Serpents Among the Ruins

by David R. George III

  Again keenly aware of her heart beating, Kamemor raced over to the console. I’m a diplomat, she thought, not an intelligence agent, not a saboteur. And yet here she stood, in an area of the Algeron station that, before now, she had only ever passed through.

  She set down the scanner atop the console and studied the array of controls there. Captain Harriman had carefully described the layout to her, and she saw now that his instruction had been accurate. Kamemor did not question how a Starfleet officer had known such information, vaguely assuming the ephemeral nature of technological secrets.

  She studied the panel closely, and at first she rushed too much, the complexity of the console nearly overwhelming her. Kamemor thought that she would not be able to do this, and in that moment of doubt, she dreaded the consequences of her failure more than the consequences of being labeled a traitor. She hadn’t fully realized it, but on her way here, and entering this room, and even standing here peering down at this console, she had not been completely committed to this course of action.

  Now she was. For the good of the Empire, she had to do this.

  Kamemor concentrated on the console. She did as Harriman had suggested, and isolated only those controls that she would need. She found the targeting sensors first, and then the activation sequencer. One by one, she located all the necessary controls. When she had finished, she raised her arms and positioned her hands above the panel, then reviewed the progression of actions the captain had detailed for her. Finally, knowing that her window of opportunity was rapidly closing, and wanting to finish here and flee this room, Kamemor acted.

  Her fingers moved carefully across the console. She hesitated briefly before operating each control, revisiting and reconfirming her memory of what Harriman had told her to do. If she did not do this correctly, then none of her actions and none of her decisions would have any meaning.

  Everything she did seemed to work. Readings and confirmation indicators appeared on the readout as she’d been told they would, until she came to the final step. Once more, she paused, not from any reservations about completing this undertaking, but because once she had, there would be no way to reverse it. And if she had done something wrong along the way, then she might just as easily kill Captain Harriman as help his cause.

  Kamemor operated the last control.

  A surge of emotional energy coursed through her body, and a thought—What have I done?—bloomed in her mind. But she knew that she would not learn the answer to that question right away.

  Using the same care that she had already shown, and continuing to follow Harriman’s directions, she sent her fingers back across the console, hiding the evidence of her handiwork. When she had finished, she retrieved the scanner and verified that the corridor outside the room was clear. Then, returning the scanner to its hiding place amid the material of her robe, Kamemor exited the transporter room, walking into a future that she had just tried to cast, but not knowing yet what that future would actually hold.

  Rafaele Buonarroti crawled along the Jefferies tube, the metal grating hard against his knees even through the material of the environmental suit he wore. A loud, deep drone filled the area, joined by a higher-pitched, tremulous whine. The sounds conducted through the air, through the decking, through the environmental suit, causing a sensation like insects crawling all over his body. Normal engineering procedures restricted access to this section of the ship when the impulse engines were engaged, but the situation right now had deviated far from normal.

  Buonarroti tilted his head—an awkward movement with his helmet on—and peered past his feet to where Lieutenant Trent clambered along after him. They’d left their comm channels open, and Buonarroti heard Trent’s breathing beginning to become a bit labored. “Are you all right, Gray?” he asked, having to raise his voice to be heard above the ambient sounds of the drive.

  “Yeah,” Trent said around mouthfuls of air. “I’m okay. It’s just a little hot in here.”

  “Don’t worry about the heat,” Buonarroti quipped. “Long before we burn up, the radiation will kill us.” Trent actually laughed at that, despite the truth contained in the joke. While the environmental suits would have safeguarded them from the standard temperature and radiation levels of the impulse engines for a matter of hours, now they would provide only minutes of protection. Lieutenant Commander Linojj had been able to shut down the starboard engine, but the port reactor remained online, deuterium fuel apparently flowing uncontrolled into its core. And that meant that somebody had to come here to attempt a repair of the problem.

  Buonarroti looked ahead again, pulling himself along in the enclosed space. He glanced at the data on the readout strip sliding down the left side of his faceplate, and saw that he and Trent had only thirteen minutes left before the radiation levels here would begin affecting their bodies. The sections surrounding the port impulse engine, he knew, were already being evacuated.

  A minute later, Buonarroti arrived at the engineering panel that allowed access to the deuterium-flow regulator for the port reactor. He stopped and climbed onto his knees, then reached forward to remove the panel, his movements slowed by the environmental suit. The panel came away from the bulkhead easily, the magnetic locks giving way under the force of his pull. He set it to one side and peered in at the regulator. A readout on it indicated the runaway nature of the hydrogen-isotope stream pouring through its electromagnetic control field.

  Buonarroti believed that the symptoms of the problem pointed to a disruption of that control field. That likely meant either a physical defect or a programmatic problem in the regulator; because the diagnostic code in the firmware had failed to identify any physical defects, he therefore suspected the latter, which was why he had brought Trent down here with him. It had also occurred to Buonarroti that Enterprise, sitting docked at a Romulan space station, might have been sabotaged, but at the moment that possibility mattered little to him; he only cared about diagnosing and then repairing the problem.

  He pulled a tricorder from where it hung on his environmental suit, along with two fiber-optic leads. He quickly attached the thin glass wires to the tricorder, then reached in and connected the other ends to the regulator. He worked the controls on both devices, scrutinizing their displays. He had expected the root cause of the problem to reveal itself immediately, but instead, he detected nothing wrong.

  On his faceplate, he saw that he and Trent had only ten minutes of safety left. If they had not fixed the problem in that time, he knew that they would continue to search for a solution, but their probability of surviving the situation unharmed, if at all, would rapidly decrease to zero.

  “Gray,” Buonarroti said, and he handed the tricorder to Trent. The computer scientist took it, holding it in both of his gloved hands, his strained breathing loud over the comm system. He studied the readout for just a few seconds.

  “There’s nothing wrong here,” he said. “The operating system is functioning perfectly.”

  “But how can there be no problem to report,” Buonarroti asked, “when there clearly is a problem?”

  Trent nodded. “Let me check the verification routines.” He operated the controls of the tricorder, then looked up and pointed into the bulkhead at the regulator. “I need to get in there,” he said.

  Buonarroti quickly scrambled farther down the Jefferies tube, clearing the way for Trent in front of the engineering panel. Trent moved forward as well, then reached inside. Buonarroti watched as the lieutenant pressed the control pad on the regulator, causing text—lines of code, Buonarroti assumed—to march across its display.

  A minute passed. Then another. Buonarroti felt perspiration rolling down his body inside the environmental suit, a result not of the heat, he thought, so much as of the time growing short. He imagined the heavy atoms of hydrogen screaming past the regulator, unconstrained as they fed the fusion reactions in the impulse engine. Like having too many logs on a fire, the increase in the number of atomic reactions in the core would eventually generate m
ore energy than could be contained in the reactor.

  Seven minutes left.

  “I’ve got it,” Trent said at last. “The diagnostics aren’t checking out. The checksum routines seem to be off.” He worked the controls on the regulator’s panel for a moment more, then began operating the tricorder

  “Can you fix it?” Buonarroti asked.

  “I’m trying,” Trent said. “I’m recoding the safety routines, reestablishing the parity bits.”

  Six minutes left. Then five.

  “Uploading,” Trent said, peering into the bulkhead. Buonarroti followed his gaze, and saw a warning message scroll across the regulator display. Around them, the resonant hum of the port impulse engine, along with the sickly whine permeating it, began to fade. He looked up at Trent. “Error detection is now functioning,” the computer scientist said. “There’s a flaw in the regulator surface. Automatic shutdown is in progress.”

  Buonarroti leaned in beside Trent and touched a control on the tricorder. Sensor readings of the reactor core appeared on the display. The radiation and temperature levels had stopped their precipitous climbs, and as he watched, they even began to recede.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Buonarroti said, pointing past Trent back down the Jefferies tube.

  “Bridge to Buonarroti.” Sulu’s voice came over the comm system as the two men began to crawl back the way they had come. “You’ve done it.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Buonarroti confirmed. “Trent did.”

  “Good work,” Sulu said.

  “We’re on our way back to the bridge,” Buonarroti said.

  “I look forward to your report,” Sulu said. “Out.” As the two made their way through the Jefferies tube toward the corridor, Buonarroti checked the readout on his faceplate. Seconds continued to tick off from their margin of safety. 3:57. 3:56. 3:55.

  “We had more than four minutes left,” Buonarroti told Trent. “That wasn’t even dramatic.”

  “Sorry,” Trent said. “Next time.”

  “Yeah, next time,” Buonarroti agreed. “I can hardly wait.”

  Sulu noticed the eyes first. The gray irises mimicked the color of ash, and appeared as cold as the remnants of a fire long extinguished. The glare of the Romulan admiral felt penetrating, even on the viewscreen.

  “We have replaced the defective part,” Sulu said, standing at the center of the bridge, directly behind Linojj and Tolek at the helm and navigation stations. The admiral regarded her impassively. So thin that he could almost be called gaunt, he had straight, silvering hair and deep lines drawn around his mouth.

  “And you are satisfied that there will be no additional…mishaps?” Vokar said. The hesitation in his words clearly marked his skepticism that what had occurred aboard Enterprise had been accidental. But if he implied that Starfleet would have sacrificed a ship and crew in Romulan space in order to gain the allegiance of the Klingons in a war, then Vokar did not know the Federation as well as he obviously thought he did.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Sulu said. “We are satisfied.” Buonarroti and Trent had concluded that the microfracture in the deuterium-flow regulator had probably been the result of a flaw introduced during the manufacturing process. After a certain amount of stress from usage, the flaw had given way, allowing the microscopic fissure to form. They had also theorized that the error in the firmware had been caused by the subsequent irregularity in the device’s electromagnetic field. And since Sulu saw no advantage to the Romulans destroying Enterprise within their territory—the Klingons would never have believed that such an event had been an accident—she accepted the judgments of Buonarroti and Trent.

  “We’ve also inspected our starboard impulse assembly,” Sulu continued, “as well as our warp drive.” The ship’s engineering and computer-science crews had taken nearly an entire day to thoroughly examine and test all of the engines, and they had encountered no further difficulties. “We’re ready to resume our journey back to the Federation.”

  “Excellent,” Vokar said, though his expression remained stoic, and his voice as icy as his gaze. “Then you’ll start at once?” He delivered the statement less like a question than an order.

  “Commander,” Sulu said, still looking at the image of Vokar on the main viewscreen, but speaking instead to Linojj. “Full impulse power. Get us out of here.”

  Vokar did not move—not a brow, not an eyelid, not a muscle—giving the impression that he might not even have heard Sulu. But then the viewscreen blinked, and a vista of stars replaced the view of the Romulan admiral.

  “They ended the communication on their end,” Lieutenant Kanchumurthi said.

  “Acknowledged,” Sulu said. She reached up and placed her hand atop Linojj’s shoulder. “I meant it, Xintal,” she said. “Get us out of here.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Linojj said. “With pleasure.” As she worked the helm, the bass thunder of the impulse drive rose around them. This time, it stayed steady.

  Sulu sat down in the command chair, pleased and relieved to finally be under way again. A few moments later, Linojj reported that the ship had attained full impulse velocity, and shortly after that, she noted that Enterprise had left the boundaries of the Algeron system. “Take us to warp five,” Sulu said, and Linojj executed the order.

  With Tomed following, Enterprise and its crew raced for home.

  Harriman stood at the base of a well that served as the junction for several equipment conduits. He continually checked his sensor veil to ensure that he, Gravenor, and Vaughn could not be detected by scans. He also consulted his tricorder regularly, performing passive inspections of the surrounding areas; just because the trio couldn’t be scanned didn’t mean that some Romulan might not stumble upon them by chance.

  On the other side of the junction well, Commander Gravenor squatted beside an open panel, her hands buried deep inside the exposed equipment. Several fiber-optic bundles wound from out of the bulkhead and connected to a Romulan scanner sitting beside her on the deck. Beside Gravenor, Lieutenant Vaughn kneeled before another open panel.

  The commander looked ridiculous to Harriman. The Romulan uniform she wore—with a dark blue sash that indicated her position in engineering—seemed too bulky for her, particularly in light of her diminutive size. Her yellowed complexion and pointed ears seemed more like parts of a costume than natural components of her body. And worst of all, the wig of straight black hair she wore appeared completely out of place on her.

  Peering down at Vaughn, who also wore Imperial Fleet garments, Harriman thought that he looked as silly—or maybe even sillier—than Gravenor. The lieutenant’s rugged face and piercing blue eyes did not seem suited to either a Romulan complexion or the straight black hair that went along with it. Vaughn’s appearance struck Harriman as so comical that he actually had to stifle a laugh, bringing his hand up to cover his mouth. He found it remarkable that he could be so amused in circumstances such as these.

  Maybe that was it, though; maybe—no, definitely—he’d had enough of these circumstances. Harriman wanted to end all of this—with the Romulans, with the Klingons—as soon as possible. Which was why he had gone to Starfleet’s commander in chief with this plan in the first place.

  “Excuse me, sir?” Vaughn said, peering up over his shoulder at Harriman. “Did you say something?”

  “No,” he said. “Just clearing my throat.” Harriman himself wore a Starfleet uniform, the insignia on his shoulder and sleeve indicating a rank of lieutenant commander. If they did encounter a Romulan officer, Gravenor and Vaughn would masquerade as Romulans who had captured a Starfleet spy. It might not work for more than a few seconds, but any time at all might allow them to extricate themselves from such a situation. Beneath the hem of his uniform jacket, Harriman carried a phaser; Gravenor and Vaughn each carried a Romulan disruptor pistol.

  “Captain,” Gravenor said. She examined the readout of the scanner that she had connected to the ship’s circuitry. “We’re turning.” Harriman waited as the commander studied
the display. “They’ve set a course for Romulus,” she said. “Warp eight.”

  Harriman nodded. “All right,” he said, glancing over at Vaughn to include him. “Let’s get to work.”

  The three Starfleet officers moved in unison, each knowing their responsibilities as they set to take control of Tomed.

  Minus Two: Singularity

  As Sulu entered her quarters, the lights automatically coming on to a nighttime level, she wondered about Captain Harriman back on Algeron. He would have been pleased to know that Enterprise had made it safely out of Romulan space, and that it now headed for its patrol assignment in Echo Sector. Certainly she felt pleased about it.

  She unsnapped the fasteners of her uniform jacket, anxious to undress and roll into bed. Of late, each day ended in exhaustion for her, and each night she looked forward to whatever sleep she could manage. Bad dreams sometimes accompanied her slumber, but more often than not, she would sleep as though she had lost consciousness, not stirring at all until morning. She would invariably awake less tired than when she had gone to bed, but feeling as though she still needed more rest.

  “Computer,” she said, “lights down half.” As the overhead lighting panels dimmed, Sulu pulled open her jacket and shrugged out of it. On her way through the sleeping area to the bathroom, she tossed it onto the nearest chair, then grabbed at the tall, ribbed collar of her white undershirt, slipping a finger inside and tugging it loose about her neck.

  Inside the bathroom, Sulu bent over the basin. “Warm,” she said, cupping her hands beneath the faucet. Water streamed out, and she splashed it onto her face. As she toweled herself dry, she thought again of the captain. She had been mildly surprised that he hadn’t contacted the ship when they’d had the trouble with the impulse flow regulator. Of course, he would have had no way of knowing what had happened without being informed of it. Sulu had considered doing so herself, but had concluded that there would have been little point; he had left her in charge of Enterprise, and his duties right now obviously lay elsewhere—at least as far as Starfleet Command thought. She couldn’t allow herself to worry about the captain not being on the ship right now.