Serpents Among the Ruins

by David R. George III

  Harriman marched away, hurrying through the corridors of the Romulan flagship, heading for Tomed’s bridge.

  While he awaited word from Subcommander Linavil and Lieutenant Elvia, Vokar continued his attempts to wrest control of his vessel’s direction and speed from the intruders. Lying on his back beneath the helm, he disconnected a series of fiber-optic lines and rerouted them to a different network link. He affixed them using a spanner, then rolled clear of the console and rose up onto his feet. Reaching over to the helm panel, he touched a control, but it remained dark and emitted an atonal buzz, signifying its inactive status. He tapped another touchpad, which flashed red and beeped. “Can you read that?” he asked Lieutenant Akeev.

  “Yes, sir,” Akeev replied, checking the readouts at his station. “You’ve bypassed one of the downed relays.” The science officer looked up and faced Vokar across the bridge. “You’re one step closer, Admiral.”

  One step closer, Vokar thought bitterly. One step closer to regaining control of my vessel. If the Federation criminals could be captured, he would tear the flesh from their bones himself. And if Harriman was among the group of intruders, Vokar would do worse than that.

  “Admiral,” Akeev called urgently. “Sensors are detecting weapons fire on the lower engineering deck…outside port maintenance connector forty-seven.” He worked his panel, obviously seeking more information. His controls blinked and chirped, and Vokar could see text advancing across his display. “A single disruptor, it appears.”

  “Yes,” Vokar said quietly, though he understood that nothing guaranteed that the weapon had been fired by one of Tomed’s crew. He reached across the helm and pressed a control to open a comm channel. “Vokar to—” A few minutes ago, he had ordered Elvia to transporter room three—to deal with the intruder he had managed to confine there—leaving the other two engineers at the maintenance connector. “Vokar to T’Sil,” he said.

  There was no response. On the bridge, the reverberation of the warp drive underscored the lack of voices. Vokar waited, his confidence in the engineering team dwindling, and his anger with the intruders escalating, with each second that passed. At last, he tried again.

  “Vokar to T’Sil,” he repeated. “Vokar to Valin.” He waited again, and then looked to Akeev. “Are they receiving me?”

  The science officer worked his panel once more. “They are receiving you, Admiral,” he said. “The comm channels are open. They’re just not responding.”

  Vokar knew the question he had to ask next, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. “Are there life signs down there?”

  “Scanning,” Akeev said haltingly, a sign that he too dreaded what the sensors might reveal. But instead of determining whether or not T’Sil and Valin were still alive, he reported something else. “I’m picking up more weapons fire, this time in transporter room three.”

  “A disruptor?” Vokar wanted to know.

  “No,” Akeev said. “A Starfleet phaser…and there’s been an explosion.” Then, not waiting for Vokar’s order, he said, “Scanning for life signs.”

  But Vokar already knew what had happened: Tomed’s remaining crew of six had been halved, Elvia, T’Sil, and Valin cut down by Federation operatives—by Federation savages. A moment later, Akeev confirmed at least part of that conclusion.

  “I read no life signs in or around transporter room three,” he said. His voice seemed mixed with both fear and anger.

  Vokar stood in the middle of Tomed’s bridge and considered his options. He reviewed everything he knew about the situation, analyzed all of the variables, worked through the best-and worst-case scenarios—and found that few differences separated the two. Given the current circumstances, he could reach only one end.

  On the navigation console, a light began to blink yellow. Vokar stepped over to the station and examined the indicator. “Where’s Linavil?” he asked at once.

  It took Akeev only a moment to respond. “The subcommander’s almost reached the shuttle compartment.”

  Vokar brought the meaty side of his fist down on a touchpad to open a comm channel. “Vokar to Linavil,” he said, already moving his hands to work other controls.

  “This is Linavil,” came the immediate response.

  “Somebody’s opening the shuttle-compartment doors,” he told her. “I’m closing them now and—” The doors would not respond to the commands he sent to them. “They won’t close,” he said. “I’m going to try to drop the forcefield.” He operated the console. “It worked,” he said, actually surprised that something aboard Tomed had functioned as it should. “Restore it from your end when you get there, Subcommander. You have to reach a shuttle and get a message out. And if the comm systems have been damaged, then take a shuttle and deliver word of what’s happened in person.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Linavil said.

  “Vokar out.” He closed the channel with a touch, then peered up at the main viewscreen. Stars shot past Tomed as it hurtled through space. Somewhere ahead lay the Neutral Zone, and beyond it, Federation space. If Linavil could send a message out, if she could get to one of the shuttles before the intruders had incapacitated all of their comm systems, one of the Romulan vessels patrolling the Zone might be able to intervene. But even if a ship could reach Tomed in time, its crew would likely not be able to do more than what Vokar had chosen to do right now.

  “Lieutenant Akeev,” he said, “is the self-destruct system operational?”

  “It’s tied to the singularity containment field, sir,” Akeev said. “As long as it stays active…”

  The containment field had been reinforced by the intruders, Vokar knew, with power being supplied to it through alternate relays. “Akeev, I want to find out where power is being routed to containment,” he said, “and sever it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Akeev said. Although he sounded less than enthusiastic about the prospect of destroying Tomed, Vokar knew that the lieutenant would faithfully discharge the order assigned him.

  Vokar sat down at the navigation console and reconfigured its panel, bringing up a control layout that would allow him to launch an examination of the ship’s power relays. Either he or Akeev would locate the flow of power to the containment field, and then Vokar would stop it. No matter what else happened, he would not permit the flagship of the Romulan Imperial Fleet to fall into the hands of the Federation—even if he had to destroy Tomed.

  Main engineering spread out before Gravenor. Dominating the large space, two warp-power conduits reached high up from the deck, slanting diagonally from the center of the room out to the lateral bulkheads. Contrasting with the standard gray-green coloring favored by the Romulan Imperial Fleet, the conduits glowed the same vibrant blue as their counterparts on Starfleet vessels. Past the conduits, a transparent bulkhead stood tall and wide, containing a swirling mass of spectral light, ranging from the longer wavelengths of red to the shorter wavelengths of violet. Inside, Gravenor knew, the kaleidoscope of color marked the containment field that allowed the massive gravitational forces of an artificial quantum singularity to be harnessed as a power source, and that prevented the microscopic black hole from tearing apart both the ship and the space it occupied. Captain Harriman had sabotaged that containment field beyond repair. After the crew had abandoned ship, he had slowed the rate of its decay, but nothing could prevent it from failing completely; within a day, the quantum singularity would be loosed, endangering everything in its proximity.

  Gravenor walked toward the warp conduits, before which sat a large master console, more than two meters wide and twice as long. On its surface, cutaway views of Tomed detailed the layouts of major systems throughout the ship. She found the system she needed, saw the location of its primary equipment in relation to main engineering—in a separate room connecting to this one on the starboard side—and headed in that direction.

  Though she expected no resistance, Gravenor held her disruptor at the ready. She had encountered the three Romulan engineers while on her way here, an
d she’d cautiously followed them until she’d been able to attack, taking two of them out. As she had headed to main engineering for the second time, Captain Harriman had contacted her to let her know that the third engineer had also been removed as a threat. That left three of Tomed’s crew with whom to contend, but a quick sensor scan had shown none of them to be in or near main engineering.

  Gravenor walked past an impressive display of state-of-the-art equipment and consoles. She would have expected nothing less of Admiral Vokar’s vessel, not only because of its place as the flagship of the Empire, but also because of Vokar’s hubris. He draped himself unapologetically in his arrogant belief in the superiority of the Romulan people.

  For this mission, the covert capture of any primary vessel of the Imperial Fleet would have sufficed. But Captain Harriman had expected that sending Enterprise—the Federation flagship—to Space Station Algeron to deliver the hyperwarp drive specifications would compel the Romulans to send Tomed to accompany it. His prediction had been correct, and while any Romulan battle cruiser and its commander would have served the needs of the mission, Tomed and Admiral Vokar would do so better than any other vessel and officer could have, specifically because of Vokar’s position and his staunch Romulan chauvinism.

  Gravenor arrived at a set of doors in the starboard bulkhead, near the aft end of main engineering. She read the Romulan lettering that confirmed the equipment housed beyond, as well as issued warnings about unauthorized personnel being forbidden to enter the secured area. Reaching up and operating a control pad, she attempted to open the doors. She tried several different command paths, without success, the controls buzzing beneath her touch.

  Stepping back, Gravenor adjusted the setting on her disruptor, taking care to select a power level that would compromise the doors without causing an explosion. She could not risk damaging the equipment she sought—not if the mission was to succeed and the members of the special ops team to survive. Of the two goals, though, the safe return to the Federation of Gravenor, Vaughn, and Harriman was secondary to their accomplishment of the mission.

  Gravenor raised her disruptor and fired. The whine of the weapon echoed in the cavernous engineering section. Blue pulses of energy struck the doors midway up, causing an almost immediate glow. Gravenor continued to fire until an irregular hole, about a meter in diameter, had been opened in the doors.

  With a quick glance around main engineering—a long-standing habit that had developed as a consequence of her work—Gravenor approached the breach. Carefully avoiding the edges of the newly created aperture—which would be extremely hot from the disruptor fire—she lifted one leg through, then ducked her head down and entered the room beyond the doors, pulling her other leg in after her. The temperature in the enclosed space—already warm due to Romulan environmental preferences—had been raised several degrees by the blasts that had penetrated the doors.

  Gravenor moved quickly to the center of the small room, where a circular console rose from the deck. Atop it sat the piece of equipment she needed, a cloudy sphere mounted on a tapering metal base. The entire assemblage measured a meter tall and about half as wide. Knowing the amount of time it would take to cleanly uncouple the equipment connections, Gravenor set to work immediately.

  She first examined the console, and saw that it had been laid out differently than what she had seen in her intelligence briefings. But she had studied not just the details of the few such panels Starfleet had gathered, but the theory of the equipment as well. With an urgency fortified by confidence, Gravenor attacked the console, working as quickly as she could to remove Tomed’s cloaking device.

  The hiss of air flowing into the shuttle compartment slowed, and then stopped. Linavil raised her disruptor in one hand, and used her other to work the control pad beside the outsized doors of the compartment. The metallic sound of locks being released rang in the corridor, and the doors parted and slid open.

  Linavil stood motionless, waiting and listening. Hearing nothing, she waved her empty hand out from the side of the doorway, attempting to draw the fire of the intruders, should any of them have survived the dropping of the shuttle compartment’s forcefield. She assumed that the intruders had operated the outer doors from one of the shuttles, and therefore had probably been unaffected when the admiral had deactivated the forcefield.

  Eliciting no response, Linavil braced herself, then sped into the shuttle compartment. She rushed to the nearest vehicle, one of Tomed’s work pods, and took cover beside it. Dropping down low, she leaned out around the curved forward hull and peered about the landing stage. Past the cluster of work pods sat the ship’s four shuttles, arrayed in two lines of two against the backdrop of stars visible through the opened outer doors. The thin blue line of the forcefield, reactivated by Linavil before she’d restored the atmosphere to the compartment, bordered the wide opening, framing the starscape.

  Nothing moved in or around the shuttles, but through the forward viewing port of one of those nearest the forcefield Linavil saw interior lighting. A ruse, she thought immediately, an attempt to draw her into an area upon which Federation weapons must even now be trained. But though Linavil ached to meet the intruders, to deal them punishment for their attempted theft of Tomed, she had a different duty to fulfill right now. If the comm systems of all the shuttles had not been damaged, she would send a message to all Imperial Fleet vessels, and to Romulus; otherwise, she would take a shuttle and, as Admiral Vokar had ordered, deliver word of the Federation deception in person. Either way, the effort to steal the Romulan flagship would go neither unrevealed nor unpunished.

  Ignoring the interior lights of the one shuttle, Linavil ran to another of the craft, the one farthest away from the first. She reached to the small panel below the name of shuttle—Liss Ornahj—and pushed it. It clicked, and then hinged open, allowing access to the door controls—

  Movement flashed above Linavil, and she looked up to see a figure crashing down on her. In the last fraction of an instant before she was struck, she jerked her head to the side, and even as she tumbled to the deck, she understood that the small shift had been what had kept her from losing consciousness. And that, she assumed, had also kept her from losing her life at the hands of the enemy.

  Vaughn resisted moving until he heard the click of the access plate opening, not wanting to risk divulging his presence too soon.

  Just a few minutes ago, as he had worked on the deflector interface aboard Liss Riehn, the passive sensors had told him in quick succession of a lone Romulan nearing the shuttlebay, of the reinstatement of the bay’s forcefield, and of the reintroduction of an atmosphere here. He had checked the shuttle for weapons, but he hadn’t found any, and he hadn’t had enough time to improvise. Without waiting for the air to finish completely filling the bay, Vaughn had exited Liss Riehn and sprinted to another of the shuttles, Liss Ornahj—Fire Hawk—and had climbed atop it.

  The move had been a gamble. If the Romulan had come into the bay and approached one of the other shuttles, then Vaughn would have had to jump down and cross the landing stage in pursuit of them, a risky proposition since his disruptor had been blown out into space when the forcefield had dropped. But Vaughn had relied on the perception and intelligence of the Romulans to lead them to the understanding that, in order to foil the commandeering of their ship, they need only let the Empire know what had happened aboard Tomed; he counted on the Romulan entering the bay and avoiding contact with him until after they had broadcast a message.

  And so Vaughn had lain unmoving, facedown, atop Liss Ornahj, listening intently to the footfalls of the Romulan as they had entered the shuttlebay. Vaughn had kept his muscles tensed, prepared to move. He had defied the strong impulse to lift his head and follow the Romulan visually, but with the loss of his disruptor, the only weapon he possessed now was surprise, and he could not chance losing that.

  The click of the control panel opening sounded unnaturally loud to Vaughn in the otherwise-silent bay, like the unexpected crack of a w
hip. He surged forward, pulling himself along and swinging his legs around, aiming his feet toward the door of Liss Ornahj. As he cleared the top of the shuttle and came down, he saw the Romulan look up at him at the last moment before the heels of his boots struck her head—a hard but glancing blow, and not the full contact for which Vaughn had hoped. The woman collapsed onto the deck. Vaughn, knocked sideways by the impact and his circular momentum, landed lengthwise, his arms coming up before him to cushion his fall.

  He pushed himself up at once and whirled toward the woman, set to rush her. She’d already risen to one knee, he saw, and she peered about, obviously searching for something. Vaughn looked too, and caught sight of a disruptor lying beside the shuttle; the weapon must have been knocked loose from the woman’s hand or uniform when she had tumbled to the deck. Vaughn lunged for it, but too late; the woman had spied it as well, and she grabbed it up and started to bring it around toward him. He planted one foot and kicked with the other, the tip of his boot striking the woman on her wrist. Her arm flew backward, and the disruptor sailed from her hand, arcing high and far, the view of its landing among the work pods obstructed by the body of Liss Ornahj.

  As Vaughn brought his leg back down, attempting to find his balance, the woman charged forward. Her shoulder hit Vaughn just below his solar plexus, and he plunged backward. He struck the deck hard, but he allowed his momentum to carry his legs upward, at the same time grasping the Romulan’s shoulders and lifting with all of his strength. The woman flipped over him, and he heard a grunt escape her as she landed on her back.

  Vaughn rolled over as quickly as he could and then rose to his feet. The woman stood up too, her chest heaving as she gasped for air, the wind apparently forced from her lungs when she had slammed onto the deck. He noticed a smear of green on the side of her face, and he saw that the upper tip of her ear had been ripped partially through, probably by the heel of one of his boots.