“Fire,” Archer said.
Lips compressed, gaze intent on his controls, Malcolm Reed unleashed a barrage on the enemy ship.
Archer watched as the photonic torpedoes—appearing on the viewscreen as bright, round flares—streaked away from Enterprise toward the rear of the Klingon ship.
Duras had been so focused on firing the disruptors—his one thought that of blowing Archer and his crew to the afterlife—that he quite failed to notice the small, blinking display on his console, with its attendant bleating alarm, showing a bevy of bright red dots moving rapidly toward his unprotected stern.
Perhaps his first officer was about to yell out, to alert him; Duras got only the most fleeting impression of the crewman whirling toward him in that last, fleeting second.
And then the bridge on which he sat began to dissolve.
It was the roar he noticed first: the pounding of blood in his ears, the shriek of the ship, so loud he could hear nothing else, not even the sound of his own frustrated screaming. Then came crimson flecked with gold, brilliant, blinding, blotting out the sight of exploding consoles, shattering bulkheads. Duras drew a breath; fire filled his lungs, seared away his hair.
He tried to draw another, and realized there was no more air to be had: Life support systems had failed. Deafened, sightless, he flailed, and felt himself begin to lift out of his chair : Gravity was failing, too.
In his final, fiery millisecond before he was hurled into the vacuum of space, the Klingon allowed himself one last spasm of hatred for Archer, and wondered: Would he, Duras, be considered a failure in his mission? Would his House continue to feel shame on his behalf, or would his kin instead find honor in his death?
He had not given up, as the others had; he had not turned back. He had persevered, to the end….
There was a sudden flare of brightness, of intense heat that took him to a place far beyond pain…and then it faded abruptly, leaving only infinite darkness.
Chapter 9
Archer watched the viewscreen as, in front of them, the bird-of-prey exploded in an angry red blaze that momentarily lit up the dark clouds like a fleeting sunset.
Enterprise sailed through the flames and debris smoothly, as if she were moving through clear space.
Archer let go a sigh. He took no joy in Duras’s death—though he could not admit to sorrow, either. He had done everything he could to avoid violence, to discourage the Klingon from following—and, indeed, the saner ones on two of the birds-of-prey had wisely chosen to back off, and return home. Duras had been determined to make this a fight to the death; he simply hadn’t realized that Archer was just as equally determined not to lose.
The Captain let go the grim thought and instead directed a faint grin at his helmsman; Archer had to admit to being impressed. “Nice going, Travis.”
Mayweather half turned to him; for the first time, the Captain noticed the beads of sweat on the young helmsman’s dark forehead. “I hope you don’t ask me to do that too often, sir.”
Archer’s grin grew indulgent; it was interrupted by an announcement from a relieved-sounding Hoshi Sato.
“The Expanse is ahead, Captain.”
He gazed up at the viewscreen. In the far distance, the clouds were thinning out, giving way to clear space. He looked at it a long moment before finally asking Trip, “Did you lose any more of those injectors?”
“No, sir,” Tucker replied. His tone was calm—no doubt in part because the battle was over, and his engines were safe…but Archer also got the impression that Trip was deeply relieved to have finally arrived at their destination, to have the mission truly underway.
The Captain turned to T’Pol, his expression a bit whimsical. “Sure you still want to tag along?”
It was the one thing about her that had always impressed him, from the first time he’d met her: She was the one Vulcan who understood a joke, and knew how to play along.
“It’s only logical,” she answered.
Archer stared back at the viewscreen. After a long silence, he said, “Let’s see what’s in there.”
Enterprise leapt toward the distant stars.
Her passage did not go unnoticed.
At the great round table in the inner sanctum, Degra studied the blinking, brightly colored icon of the Earth ship as it moved slowly through the cartographic representation of stars and planets, each labeled in one of the five major Xindi tongues. In deference to the aquatic members of the group, nothing but the dim glow from the graphics lit the room, leaving the others in shadow.
Degra was but one of ten Xindi at the table. Beside him sat his aide, Mallora; the two were flanked on one side by a pair of reptilians, on the other by a pair of slow-moving, heavily furred marsupials. Between the former and latter, two insectoids sat, and a pair of aquatics undulated in a water-filled tank.
Externally, Xindi politics were complicated, with myriad parties separated according to species; ethnic tension was the rule, with different groups occasionally forming alliances in order to seize control from the others. Theoretically, most of the governments on the divided homeworld were republics.
True rulership, however, had always belonged to the sanctum. It had been thus for millennia, long before the emergence of representative governments; Degra’s position of power was a legacy from his ancestors. He had been groomed for it since childhood, as had all the others surrounding him.
And like the others, he had learned upon entering the sanctum to leave all racial tensions and preconceived ideas outside. Indeed, a sense of equality was encouraged here; for such reason, the table was round.
Things had certainly not been equal outside, in the Xindi world. From an evolutionary perspective, the aquatics had attained intelligence first—but not being land-based had led to theirs being a relatively peaceable society. They demanded a political voice only when the land-based races began to despoil their waters.
Degra’s race, with its primate ancestry, had been next to attain a very high degree of intelligence; it troubled him, for a reason he could not fathom, to discover that, of all the Xindi species, his resembled the people of Earth most closely.
The primates had, for eons, ruled most of the Xindi world; they had been ruthless in their oppression of the other land species, and in their dogma that the other races were inferior. Although they had, over the past few centuries, abandoned that belief (ostensibly, at least), they were still hated by the others, most notably the reptilians and the insectoids.
To date, Degra’s people still controlled most of the planet…but the reptilian warrior class was rapidly gaining power, and the quickly reproducing insectoids had become the most populous group. Originally, Degra and most primate politicians had thought these things a tragedy; certainly, they could only lead to more racial wars of the sort that had nearly torn the planet apart. The oft-stated belief shared by the primates was that the reptilians (their intelligence having evolved from only their brain stems and basal ganglia) thought with their spinal cords…and the insectoids, of course, didn’t think at all. And the marsupials…well, the marsupials thought, all right; they thought about napping upside down in trees.
Now, with the threat of annihilation from Earth, Degra’s perspective had changed. He was grateful to the warriors for their willingness to sacrifice themselves; their ferocity in combat could now be put to good use.
In a way, he was even grateful to the people of Earth, for giving the Xindi a new group to hate. It was a most unifying experience. For a time, only the ten members of the sanctum had been privy to the information concerning the future destruction of the planet—but they voted, after lengthy discussion, to inform the entire population. At once, petty wars and local rioting stopped; even the notoriously skeptical insectoids put their support behind the anti-Earth efforts, and presented lavish donations to the little reptilians orphaned by their warrior-father, who had manned the probe.
Today, however, the atmosphere in the sanctum was charged with conflict. Degra, made wise by hi
s fifty journeys around his homeworld’s sun, sat back in the shadows and listened. His aide, Mallora, whose hair had not yet begun to silver, was talking, shaking his head subtly as a token of his general disagreement with the others.
Mallora’s tone was impassioned. “It could simply be a coincidence.”
Beside him, Guruk looked down on him with condescension, narrowing opaque yellow eyes with vertical slits for pupils. Reptilians’ expressions were unreadable, masklike—with all the animation of a lizard sunning itself upon a rock, Degra thought—but the contempt in Guruk’s tone was unmistakable. “You’re being naive. Their planet is fifty light-years away. It’s not a coincidence.” Guruk was alarmingly tall, even for his race; his voice was low, emanating from deep within his chest, and his sibilants were marked by a slight hiss. He shifted his weight, causing the faint light to ripple across the scales covering his face and muscular arms; the effect was prismatic, throwing off glints of amber, ruby, emerald.
Of all the races, only the reptilian and the primate tended to intermix. Degra had always thought it was because of the striking beauty of the reptilian skin. He had been told it was softer than it appeared, though he had never himself touched it. The notion of embracing a creature with a darting forked tongue, scales, and vestigial tail disgusted him; and then there was the matter of a cloaca. Old prejudices died hard.
Mallora did not appreciate Guruk’s tone or his words. He countered forcefully. “How do you know your contacts gave you accurate information? The ship may not be from Earth.”
At that point, Shresht, the head insectoid at the table, let go a shrill blast caused by rubbing his darkly gossamer wings together. It was a request for attention; the others faced him at once. Like Degra, they did not possess the equipment to reproduce the insectoid language, but they understood it. Their mastery of the language was not out of deference to Shresht’s race, but the fact that its members lacked the teeth, tongue, and palate necessary to articulate primate speech, which had, after centuries of primate domination, become the planet’s official language.
Even the aquatics—by nature serene and emotionally removed from conflict—turned swiftly in unison inside their tank, their soft, translucent dorsal fins flowing delicately above them. Their names were Qam and Qoh; beneath their pale, moon-shaped and -colored faces, gills released bubbles that ascended slowly to the surface of their private sea. Degra had never been able to tell the two of them apart, nor was there a clear distinction as to which one held more power, or even as to whether they were male, female, or a mixed pair. Aquatic politics were based on equality and consensus, a concept foreign to the land-based species.
Judged by the standards of any other Xindi group, insectoid behavior seemed manic. Degra had endured a great deal of cultural training which enlightened him to the fact that, since insectoids were shorter-lived and lacked the protection of an internal skeleton, they had developed mannerisms based on a sense of urgency.
But the torrent of clicks and chirps Shresht unleashed on this particular day was more hysterical than usual.
It’s the beginning of an invasion! Hundreds of other ships will follow them!
Degra translated the outburst silently in his head, and, once again, left Mallora to do the speaking for him.
“They have no way of knowing that we launched that probe.”
Shresht only grew more agitated. We must destroy the vessel!
Guruk listened with great focus and stillness—a stillness, Degra knew, hid a reptilian penchant for sudden, deadly strikes. At last, the reptilian asked, “How many humans are aboard?”
Shresht’s chirps grew so high-pitched Degra longed to cover his ears. It doesn’t matter! They’ve come to find the weapon! They must be destroyed!
Beneath his glistening black carapace, his thorax began to pulse and twitch in agitation; he flailed his slender, fine-haired limbs. Beside him, his aide followed suit, in a display of insectoid outrage and fear.
Degra said nothing, and directed a look at Mallora to silence him. Arguing with Shresht was pointless; any attempts to reason with him now would be wasted.
Slowly, deliberately, an old marsupial covered in thick, graying fur turned toward Degra. This was the great, hulking Narsanyala. He formed his question with such languor that Degra fought to keep his patience. “When will it be ready?”
It was easy to believe, given the marsupials’ tendency toward torpor, that they were harmless and stupid, but such was not the case. Narsanyala’s people, while they much preferred the company of family, were shrewd when it came to politics, and had proven themselves fierce fighters when attacked. Degra looked down at Narsanyala’s hands, and the fingers that terminated in thick, sharp black claws; while the marsupial was by nature affable, he was also capable of slitting Degra open from throat to pubis with a single strong swipe.
“The next series of tests are being prepared,” Degra answered tersely. He wished to give no further information; the primates, possessed of the greatest engineering talent, had taken control of the weapons project. And with good reason: The reptilians and insectoids would rush headlong into attacking Earth well before the Xindi were ready—and the marsupials and aquatics would dally too long, and permit the homeworld to be destroyed.
As expected, Shresht reacted with another shrill outburst of insectoid.
You said your “test” was successful! You said the probe did what it was designed to do.
A muscle in Degra’s lean, sculpted cheek twitched, but his tone remained even as he countered, “The new weapon is far more complex.”
Facial skin flashing like dull jewels, Guruk turned to look down upon Degra. The cadence of the reptilian’s speech was slower, calmer than that of the insectoid’s, but it was clear he agreed with Shresht. “We’ll accomplish nothing if all you do is run tests.”
His aide hissed agreement; the insectoids let go a cacophony of whistles, chirps, chatters.
True to his character, Narsanyala raised his voice just loud enough to be heard above the din. “We must be patient…follow the plan we all agreed to.”
He graced Degra with a glance indicating support; grateful, Degra returned it. There was a certain wisdom in the design of the Xindi world: The passion of the reptilians and insectoids was balanced out by the coolness of the marsupials and aquatics.
And, of course, Degra secretly believed the primates were meant to be leader of them all.
While he ostensibly agreed with Mallora that the appearance of the Earth ship might be coincidence, it was certainly an uncomfortable one, and one that needed to be further examined. For that, he would rely on the reptilians’ military talents.
He turned to Guruk, and said softly, “Learn everything you can about this human vessel.”
At once, the chattering of the insectoids eased; Guruk hissed his approval.
Degra let his gaze fall once again upon the computer readout in the table’s center, and the bright, blinking representation of the human vessel.
Whatever the reason for its appearance, it would certainly have to be destroyed.
T’Pol sat in what had become Enterprise’s command center—a large, dark chamber filled with monitor stacked upon monitor, most of which were unused, the screens a dull opaque gray. A large, brightly lit display dominated the wall before her: a starchart of the Expanse. On one edge, a single planet circling a star blinked, indicating their current destination.
On this particular day, T’Pol wore civilian clothing, a low-cut V neck suit in a shade of bright steel blue with a white belt slung low on the hip, far too outspoken for a Vulcan diplomatic aide. Upon rising, she had stood before her tiny closet and reached, out of habit, for her usual drab Vulcan uniform—then dropped her hand.
One Earth month and eleven days had passed since they had entered the Expanse, and she had failed to realize, after all that time, that she no longer had the right to wear it. That troubled her—not that she had lost the right, but that she had not remembered.
So she f
orced herself to remember, in that instant, all she had surrendered: her future as a diplomat representing her planet, a goal she had clung to since childhood; the respect of her peers; and even the approval of her own family. She had not shamed them by attempting to contact them; they had certainly been notified by the Embassy, and chosen not to communicate with her. She could not question their choice. It was the right of families to disown offspring who broke with family tradition, and most of T’Pol’s ancestors had been diplomats since the time of Surak. She had to assume that she was no longer on speaking terms with any of her kin.
She was also violating a Vulcan principle by going off with a shipload of humans, armed with weapons and—at least, from her culture’s perspective—bent on destroying another world to protect their own. This went against T’Pol’s own beliefs; but she possessed one thing her Vulcan contemporaries did not.
Trust in Captain Archer, and his crew. While her—former, T’Pol forced herself to add mentally—superior, Ambassador Soval, saw humans as completely incapable of rational thought, T’Pol had been the first Vulcan to truly work among humans. True, they were highly emotional; but Archer and his officers tempered their emotion with compassion and logic. She trusted them to shun violence whenever possible, even in their attempt to stop the Xindi.
That morning, T’Pol had put a hand upon her Vulcan uniform and pulled it from the closet. It was illogical to keep it; she moved to pull it from the hanger, intending to throw it into the recycler…But something stayed her hand. It seemed more than a uniform; it was an entire life.
Tentatively, she put the uniform back in the closet.
And then she chose one of the brightest colors of the civilian clothes she’d brought, and slipped into the suit without pause. At the mirror, she carefully combed her hair into the style most approved by the diplomatic corps; only then did she hesitate, and stare at her image for a few seconds. The distraction of being in the Expanse, and giving up her career, had caused her to forego her usual trims; her bangs and the hair at the nape of her neck had grown longer. She most definitely no longer looked the part of a Vulcan ambassador’s aide.
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