Yes, it would be good to have a definable, concrete destination once again. Unless, of course, the prize at the end of this particular rainbow turned out to be yet another pot of fool’s gold.
Staring down at T’Luadh’s star chart, Trip wondered whether the Tal Shiar agent’s confidence was warranted this time.
“Why are you so sure we’ll find the Ejoi Ormiin’s shipbuilding complex in the Carraya system?” he said, folding his arms before him.
T’Luadh’s left eyebrow rose almost imperceptibly, which Trip recognized as a sign of defensiveness. “The Tal Shiar has taken great pains to verify its findings, Mister Sodok.”
Shrugging, Trip said, “Oh, as opposed to all the other times your people have given us unreliable intel since this mission began.” After having already spent nearly nine months cooped up with her in this little scout vessel, he was wary of committing to yet another wild-goose chase, even one whose endpoint was so close, relatively speaking.
But he also was reluctant to wrap up their ongoing arrangement. Whether the search for the Ejhoi Ormiin and their illicit high technology finished in success or failure, he knew that the mission’s conclusion would mark the end of his usefulness, both to Admiral Valdore and to Colonel T’Luadh of the Tal Shiar.
Despite the uneasy trust that had grown between them during their collaborations over the past few months, Trip was willing to bet money that the moment that happened she’d waste little time slipping a blade between his ribs.
“It is difficult to maintain current intelligence on an adversary as clever, as secretive, and as committed as the Ejhoi Ormiin,” T’Luadh said with a scowl. “You of all people, Mister Sodok, should understand that.”
“I probably understand it better than just about anybody working in your spook bureau,” Trip said. Memories sprang to mind of the friends and colleagues who had perished because of the Ejhoi Ormiin’s machinations: Trip’s first Section 31 partner in the field, Tinh Hoc Phuong, whom a Romulan double agent named Ch’uivh—aka Sopek of Vulcan—had reduced to smoking meat with a pitiless blast of disruptor fire; and Dr. Ehrehin, the kindly old warp-theory genius who had died in the never-ending crossfire between the Ejhoi Ormiin radicals and the Romulan military.
The hard but handsome Romulan woman stared at him in silence for the length of several dozen heartbeats before she spoke. “That is arguably true, Mister Sodok. In fact, your extensive espionage experience was what prompted me to draft you on this mission after Terix captured you.”
And I hope you don’t think for a minute that I’m not grateful for the change of scenery, he thought, though he had always recognized T’Luadh’s intervention as less a pardon than a temporary stay of execution. Not for the first time, Trip wondered if she had drafted him because she knew more than she was letting on about his “extensive espionage experience.”
“Guess it pays to keep the résumé up to date,” he said. Over her perplexed frown, he added, “What makes the Tal Shiar so sure we’ll find the shipyard in the Carraya system?”
“Our intelligence analysts have noted a pattern in recent pirate attacks on civilian shipping convoys. In almost every case, much of the materials stolen have relevance to starship construction. And the general pattern of the raids converges upon the Carraya system.”
Trip scratched his jaw and discovered that he needed to shave. “But why Carraya? I thought the system’s only habitable planet had no intelligent life, no civilization, and was covered nearly from pole to pole in tropical jungle.”
“The fourth planet,” she said with a solemn nod. “Correct.”
“But there wouldn’t be any industrial infrastructure there for the Ejhoi Ormiin to exploit.”
“Correct again, Mister Sodok. Evidently the radicals perceived the need for remoteness and secrecy to trump the need for efficiency and speed. As you say, the planet can provide the radicals with little in the way of refined resources. The jungle canopy, however, possesses biosensor-scattering properties, thus providing the Ejhoi Ormiin a good deal of cover.”
“So how do we know they’re there?”
“Romulan military vessels supervised by Tal Shiar field agents conducted both long- and medium-range scans of all the worlds of the Carraya system very recently. They yielded sensor profiles indicating quantities and concentrations of polyalloys, duranium, and other refined materials consistent with a large-scale shipbuilding operation.”
Trip had to admit that the information sounded compelling. Whatever those scans had picked up on Carraya IV sure as hell wasn’t just a bunch of beavers building a dam.
“You said that the Tal Shiar think the radicals might have finished building some of these high-warp vessels,” he said. “Have they found any sign they’ve deployed the ships?”
She shook her head. “Not definitively. But we cannot afford to wait for proof, which could come with whole worlds abruptly set ablaze. Like Cor’i’dan, or Galorn’don Cor.”
It didn’t escape Trip’s notice that the Romulan military and the Romulan government, not the Ejhoi Ormiin radicals, were the parties responsible for the destructive energies released in those two places. But he decided there was nothing to be gained by pointing that out.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked instead.
T’Luadh favored him with a look of long-suffering patience, as though he were a defective child. “Except, perhaps, for specific tactics, our plan remains unchanged. We will make a stealth approach to Carraya IV and find the Ejhoi Ormiin shipyard complex. Then, before the radicals have an opportunity to flee the system, we will seize it—along with their avaihh lli vastam warp-seven technology.”
“Or at least destroy it all to keep it out of the wrong hands,” Trip ventured.
Her eyes narrowed as she regarded him with unconcealed suspicion. Trip had seen this same expression on numerous prior occasions, so it no longer bothered him. Clearly, she had reservations about his loyalty, either to the mission, the Romulan Star Empire, or both.
The smart money’s on both, Trip thought, well aware that she was no fool.
“We will exercise that option,” she said icily, “only as a last resort.”
His face and neck flushed under the intensity of her glare, and the sudden warmth made him grateful for his hidden supply of the sulfatriptan compound that maintained the green coloration of his blood.
Like T’Luadh, Trip couldn’t afford to allow the radicals to escape Carraya IV with their high-warp technology intact. Neither could he afford to allow T’Luadh to capture it.
It came to him then that all the advances and reversals in the ongoing cat-and-mouse games that he and T’Luadh had played with the Ejhoi Ormiin would finally come to a head within a week, or even sooner. Despite the surprisingly easy working relationship that he had forged with T’Luadh, he might soon have no choice other than to kill her. And he didn’t doubt that she had the very same imperative regarding him.
Pushing aside these unpleasant thoughts, Trip stared down at the tabletop viewer. T’Luadh had replaced the star map with a half-meter-wide image of a preternaturally green planet. Except for a single kidney-shaped ocean, a smattering of large inland seas, and a pair of anemic-looking polar ice caps, the place was essentially one vast planet-girdling tropical rain forest. Trip sighed as he contemplated the prospect of searching such a place for such a determinedly hidden adversary as the Ejhoi Ormiin. Though he’d spent a fair proportion of his life in sunny, humid Florida, he doubted that had prepared him adequately for the ordeal that was to come.
Resigning himself to the inevitable, he decided that the best way to deal with the mission ahead was to get as much sleep as possible before the Kilhra’en’s arrival at Carraya IV. He hoped that the planet had some unexpected positives to balance out its many apparent negatives.
As Trip rose from the table, headed for his sleeping quarters, he asked, “Does the Tal Shiar know if Carraya IV’s ocean has anything in it like a Terran catfish?”
* * *
Se
cure in the aft sleeping compartment, Trip slumbered.
And dreamed.
But in the midst of the dreaming, he entered a decidedly different state, a mode of consciousness far more vivid and real than the realm of dreams. Like an ancient film negative, the universe transformed itself into an infinitude of brilliant whiteness right before Trip’s eyes. As always, the suddenness of the effect startled him.
He’d come many times before to the all-white expanse in which he now stood, though the frequency of these…spells?…episodes?…had declined steadily the more deeply he ventured into Romulan territory.
He saw a slender, upright shape in the distance, indistinct yet nonetheless familiar. His booted feet somehow gaining purchase on the insubstantial white nothingness beneath them, he jogged toward the approaching figure.
He grinned as he recognized her. T’Pol.
Her voice answered inside his mind, no doubt being transmitted via the insubstantial, gossamer psi connection that still tethered them together in spite of the gulf of light-years that separated them.
Trip.
Even before she drew close enough to give him a clear look at her olive-toned face, he could sense that something wasn’t right. She was in emotional turmoil, though he knew she’d be loath to admit it.
What’s wrong? his inner voice asked her.
She continued to approach him until she was nearly close enough to touch. These…psionic assignations of ours, she said silently.
It took him a moment to realize that she was referring to their more-than-occasional meetings in the Bright White Place. He reached toward her, but she seemed to recoil from him slightly, just enough to stay beyond his reach. What about ’em, T’Pol?
Perhaps we should try to further reduce their frequency, she said.
Why?
She closed her eyes. He saw a tear on her cheek. He reached out to brush it away, but she remained just centimeters too distant.
My emotions, she said, her breathing labored. They have become increasingly difficult to control.
It doesn’t exactly surprise me, T’Pol, Trip said. You’ve been through a lot over the past few years. Losing your mother, and baby Elizabeth. And then that business with Surak on Vulcan.
I should be able to manage those traumas, she said. Tears now ran down both her cheeks. Were I truly Vulcan, that might be the case. But I fear I am becoming something other than Vulcan.
Trip’s now human forehead crumpled into a concerned frown. You are Vulcan, T’Pol. What the hell are you talking about?
I have mind-linked with a human, Trip. No Vulcan has ever done such a thing before. I must return.
To Vulcan? he asked, his confusion escalating. Now? In case you hadn’t noticed, T’Pol, there’s still a war on, a war that Vulcan has decided to sit out.
She nodded sadly. I know. And I regret it deeply.
You have a responsibility to Captain Archer, he said.
And I will honor that responsibility in my own way, just as you do. But I have responsibilities on Vulcan as well. Two of my oldest friends, Denak and Ych’a, remain under suspicion for the destruction of Surak’s katra. They are still in detention, even now. I need to help them clear their names… She trailed off into silence.
For an instant, Trip wondered absurdly whether the bountiful garden at T’Pol’s house had gone completely to seed since his departure from Vulcan; after all, T’Pol, Denak, and Ych’a were in no position to pitch in with the chores these days.
Pushing that matter aside, he lunged forward in an effort to close the distance between himself and T’Pol, but to no avail. He acknowledged with some shame that he was being selfish; he had allowed the loneliness of his current plight to win out over any consideration of T’Pol’s feelings. He was dozens of light-years away from anything and everything familiar, and T’Pol was his lifeline. The prospect of her cutting him loose while he lay asleep and defenseless in a cramped scout ship, alone but for the company of a Romulan spy who must surely kill him within a matter of days, was simply too much to bear.
The Bright White Place suddenly began to rock and shake, as though some huge creature were hurling boulders at it from the outside. No sooner had the first shock subsided than a second, even stronger one knocked his boots out from under him—
“What the hell?” Trip shouted as he rolled out of the aft sleeping compartment.
The lighting was dim and green, the Romulan color of emergency and danger. His footing was unsteady on the deck plating, which rattled as though from a massive collision. He realized immediately from the feel of the deck that the Kilhra’en had dropped back into normal space.
It came to him suddenly that the Ejhoi Ormiin must have somehow detected their approach, even though Carraya IV still lay days away at maximum warp.
At least my lungs aren’t sucking vacuum yet, he thought as he stumbled into the forward compartment, where T’Luadh was furiously entering commands into the cockpit console. Maybe there’s still time to get us out of this.
“We’re under attack,” T’Luadh said, stating the obvious with a businesslike calm that T’Pol might have envied.
He took the right chair, directly beside hers, and began accessing the tactical systems. “By whom?”
“One ship. It’s a small civilian vessel, armed with at least one disruptor cannon. The configuration matches that of a private Haakonan transport ship.”
Trip didn’t bother trying to conceal his surprise. “What would Haakonans be doing all the way out here?”
T’Luadh remained focused on her console, but her words took on an impatient timbre. “Firing on us, evidently.”
That much was obvious. But the situation made no sense. Dead, defeated Haakona, a former annex of Romulan space against which Admiral Valdore’s forces had fought fiercely until the end of Praetor D’deridex’s reign, lay more than a thousand light-years away. Relative to Earth, Haakona was located in the Romulan Star Empire’s opposite frontier, about as far away from the Earth-Romulan conflict as one could get. A Haakonan commander would have to have a compelling reason to venture so very far from his homeworld—and as far as Trip knew, the Haakonans had never exhibited much interest in exploration for its own sake.
“Are you sure these people are Haakonans?” Trip asked.
“At the moment, Mister Sodok, I’m not entirely sure of anything,” she said as she tried to route additional power to the Kilhra’en’s polarized forward hull plating. “Except for the fact that these were the strangest-looking Haakonans I’ve ever seen. Little better than wild animals, from what I observed.”
“You hailed them?” Trip asked.
The Kilhra’en rocked and jounced brutally under another disruptor fusillade. T’Luadh grabbed the edge of her console to steady herself. “I did. And they appear to have disliked the way I answered their question so much that they felt obligated to melt our comm system.”
And with the comm system down, Trip thought, they’ve switched over to the universal language of mindless violence.
The hostile vessel’s bulbous, tubular shape came about again and approached, its forward guns blazing. Trip tried to lock the Kilhra’en’s pulse cannon on what appeared to be an external ramscoop intake, but the targeting system wouldn’t maintain contact. Switching to manual, he opened fire as the two vessels crossed paths, apparently passing nearly close enough to trade paint jobs. It looked to Trip that the Haakonan ship couldn’t be much more than twice the Kilhra’en’s size.
“What did they ask you?” Trip said as orange and blue flames rushed out of the hostile’s intake vent. Long fingers of orange lightning crackled across the vessel’s entire hull as adjacent systems surged with excess energy from the overloading ramscoops. With any luck, every major system aboard would soon fail as they succumbed to a cascade of power surges.
Apparently satisfied that the Haakonan ship had been neutralized, T’Luadh began tapping her remaining functional comm controls.
The telltale static hash of a downed subsp
ace transceiver cleared from Trip’s comm screen, replaced by what appeared to be an image recorded from T’Luadh’s earlier conversation with the Haakonans.
Trip hadn’t had any direct encounters with Haakonans, though he had seen pictures. Those images looked nothing like the blue-eyed, vaguely reptilian forms that stared out of his console.
Nor were they half as familiar looking.
“They demanded to know the location of a planet,” T’Luadh said. “One I’d never heard of.”
“What planet?” Trip said. He resumed watching the Haakonan ship as it tumbled away, its hull glowing intermittently before fading out until it was nearly as black as space itself. Even the external running lights were extinguished.
“Urquat,” T’Luadh said.
The familiar name unlocked a memory that the image of the hostile crew had summoned.
Urquat wasn’t a planet. Looking down at the image T’Luadh had sent to his comm panel, Trip said, “Urquat is a city. Or at least it was a city. A long, long time ago.”
During a past age, Urquat had been the ancestral home of a race native to the former Delphic Expanse, an extinct people known as the Loque’eque. About five years ago, the crew of Enterprise had discovered a mutagenic virus on the Loque’eque’s homeworld, a DNA-altering pathogen that had temporarily remolded Jonathan Archer, Malcolm Reed, and Hoshi Sato into Loque’eque. After Dr. Phlox had neutralized the virus and reversed the transformation, Captain Archer had instructed Phlox to preserve a single vial of the virus. It was all that remained of an entire civilization, encompassing both its biology and its culture.
Either that vial had fallen into the wrong hands, or another supply existed—a supply that had somehow made its way to Haakona. If somebody can smuggle Vulcan weapons all the way to Haakona, Trip thought, recalling Terix’s boasts about such things during his interminable interrogation sessions, then why couldn’t a few milliliters of viral bugs get there the same way?
Trip raised his eyes from the comm screen. Looking forward, he saw the Haakonan ship reappear momentarily as a distant but bright cloud of expanding gases; the molecular fires and lightning on the hull had metamorphosed into internal explosions and venting atmosphere.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 15
