He felt Shran’s rage, which was no doubt being intensified by the fact that Jhamel remained trapped aboard this cursed slave ship.
An inspiration seized him.
I am Aenar. I cannot fight.
But neither am I helpless.
Theras smiled grimly to himself and carefully reached out once again with his mind….
Centurion Rhai had unexpectedly ceased firing, making Decurion Taith fear that one of the interlopers shooting at them from out of the darkness had scored a lucky shot and killed him.
Taith paused for a moment to ascertain his superior’s condition, creeping toward him cautiously on knees and elbows. Reaching the centurion’s supine form, he placed a hand on his shoulder, preparing to turn the body over in order to check for injuries.
The centurion swung into motion at Taith’s touch, bringing the muzzle of his disruptor aggressively up toward the young decurion’s face.
“Hold!” Taith whispered.
“Don’t sneak up on anyone like that!”
“I thought you’d been killed, like Decurion T’Rheis. Why are you not firing?”
“Why aren’t they?” Rhai asked.
Taith suddenly realized that the intruders had indeed ceased firing. He had been so intent upon reaching the centurion that he hadn’t noticed the abrupt silence of their adversaries’ weapons.
“They must be on the move,” Taith said, fumbling for the scanner at his belt. “They found the other exit from the holding pens.”
“Where are they?” Rhai wanted to know.
Taith’s eyes went wide when he saw the reading on the stealth-shielded, backlit screen. “I can’t detect them, Centurion.”
“Fvadt! They must have used their material transmission device to escape us.”
Taith adjusted his scan, attempting to confirm his superior’s idea. A moment later, he shook his head in confusion. “I don’t think so, Centurion. Their teleportation equipment left a telltale energy signature. But I’m not detecting it now.”
But Rhai seemed unconvinced. “Perhaps they’ve adjusted their equipment somehow.”
“Or else they’re still aboard, Centurion, and are cloaking themselves somehow,” Taith said.
“We must be prepared for either eventuality, Decurion. Scan our remaining prisoners. What is their status?”
Taith hastened to do as his superior had bid. When he saw the reading, his heart sank as though it were in freefall in a gas giant’s atmosphere. He quickly ran the scan a second time.
“Well?” the centurion asked impatiently.
Taith realized that he had to tell Rhai what he least wanted to hear. “I can’t even find any of them, sir. They’re gone!”
“All right, Theras,” Shran whispered into his suit’s com channel. “Your plan had better work. The more we prolong this standoff, the more vulnerable we’ll be.”
Theras smiled in the direction of Shran’s voice. He could feel the attentive presence nearby of Commander T’Pol, Lieutenant Reed, and the two Earth soldiers. “In order to have a standoff, the Romulans would have to know where we are.”
“What do you mean?” asked the Vulcan woman.
“I mean that I have used my telepathy defensively. They cannot see us now. Nor can they see their prisoners. I’ve made us all… disappear from their conscious minds.”
“Good work, Theras,” Lieutenant Reed said, both his voice and his aura brimful of admiration. “If we really are invisible to the Romulans now, maybe we can stay aboard long enough to use their own transporter to send the rest of the Aenar over to Enterprise.”
But Shran sounded and felt far less admiring. “Then we’d better get on with it- before the Romulans figure out that we’re using parlor tricks against them instead of real weapons.”
As the group slowly made its way forward, moving directly into what had been the active line of fire only moments earlier, Theras wondered just what he would have to do to gain the hard-bitten Shran’s acceptance.
Uzaveh take him, Theras thought, concentrating instead on recovering his beloved shelthreth bondmates.
He tried, without success, to shut out Shran’s intrusive, passionate thoughts about Jhamel; he was clearly prepared to do just about anything to rescue her.
Far more, apparently, Theras thought sadly, than I ever could.
“The intruders are still here,” Rhai said, his words still pitched at a whisper. “And unless I miss my guess, so are the remainder of our prisoners as well.”
Taith felt confused, even though he had been the first to raise the possibility. “The scanner cannot confirm that, Centurion.”
“Of course it can’t, Decurion. Not if our prisoners have reached into our minds to alter what we can see- or think we can see. Had they teleported away like the first prisoners that went missing, they would not have bothered covering it up. Therefore, they are still aboard this ship, and are hiding that fact from us. As are their would-be rescuers.”
Like all the soldiers serving aboard the transport vessel T’Lluadh, Taith had been well briefed on the danger posed by the Aenar prisoners. Although they seemed possessed of far too gentle a temperament for their own good, they were powerful telepaths who could indeed tamper with the minds of their jailers, were they so inclined- and were they given the barest opportunity to do so.
“I thought we had sedated each of the prisoners, Centurion,” Taith said. “To blunt their telepathic abilities during their passage to Romulus.”
“That was my belief as well,” Rhai said. “But suppose our prisoners had planted the notion into our minds? Suppose we never actually sedated them, or were deceived into leaving even a few of them with their mental abilities still intact?”
Taith shivered slightly, as though the spirits of Erebus were coming for him. If we can’t even trust our own memories… He allowed the thought to trail away like an errant wisp of smoke, though he could do little to shake the vivid image of the T’Lluadh suddenly erupting in all-consuming gouts of flame and venting atmosphere because an Aenar had influenced the control room crew.
“What can we do, Centurion?” Taith whispered.
Rhai raised his disruptor pistol. “If the intruders are still aboard, they may be trying to get the prisoners to freedom right now. Contact the rest of the security contingent, and tell them to concentrate their fire on the detention area’s aft exit.”
Taith put his scanner away and pulled his communications device from his belt, then raised his own weapon. “What about the prisoners, sir?”
“Our orders are clear, Decurion. They are not to come into the possession of anyone- save the Romulan Star Empire. Perhaps if one or two of them are hit, the remainder might be motivated to behave themselves for the duration of their voyage to Romulus.”
As Taith began signaling the rest of his fellow soldiers, he hoped that they would be able to trust that any Aenar suddenly observed “behaving themselves” wasn’t actually a ruse of the deadliest kind.
Shran and T’Pol led Jhamel and the remaining handful of sedated Aenar captives through the transport ship’s darkened, winding passageways, while Lieutenant Reed and the MACOs- one of whom now walked with a pronounced limp, thanks to a stray disruptor bolt- guarded the group’s moving perimeter. As the team made its way toward the vessel’s central core, Shran had to acknowledge his grudging admiration of Theras, who was actually taking the point in the pitch-black corridors.
He’s a pacifist, Shran thought with no small degree of wonderment; it was, after all, a philosophical stance that stood at odds not only with Shran’s own personality, but also one that flew in the face of nearly all of his own often bitter personal experience. And he’s obviously terrified. Yet he’s willing to help us fight a very dangerous, unscrupulous foe.
Because he must want to save Jhamel just as much as I do. Though he was unable to see Jhamel clearly in the darkness, Shran was nevertheless haunted by a vision of the icy gray eyes of the woman he had been quietly in love with for the past several months.
A woman whose great strength, despite her own innate pacifism, had been evident to Shran ever since the Romulans had forced her to deal with her brother’s death. He clung to the slender lifeline of the psychic bond her telepathic talents had tethered in his mind, drawing comfort from it even as he worried about the incoherence and fear he sensed in her mind. They’ve drugged her, he reminded himself yet again. Of course she’s incoherent.
A sizzling energy beam interrupted Shran’s reverie, passing close enough to scorch his helmet’s faceplate. The boarding party and the Aenar immediately split into two groups, which flattened against the walls on either side of the narrow corridor.
Shran found himself standing almost nose to nose with Theras. He grabbed the startled Aenar’s tunic, momentarily lifting him a couple of centimeters off the deck. “I thought you said they couldn’t see or hear us!”
“They can’t!” Theras said, almost stammering in fear. “At least, they shouldn’t be able to, even on their scanning instruments.” Once again, Shran felt a wave of loathing for the pasty Aenar, and extended his left arm to shove him up against the same cold metal wall into which he himself was trying to blend.
Another blast bisected the corridor, missing both halves of the team by about a meter.
Theras gasped, making Shran fear for a moment that he’d handled him too roughly. “They’re just firing blindly!”
“But these passageways ought to look empty to them,” Shran said.
Theras nodded, his features taking on an almost hysterical cast. “They should. But the Romulans must know that there are only two ways in or out of this section of the ship.” Large tears pooled in the Aenar’s gray, sightless eyes; he appeared to be in intense physical pain, but it was clearly not because of anything Shran had done to him. “They’ve cut us off. And they’re determined not to let anyone take their prisoners away from them. They’ll kill us all before they permit that. I—”
Yet another disruptor blast illuminated the corridor for a split second. It struck lower than had the previous shot, but came no closer to hitting anyone.
“Even firing blind, they’re bound to start hitting us sooner or later,” Shran said, addressing nobody in particular. He supposed that even if the Romulans hadn’t actually somehow pierced Theras’s psionic veil of selective blindness, they must have intuited the boarding party’s continued presence aboard their vessel by some other means.
Of course, none of that would matter a whit if the Romulans managed to score only a handful of lucky, random shots.
“What have I done?” Theras said, breaking down into shoulder-racking sobs that were amplified grotesquely by his suit’s com pickup.
Shran wanted to strike him, but restrained himself when he realized he’d only succeed in injuring himself on the Aenar’s helmet. “Shut up, Theras. Remember, they still can’t see us. Otherwise they wouldn’t be lob-bing their fire at us at random.”
“There is another problem,” T’Pol said. In the dimness, and with the suit’s apparently damaged night-vision functions disorienting him somewhat, Shran could just make out the fact that the Vulcan woman, flanked by Reed and a pair of rifle-wielding MACOs, was holding a small scanning device before her face. “We apparently cannot determine the precise location of any of the Romulans aboard this vessel. Therefore we cannot return their fire with any degree of accuracy.”
Shran felt as though a physical blow had abruptly slammed all the air from his lungs. He grabbed the hard carapace of Theras’s suit, keeping both their bodies close to the wall as he caught his breath.
“Why might that be, Theras?” Shran whispered.
It took Theras a protracted moment to rein in his sobs and find his voice. “It may be… that using my telepathy defensively has created a… blanket effect.”
“Are you saying,” Shran said, the words leaving his mouth in a snarling rush, “that you’ve blinded us as well as the Romulans?”
Theras nodded, weeping again. “Forgive me, Shran. Forgive me, all of you. I am… unused to the ways of war.”
Pacifists, Shran thought disgustedly. Beautiful. He felt his psionic bond with Jhamel jangling uncomfortably at that thought, momentarily filling his mind with an unpleasant sound not unlike an inexpertly plucked high string on an Andorian zharen’tara.
Still another stray blast briefly ionized the air, once again coming uncomfortably close to Shran’s back. Theras winced as the beam passed and struck a distant wall with a momentary spray of bright orange sparks. In that instant, Shran saw Jhamel clearly, her gray eyes staring and sightless, her mien sedated and confused.
She was in mortal danger, as were they all. Why couldn’t Theras have just tricked the damned Romulans into shooting at each other instead of at us?
“I suggest you get used to the ways of war,” Shran said, no longer trying to hold back the contempt he felt for this weakling. “And quickly, Theras. Otherwise, you’ve probably condemned Jhamel and all the rest of us to death.”
Thirty-Eight
Friday, February 21, 2155
Rator II
“HANG ON, DOCTOR,” Trip said, though he could see that Ehrehin was securely strapped into his seat, just as Trip himself was. “I’m taking us out.”
“Perhaps we should wait until the hangar bay doors open completely,” the elderly scientist said, a note of apprehension causing his voice to quaver slightly.
Trip grinned at him. “Trust me.” He pulled back the throttle, and the small vessel shot forward. Trip was slammed backward into the pilot’s seat for a second or two, before whatever passed for the scout ship’s inertial damping system compensated for the g-forces generated by the sudden acceleration. Like Ehrehin, Trip had not yet donned the helmet of his pressure suit- both pieces of headgear were wedged securely beneath their respective seats, where they would remain until they were needed- so his pressure suit’s titanium neck ring bit briefly into the back of his neck as the little ship whipped upward at a steep-angled roll through the only partly opened hangar dome, narrowly missing the still spreading doors. Trip imagined the hangar bay filling with armed troopers, all of them vainly firing their disruptor pistols at his quickly vanishing stern.
Trip opened the throttle further, and the vessel swiftly arced high into the deep cerulean skies above the Ejhoi Ormiin’s secret island fortress. The paradisiacal blue of Rator II’s atmosphere quickly gave way to a deep, brooding indigo, passing within moments into the star-flecked blackness of space. The cold vista of the cosmos made Trip grateful for the pressure suit he was wearing, even if he was helmetless at the moment.
When he and Ehrehin had first come aboard the little scout ship, Trip had marveled at his good fortune in having found environmental suits constructed so similarly to the standard Starfleet-issue vacuum garb used by Enterprise personnel. He could only wonder how these suits had made it aboard. Perhaps Ch’uihv- or Sopek- had acquired a few of them through his espionage connections on Vulcan, or maybe the Ejhoi Ormiin had obtained them by raiding an Earth outpost or by hijacking an Earth ship. Wherever the suits had come from originally, it was easy for Trip to imagine that Phuong had found them elsewhere in the hangar while reconnoitering the place, and then had stashed them aboard the scout ship before leading Trip and Ehrehin into their initial- and catastrophically failed- escape attempt.
An alarm on Trip’s console suddenly flashed a deep sea green; he reminded himself yet again that to a Romulan, green was the color of blood, and therefore signified the presence of imminent danger.
“We’re being pursued,” Ehrehin said, leaning forward and to his left to observe the readings on Trip’s console.
“I’d be surprised if we weren’t,” Trip said.
“We need to hail them, Cunaehr. Otherwise, Valdore’s forces may kill us inadvertently, as you say.”
Trip shook his head, wondering how long he could continue dissembling, stringing the elderly scientist along- and when Ehrehin would finally figure out that he’d disabled the ship’s receiver to prevent the rece
ption of any hails from their pursuer, which would certainly reveal the identity of the vessel that nipped at their heels.
“We don’t know for certain that the ship on our tail is one of Valdore’s,” Trip said.
Ehrehin fixed him with a hard stare that seemed to Trip to fairly ooze with suspicion. “Who in the name of Erebus could it possibly be if not Valdore?”
“It could be Ch’uihv’s people, Doctor. And hailing them would only confirm our escape for them.”
“If he’s pursuing us,” Ehrehin said, shaking his head. “Ch’uihv already knows we’ve escaped in this ship.”
Trip shrugged, pressing on even though his extemporaneous yarn-spinning was beginning to sound ridiculous even in his own artificially pointed ears. “Maybe, Doctor. Maybe not. If Ch’uihv is the one who’s chasing us, then all we know for sure that he knows is that somebody took off in this ship without any launch clearance.”
Ehrehin leaned back in his copilot’s chair and sighed. Trip spared a glance at him and saw that he was staring straight ahead at the distant, uncaring stars. The old man was scowling deeply, apparently becoming lost in thought.
He must suspect by now that I don’t have any intention of taking him to Valdore, Trip thought as he leaned forward, entering commands intended to coax still more thrust out of the impulse drive, while simultaneously laying in his desired heading: Coalition space. So I’d better do whatever I can to keep him preoccupied.
He touched a few of the cockpit’s other thankfully simple controls. The deck plates beneath his feet began to rumble with a gratifyingly familiar vibration. That sensation alone told Trip that the warp drive was beginning to warm up to operational temperatures, pressures, and intermix ratios.
The little vessel suddenly shook and rattled intensely, as though it had been punched by the fist of an angry god.
“They’ve opened fire,” Ehrehin said dryly, one eyebrow arched upward as if to announce that he found making declarations of the obvious to be darkly amusing. He calmly studied the readouts on his copilot’s board. “At the rate they’re gaining on us, they’ll be in weapons range in only a few siure.”
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