“Let’s sit tight, stay ready, and see what the Romulans do next.”
And hope like hell for another cavalry charge.
Warbird Dabhae
Standing uneasily in the empty causeway, Trip wasn’t entirely sure of the sincerity of T’Luadh’s change of heart until she used the wall-mounted keypad to open the hatch. Moving cautiously, he peered inside to satisfy himself that the interior of an escape pod, rather than that of an empty airlock, lay on the other side of the aperture.
“So I was right about you,” he said as he moved onto the escape pod’s threshold and turned back to look at her. “You’ve got to be working for the Vulcans. Otherwise you’d never have agreed to let me go.”
Her neutral expression darkened into a glower as she holstered her disruptor pistol. “Hurry, Commander Tucker. Neither of us wants anyone to observe your departure.”
He grinned. “You’re still denying your connection to Vulcan? After rescuing me? After the mind-meld you performed?”
“Never make assumptions.” She suddenly became a blur of motion. With one hand, she removed a small object from a pouch attached to the belt of her black paramilitary uniform. With the other hand, she pushed Trip hard in the chest, sending him reeling backward to get him clear of the hatchway. With a sibilant pneumatic hiss, the hatch began to close.
Trip fell awkwardly to the escape pod’s hard deck. As he rose, he realized that something had tumbled inside with him. Belatedly he recognized it as the object T’Luadh had pulled from her belt. Suspicious of the thing he now held in his hand, he faced the hatchway. It was sealed, and T’Luadh was no longer visible through the narrow porthole.
Next he heard a loud bang, then fell against the hatch as the escape pod launched and the forces of acceleration made the pod rock and shimmy, pinning him in place. Somehow, he never lost his grip on the object that T’Luadh had tossed into the pod.
It must be a beacon, he thought, trying to calm his mounting anxiety. Probably set to a Vulcan frequency. I bet all I have to do is find the switch that activates it.
The object was a gray metallic ovoid roughly twice the size of an egg, and a recessed panel opened in response to a push from his thumb, which almost immediately fell upon a small internal button.
Let’s see what frequency this baby broadcasts on, he thought as he pushed the button and brought the device near his face to take a look at its digital display.
Instead of the flowing, musiclike Vulcan script he’d expected, he saw a slow succession of numerals.
Romulan numerals, changing at a rate of roughly one per second as they counted down inexorably. It was clear to him immediately that he didn’t want to be anywhere near this object when it ticked down to the Romulan equivalent of zero. But there seemed to be no way to chuck the thing overboard without depressurizing the pod and dying of asphyxia.
“Shit,” Trip muttered. “I hate when this happens.”
An instant later, a blinding white light flooded the universe.
THIRTY
Enterprise NX-01
THE SHOUT FROM THE BIOBED behind him startled Phlox, nearly making him drop the container he had been filling with Regulan bloodworms.
“Trip!” T’Pol shrieked, pulling the restraints so taut that Phlox feared she might injure herself. Her eyes were open wide, her tone one of terror. “He’s out there!”
Phlox knew that the Vulcan healing process usually passed through a critical stage during which the body concentrated all of its prodigious energies on repairing injured tissues. At this time, the patient faced the very real danger of forever losing the ability to return to full consciousness. Though he had always found it counterintuitive, Phlox knew that all it usually took was a few well-timed, open-handed blows to the face to shepherd most Vulcans through this crisis.
What he hadn’t expected was that T’Pol would reach the crisis portion of her recovery so soon.
“Trip!” she cried again, still straining against the biobed straps. “We have to find his escape pod.”
Phlox quickly released her restraints, grabbed her arm, and pulled her up into a sitting position so that her legs dangled over the edge of the biobed. He drew his right hand back.
“Forgive me, Commander,” he said before releasing a vicious slap across her face. He gave her another with the back of his hand, then repeated the process, forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand. All the while, she continued speaking about Commander Tucker, insisting that he was in danger, that he was in an escape pod, that Enterprise had to find him.
As he prepared to initiate another slap, T’Pol reached out and caught his arm, immobilizing it in an iron grip.
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said. Her eyes focused, and an appearance of calm and rationality returned to her. He urged her to lie back on the biobed while he examined her, and she complied with what seemed to Phlox to be the greatest reluctance. Though the burns on her face were scarcely noticeable now thanks to the treatment he had administered, both with dermal regeneration gel and his osmotic eel, he wanted to check for any lingering internal injuries.
“You might not remember any of this, Commander,” he said as he ran his scanner over her head and chest and checked the readings. “But in your, ah, delirium, you mentioned Commander Tucker several times.”
She sat up abruptly, as though he had just reminded her of an important task she’d forgotten. “That’s because I know where he is.”
“That seems unlikely, Commander,” Phlox said. “You’ve sustained a serious trauma, and such injuries can distort the normal operation of sense and memory.”
“I know where Trip is,” she repeated as she got to her feet. He reflexively reached out to steady her, but she shook him off. “Where is my uniform?”
“I don’t think—”
Her brows folded downward, casting sinister shadows across her face. Beneath the brows, her eyes were twin flames.
“My uniform, Phlox. I’m needed on the bridge. Otherwise Commander Tucker may not have much longer to live.”
* * *
“I’m afraid she insisted, Captain,” Phlox said, the comm speaker built into the arm of Archer’s chair conveying the doctor’s intense concern. “She’s become convinced that a certain…mutual friend has left the Romulan flagship in an escape pod. And that this individual is in imminent danger if we fail to intervene on his behalf.”
Trip? Archer thought. “Understood, Doctor. Thanks for the heads-up.”
At that moment, the turbolift hatchway hissed open and a surprisingly well-poised T’Pol stepped onto the bridge. Without pausing to acknowledge the presence of either her captain or crewmates, she made a beeline to the science console. Commander O’Neill stepped away from the station, and T’Pol immediately began running the scanners without saying so much as a word.
Archer quietly approached his exec, concerned. “T’Pol, are you all right?”
“Lazarus is out there,” she said. “In an escape pod.”
He leaned in close to her and matched both her tone and her volume. “You’ve probably noticed by now that the Romulans have launched a whole bunch of escape pods, and they’ve already gotten busy with recovery operations. Finding a particular pod in a hurry might be a real challenge. Besides, what do you intend to do if you find it?”
“We’ll use the transporter. We’ll beam him aboard.”
“T’Pol, you’re not being…logical,” Archer whispered, shaking his head. “We’re nowhere near within transporter range.”
She turned from the scanner display and faced him. Jabbing at a specific dot on her screen, she said, “That’s the one. I’m certain of it. We have t—”
A shout from Malcolm interrupted her. “The Romulan fleet has just entered weapons range, Commodore. They’re powering up their forward tubes.”
“The fleet reports ready at Tactical Alert,” Hoshi reported from the comm station. “Hull plating polarized. Shields engaged. Weapons locked and loaded.”
Archer straightened and n
odded to Malcolm. “Fire at will.” Turning to Hoshi, he said, “And direct the fleet to do the same.”
“Incoming fire, Commodore,” Malcolm said an instant before the lights cut out and the deck pitched abruptly forward.
Warbird Dabhae
As his fleet began slicing through the forward ranks of the hevam and their allies, Valdore felt the approving breath of the haein upon him.
How could it be otherwise? The gods of his ancestors had to smile upon any venture that purged the Romulan Star Empire’s Outmarches of the mongrel, marginally sentient races who would surely try to annex them.
“The enemy force has been cut in half yet again, Admiral,” Subcommander Threl reported.
“Our losses?” Valdore asked.
“A total of six warbirds thus far. The avaihh lli vastam vessels remain safely in the rear as we continue driving the enemy toward the system’s periphery and away from Cheron’s orbit.”
It was a triumph. Except for one thing. And its image mocked him from the command deck’s central viewer.
“En’ter’priz remains in one piece, Subcommander,” Valdore growled. “Once you remedy that situation, the residue of the enemy force will lose whatever remains of its will to fight.”
Threl bowed his helmeted head as he saluted. “It will be done, Admiral.”
“Target her bridge,” Valdore said.
Subcenturion T’Velekh spoke up from the sensor station. “I’m reading a large number of incoming warp signatures, Admiral.”
“The reinforcements,” Valdore said, his spirits rising. “Hail them.”
Enterprise NX-01
His nostrils assaulted by the stench of fire and ozone, Archer found it nothing short of miraculous that nobody on the bridge was dead. But he knew death would come soon enough.
In the ruddy semidarkness of the bridge’s emergency lights, he sat on the half of his command chair that the falling ceiling beam hadn’t clipped. Having only one armrest felt extraordinarily awkward. The main viewscreen flickered and filled with momentary bursts of static as they conveyed a stark real-time portrait of what was going on all around Enterprise.
A pair of Daedalus-class ships, the Armstrong and the A. G. Robinson, completed their death throes in the viewer’s foreground. Both vessels yielded almost simultaneously to the structural stresses caused by cascades of internal systems failures, a result of the pitiless impacts of countless pieces of Romulan ordnance. In the distance, a nuclear explosion flared; Archer could see fragments of at least four other Daedalus-class vessels tumbling away from the expanding orange sphere of the conflagration.
It struck him then just how calm and emotionally disconnected he had become as he contemplated the end that was surely coming for everyone aboard Enterprise, not to mention the remainder of the fleet. His crew needed him. He owed them all the dignity of staying busy, fighting until the end.
“T’Pol, status?” Archer said.
“Twelve ships remain in our combined force,” she said. “Shran’s vessel is intact but has been disabled. Kolos’s ship was destroyed, and much of his force has been scattered or disabled.”
Archer nodded. “And the Romulans?”
“They outnumber us more than two to one, sir,” Malcolm said, his soot-smeared face the epitome of British stoicism. “And most of their ships have taken less damage than we have.”
We’re done, Archer thought. I might as well order anybody still capable of going to warp to withdraw.
He opened his mouth to give the order.
He found he couldn’t get it out.
“The Romulan flagship is closing on us, Commodore,” Malcolm shouted. “Targeting the bridge!”
“Evasive, Travis!” Archer cried, and grabbed his chair’s right armrest as the hull groaned and the slight delay in the overstrained inertial dampers kept his stomach a few critical milliseconds behind the rest of his body. The bridge rocked and shuddered again as the lights dimmed and something struck the primary hull with unbridled savagery.
“Hull breaches on Decks B through D,” T’Pol said. “Engines are offline.”
Under circumstances such as these, Archer knew that once the warp drive failed, the impulse engines wouldn’t be far behind. Still, it felt surreal to hear that that had happened.
“Life support is now on tertiary backup,” O’Neill reported. “Battery power only.”
“Helm’s gone dead, too,” Travis said.
“Same with the hull plating, shields, and most of the tactical system,” Malcolm said. “Sensors are still working, at least for the moment. I’m reading a number of incoming warp signatures. More than thirty vessels.”
“Starfleet?” Archer said, though he no longer held out any real hope.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” Malcolm said, his tone and manner funereal.
Of course, the captain thought. On the plus side, at least I won’t have to put up with this “Commodore” business for much longer.
“T’Pol, I need a positive ID on those ships,” Archer said.
“Sensor resolution is less than optimal at the moment,” T’Pol said. “It may be attributable to battle damage. However, I have determined that the incoming vessels have begun coming out of warp. They are still on an approach vector, at high impulse.”
“Hoshi, hail them,” Archer said.
“I just tried, sir,” said the communications officer. “It’s no good. The comm system can’t deliver much power at the moment. And the Romulans appear to be jamming us.”
“Can we get a look at the incoming ships?” Archer said, gesturing at the main viewscreen. At the moment, it displayed only a chaotic hash of static.
Malcolm said, “I think so.” He began entering commands into his console, and the big screen slowly and grudgingly yielded an expansive image of ship debris, scorched Romulan vessels, and the star-bejeweled blackness beyond.
One of the warbirds was making a leisurely, looping turn. Archer recognized it as the flagship that had done so much damage with its previous salvo. Very soon, she would come about and, presumably, deliver the coup de grâce.
Archer suddenly became aware that every eye on the bridge was now fixed squarely upon him.
They understand that we’re all about to die, he thought. And they need me to either summon a miracle or say something to make the end a little less terrifying.
Turning slowly in a full circle, he looked around the ruined bridge, fixing in his mind the image of each crew member.
“It’s truly been an honor serving with you all,” he said at length. The acrid air filled with murmurs of agreement.
Most remarkable, he thought, was the almost complete absence of any overt signs of fear—even from Hoshi, who had from time to time expressed diffidence about facing the unknown. It occurred to him only then just how far they all had come over the past decade.
“I see something on the viewer,” Travis said, pointing.
“The incoming vessels,” Malcolm said. “Boosting the magnification to maximum.”
Archer could see the approaching ships only indistinctly. As the swelling multitude of craft steadily grew before his eyes, his first impression was of streamlined cylinders.
Dozens and dozens of cylinders unevenly bisected by the circular propulsion assemblies that ringed their cigarlike aft sections.
Archer could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Dozens and dozens of—
“Vulcans, sir!” Malcolm cried, completing Archer’s thought as a great whoop went up across the dark and smoking bridge.
The phalanx of Vulcan ships had been accompanied by other vessels whose designs Archer quickly recognized. The long, dual-nacelled lines of Andorian heavy cruisers, ships whose sleek forward sections reminded him of the business end of a terrestrial Venus flytrap, blended in with their Vulcan counterparts with remarkable grace, as did—surprisingly—the rounder and more bulbous shapes of at least ten Tellarite frigates.
The bridge watched in silence as the combined Vulcan-Andorian-Tellarite a
ssemblage took up positions that cut off all immediate avenues of escape for the Romulans save those trajectories that made for easy navigation back to Romulan space.
The newcomers wasted no time opening fire. The Romulan vessels that had survived the earlier phases of this engagement put up a perfunctory fight, but Archer could see right away that their hearts weren’t in it.
“The Romulans are withdrawing,” Malcolm said. “Those that still can withdraw, at any rate.”
A nuclear fireball erupted near one of the far edges of the spreading ship-to-ship melee, annihilating no fewer than four of the alleged warp-seven ships that the Romulans had taken such pains to protect. Moments later, three other apparently crippled Romulan vessels initiated the same maneuver, vanishing in globular clouds of orange, fission-generated brilliance as their still-mobile sister ships abruptly brought themselves about before exercising the better part of valor.
Those self-immolations spoke volumes to Archer about the Romulan attitude toward war. This was an adversary that obviously preferred death to the indignity of capture.
Good riddance, you bastards.
He wondered whether Lazarus—Trip—had managed yet again to cheat death while hiding among the enemy.
Crossing to T’Pol’s station, he leaned close to her and whispered, “See if you can find Lazarus out there again.”
Her eyes seemed to be brimming with unshed tears. “His escape pod…exploded.”
Archer felt as though he’d been stabbed in the gut. “Was he inside the pod?”
“The sensors have been unreliable, so I found the pod by tracing its previous trajectory,” T’Pol said. “When the detonation occurred, I could not tell for certain whether he was in the pod or not.”
“Commodore,” Malcolm said as he gestured toward the forward viewer.
Archer watched one of the Vulcan ships, a long, flat, ring-tailed D’Kyr-class military vessel, spin off from the main group and approach Enterprise.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 28
