T’Pol nodded. That sounded reasonable. She said, “Humans are prone to emotional repercussions following highly stressful situations. And ship-to-ship combat is unquestionably stressful.”
The lieutenant shrugged and displayed a dissatisfied scowl. “It’s not as though I actually got injured, Commander.”
“That is entirely beside the point. You need not experience a physical injury to be traumatized emotionally. Witnessing such occurrences can suffice as the cause.” T’Pol had spent the last two hours in meditation in an effort to purge her subconscious of the terrible spectacle she had seen earlier today—the horrendous tableau of decompressing, burning, disintegrating spacecraft that otherwise might follow her into her dreams.
But such things were entirely too personal to share, even among her fellow Vulcans.
“Maybe you’re right,” Lieutenant Sato said. “Phlox ordered me to spend the rest of the day trying to relax.”
“Did you succeed?”
The human released a brief laugh, creating small facial lines that T’Pol had never noticed before. “Do I look relaxed to you? I haven’t been able to sleep very well at night for weeks now, let alone take naps during the middle of the day. But I’ve never folded up like that on the bridge before.”
T’Pol thought she was beginning to understand the source of the lieutenant’s distress. “You believe you have somehow demonstrated weakness.”
“I survived having my brain infested by Xindi reptilian parasites.” Sato’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “I suppose turning out to be weaker than I thought I was is part of the problem.”
The intensity of Sato’s emotions was beginning to make T’Pol uncomfortable. “Then perhaps you should discuss this with Major Kimura. I know that the two of you have grown close over the past year.”
Sato’s round face flushed. “Have we been that obvious?”
“Enterprise is a small ship, Lieutenant. Such relationships may be unwise, but they violate no regulation of which I am aware. Regardless, they can be difficult even for Vulcans to avoid noticing.”
Judging from Sato’s breathing and complexion, the human appeared to be regaining a measure of her self-control. “I don’t feel quite right about talking to Takashi about this. I know he likes to come off as the quiet, deep MACO warrior-philosopher, but I don’t think even he can get his head around what’s really bothering me.”
T’Pol’s curiosity suddenly began wrestling with her reluctance to involve herself in the personal matters of a subordinate. In spite of herself, her right eyebrow went aloft.
“And you believe that I would understand your problem better than the major could?” she asked.
Sato nodded. “Of everybody on board, you may be the only one who can.”
Several seconds passed in silence as T’Pol considered Sato’s request. The moment stretched until her curiosity and a desire to help a colleague overcame her natural Vulcan reticence.
She gestured toward the mats on the floor of the small but adequate central living area. “Make yourself comfortable, Lieutenant.”
“Hoshi,” the lieutenant said as she nimbly lowered herself to one of the mats and sat there, cross-legged, near T’Pol’s meditation candle. T’Pol adopted a similar posture, her back to the port and the star-flecked infinity that lay beyond it.
“Hoshi,” T’Pol said, correcting herself. Apart from Trip, and on rare occasions Captain Archer, being on a first-name basis with a human colleague felt awkward.
After a lengthy pause, Sato said, “You’re a Vulcan.”
Again, one of T’Pol’s eyebrows rose. Sato’s remark reminded her of how a V’tosh ka’tur—a so-called Vulcan without logic she had met during her tenure as a V’Shar agent—had responded to the very same words uttered by an Andorian soldier. “What was it that gave me away?” the V’tosh ka’tur had asked the Andorian. “The ears? Or the way I snort when I laugh?”
“Whatever you may believe to be wrong with you, Hoshi,” T’Pol said, “your grasp of the obvious remains unimpaired.” It occurred to her that even among the strictest Syrrannite orders on her homeworld, there might be no such thing as a V’tosh rik’ortal—a Vulcan without sarcasm.
Flushing again, the human said, “What I meant was, you’re a student of the philosophy of Surak.”
“I am,” T’Pol said softly, nodding. “It is a lifelong pursuit.”
“I’ve read Skon’s translation of The Teachings of Surak,” Sato continued. “I’ve even read it in the original Vulcan.”
T’Pol could not help but be impressed. While Skon’s volume was a relatively common sight on the bookshelves and coffee tables of humans from Earth to Alpha Centauri to the Altair system, humans willing expend the energy to read Surak in Vulcan were rare indeed.
T’Pol experienced a sudden pang of deep regret for her earlier sarcasm.
“And you have questions.”
Sato nodded. “More than I had before I started. And way more since the war got under way.”
“And you wish to understand how a Syrrannite—a follower of Surak, bred to the ways of peace—can take part in such destruction and bloodshed.”
Sato answered with a nod and a small, sad smile. “Yes.”
I wish I had a simple answer for you, Hoshi, T’Pol thought.
The Vulcan paused to consider all the killing she had abetted since the war had begun. Did the lives her actions had arguably helped save truly balance the scales? Did the fact that Enterprise and the rest of the Starfleet task force had succeeded in stopping the Romulan advance here at Prantares, preventing an aggressive empire from annexing the worlds of the Pi 3 Orionis system and thereby folding their abundant resources into its war effort mean anything in the end?
Perhaps T’Pau had been right all along. Maybe there really was no way back onto the path of peace for any Vulcan who succumbed to the temptation to pick up the sword. Could she ever embrace Surak’s teachings, or would they always elude her?
And her participation in the war wasn’t the only issue. In addition, she had become psychically bonded to a human mate. Did she even still deserve to call herself a Vulcan?
T’Pol knew that she wouldn’t settle the matter anytime soon. At least not so long as she remained aboard Enterprise. And certainly not, she thought, until I can return to Vulcan and climb the steps at Mount Seleya.
A pang of regret and homesickness sharper than any blade pierced her guts. The place where Surak’s essence was forever taken from us.
She rose, crossed to the environmental controls on the wall, and lowered the lights back to meditation-chamber levels.
“Commander?” said Sato, still seated cross-legged on the mat.
T’Pol sat, resuming her contemplative posture. “I’m afraid I can furnish no easy solutions,” she said, “for either of us.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Sato said and started to rise.
T’Pol held up a hand, and the lieutenant settled nimbly back into her cross-legged, seated position. “I did not, however, say there were no answers. I would encourage you to remain for a while.”
“You’ll let me meditate with you?” Sato said, her gratitude clearly audible.
T’Pol began trying to focus her attention upon the flame that burned atop the candle between them. “If there are answers for either of us,” she said with a nod, “perhaps we can find them more quickly if we seek them together.”
FIFTEEN
Day Forty-Four, Romulan Month of Khuti, 1181 YD’E
Thursday, December 29, 2157
Haakona
STANDING ALONE on the darkened observation deck of the Warbird Pontilus, Admiral Valdore ignored the trio of battered, broken spacecraft that drifted across his visual field. He tried not to notice the steady, insistent approach of the Bird-of-Prey Nel Trenco, which had arrived right on schedule. Instead, he focused his attention on what remained of the former province-cum-protectorate that had been such a thorn in the side of Praetor Karzan’s last two predece
ssors.
Even from low orbit, he could discern precious little detail on Haakona’s dayside surface other than a few indistinct blotches that might be columns of smoke. It was only beyond the boundary of the terminator, the edge of the shadow of Haakonan night, that the really telling signs lay. Rather than the brightly illuminated, straight-line geometries that characterized an advanced world, the lights that punctuated the darkness were scattered and chaotic. The artful, alternating curves and straight edges of vehicular thoroughfares and cities had been supplanted by the randomness and disorder of fires burning hither and yon, untended and out of control.
In slightly less than four complete turns of this planet on its axis, Haakona’s civilization had been eradicated. It appeared that it would never again represent a threat to the Romulan Star Empire, or to anything else.
Valdore was now free to concentrate the entire war-making apparatus of the Romulan Star Empire upon the urgent task of bringing the hevam homeworld of Earth to its knees, along with its remaining allies.
He heard the hiss of a hatch opening directly behind him. A familiar, confident voice followed. “Admiral Valdore, the Nel Trenco is docking with us.”
“Thank you, Subcommander Terix,” Valdore said without lifting his gaze from the desolate vista that lay beyond the panoramic window.
“Admiral Dagarth and Colonel Talok are aboard. The colonel says they have orders to report to you in person, immediately.”
“That is correct, Subcommander.”
“Shall I conduct them to your office?”
Valdore turned away from the port and shook his head at the subcommander. “Bring them here. I will wait.”
The younger man’s heels clicked as he delivered a textbook elbow-over-the-heart salute before turning and exiting.
After pausing to straighten the Honor Blade that dangled from his belt, Valdore resumed staring at the vast, quiescent planetscape that slowly turned below him. A small, scorched native spacecraft tumbled past, apparently merely one of the hundreds of such vessels whose operators had proved too inept to get clear of the planet and into deep space. Others had no doubt escaped Haakona, perhaps even making it out of the system entirely, compelled by mutagenic demons toward a destination that probably had never existed in the first place.
He wondered how many remained alive but stranded on the planet’s surface—hagridden by the same delusion yet unable to flee the planet in order to act upon it.
Uncounted moments later, the hatch behind him opened again. He turned in time to see Admiral Dagarth and Colonel Talok enter the observation deck. The two officers approached, then abruptly stopped to deliver crisp salutes to Valdore in unison.
Valdore turned away from his officers and set his gaze back upon the planet below. “Sit-rep on Haakona, Admiral,” he said. Though Dagarth and Valdore nominally shared the same rank, she occupied a lower echelon of the admiralty; while she was a Khre’rior, or vice-admiral, he was supreme commander of the fleet, with seniority that far and away outstripped hers.
Dagarth’s reply dripped with pride. “As you can see, Admiral Valdore, Haakona has been completely neutralized, per your orders.”
Valdore scowled as he surveyed the dying planet. “Your orders, Dagarth, were to present me with a plan for the neutralization of Haakona. Not to implement one without my prior authorization.”
“I understand, sir,” she said, still sounding infuriatingly confident. “Unfortunately, it proved necessary to take preemptive action.”
He turned back in Dagarth’s direction and approached her almost closely enough for their noses to touch. To his surprise, she stood her ground.
“It proved necessary to defy my orders?” he shouted.
She answered without hesitating and without raising her voice. “The viral material my men released into Haakona’s atmosphere was the product of paid specialists from B’Saari II and Adigeon Prime,” she said. “The bioscience expertise available on those worlds is far in advance of ours.”
“Or so says the Yridian I’m told sold you the material. Your virus should have been thoroughly tested by our own technologists before you deployed it here. It might have unforeseen long-term residual effects on us.” The thought of virus-infected Romulan soldiers suddenly abandoning their posts in legionary numbers chilled him to the marrow.
“The research team guaranteed that the viral agent would affect only the genome we provided,” Dagarth said. “That of the Haakonans. My science officers confirmed it.”
“I should have been consulted,” Valdore repeated. “My science specialists may have found something that yours missed.”
“The material had an extremely limited shelf life, Admiral,” Dagarth said, galloping on as though her transgression had been a mere breach of utensil protocol at a formal consular dinner. “I also had to consider the low likelihood of obtaining more of the material later, given the protests the B’Saari scientists made.”
“I’ve already heard about that,” Valdore said, nodding toward Talok, who had furnished the information. Turning his ire fully upon Dagarth, he said, “You led them to believe that they were participating in a project that would restore a dead civilization to life. Not extinguish a living one.”
Dagarth looked straight ahead, apparently expending real effort to avoid Valdore’s angry gaze. “Like the accelerated deployment of the viral agent, deceiving the B’Saari was an unfortunate necessity.” Only now was she beginning to sound defensive, if not properly chastened.
“‘An unfortunate necessity,’” Valdore repeated, turning away from Dagarth and back toward the sprawling panorama of death and chaos that she had created.
This is really my fault, he thought. I failed to impress upon her the danger of overweening ambition.
Instead, Valdore had recognized and rewarded that ambition, thus encouraging the current potential debacle. While serving as captain of a ship of the line, Dagarth had distinguished herself during the crucial testing phase of the arrenhe’hwiua telecapture system. With the Coalition worlds having blunted their vulnerabilities to that weapon—and with a workable avaihh lli vastam warp-seven stardrive still lying out of Valdore’s reach—it should have come as no surprise that Dagarth would seek to distinguish herself in other ways.
I placed her in the admiralty, he thought as a deep sadness settled across his soul. Therefore I should not be surprised that she would seek to climb its hierarchy boldly and quickly. It was axiomatic that the ascent to power and authority was neither a pursuit for the timid nor one that would tolerate half measures.
Valdore also understood that the same could be said about the defense of power and authority.
Drawing his dathe’anofv-sen—his razor-keen Honor Blade—Valdore turned and lunged.
The blade pierced Dagarth’s heart before she could either move or utter a sound. She slumped to the deck plates, her eyes wide, her face frozen in a rictus of surprise that matched Colonel Talok’s expression almost perfectly.
Valdore knelt beside Dagarth, withdrew his blade, and wiped her verdant heartblood on her sleeve. A great green pool was forming beneath her body.
“Your orders, Admiral?” Talok said, adopting a parade-ground posture. He appeared to be expending a great deal of effort not to make direct eye contact.
Valdore rose to his feet and sheathed his Honor Blade. “Get somebody in here to clean this place up. And say a prayer to T’Vet that Dagarth was right.”
Talok looked at him then, apparently confused. “Right, Admiral?”
The chill he had felt earlier returned. “About that virus being incapable of doing to us what it did to the Haakonans.”
SIXTEEN
Tuesday, February 14, 2158
Romulan Scout Ship Kilhra’en
Carraya sector, Romulan space
GAZING THROUGH ONE of the windows in the little vessel’s cramped galley, Trip Tucker searched in vain for the star of his homeworld.
Home usually wasn’t far from his mind, but on this day of al
l days—Valentine’s Day marked not only the fourth anniversary of the successful resolution of the Xindi crisis, but also the passage of three years since his “death” aboard Enterprise—he was particularly aware of the immense gulf that separated him from everything and everyone he’d ever cared about.
T’Luadh, Trip’s “minder” from the Tal Shiar, took a seat on the opposite side of the galley table at which Trip was seated, abruptly scattering his train of thought. He suppressed a reflexive frown, deciding that he didn’t mind the intrusion.
T’Luadh touch-activated the viewer embedded into the flat tabletop. A two-dimensional map of local space obediently appeared, and T’Luadh placed one of her long index fingers against the screen’s surface. “It is there, in the Carraya system,” she said, her voice and manner all but bursting with a confidence that bordered on arrogance. “And we are fortunate, this time. At this vessel’s maximum speed, that’s slightly more than four eisae away from our present position.”
Nearly five Earth days. Trip was relieved that this destination didn’t lie months away. It would be nice to have a real, planned-out destination, especially after having spent the better part of the last two weeks engaged in a more or less random search for the quarry that had already eluded them for more than half a year now: the new Ejhoi Ormiin shipbuilding facility, a high-tech complex that the upper echelons of the Tal Shiar, the Romulan Senate, and the Romulan military all feared might have already secretly completed a number of highly advanced, warp-seven-capable warships.
Even a relative handful of such vessels had the potential to bring down the Romulan Star Empire’s civilian government as well as its military, both of which were the Ejhoi Ormiin’s goals. More important, at least to Trip, was the terrible exacerbation of Earth’s disadvantage in the Romulan conflict that would result should Admiral Valdore succeed in capturing, rather than destroying, the Ejhoi Ormiin’s alleged creations.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 14
