Serpents Among the Ruins

by David R. George III

  Harriman’s crewmates quickly fanned out. Four took up positions beside the bridge exits—two monitoring each door—and the others covered each of the seven Romulans present, moving them away from their stations. One Romulan did not sit at a console, but in a large, raised chair at the aft end of the bridge. As he stepped down onto the decking at the point of a phaser, Harriman strode over to stand before him. “Are you the captain of this ship?” he asked, even as he noticed the uniform insignia denoting the rank of admiral.

  “I am,” the Romulan said in a voice unambiguously defiant. “I am Vokar.” Much shorter and thinner than Harriman, the Romulan nevertheless cast a strong aura of authority. His gray eyes held on Harriman’s face, the intensity of the admiral’s stare conveying the fury he clearly felt.

  Ire rose within Harriman, his craving for vengeance surging again. The notion that this Romulan who stood before him felt angry for having been prevented from exterminating the rest of the Hunley crew, this Romulan who had already overseen the unprovoked and unnecessary deaths of Captain Linneus and the others—the very idea enraged Harriman. In a flash of bitterness, he pictured himself raising his phaser to Vokar’s head and applying pressure to the trigger.

  Harriman looked away, almost unable to contain the emotions roiling within him. Trying to focus on his duties, he lifted his tricorder and, his phaser still in his other hand, carefully worked the controls. The display blinked to life, and told Harriman that Daami’s shields were up, as he’d suspected they would be. He had considered attempting to beam Daami’s entire crew from their ship once the Romulans had lowered shields to transport their boarding parties—and as soon as the radiation had subsequently cleared aboard Hunley—but there wouldn’t have been enough time to transport all four hundred before they had managed to raise shields again.

  Harriman looked back up at Vokar. “Where are the shield controls?” he asked.

  Vokar glared at Harriman. “There is an old Romulan saying that tells that if all around you lies in ruins, either fault yourself, or seek the serpent. Are you the serpent?”

  Harriman said nothing. Instead, he turned and walked over to the freestanding console that sat between Vokar’s command chair and the forward viewscreen. As he did, he peered up at the viewer, and saw the image of Hunley drifting through space, battered and seemingly beaten. But Lieutenant Bexx had assured him that her engineering team would need only an hour or two to restore warp power, and so the ship would soon be on its way back to the Federation.

  From the markings on its controls, Harriman identified the first console he examined as hosting a combination of helm and navigation functions. He quickly moved to the freestanding consoles rimming the bridge, studying the Romulan symbols on them. The fourth panel he came to appeared to contain tactical controls, and Harriman soon found characters spelling out SHIELD FUNCTION. He reached forward and touched the deactivation switch, then checked his tricorder again. Finally, he raised his wrist and spoke into the communicator he wore there. “Harriman to Bexx,” he said.

  “This is Bexx,” the engineer responded.

  “Lieutenant, we’ve lowered the shields on the Romulan ship,” he said. “You can begin transport.” The Romulans would be beamed, sans any weapons they carried, into Hunley’s cargo holds, where they would be restrained by the ship’s heavily armed crew. They would be held there until Hunley reached a Federation starbase.

  “Understood,” Bexx said, relief evident in her voice.

  “Wait,” Vokar said, the word delivered as though the admiral were still in command.

  Curious, Harriman said into his communicator, “Lieutenant, transport the bridge crew last.”

  “Aye, aye,” Bexx said.

  Harriman walked back over to Admiral Vokar, waiting for him to continue. But Vokar only glared at him, his hatred readily apparent. Again, Harriman felt the rush of his own powerful emotions, and found himself not just wanting to shoot the admiral, but to throw him to the deck and beat him.

  Vokar stared at Harriman without saying anything for long seconds, and Harriman quickly tired of whatever game the admiral was playing. He had started to move away when Vokar finally spoke again.

  “Kill me,” he said simply.

  Harriman thought he understood. Although little information had come out of the Romulan Empire in the decade and a half since contact had been reestablished with them—the Romulans had essentially isolated themselves in the century after the Earth-Romulan war—Starfleet Command had drawn some conclusions about the Imperial Fleet. When faced with the possible capture of their vessels, Romulan commanders had, on at least three occasions, chosen instead to destroy their own ships. And while Vokar did not have the capability of taking such action now, he clearly did not want to have to face the consequences of losing his vessel to Starfleet.

  With the condition of Hunley, though, and the apparent claim to this space by the Romulans, Harriman would not risk towing Daami back to the Federation. Nor would he even spend the time here that it would require to download Daami’s files, as much as it might have benefited Starfleet to have such information. Instead, he would order Hunley’s phasers trained on the Romulan vessel once it had been emptied of its crew.

  He said none of this to Vokar, though, discovering that he had nothing at all that he wanted to say to this thug. He turned away, intentionally showing the admiral his back.

  “Kill me!” Vokar roared, his tone one of command.

  Harriman turned back to face the admiral. Then he raised his phaser, pointed it at Vokar’s chest, and fired.

  Vokar awoke slowly. He felt disoriented, unsure of where he was, or even of what he’d been doing before falling asleep. A vague recollection of being aboard Daami rose in his mind, but he could not—

  It all came rushing back.

  Vokar opened his eyes, wanting to know where he was. He lay on his back, and light glared on a clear pane several centimeters above his face. To either side, and down past his feet and above his head, the walls of a container surrounded him. Vokar recognized Federation markings, and although he’d never seen the UFP version of the device in which he now lay, it bore enough of a resemblance to its Romulan counterpart that he knew what it was: a stasis chamber. An emergency medical device, the unit was most often utilized to keep an injured individual in a state of suspended animation until they could receive medical treatment. It apparently also functioned effectively as a prison cell.

  The Starfleet officer—Harriman—had shot him, but obviously hadn’t killed him. Worse, Harriman had made him a prisoner of the Federation. Rage coursed through his body, and he felt his hands clench into fists. At the earliest opportunity, he would find a Federation throat and choke it until—

  The clear panel above him began to move, retracting into one side of the stasis chamber. Now, Vokar thought, realizing that his opportunity had come sooner than he could have hoped. A shadow fell across him, and he tensed, waiting to see the face of the Federation citizen he would kill.

  “Get up,” a man’s voice said in a cold tone.

  Vokar reached up to the sides of the chamber and slowly pulled himself up to a sitting position. He turned, ready to leap at the first person he saw. Somebody moved into his line of vision, but as Vokar set to act, he saw something that stopped him: a Romulan Imperial Fleet uniform. Slowly, he tilted his head up to look at the narrow face and hard features of the man who wore it, a man he knew well.

  “Get up,” Admiral Hiren said again, and he stepped forward and threw the back of his hand across Vokar’s face.

  Vokar’s head snapped to the side, and he felt the flesh of his cheek open beneath what must have been a ring on one of Hiren’s fingers. The pain fueled his anger, not for the Romulan admiral who had just struck him, but for the Starfleet officer who had put him in this situation. He looked back up at the unforgiving expression on Hiren’s face, and saw two security guards standing behind the admiral.

  Vokar knew that he still lived only because of his connections in
the Romulan Senate. He must have been returned to the Empire, perhaps exchanged for one of the Federation spies recently unmasked, who’d been kept alive specifically to be used for such a purpose. And the Federation had probably believed that the Imperial Fleet would punish Vokar far more than they ever would.

  And they would have been right.

  “Get up,” Hiren said again, and he reached forward and grabbed Vokar by the front of his uniform. Hiren pulled him from the stasis unit and threw him across the room. “Get up,” the admiral repeated. “Get up, Sublieutenant.”

  The last word chilled Vokar, telling him his future: he would be made to remain in the Imperial Fleet, reduced in rank and carrying the burden and shame of his failure with him. His ties in the Senate had spared his life, but that would not necessarily be preferable to the fate to which he had now been consigned.

  “Get up, Sublieutenant,” the admiral said again, striding across the room toward Vokar. Hiren did not stop saying it for hours.

  Minus Four: Cloak

  Sulu entered the Enterprise bridge a few minutes before the change of shift. For days, she’d been intending to speak with Ensign Fenn about what had happened to her—about the section of chitin that had fallen from Borona’s finger. Sulu knew that such a loss of exomembrane by a Frunalian often signaled the preliminary stages of what they called the Shift. And while she couldn’t understand what it would be like to face such a metamorphosis, she had seen the expression of fear Fenn had worn when confronted with the prospect. Sulu had been concerned about the young woman, and she’d wanted to make sure that Fenn would be all right.

  After the Universe tragedy, though, Sulu’s attentions had been diverted in other directions. In addition to dealing with her own grief, she’d been trying to assist the crew with theirs. She’d also been worried about the captain, who not only had the weight of the entire crew’s troubles on his shoulders, but who carried sizable trouble of his own: though he was no longer comatose, Admiral Harriman’s condition had improved no further.

  As Sulu walked around the raised perimeter of the bridge, passing behind Lieutenant Tenger and Lieutenant Kanchumurthi at the tactical-and-communications console, she saw the captain glance over his shoulder at her from the command chair. He nodded a greeting to her, and she returned the gesture. As Sulu circled past the port-side turbolift, Ensign Fenn looked up with both eyes from the sciences station. “Hi, Borona,” Sulu said.

  “Commander,” Fenn replied. “I was about to contact you. I detected another occurrence of the dispersion in the navigational deflector.”

  “Were you able to track it down?” Sulu asked. She noticed a bandage wrapped around Fenn’s wounded digit.

  “No,” the ensign said. “The effect lasted less than a second. But I’ve set up some monitoring programs, and they had enough time to eliminate some systems as the cause of the problem: the warp drive and impulse engines, sensors, and environmental control.”

  “Well, that’s a start,” Sulu said with a wry smile. “Maybe in another year and a half, we’ll actually figure out what the source of the dispersion is, rather than what it isn’t.” Realizing that her statement could be construed as criticism, which she had not intended, Sulu added, “Good work, Borona.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  Sulu paused, allowing a moment for her to alter the course of the discussion. “Did you see Dr. Morell about what happened?” she asked, pointing offhandedly toward the bandage around Fenn’s finger.

  “Yes, I did,” Borona said, but then she said nothing more.

  “I don’t mean to pry if you don’t want to discuss it,” Sulu said. “I just wanted to make sure that you were all right.”

  “No, no,” Fenn said, somewhat hastily. “I mean, yes, I’m all right.” She peered down at her hand, splaying her fingers as she did so. “I’m beginning the Shift.” Fenn looked back up. “I thought Dr. Morell would have told you.”

  “She’s probably informed the captain,” Sulu guessed. “Are you in any pain?”

  “The doctor prescribed some Frunalian medication for me,” Fenn said. “I think she’s been prepared for this to happen.”

  “Dr. Morell is nothing if not attentive to the needs of the crew,” Sulu agreed. “How long will it be?”

  “The doctor estimates I won’t begin the main phase of the Shift for another eighteen to twenty weeks,” Fenn said. She looked down, apparently embarrassed. “I’ll need to take a leave of absence before then,” she said. “In about fourteen weeks.”

  Sulu knew that Frunalians never allowed themselves to undergo their metamorphosis off of their planet. “It’s all right, Borona,” she said, attempting to reassure her. “Your position as science officer will be here when you return.”

  “Yes, Commander,” Fenn said, nodding. Although she did not appear to disbelieve what Sulu had said, she still seemed troubled by what lay ahead for her.

  “Captain, we are being hailed,” Kanchumurthi said. Sulu peered over and saw him operating his communications console. “It’s the Tomed.”

  Sulu looked back around at Fenn. “Borona, I’m on alpha watch tomorrow,” she said quickly. “Let’s have dinner.” Fenn nodded, and Sulu gave her shoulder a pat.

  “How long until we reach the Neutral Zone?” Captain Harriman asked. Sulu stepped down into the lower, central portion of the bridge and walked over to stand beside him.

  “Twenty-seven minutes,” Linojj answered from the helm.

  Harriman looked at Sulu. “Sooner than Vokar wants to see us, I’m sure,” he said. “Put him through, Ramesh.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kanchumurthi said. Then, after a moment, he added, “Captain, it’s not Admiral Vokar.”

  Sulu felt her brow furrow in confusion. Had something happened to remove Vokar from command of the Romulan flagship? Had he perhaps been injured, or even killed?

  “Put the message through,” Harriman said.

  “Yes, sir,” Kanchumurthi replied, and the starscape on the main viewscreen disappeared, the image of a lean Romulan woman appearing in its place, the dark, green-tinged setting of the bridge on which she stood visible behind her. She wore the insignia of a subcommander, the color of tactical operations, and the guise of command. Her cheekbones sat high on her narrow face, her flesh extremely pale and yellowish, even for a Romulan.

  “Captain Harriman,” she said.

  “Of U.S.S. Enterprise, yes,” the captain said. “And you are?”

  As Sulu watched, color rose in the woman’s cheeks, an olive tone that clearly marked her ire. “I am Subcommander Linavil,” she said evenly. “First officer of Tomed under Admiral Vokar.” Sulu remembered Harriman’s report of his experiences on the planet of the Koltaari, and that this woman had struck him and knocked him to the ground, then threatened him with a knife.

  “Subcommander,” the captain said, and Sulu noted an almost imperceptible curl along one side of his lips. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  For a tense beat, Linavil said nothing. What can she say? Sulu wondered. Any attempt to remind Harriman that the two had met previously would simply have underscored how she had apparently made no impression on him. If Vokar had intended his absence during this communication as an insult to Harriman, the captain had clearly returned it to the admiral’s executive officer.

  Finally, Linavil said, “Once Enterprise reaches the Neutral Zone, you will reduce velocity to warp factor five and lower your shields.”

  “We are not traveling with our shields raised,” Harriman responded. “We expected there to be no need for us to defend ourselves. Our mission here is one of peace.”

  Linavil’s lips parted and she expelled a short burst of air, the Romulan equivalent, Sulu supposed, of derisive laughter. “Whatever your mission,” the subcommander said, “you will reduce your velocity and continue with your shields down. Tomed will escort you to Space Station Algeron. You are not permitted any communications while within Romulan territory.”

  “Even with your ship?” Harrima
n asked, and Sulu thought she could see the mischief behind his eyes.

  Again, Linavil paused, her features tensing, her rage seeming barely contained. “At the first transgression of these requirements, Tomed will fire on Enterprise.” The subcommander turned her head sharply to one side, clearly looking to somebody offscreen, and an instant later, her image vanished, the stars ahead of Enterprise appearing once more.

  Sulu looked at Harriman, who returned her gaze. “I don’t think she likes you very much,” she said.

  “Funny,” the captain said. “I just don’t seem to be able to make friends among the Romulan military.”

  “No, sir,” Sulu said. Directly ahead of her, the doors to the starboard turbolift opened, and Lieutenant Trent and Ensign DeYoung stepped onto the bridge, the computer scientist and the tactical officer now obviously arriving for beta shift. Others would also be appearing shortly, she knew.

  “Do as Linavil…ah, requested,” Harriman said. “When we reach the Neutral Zone, keep the shields down, reduce speed to warp five, and maintain radio silence.” He stood up from the command chair. “And let me know immediately if anything seems suspicious to you, Demora.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. As Harriman made his way to the turbolift, Sulu took her place in the command chair. She still did not feel comfortable about Starfleet providing the Romulans and Klingons with the hyperwarp-drive specifications, and she certainly did not trust either power. But she did trust John Harriman, and as Enterprise headed for hostile territory, she tried to focus on that fact. For eighteen years, the captain had commanded Starfleet’s flagship through uncounted dangers, and always, he had successfully protected the ship, the crew, and the Federation itself. Right now, she simply had to trust that he would so one more time.

  “Here are the research notes, the design specs, and the sensor logs of all the testing,” Harriman said. He stepped up to the conference table and set down one of the three personalaccess display devices he carried. On its screen, numbers, letters, and symbols marched in formulas along the bottom, below an animated line diagram that described warp fields being generated around an accelerating starship frame.