disposal.

 

He glanced unceremoniously at the chrono on the desk. He’d given Graham and Chen one hour to do an impossible task, or nearly impossible…depending. A test of worth. Ah-Windu wanted to know what he was working with…clay or diamond. Both had their situational value, and both had their situational usages which normally determined the former.

 

The Andorian works hard, and cares about the mission, he follow because of a sense of duty…though I am not quite sure why…he is after all not truly Andorian but more of a Science Project gone awry. Chen seems to follow out of fear of the claws.

 

Corizon stopped in his exposition of the crew to admire his talons—some found them what stopped the Dameon people from being accepted within the homosapien only club that is the Federation, but he recognized a tool when he saw it, and felt it only fitting to use them for their psychological advantages.

 

The wild cards. Corizon resumed examing. Many skeletons fill Mr. Xavier’s closet …quite literally. And the tendency towards self-autonomy—that can be dangerous. I will have to keep an eye…and ear on him.

 

Then there is Doctor Delgado. The Vulcan, though she seems to have missed the lesson where she, as a proper green-blood, is overbearing and arrogant to a fault—but then she is only a quarter green-blood. I suppose I should be happy, but they do make for interesting arguments.

 

They will be tried by fire. I know what the Doctor said, “Big Deal.” But I do not think that she realized the scope of this…affair. The balance of terror, the balance of power of the entire Galaxy lay in our hands. We have been sent on an errand by the One to ferret out those who oppose the Federation, those who oppose peace and justice. For now is the hour when we walk alone, just before the storm, when we walk in the dead land, in the shadows of a dying star. .

 

Sober and dispassionate, Ah-Windu arose from his seated position. He gave a slight, sub-conscious tug on his uniform and glanced out the window at the moon the Excalibur. His pursed lips formed the silent words to an Ancient prayer, head bowed slightly, he turned exiting the Ready Room onto the Bridge.

 

Status Report, Mr. Pilot?