Malcolm nodded. “With the possible exception of the Romulan troops already on Cheron’s surface, it appears that we’re the first guests to arrive at the party.”
“Let’s hope we aren’t the only ones, Malcolm,” Archer said. “I’d hate to think the Romulan fleet has decided to stand us up.”
Archer deliberately kept his tone light. He had finally convinced Admiral Gardner to devote the lion’s share of Starfleet’s resources to the Cheron operation. If he turned out to be wrong, two dozen critically needed Starfleet vessels might have traveled seventy-five days to reach a system fifty-eight light-years from Earth only to discover that they had been deployed to the wrong location.
No, Archer told himself. The information I acted on came from Trip, so it’s solid. It has to be.
Archer stepped onto the bridge’s upper level and came to a stop halfway between T’Pol and Malcolm. “We know the Romulans are big on stealth.”
“How could I forget?” Malcolm said with a wry grin. “Thanks to that incident in the minefield, my leg still aches whenever it rains.”
T’Pol raised an eyebrow. “The mines were obscured with cloaking technology.”
“Exactly,” Archer said, nodding. “Do you think the Romulans could have adapted that same technology to the purpose of concealing entire ships? Maybe even a whole fleet?”
“That has been a distinct possibility for the past several years,” T’Pol said. “Given the facility the Romulans have demonstrated in the field of holography, cloaking entire fleets of warbirds could be within their ability.”
“Frankly, I have serious doubts about that,” Malcolm said, shaking his head.
“Why?” Archer wanted to know.
“A cloaking device capable of concealing a ship—as opposed to small things, like ordnance—would suck up a tremendous amount of power,” said the armory officer. “A power-consumption curve that steep would put strict limits on anything else the cloaked ship might need to do—like fire its weapons.”
T’Pol nodded. “That is a valid point. In addition, power utilization on the order we are discussing might, in itself, be difficult to conceal. No matter how well shielded such a vessel was, a telltale power signature might be detectable when the cloak is active.”
Archer’s eyebrows rose. “Well,” he said, returning to his chair, “we’d better keep a sharp eye out for anything like that. Hoshi, pass that along to the fleet.”
Time passed slowly as the bridge crew maintained its vigil.
T’Pol looked up from her scanner. “Commodore, it occurs to me that the Romulans may not need cloaking technology to conceal their presence from us.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Commander,” Archer said, frowning as he moved back up to T’Pol’s station.
“Approximately half the stars in this galaxy are part of multistar systems,” she said as she continued working her console. “On the star charts of both Vulcan and Earth, the local star is considered part of a binary system.”
Archer nodded. He already knew the system’s basic astronomical catalog boilerplate data: 83 Leonis B, the sun that the Starfleet task force presently circled, was an orange dwarf star that massed a little less than eighty percent of Earth’s sun, a difference that made it considerably cooler and duller than Sol. The nearly circular orbits of its family of six planets were spaced more closely than were their counterparts in the Sol system, an arrangement that helped Cheron qualify for the Vulcan habitable designation of Minshara-class.
Eighty-three Leonis A was an orange subgiant star with a planetary brood of its own. The critical difference was that A had started off with more mass, and therefore was hotter. As a consequence, A had already exhausted its supply of hydrogen fuel, which limited its internal fusion processes to helium and heavier elements. A was therefore actively transforming into a bloated red giant. This was bad news for any humanoid-type life-forms that might have arisen in the A system. B’s planets, which included Cheron, were more fortunate, since A lay a considerable distance from its stellar sibling—about 80 billion kilometers, or more than five hundred times the average distance between Earth and Sol.
Archer watched the displays on his science officer’s console as T’Pol summoned up both text and images. A schematic representation of two orange stars appeared, one slightly larger than the other. Lines that emanated from the poles of each star looped out and crossed one another at a point nearly equidistant from both bodies.
“The lines represent the boundaries of each star with respect to interstellar space,” T’Pol explained. “The point at which the particle density of the interstellar medium exceeds that created by the solar flux.”
“You’re talking about the distance where the solar winds peter out,” Archer said. “The heliopause.”
“Exactly.” T’Pol placed her long index finger at a point between the A and B stars and traced a long downward arc to show where the heliopauses of both bodies either touched or overlapped. “The complex interheliopause particle interactions I’ve identified here could cause a great deal of sensor confusion.”
Archer brightened. “Enough to hide a Romulan fleet?”
“Unknown,” she said.
Grinning, Archer walked over to Hoshi’s station. “Lieutenant Sato, place the fleet on High Tactical Alert. And open up a hailing frequency.”
Day Fifteen, Romulan Month of et’Khior, 1184 YD’E
Tuesday, July 29, 2160
Imperial Warbird Dabhae
Extreme edge of the Cheron system
“The hevam fleet continues to simply sit there, Admiral,” said Subcenturion T’Velekh, who operated the primary sensor network of the flagship of the Fifth Legion of the Romulan Star Empire’s Imperial Navy.
Valdore smiled. The only thing more satisfying than slaying a deadly enemy was doing so before one’s target even glimpsed the Honor Blade that streaked toward his unprotected neck.
“Alert the fleet,” he told the female centurion who was running the communications hub. “Prepare to move all eighty ships from concealment. On my order, we will bring all the cold fury of Bettatan’ru and Erebus upon the heads of the hevam before they understand what is happening to them.”
“Immediately, Admiral.” The comm officer began tapping commands into her console.
The entry hatch slid open, and Colonel T’Luadh of the Tal Shiar entered. The woman strode forward and came to a stop beside his chair, where she stood at rigid attention. “I have come to relay a request from Mister Cunaehr,” she said.
“What does he want?”
“He wishes to assist you in winning the coming battle.”
Valdore chuckled. Although the man’s engineering talent appeared so far to be extensive, it was also beyond question that he was a spy for the Ejhoi Ormiin radicals. Did Cunaehr think him a fool?
“Tell Mister Cunaehr that if the engines of our new avaihh lli vastam vessels perform as well as he has promised during the S’ol system invasion, then he will have contributed enough assistance for two lifetimes.”
T’Luadh nodded, then performed a perfect salute. “I will convey your words, Admiral.”
She turned toward the hatch, but he stopped her by placing a hand on her shoulder. “More importantly, I want you to maintain constant vigilance over him.”
She nodded, saluted again, then exited the command deck.
“I am receiving an incoming message, Admiral,” the comm officer said. Valdore turned in time to see her suppress a bemused frown.
“A message?” Valdore said, scowling. “From whom?”
The young officer turned toward him, her face a study in surprise. “It’s from the hevam flagship—from En’ter’priz.”
Captain Archer, Valdore thought, his heart pounding with martial eagerness. “What does it say, Centurion?”
“There’s a great deal of interference, Admiral. I am attempting to clean it up, translate the initial message, and put it on audio.”
Tension-filled heartbeat after heartbeat p
assed. Just as Valdore was about to admonish the centurion, a burst of tinny sound emerged from the command deck audio system.
“—athan Archer. There’s no need to be coy, Admiral. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Valdore growled, intensely angry at whatever unjust force was responsible for robbing him of the element of surprise at the very last moment.
“Helmsman!” he roared, sitting back in the thronelike chair that dominated the command deck. “Do not keep the hevam waiting any longer!”
“What’s the word, T’Luadh?” Trip asked after letting his Tal Shiar “minder” back into the quarters Valdore had issued him.
She stepped inside the small but functional suite of rooms and fixed him with a sober stare. “I’m afraid he doesn’t trust you enough to give you the run of the ship, Mister Tucker.”
Trip winced at the mention of his real name here aboard the Romulan flagship. If T’Luadh had spoken that name to Valdore…if she had ratted him out as a human spy, he’d be inhaling vacuum.
“Well, thanks for asking,” he said, trying to reveal none of his anxieties. “I should have figured that the admiral wasn’t the trusting type after he refused to let me stay aboard any of the new warp-seven ships.”
“I’m sure that’s just until the present battle concludes,” T’Luadh said.
“I hope so. Because being stuck on the flagship makes it pretty damned difficult for me to make those new vessels fly the way Valdore wants ’em to fly.”
T’Luadh chuckled and adopted a rueful expression. “For reasons I’m sure you understand very well, the admiral has great difficulty trusting you at the moment. One of the great Commander Amarcan’s sayings from his Axioms expresses it best—”
“‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,’” Trip interrupted.
T’Luadh’s eyebrows rose. “I had no idea you were so well read outside the disciplines of engineering and espionage, Mister Tucker.” With that, she excused herself.
Trip examined the comm terminal that T’Luadh had graciously allowed him to use to pass the time during much of the long voyage to Cheron. As he had already done several times, he paid close attention to the delicate connectors that accessed both the Warbird Dabhae’s electroplasma system and its data network.
Whatever “contribution” I end up making to Valdore’s war effort, he thought, I guess I’ll have to make it from right here.
Enterprise NX-01
“Romulan vessels, Commodore!” Malcolm cried. “They’re coming out of the overlapping heliopause zones.”
Archer sprang from his chair. “How many ships?”
“Twenty so far,” Malcolm said, his fingers making frantic gyrations across his console. His rough-hewn face was turning pale. “And they’re still coming.”
T’Pol consulted the displays at her station with similar, if more graceful, urgency. “Confirmed. I have picked up the subspace wakes of approximately sixty Romulan vessels. And that number is steadily increasing.”
Sixty-plus against twenty-four, Archer thought. He tried to use his incredulity as a shield but found that offered scant protection. “How fast are they approaching?”
“They’re moving toward us as a unit,” Malcolm said. “At a uniform speed of warp four point six.”
At least nobody’s coming in at warp seven, Archer thought, returning to his chair. He studied the main viewscreen. It displayed a tactical rendering of the two fleets, which had arranged themselves into opposing spear-point shapes. Only the Romulan vessels, rendered in red to distinguish them from Starfleet’s blue icons, appeared to be moving, and the gap between the red and blue shapes was steadily decreasing. Trip’s intel about their high-warp program not being ready yet is accurate.
For now.
“No more vessels are emerging from the high particle-flux region,” said T’Pol, leaning over her scanner’s hooded visor. “I now read a total of eighty-one ships in the Romulan contingent.”
Archer braced himself, his hands clutching hard at the arms of his command chair. Very little time remained before immovable object and irresistible force were to collide in the war’s biggest engagement to date. Crossing the 515-AU-wide gulf that separated the two fleets would have taken Zefram Cochrane’s prototype warship nearly three days. Moving nearly at Enterprise’s top safe speed, the Romulan force would close that gap in considerably less time.
“What’s the Romulan fleet’s ETA?” Archer asked.
T’Pol answered with her usual alacrity. “At present speed, twenty-six point two minutes.”
Archer nodded. “Hoshi, are the emergency subspace frequencies clear?”
“Yes, sir. The Romulans haven’t gotten close enough yet to jam them. But I expect they’ll do it the first moment they can.”
“Inform Starfleet Command that we are about to engage the enemy. Then aim a second transmission at every world we’ve asked to join us in this fight so far. Tell them that the war’s most decisive battle is about to start.”
“Aye, sir,” Hoshi said, immediately beginning to tap the appropriate commands into her console.
Archer noticed only then that T’Pol had approached his chair and was standing to his immediate left. “I’m curious. What do you think that second message will accomplish?”
“‘Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight.’”
“Sir?”
“It’ll warn the Romulans’ next victims.”
T’Pol regarded him quietly, then returned to her science console.
“Interesting that the Romulans didn’t appear right on top of us,” Malcolm said.
“They would have if they could have,” Archer said.
“Perhaps the Romulans have simply decided that their numerical superiority obviates any need for the element of surprise,” T’Pol said.
“Maybe.” Archer stroked his unshaven chin. “Or maybe their commander just can’t take a good taunting and jumped the gun on his attack.”
T’Pol did not appear satisfied with that. “Commodore, our fleet is seriously outnumbered. Starfleet has erred, deploying too many of its resources at Iota Horologii, Eighty-two Eridani, and elsewhere. Therefore it is likely that the Romulans will succeed.”
Archer’s jaw hardened. “The Romulans won’t win their victory easily. If we go down, then I swear we’ll take more than half of them with us. Starfleet’s other ships will regroup from their positions at Iota Horologii, Eighty-two Eridani, and Gamma Equulei. They’ll catch up with the rest of the Romulan fleet before they get to Earth or Vulcan.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Regardless, we could employ a different option while the time still remains to do so.”
Anger flared from some deep place within him. “Are you suggesting we run away, Commander?”
Her eyebrows rose, and she looked genuinely hurt. “No, sir. Only Enterprise and three retrofitted Daedalus-class vessels have warp-five capability. The remaining twenty ships in our contingent would be unable to outrun the Romulans. We would be abandoning them to certain death or capture.”
“Then what do you have in mind?”
An alarmed-sounding Hoshi Sato interrupted the discussion. “Commodore, I’m picking up incoming subspace signals from the Romulan fleet.”
“Are they hailing us?” Archer asked
“No, sir.” said Hoshi. “It looks like the Romulans are recycling one of their older tricks—they’re trying to hijack the helm consoles of Enterprise and the rest of the fleet remotely.”
Fear and outrage warred within Archer’s belly, and outrage won. “They must have been revising this technology the entire time we’ve been working on countering it.”
“It appears they haven’t revised it nearly enough,” said Malcolm as he ran some quick diagnostics. “The most recent anti-hijacking computer protocols we received from the Cochrane Institute team are neutralizing the new Romulan code as fast as it comes in. I’m already purging the bad code from the system.”
“Good work, Malcolm,” Arch
er said. “Ready weapons. Hoshi, screen all incoming signals for Trojan horses. The Romulans could still get lucky.”
Archer glanced down at the chronometer on the arm of his chair. A little less than twenty-three minutes remained.
He turned his attention back to T’Pol. “Commander, you were about to explain a tactical option I hadn’t considered yet. Go ahead.”
The Vulcan outlined the details. To Archer’s surprise, the notion left him grinning.
He wasted no time giving the orders. “Hoshi, open a secure channel to the entire fleet. This is going to take quite a bit of ship-to-ship coordination…”
Warbird Dabhae
“We have dropped back into normal space, Admiral,” Subcenturion T’Velekh reported from the sensor station.
“Receiving confirmation from the fleet,” said the comm officer.
Valdore looked intently at the image on the command deck’s forward viewer. He saw only empty space, the distant, wan disk of the daystar that dominated the Cheron outpost’s skies, the faint crescent of Cheron itself, and the myriad of tiny points of light that filled the infinity that lay beyond it all.
“What happened to the hevam ships, Subcenturion?” Valdore rumbled. “Where is En’ter’priz?”
“The enemy fleet appears to have, ah, changed location,” T’Velekh said, his voice unsteady.
“That much I could have told you already,” Valdore said. “What I fail to understand is how they could have ‘changed location’ without your having noticed it.”
Subcommander Threl rose from behind the main tactical panel, inclining his silver-helmeted head toward Valdore as he executed the time-honored elbow-over-heart military salute. “I believe I may be able to explain what happened.”
“Speak,” Valdore said, scowling. He hoped his tone made clear that he wasn’t fishing for excuses or apologies.
“Whenever our ships drop out of superluminal mode and reenter normal space,” Threl said, “there is a very brief delay between the time when our superluminal sensors disengage and the sublight sensors become active.”
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 25
