“Our weapons systems are opening fire again,” Underhill said as he took a seat behind the helm.
Dax expected the deck beneath his feet to shimmy slightly in response to the virtual weapons fire, just as it had during the previous salvo. He waited for a good five-count before he noticed that no such thing had happened—and that the once-grinning Dr. Underhill now looked as dour as Skon.
“The weapons haven’t fired, Doctor Underhill,” Skon said.
“Fire control did transmit the appropriate signal,” Underhill said. “It appears not to have traveled past the bridge.”
Another alarm flashed right in front of Dax’s surprised eyes. “Comm system’s just gone down. This ship’s virtual crew can’t get in touch with its virtual Starfleet—or anybody else.”
“Weapons control systems have stopped accepting commands,” Underhill said, punctuating his statement by pounding his right fist once against the top of the helm console. “Helm’s gone, too. Along with our hull-plating system and propulsion.” He smacked the console again.
All that percussive input can’t be helping matters any, Dax thought.
The Trill turned away from Underhill to consult his console. “The Romulans are approaching.”
“Confirmed,” said Skon. “Internal sensors detect intense incoming directed-energy transmissions.”
“Transporters,” Dax said. “Romulan boarding parties. They’ll take the ship.”
Underhill muttered a curse. “Not if we blow it up around them.”
“The crew escape pods are frozen solid,” Dax said. “Autodestruct is dead as well.”
With a loud pneumatic hiss, the ceiling and forward section of the bridge module began to open. Dax blinked in the late-afternoon light of Alpha Centauri III’s two primary stars as a silhouette of a human male stormed into the middle of the bridge.
“This is all you have to show for the past year’s work?” Captain Jefferies said, plainly annoyed. “This is how we’re supposed to overcome the Romulans’ remote-hijack weapon?”
“There appears to be some work still ahead of us,” Underhill said, evidently unimpressed by Jefferies’s military thunderbolts.
“Indeed,” said Skon. “A complete failure analysis should prove illuminating.”
Jefferies came to a stop just across the railing from Dax’s station. “And what observation would you like to make about this afternoon’s debacle, Mister Dax?”
Other than “uh-oh,” Dax could think of little of any real relevance to say to the captain. Almost without conscious volition, he found himself beginning to stammer out what he hoped would quickly evolve into a coherent sentence.
“D-d-do you think you can talk the, um, Vulcan Science Academy,” he said, “into loaning Skon out to us for a little bit longer?”
* * *
Immediately after his dinner break, Dax returned to the lab, eager to delve into what had gone wrong with the afternoon’s simulation. He was surprised to see only Pell Underhill, who looked tired and drawn, studying the data that scrolled across his padd.
“Where’s Skon?”
“Gone,” said a voice directly behind Dax, making him jump slightly.
Turning, Dax found himself face to face with Captain Eric Stillwell, one of the project’s main Starfleet designers. “When’s he coming back? And where’s Captain Jefferies?”
Stillwell shook his head. “Skon probably won’t be back for a good while. The Nyran picked him up an hour ago to take him back to Vulcan. As for Captain Jefferies, I’m just taking the helm until he finishes running a failure analysis of the previous simulation.”
Dax couldn’t prevent his eyes from narrowing with suspicion. “Funny that Skon didn’t mention anything about having to leave today.” It was also strange that Jefferies had failed to speak up about the subject. Had he been caught by surprise as well?
“Must have slipped Skon’s mind,” said Stillwell. “You know how focused on their work Vulcans can get. And they don’t always excel at the social niceties.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Dax said, though he understood that he wasn’t particularly socially adept himself. “But Skon would have said something. Why would he suddenly—”
Stillwell cut him off, obviously irritated. “How should I know? Maybe he had a family emergency back home. Maybe the Vulcan Science Directorate needs him to translate some more ancient documents out of Old High Vulcan.”
That second point struck Dax as unlikely. Certainly, everybody knew that Skon had created the English translation of The Teachings of Surak, ostensibly to encourage humanity to think in a more Vulcanlike manner. He hoped that Skon would create a Trill edition of Surak’s writings—updated to include the new stuff that had been discovered stored in an unearthed archaeological artifact. However, Dax couldn’t believe that his friend and colleague would have suddenly dropped out of the Romulan Countermeasure Development Team to pursue a new literary project.
That left Stillwell’s first point—the possibility that Skon had left in response to some emergency back home. Turning toward Pell, Dax said, “Doctor Underhill, have you heard anything about why Skon left?”
Underhill put aside his scanner and shook his head glumly. “You know as much as I do.”
Dax shook his head, concerned. “I certainly hope nothing happened to T’Rama.” He turned to face Stillwell. “That’s his wife. Skon told me they were planning to start a family in a few years, once he’d—”
“Could we please stay focused on the business at hand, Mister Dax?” Stillwell said, cutting him off. “We need to set the simulator up for a second run.”
Dax could scarcely contain his incredulity. “Tonight?”
“Immediately, Mister Dax,” Stillwell said with a stern nod.
“But we haven’t had a chance to analyze the failure of the last simulation,” Dax said.
“I told you, Captain Jefferies will handle that.” Stillwell’s tone contained enough tritanium that Dax took a step backward. “Now, forget about the last simulation.”
Underhill stepped forward, his brow furrowed. “Tobin’s right, Captain. We need to know exactly why the last run failed before we can proceed with another. To do so would be a waste of time and resources. Not to mention bad science.”
As Underhill and Stillwell stood regarding each other silently, Dax tried to brainstorm possible causes of the simulation’s failure but came up with nothing. It should have worked, and worked outstandingly, and yet it hadn’t. After everything the team had learned from Starfleet’s recent victories in the Orion sector and the previous year’s costly yet surprisingly successful First and Second Battles of Altair VI—information confirmed via the back channels in Vulcan’s intelligence service—the simulation should have ended with the Starfleet vessel triumphing over its Romulan opponent. The anti-hijacking countermeasure’s newest analog design features looked to have been all but infallible, from the non-networked bridge computers that incorporated archaic tape drives instead of redundant memory modules, to the new system of prearranged prefix codes. They had even used decidedly nondigital data displays that resembled the mechanical mileage readouts that Dax’s first host, Lela, remembered seeing on the control panels of century-old Trill ground cars.
“This isn’t about science, Doctor,” Stillwell was telling Underhill, his words freighted with impatience. “It’s about doing whatever’s necessary to defeat the Romulans before they plant their flag here, and on Earth. Or isn’t that a priority for you?”
The slight to his patriotism seemed to break Underhill. His shoulders slumping in defeat, he moved toward the faux bridge’s engineering console, where the simulator’s main controls, including the RESET function, could be found.
“Thy will be done, Captain,” Underhill said as he began flipping toggles and pressing large and colorful translucent buttons that looked like the glowing candies young children received during syn lara concert festivals on Trill.
Stillwell moved purposefully across the bridge and took
the center seat. He pressed a button on the right arm of the captain’s chair. “Game on!”
Minutes passed. Finally, a spacecraft shaped like one of the symbionts that dwelled in the underground pools beneath the Caves of Mak’ala appeared on the main bridge viewer and made a swift approach.
“Incoming!” Stillwell shouted. “Tactical Alert!”
Once again, the bridge module shook violently. Here we go again, Dax thought as he checked the status of the hull plating and the weapons.
A few minutes later, every system aboard the simulated Starfleet vessel was running at near optimal status. And little was left of the hostile Romulan ship other than a slowly expanding cloud of metal fragments, frozen atmosphere, and other debris.
“I don’t get it,” Dax said. “We won that round. So what went wrong the first time?”
Grinning triumphantly, Stillwell rose from the command chair. “What happened the first time,” he said, “was that we had personnel present who represented an unacceptable security risk.”
Dax realized only belatedly that his jaw had fallen open. “What are you talking about?”
His smile folding quickly into a scowl that seemed intended specifically for Dax, Stillwell said, “We finally have demonstrable proof that our countermeasure against the Romulan remote-hijacking weapon will work in the field.”
“Do we?” Dax said. “We’ve only tested it twice, and we got radically different results on each occasion.”
Stillwell shook his head. “No. The results of the first test showed you what we wanted you to see. Or, to be more specific, what we wanted Doctor Skon to see.”
Underhill’s bushy brows looked as though they were challenging each other to a duel. “Captain, you wanted the first test to appear to have failed? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Suddenly it was all becoming clear to Dax. “It makes perfect sense,” he said, “if you don’t want Vulcan to know what we’ve just developed here.” Pushing aside the sense of intimidation he felt in the captain’s presence, he took a step toward Stillwell. “You cheated.”
Stillwell faced him down confidently. “I changed the apparent result of today’s first test because I refuse to risk compromising what may turn out to be our greatest asset in this war.”
That struck Dax as enormously unfair, especially when he considered Skon’s contribution. He had worked as hard as anyone else on this project. “Vulcan’s space force is a lot more vulnerable to the Romulan hijack tactic than Starfleet is, all our countermeasures notwithstanding. Vulcan has as big a stake in this thing as Earth does. As does my own homeworld.”
Stillwell nodded. “As long as the Vulcans and the Trill don’t have any skin in the game, then they have no need to know that this project was anything other than the failure it appeared to be this afternoon.”
Skin in the game, Dax thought. It was a curious phrase, but its meaning was intuitively obvious to him. It made him shiver.
Though Stillwell’s actions horrified him, they also piqued his curiosity. “You sent Skon away to keep Vulcan in the dark about Earth’s ability to cope with the Romulan remote-hijacking weapon.”
“That’s right,” Stillwell said. “I don’t particularly trust Vulcans, especially since they’ve abandoned their Coalition Compact responsibilities.”
“But you didn’t send me home,” Dax said. “Do you trust the Trill more than you do the Vulcans?”
Stillwell chuckled. “Mister Dax, I don’t know enough about your species to know whether I ought to trust you or not. But I’ve spent enough time doing intel work to know that the more I know about anybody, the less I’m likely to trust him.”
Dax felt more confused now than before he’d asked the question. He considered the symbiont in his belly and the pains his government had taken to conceal the fact of Trill symbiosis from all other sentient species. Given the practices of his own society, he could hardly fault this human for keeping his guard up.
“So you’re saying you do trust me, Captain?” Dax asked. “At least, more than you do Skon?”
Stillwell laughed again. “No, Mister Dax. I’m saying because I still have a warp-seven stardrive project that needs to move forward, I can’t afford to do without both you and Doctor Skon. That warp-seven work should keep both you and Doctor Underhill busy for the foreseeable future. Maybe even for the entire duration of the war.”
“Oh,” Dax said. It wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for. But at least it was good to know precisely where one stood.
“Remember, both of you,” Stillwell said, “everything we’ve learned via today’s Romulan countermeasure tests is now classified at the highest level. The fact that it exists—and that it works—is now one of the most closely guarded secrets of Starfleet and the United Earth government. And I am charged with keeping it that way, at least until all our ships of the line are equipped with it, and possibly for some time afterward. It is therefore a secret I will expect both of you to guard carefully.” His eyes widened, and his tone took on a perfervid intensity. “With your very lives, if it comes to that.”
The implied threat was not lost on Dax, and he was sure that Underhill had heard it clearly as well. That threat made the Trill engineer realize that Stillwell was flat-out wrong about something he had said a little earlier: Unlike Vulcan, Trill did indeed have “skin in the game.” Trouble was, he found the stakes of the game to be far too high, even for a card-game aficionado like himself.
And all the “skin” belonged to one Tobin Dax.
ELEVEN
Wednesday, February 16, 2157
Enterprise NX-01
Gamma Hydra sector
“ANY SIGN of the Romulans yet, Malcolm?” Archer said as he leaned forward in his captain’s chair toward the weird vista displayed on the bridge’s central viewscreen.
Like the periphery of the viewer’s image area, the screen’s center depicted a region of infinite black. This was encircled by a bright, flat orange annulus, vaguely reminiscent of the ring system of Saturn. Fountains of brilliance taller and more intense than any volcano Archer had ever seen streamed from the top and bottom of the interior space, jets of superheated matter that was being ejected from the vicinity of the black hole’s accretion disk at nearly the speed of light. On either side of the brilliant ring lay an image of the yellow star known as Gamma Hydra, which lay less than two light-years distant. Although the star and its system of planets lay far enough from the singularity not to be endangered by the black hole’s ravening event horizon, the object’s intense gravity had lensed Gamma Hydra’s light enough to make it appear to be two distinct objects rather than one.
“Not yet, sir,” said Malcolm. “So far none of the other ships in the flotilla report making enemy contact. Apart from all the electromagnetic and subspace noise being generated by the singularity and its polar jets, it’s still as quiet as a mausoleum out there.”
Archer frowned as he considered all the deaths the Romulans had caused since the war had begun—as well as the fact that Enterprise had very nearly become a flying tomb the last time she’d made such a close approach to such a highly energetic singularity. “That’s an unfortunate metaphor, Malcolm,” he said.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Continue coordinating sensor sweeps with the rest of the flotilla,” Archer said.
“Aye, Commodore.”
Archer winced at the archaic naval title, though he couldn’t fault Malcolm—the product of a family with a long, proud tradition of service to Britain’s Royal Navy—for using it. “Commodore” actually was the correct term, because for the current mission, Starfleet Command had placed Archer in charge of several vessels drawn from the less-advanced Daedalus-class fleet: the William Clark, the Cow-pens, the Gettysburg, the Jein, the Lovell, the Nez Perce, and the Okuda.
“Hoshi, any word from the Vissian government?” Operating on the assumption that the best place to look for invading Romulans would be wherever the Vissians had hidden their listening post, Archer had formally requ
ested that the Vissian government provide Enterprise with the facility’s exact coordinates.
“Still nothing, sir,” Lieutenant Sato said after taking a moment to check the communications queue at her portside station.
Archer leaned forward in his chair, as though getting a few additional centimeters closer to the viewscreen would enable him to glimpse the Romulan attack force, which a grateful local merchant captain had warned him of several weeks earlier.
“I still must question the logic of trusting the word of an alien freight hauler, Captain,” said T’Pol, who had momentarily turned away from her scanner at the port science station to face the center of the bridge. “We have no guarantee that Starfleet hasn’t set eight vessels in pursuit of amphibious avian fauna.”
Recognizing one of T’Pol’s deadpan bids to lighten his mood despite the seriousness of the point she was raising, Archer smiled. “Nothing except my intuition that the man was sincerely grateful to us after Phlox saved his crew from that outbreak of Rigelian fever.”
“That’s one of the benefits of conducting a lengthy ‘generosity offensive,’ sir,” Malcolm said. “We can cultivate goodwill and gratitude with every local commercial starfarer we encounter out here. But what we can’t do is know whether we can trust that what they tell us about the Romulans is anything other than disinformation deliberately created by the Romulans.”
“I concur,” said T’Pol.
Archer nodded. “I can’t disagree with anything either of you are saying. But there’s one other piece of the puzzle you haven’t taken into account—the fact that the Vissians have set up a listening post in this sector.”
“So they say,” Malcolm said. “So far I haven’t been able to find any evidence of it.”
“Probably because the Vissians are using the EM noise from that singularity to cover their tracks.” Archer gestured toward the never-ending twin eruptions at either end of the enigmatic body on the main viewer. “Just as the Romulans will.”
The captain noticed a look of dawning comprehension on his tactical officer’s face. “You think the Romulans know about the listening post,” Malcolm said.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 9
