Although he saw and heard nobody, the corridor in which he found himself left him feeling vulnerable. It ended at a T-shaped intersection a short distance to his left, but it stretched a long way to his right—the direction he needed to travel. Perhaps seventy meters long, it crossed several other corridors and afforded few places for concealment; he glimpsed what appeared to be a couple of recesses along the way, but hatches, access panels, and equipment—rather than doors—lined the bulkheads. If he had not left here by the time the Romulans arrived to investigate his tricorder signal, he would probably not be able to hide from them.
He pushed the hatch closed and proceeded cautiously down the corridor. He stayed low, hugging tight to the bulkhead, his phaser raised before him. As he approached the first intersection, he paused, choosing not to scan again, but listening intently. He heard nothing but the rhythms of Tomed’s warp drive.
Just as he started forward again, though, a sound reached him, like a foot shuffling along a deck, or a shoulder brushing against a bulkhead. Harriman froze, then aimed his phaser toward the intersection, toward the corner nearest him. He waited…one second…two…and then a Romulan emerged from the cross-corridor, a disruptor in his hand.
Harriman’s arm tensed, even as the inconsistency struck him. Only a moment ago, his sensor scans of the area had detected no life signs. And as the Romulan glanced in his direction and spotted him, Harriman hesitated.
“Vaughn,” he said in a hushed tone resembling a stage whisper, just loud enough to be heard above the background hum of the warp engines. As Harriman lowered his weapon, it occurred to him that the lieutenant no longer looked silly in his Romulan masquerade, but threatening. He had no idea how he’d managed to avoid firing on Vaughn.
“Captain,” the lieutenant said, trotting over, his sensor veil obviously still functioning. “I’m on my way to the shuttlebay.” Harriman nodded. He knew that had been the plan, of course, but the statement confirmed for him that nothing had happened to prevent Vaughn from undertaking his tasks there. “The access ladder to the next deck is this way,” the lieutenant said, hiking a thumb back over his shoulder.
“I know. I’m headed past there,” Harriman said, glancing around to make sure that the corridor remained clear.
“We have to go now though. I just used my tricorder, so the Romulans will be here soon.”
“Yes, sir,” Vaughn said.
Harriman began down the corridor again, and Vaughn fell in alongside him. When they reached the first intersection, they peered carefully around the corners. “Take cover here,” Harriman told Vaughn. “If we encounter Romulans now—” He motioned down the long corridor that lay in front of them. “—I don’t want both of us at risk.” No matter what happened, at least one of the special ops team needed to survive and remain free long enough to complete the mission.
“Yes, sir,” Vaughn said. He took a position off of the main corridor, where he could look around the corner to follow Harriman’s progress.
Phaser in hand, Harriman moved swiftly, staying low to the deck and close to the bulkhead. He stopped twice before intersections, traversing them guardedly, and then a third time at an equipment recess, where he ducked out of sight. Across from him, in a small bay, stood the ladder leading to the next deck, and just a few meters to his right, a corridor reached away in both directions from where this one ended.
Leaning out of the recess and peering around, Harriman waited several seconds, listening for the sounds of anybody approaching. Hearing nothing, he reached his empty hand out and gestured toward Vaughn, waving him forward. The lieutenant rounded the corner immediately and began down the corridor. After he had navigated the first intersection, and then the second, Harriman held up his hand, palm out. Vaughn stopped, allowing them both to look around and listen once more for any Romulans who might be heading this way.
Finally, Harriman signaled to Vaughn by pointing across the corridor. The lieutenant’s gaze seemed to take in the ladder, and then he lifted his own hand and pointed toward the end of the corridor, obviously asking about Harriman’s own plans. Harriman nodded and stepped out of the recess. He offered the lieutenant a final look, feeling a solidarity of purpose with him. Then he turned and continued on toward his objective, knowing that Vaughn would do the same.
Harriman sped through a half-dozen more corridors, pausing only before intersections. Doors eventually replaced the equipment and hatches and access panels, reminders of the crew who had recently stridden these decks. Still under power, the beat of its engines still permeating the hull, the ship seemed eerie for its emptiness. Despite knowing what had taken place here, Harriman recalled the centuries-old Earth tale of Mary Celeste, a sailing vessel found abandoned in midvoyage. This somehow felt like that—mysterious, and even haunting. Except that whatever presence leaped out at him here would be far more dangerous than some imaginary specter.
When he neared his objective, he began reading the rectangular plates set into the bulkheads beside the doors. The rounded-block forms of the Romulan characters identified an auxiliary-computer control site, a life-support monitoring station, a conference room, and finally, his destination.
Clutching his weapon before him, Harriman darted toward the doors. As they parted and he traversed the threshold, he tucked and rolled. Across the small room, he come up onto one knee, his phaser held up in one hand and steadied by the other. His eyes rapidly scanned his surroundings, right to left, from a circular platform, to a freestanding console, to a bulkhead faced with displays, controls, and access panels. Like most of the rest of the ship, the room was empty.
Harriman rose and moved to the console, a long, arcing station supported by a narrow column reaching up to its center. He examined the Romulan markings there, familiarizing himself with a layout slightly different from the one he had seen in intelligence briefings. When he had distinguished all of the controls that he would need, he set his phaser down atop the panel and activated the sensor matrix. He scanned the ship for life signs—doubtless giving up his position once more—and located the six Romulans still aboard Tomed. Two roamed near the maintenance junction that Gravenor and Vaughn had left not long ago, while a third moved inside the junction itself. A fourth rode in a descending turbolift, and Harriman guessed that they were headed either for main engineering or for the shuttlebay. The final pair of life signs emanated from the bridge; he targeted those two first, assuming that one of them would be Admiral Vokar, who surely would have been the last to vacate the flagship.
Moving his fingers deliberately across the transporter console, Harriman locked on to the two Romulans. He specified the remainder of the settings, verified them, and then engaged the activation sequencer. A series of lights running laterally across the panel illuminated one after another as a deep buzz rose in the room. After he had beamed the first two Romulans into—
Nothing happened.
The whirr of the transporter faded to silence as the chain of lights, all of them glowing, winked off. Without delay, Harriman ran through the preparations a second time, confirming the operation of the console and the two sensor locks. He reviewed the rest of the settings, then initiated the activation sequencer once more. Again, the row of lights began to brighten one at a time, and the drone of the transporter grew out of the silence. But he already knew what would happen: nothing.
Vokar, Harriman thought, certain that it had been the admiral who had thwarted his plan. A long time ago, Harriman had utilized a transporter to defeat Vokar. Clearly the leader of the Romulan Imperial Fleet would not allow such an occurrence to happen a second time.
Harriman grabbed his tricorder and scanned the sections of the deck surrounding the transporter room. He read one life sign, Romulan, moving away from the maintenance junction and seemingly headed in this direction. They were still far enough away, though, that Harriman would have time enough to escape.
Snatching his phaser from the console, he rushed for the doors. At the last instant, as they failed to open, he r
olled his shoulder forward, absorbing the impact with his upper arm. He stepped back and looked to either side of the doors, spying a small control panel in the bulkhead to the right. He hastily pulled it open, searching for a manual override. A lever promised freedom, but failed to work. Obviously, the transporter room had been completely locked down from another location, probably the bridge.
Harriman checked the tricorder again. The Romulan would be here shortly. He peered around the room, but saw no place to conceal himself. He could take a position behind the transporter console, but standing on its slender base, it would provide him little protection.
With no other choices, he retreated across the room. He stood opposite the doors, with his back against the bulkhead. Then, keeping his eyes focused on the tricorder display, Harriman raised his phaser and waited for the impending confrontation.
Sublieutenant Alira T’Sil stood outside maintenance connector forty-seven, uncomfortable with the feel of a disruptor in her hand. Although she served as an officer in the Romulan Imperial Fleet, she considered herself an engineer and not a soldier. In her nearly seven years of duty, she had never fired a weapon outside of compulsory drills. She found herself far more anxious now than when she’d been aiding in the attempted repair of the singularity containment field only moments before it had been expected to collapse.
Ahead of her in the corridor, Lieutenant Elvia operated a scanner, searching for indications of the intruders on the other side of the closed maintenance hatch. T’Sil watched the rangy engineer take sensor readings, the lieutenant’s fingers moving across the controls of the scanner with such fleet precision that they almost seemed choreographed. Beside T’Sil, Sublieutenant Valin also watched, a disruptor drawn awkwardly in his hand.
“I’m not picking up any life signs,” Lieutenant Elvia said, studying the display on her scanner.
“Admiral Vokar said that the intruders couldn’t be directly detected using sensors,” T’Sil offered.
“I know what the admiral said,” Elvia snapped. T’Sil knew Tomed’s lead engineer well enough to understand the target of her discontented tone. The lieutenant aimed her frustrations not at T’Sil for her comment, but at Admiral Vokar for having ordered engineers to take on the mantle of security.
Elvia stepped back from the maintenance hatch, taking hold of the disruptor hanging at her hip. “All right,” she said, looking over at T’Sil. “Open it.” The lieutenant lowered her scanner and raised her weapon.
T’Sil attached her own disruptor to its place on her hip, then moved over to the hatch. The rectangle of burnished, lightweight metal extended about as broad as her shoulders and half her height. She took hold of the handles on either side of the hatch, facing her reflection in its glossy surface. Her rounded cheekbones, delicate nose—turned slightly upward at its tip—and straight black hair seemed familiar, but the unconcealed look of fear in her eyes did not.
“To the side,” Elvia said, as though T’Sil might have been oblivious of the situation, opening up the entrance to the maintenance connector while staying in the line of fire. T’Sil said nothing, though, as she tightened her closed fists about the handles and pulled. The hatch came free with a pair of metallic clicks, and she swung her body around, flattening her back against the bulkhead. In front of her, Elvia glared into the access port, her disruptor a minatory sight at the end of her outstretched arm. T’Sil tensed as she anticipated the shrill scream of the weapon, waited for blue packets of lethal energy to streak past her and into the maintenance connector.
Instead, Lieutenant Elvia paced across the corridor to the open hatch. She peered inside for a few seconds, then dropped her disruptor to her side. “There’s no one here,” she said. As Elvia moved to hook her scanner and weapon to the waist of her uniform, T’Sil turned and set the hatch down on the decking, leaning it against the bulkhead. “Come with me,” Elvia said to T’Sil, then looked back over her shoulder at Valin. “Stand guard, Sublieutenant.” Valin nodded.
Elvia leaned against the bottom of the hatchway and swung a leg across it, then stooped and climbed inside. As the lieutenant disappeared from view, T’Sil glanced over at Valin, exchanging a look with the stout engineer—a slight shifting of the eyes, a slight raising of the eyebrows—that told her that he felt as uneasy as she did about this duty. Then she followed Elvia through the hatchway.
Inside the small, circular compartment, T’Sil saw the dozen or so equipment conduits accessible here—some high on the bulkhead, some low—and she realized just how many places for concealment Tomed offered. Elvia moved to one of the conduits and peered into it. She had drawn her disruptor again, T’Sil saw, but she held it at her side, unprepared to fire even if she spied one of the intruders.
T’Sil looked around the enclosed space and saw no evidence that anybody—intruders or crew—had been here recently. “I’ll check the equipment,” she said as Elvia moved from one conduit to another. T’Sil turned to the bulkhead, bent down, and reached for the nearest access plate. Pulling it clear and putting it down on the deck, she studied the layout of circuitry revealed. Nothing seemed amiss, at least not from a visual inspection.
She replaced the panel and moved to the next. She’d examined four equipment configurations when Elvia said, “There’s nobody here.” A mixture of disappointment and relief seemed to lace her voice. T’Sil peered up at her to see that she had circled the compartment, obviously having checked each of the conduits. “What about there?” Elvia said, nodding toward the exposed circuitry.
“No indications of any tampering so far,” T’Sil said. “Not that I can see, anyway.”
“Complete a visual assessment,” Elvia said, waving one finger in a circular motion, clearly indicating all of the access panels within the connector. “If you don’t find anything, we’ll use scanners to do a thorough examination. I’ll assist after I contact the admiral.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” T’Sil said.
She sidled over to the next access plate as Elvia started through the hatchway. Before she’d made it back into the corridor, though, the stern voice of Admiral Vokar suddenly filled the maintenance connector. “Vokar to Elvia,” he said. Not long ago, T’Sil had heard him contact the lieutenant to inform her that the deterioration of the containment field had been slowed, a claim borne out when the predicted moment of its complete failure had come and gone without incident. And yet T’Sil now imagined that he would retract that information, letting the engineers know that they were once again just moments from death.
Still inside the compartment, Elvia sat on the threshold of the hatchway. She reached up and, with a touch, activated the communicator wrapped about her wrist. “This is Elvia,” she said. “I was about to contact you, Admiral. We’ve entered maintenance connector forty-seven and found it empty. We’ve also seen no evidence—”
“Lieutenant, we’ve located at least one of the intruders,” Vokar interrupted. “They’re in transporter room three, and the room has been secured. Proceed there immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” Elvia said, although she seemed less than enthusiastic about the order. “Do you want me to detain the intruders there, or elsewhere?”
“Detain?” Vokar asked, irritation plainly coloring his voice. “I want you to kill them.”
Elvia looked over at T’Sil, stricken. The lieutenant had paled, the yellowish tint of her flesh completely drained away. But she said, “Yes, Admiral.”
“Vokar out.”
Elvia remained motionless on the edge of the hatchway, her face now expressionless, though her dark eyes betrayed the distress she felt. T’Sil thought the lieutenant might talk to her about the orders she had just been given, but she only said, “Keep looking for sabotage. I’ll be back.” Elvia then left the maintenance connector, and T’Sil heard her tell Valin to continue to stand watch in the corridor.
With difficulty, T’Sil returned her attention to her task. She pulled open the next access panel and peered inside the bulkhead at the circuitry there. All appeared a
s it should, and she covered the equipment back up and started for the next panel. It was bad enough that the ship had been sabotaged and the crew endangered, but to learn that the saboteurs remained on board, and that she and the other two engineers would have to function as security, and even have to—
As she removed the next access panel, T’Sil saw a batch of fiber-optic lines jammed haphazardly inside. The lines clearly did not belong here. She traced a finger along them until she reached their ends, many of which had been broken off, and none of which connected to anything. T’Sil leaned into the panel for a closer look, and spotted fiber-optic fragments protruding from several pieces of equipment. The lines might not have been connected to anything right now, but it appeared that they had been—connected, and then ripped out.
T’Sil carefully grasped the fiber-optic bundle and pulled it toward her, searching for the other ends of the lines. She quickly found them, also not connected to anything, but their perfectly intact tips suggested that they might at some point have been linked to an external device. It occurred to her that some sort of system reconfiguration might have been executed from here. She read the identification markings on the equipment and saw that helm and navigation functions routed through this panel.
The significance of that pushed T’Sil immediately to her feet. Not only had singularity containment been damaged, but the intruders might well have taken control of the ship’s course and velocity. Needing a scanner and other equipment both to determine the extent of what had been done, and then to attempt to effect repairs, she crossed the maintenance connector and maneuvered through the hatchway. In the corridor, she raced up to Sublieutenant Valin, who stood several strides away.
“Alira,” he said, obviously concerned by her agitated manner. “Are you all right?”
Serpents Among the Ruins Page 27
