Trip suddenly became conscious of T’Luadh staring at him. The green emergency lighting cast the planes and hollows of her long, angular face into sharp relief. “Interesting, Mister Sodok. Who built this ruined city of Urquat?”
“A race of people who died out centuries ago.”
“Where was their homeworld?”
He made a noncommittal shrug. “At least as far from here as Haakona.”
Trip realized only then that he might already have said entirely too much about a subject that no one in the Romulan Star Empire, including even the Tal Shiar, was likely to know much about. The last thing he needed was to make her suspect that he might be anything other than the Vulcan he appeared to be.
A horrific notion all but froze his breath in his throat: The Romulans might already possess the Loque’eque virus. What if they’ve weaponized it and deployed it? That would sure as hell explain why everything’s been so quiet lately along the Haakonan front.
An entire civilization could have been made to vanish nearly overnight, its citizens transformed into billions of determined Loque’eque pilgrims prepared to do anything to gain passage to dead, ruined Urquat.
Fortunately, T’Luadh seemed too focused on their mission to waste any more time pursuing the matter.
“Mister Sodok, do you detect any other hostile vessels in the vicinity?”
He touched his console and checked the readouts. “Not so far. But the only sensors that are operating at the moment are the passive ones. That Haakonan ship hit us pretty hard.”
“How hard?”
Trip scrolled through the damage-control inventory. “Subspace transceiver is out. We can forget about calling Admiral Valdore for help.”
“At least until we can get it repaired.”
Trip shook his head. “I’m not sure it can be repaired. At least, not outside a fully equipped drydock facility.”
T’Luadh flashed a humorless grin. “Well, we were already headed for just such a place, were we not?”
“I’d prefer reaching a base staffed with friendlies. But it’s not as though it’ll matter.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we won’t be getting there anytime soon. The warp drive is fried. We still have impulse power, but that won’t do any better than accelerate us to a high tahll velocity.”
“How high?” T’Luadh asked.
“Ninety percent of light speed, if what’s left of the equipment cooperates,” Trip said. “Maybe a bit more if we’re lucky. Either way, those last few eisae of our journey to Carraya IV could end up taking as many fvheisn.” Start with a vast cosmos, stir in a little unexpected engine damage, and days suddenly begin stretching out into years.
“And I suppose you’ve taken into account the effects of the ahhaid’rawn,” she said with a frown.
He nodded. Unfortunately, there was no getting around the effects of time dilation when one’s vessel was restricted to the highest possible sublight speeds. In fact, it was only when traveling at a very high percentage of c that starfarers needed to factor in such disconcerting temporal distortions.
“On the bright side, only a few weeks would have passed for us while we were crossing the rest of the distance between here and Carraya IV,” he said.
“But outside this ship, orders of magnitude more time will have passed before we arrive,” T’Luadh said, her gaze unfocused, as though she were recalling facts she learned long ago but had rarely considered since. She suddenly looked very drawn and haggard as she paused to breathe a low curse. “The Ejhoi Ormiin could have time to build and launch an unstoppable fleet in the interim.”
“Admiral Valdore must have other options,” Trip said, citing a fact he didn’t much like thinking about. “We can’t be the only set of eyes he’s sent to search out the Ejhoi Ormiin shipyard.”
“True enough. Perhaps that also means some of those eyes will find us before the radicals make much more progress,” said T’Luadh.
Trip shrugged. He was all for maintaining an upbeat attitude, but he couldn’t avoid acknowledging reality. The Kilhra’en was a very small ship, moving at a relative crawl across an immense cosmos without generating a telltale warp signature. Although Valdore was aware that she was en route to Carraya, he hadn’t been advised of the scout ship’s specific trajectory, which T’Luadh had chosen to make the little vessel harder for the Ejhoi Ormiin, and incidentally the Romulan Fleet, to detect.
“At least there’s an upside to the ahhaid’rawn,” Trip said, looking elsewhere for sources of encouragement. “We probably won’t run out of provisions before we get where we’re going.”
T’Luadh appeared to draw new strength from some hidden reserve. “Resume our course for Carraya IV, Mister Sodok. And do everything possible to get the warp drive back online as quickly as possible.”
With that, she rose and retreated aft, perhaps to return to her own sleeping compartment.
After he’d finished putting the Kilhra’en back on course at high impulse, Trip remained in the right chair and continued using his console to further assess the damage the propulsion system had sustained. He still wasn’t convinced that the warp drive was fixable under the present circumstances.
This provided a sense of relief rather than frustration.
At least T’Luadh probably won’t kill me before I get this bird back up to warp, he thought, grateful for whatever cold comfort the universe might permit him. I guess there’s something to be said for job security.
SEVENTEEN
Early in the Month of T’keKhuti, YS 8767
Wednesday, July 17, 2158
Central ShiKahr, Vulcan
YCH’A FELT A strong temptation to conclude that Silok’s interrogation sessions, which had been incessant during the early days of her confinement by the Vulcan Security Directorate, had finally come to an end.
And yet she and Denak remained in detention, both due process and interaction with the outside world denied them. The days passed slowly, piling into deep drifts of uneventful tendays that gradually accumulated into months, and finally into two entire Vulcan years. Fortunately, meditation and
Suus Mahna exercises made the tedium of inactivity bearable, as did the reassuring presence of her mate in the adjoining detention cell; Silok had not been so cruel as to deny her that. Illogically, it buoyed her spirit immeasurably to see how Denak had recovered from the mental trauma that he had suffered on the day of the Mount Seleya bombing.
Ych’a understood that this situation could not continue indefinitely. Despite the fact that Denak was nearly as accomplished as she was in the Syrrannite mental disciplines that the V’Shar cultivated in all its operatives, he was both older and frailer than she was. Inevitably, he would fall into an irreversible physical decline if this open-ended incarceration continued. In part because of that realization, she was finding it increasingly difficult to keep at bay her feelings of incipient despair; that emotion lurked just out of sight like a hungry desert sehlat, all coiled-steel muscle and ravening appetite.
We have not allowed Silok to break us, she told herself, as she had done on countless previous occasions. Not yet.
A cluster of low-volume sounds startled her out of her contemplation. Somewhere an ancient iron door creaked, then bumped gently against a stone wall. She heard footfalls from somewhere in the corridor just beyond her line of sight.
Ych’a turned her gaze upward from where she sat in the middle of her cell’s cold stone floor and observed a pair of slight, dark-robed figures entering the cell block, each one accompanied by a uniformed, helmeted guard. The faces of both robed figures were obscured by loose, billowing hoods.
She felt despair’s sharp claws in her back. “Interrogators,” Ych’a said, wondering what more they could possibly want to ask her. And why their dread master, Security Minister Silok, wasn’t with them this time.
“We are not interrogators,” said one of the robed figures, pulling back the hood to expose a surprisingly familiar face.<
br />
Ych’a sprang to her feet. “T’Pol! I thought you were aboard Enterprise. Helping the humans fight off the Romulans.”
T’Pol approached the ancient iron bars, as did the guards. “I was aboard Enterprise.”
Ych’a lofted an eyebrow. “Does that mean the war is over?”
“I wish that were so,” T’Pol said with an almost melancholy shake of her head. One of the guards opened the door to Ych’a’s cell while the other did likewise for Denak.
“Then why have you come, T’Pol?” Denak said from the adjoining cell.
The younger woman seemed ill prepared for the question. “I have…unfinished business on Vulcan,” she said at length.
Ych’a watched with near incredulity as her door swung open. Was this really happening? Or had prolonged imprisonment caused her sanity to unravel?
She stepped through the open door, as though performing an empirical scientific experiment. Brushing past the guards, she walked into Denak’s open cell and offered him her arm as he made an unsteady exit into the corridor. As though responding to a signal Ych’a hadn’t noticed, the guards turned as one and left the cell block.
Steadying her husband with her arm, Ych’a now stood face to face with T’Pol and the second hooded figure.
“What now?” Ych’a said.
“I will have you taken to my home,” T’Pol said. “You may stay there as long as you like.”
“Under house arrest?” Ych’a asked.
Both of T’Pol’s eyebrows rose steeply. “Of course not.”
“We can’t stay at your home, T’Pol,” Denak said. “That’s the first place Silok will look for us. Or weren’t you aware that his people first arrested us there?”
“I believe you are laboring under a misapprehension,” T’Pol said.
Denak raised a hand, the one that had only three fingers. “I may not be in optimal condition at the moment, but I believe I can still recognize what the humans call a ‘jail break’ when I see one.”
The second robed, hooded figure finally spoke. “No one will come looking for you, regardless of where you go. The V’Shar is in a state of disarray.”
“Why?” Ych’a asked.
“Security Minister Silok has resigned. Members of his senior staff have been implicated as Romulan operatives.”
The hood fell away, revealing a face nearly as familiar as that of T’Pol—not to mention a good deal more famous.
“Administrator T’Pau,” Ych’a said as she grabbed at the cell bars to steady both herself and Denak.
“Silok’s bureau has become a nest of traitors?” Denak said with undisguised astonishment.
T’Pau nodded. “Spies charged with disrupting a plan by my deputy, Minister Kuvak, to provide covert assistance to the Haakonans in their struggle against the Romulan Star Empire.”
T’Pol approached Denak and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. “Their other task was to coordinate the terror attack at Mount Seleya.”
As incredible as it all sounded initially, Ych’a now could see how the pieces of the puzzle might fit together. She received the news, and the insight that accompanied it, with a great rush of relief. Whatever gaps may exist in my memory or in Denak’s from the day of Surak’s assassination, she thought, we’re no longer considered the prime suspects.
But part of it still made little sense to her. “Why would the Romulans seek to antagonize us, especially after Vulcan has officially removed itself from the fight?”
“They’ve evidently discovered Vulcan’s unofficial collaboration with Haakona,” said T’Pau.
“From the Romulan perspective,” T’Pol said, “Vulcan’s formal withdrawal from the conflict provided them no assurance that we would not pursue informal channels. They sought to discourage this by demoralizing Vulcan.”
By destroying the katra of Surak, Ych’a thought. Perhaps the Romulans have seriously overreached themselves. It would be ironic indeed if the destruction of Surak ended up awakening the proverbial sleeping tracehound, thereby ensuring that the Romulans generated the exact opposite of their desired outcome.
Meeting T’Pau’s gaze squarely, Ych’a said, “The commander must have come to try again to persuade you to bring Vulcan directly into the Romulan War.”
“Among other things,” T’Pol said, then nodded toward her two oldest friends.
Noticing for the first time the premature lines that marred T’Pau’s otherwise flawless, youthful face, Ych’a said, “And what have you decided, Administrator?”
“My original determination on the matter remains unchanged,” T’Pau said. “War is not logical.”
“Neither is dying,” Ych’a said.
“Illogical,” T’Pau said. “You raise a false dichotomy. Entering this fight poses an unacceptable risk of leading our people away from the path of Surak and toward the way of the raptor.”
T’Pol spoke with ill-concealed bitterness. “How can you continue to say that in light of recent developments?”
“To which developments do you refer?” Ych’a asked, frowning at both of her interlocutors.
“The commander refers primarily to something terrible that occurred more than half a year ago,” T’Pau said. “On the Romulans’ Haakonan front.”
Ych’a’s interest was now fully piqued. Prior to her arrest and imprisonment, Haakona had been her main area of concentration.
“What occurred?” she said.
“Our intelligence is still somewhat fragmentary,” T’Pau said, “but we have gleaned enough information to determine that the Romulans have used a biogenic weapon against Haakona.”
Haakona. The world to which she had helped Minister Kuvak funnel weaponry and other matériel to be used against the Romulans. Haakona, a former Romulan possession that she had helped develop into a second battlefront calculated to distract the Romulan Star Empire from its aggressive ambitions against Earth and its Coalition of Planets allies.
T’Pau nodded, her expression grim. “A biogenic weapon that members of Minister Silok’s staff may have secretly helped them acquire, in collaboration with third parties on Adigeon Prime and perhaps B’Saari II as well.”
“Doctor Phlox has confirmed that the viral-weapon modality the Romulans used against Haakona is a modified variant of a mutagenic virus the crew of Enterprise encountered in the Delphic Expanse five standard years ago,” T’Pol said.
Denak was shaking his head, clearly not convinced. “Historically, the Romulans haven’t relied on biogenic weaponry,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” Ych’a said, “but they’ve always been a highly adaptable people.”
“Indeed,” T’Pol said as she cast a none-too-subtle glare at T’Pau.
If the administrator noticed the implied reprimand, she made no sign of it. Alternately facing Ych’a and Denak, she addressed them both, in the manner of a campaigning politician. “I only recently became aware of Minister Kuvak’s covert plan to assist Haakona in its fight against the Romulans—as well as your involvement in carrying out that plan.”
“A plan that ultimately led to Silok placing us in indefinite detention,” Ych’a said.
An intense emotional presence seemed to come over T’Pau as her gaze continued to move between Ych’a and Denak. “Regardless, I offer both of you my gratitude for your participation in Kuvak’s plan, rather than any further punishment or opprobrium.”
“Why?” Ych’a said, frowning.
“Because your assistance to Haakona has provided Vulcan with a valuable object lesson.”
Once again, Denak held up his maimed hand. “Wait, please. Since the Romulan biogenic attack, what is the condition of the Haakonan civilization?”
T’Pau’s dark eyes opened into deep pools of grief. “The Haakonan civilization no longer exists.”
A wave of vertigo swept over Ych’a, forcing her to tighten her grip on the bars beside her.
“Administrator,” T’Pol said, a barely restrained anger audible in her voice, “no one could have foreseen the
Haakonan disaster. You cannot blame Denak and Ych’a for a choice that the Romulans ultimately made.”
“No?” the administrator said, her eyes flashing.
“Before you took charge of the government, you were prepared to sacrifice a man’s life for what you considered a higher purpose.”
Thanks to her relationship with T’Pol, Ych’a was familiar with the incident. Following the untimely death of Syrran, Captain Jonathan Archer temporarily became the storage vessel for the katra of Surak. T’Pau had insisted that Archer undergo a potentially lethal extraction procedure in order to move the katra into a more compatible Vulcan brain. Archer had submitted willingly, but T’Pau would have forced it upon him had he refused, regardless of the risk.
T’Pau cast her eyes downward. “I have since recognized that to have been a mistake,” she said. “An ethical lapse that Surak himself never would have countenanced. Like entering the current war.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said T’Pol. “Or perhaps you are merely committing the logical fallacy of the false analogy.”
“I am trained in the Syrrannite disciplines, Commander. Do not presume to lecture me about logic,” T’Pau replied calmly.
“The choices Surak faced during his time are not the same as those you must deal with now. You cannot claim to know how Surak would respond to them.”
“I cannot make that claim now,” T’Pau said, raising her hands to her temples. “But there was a time when I could have told you precisely what Surak thought about any given matter.”
T’Pol nodded. “The time when you served as the keeper of Surak’s katra has passed.”
“The time for anyone to touch Surak’s living spirit is gone.” Though T’Pau’s voice remained level, it carried an overtone of sadness that Ych’a had only rarely heard a fellow Vulcan express outside of the ancient chants.
What she was hearing, what she was feeling, Ych’a realized, was the collective grief of her world.
“That is true, Administrator,” T’Pol said. “However, it is not logical to dwell in the past. Nor is it logical to allow reticence and fear to drive one’s decisions.”
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 16
