Trip considered the grim fact that it could all be over for them both in a matter of only a few short minutes. He felt a knot of fear twisting in his stomach.
Fortunately, Trip often regarded his own fear as a wonderful source of motivation during a crisis.
“Put on your helmet, Doctor,” he said as his hands flew across the console. “We’re going to warp.”
Ehrehin scowled again, then reached under his seat and drew up his helmet with a pained grunt. A moment later, he was fitting it clumsily over his head and trying to mate its collar to his suit’s broad neck ring.
The vessel shook again, though not quite as roughly as on the previous occasion. Trip hoped that meant that their pursuers had scored only a glancing blow this time.
After noting the temperature and power-level readings, displayed graphically as well as in unreadable Romulan text on the warp field gauge, Trip heaved a brief sigh of relief that the weapons fire hadn’t disabled the warp drive.
Yet.
Eager to deny their pursuers another opportunity to strike, Trip wrapped his gloved left hand around a pair of levers. Here goes. He pulled the levers down quickly, then punched a button beside them.
A moment later the starfield that lay before them distorted into streaks around the edges, with the light of the stars near the center shifting toward the blue portion of the visible spectrum.
“We are now at warp,” Trip announced. I’m not the only one who gets to state the obvious around here.
“And I’m sure Valdore’s ship is still pursuing us, only much faster than before. Do you think it was really wise to go to warp so close to the planet?”
Trip knew very well that certain types of warp fields could unleash catastrophic gravimetric and subspatial effects if activated too deep inside the gravity well either of a star or a planet. Once again, he had no choice other than to defend his decision to gamble for the sake of his mission.
“Seemed like the best option at the time, Doctor,” Trip said as he unstrapped himself from his seat restraints.
He rose to help Ehrehin hook up the hoses that led from the back of his helmet to the environmental pack mounted on the back of his suit.
“Indeed,” the scientist said, obviously unconvinced.
Once he was satisfied that Ehrehin’s suit was completely sealed and functioning properly, Trip reached behind his own helmet, attaching his own air hoses and checking his suit’s seals in a series of swift, practiced movements.
Then he noticed that Ehrehin, who had already strapped himself back into his seat, was staring daggers at him through their helmet faceplates.
“These particular pressure suits were an interesting choice on your part, Cunaehr,” the old man said, his voice distorted slightly by its passage through two hel-mets before reaching Trip’s ears; Trip had taken the precaution of disabling the com systems in both suits, so that Ehrehin wouldn’t be tempted to find a way to use them to communicate with their pursuer.
Trip shrugged as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat once again. “You have to use what you have on hand.”
“Indeed you do.”
Trip looked across his console’s orderly bank of gauges and monitors, noting with some apprehension that the pursuing vessel was steadily gaining on them. Although the scout ship’s sensors lacked the resolution to settle the matter definitively, Trip had no doubt that Ehrehin was right about their pursuer being one of Valdore’s military ships. Therefore the other vessel had to be more than capable of catching up with them at their present speed, which both the console gauges and the vibrations of the deckplates told Trip he had already pushed to within a millicochrane or two of maximum.
It’s time to push this baby a little bit past spec, Trip thought as he carefully began entering a new command string into his console.
“Tell me, Cunaehr: Are there no other suits aboard this ship?” Ehrehin asked.
He knows, Trip thought. He is a genius, after all.
Aloud, he said. “There are, Doctor.”
“Suits of Romulan manufacture, rather than these… alien garments?”
Trip was becoming increasingly certain that it wasn’t going to matter much longer how he answered the old man’s questions. “I think so.”
“Yet you chose these suits instead. And you seem quite expert in their operation, I might add.”
“The environmental packs on these suits were more fully charged than any of the others were,” Trip said. Whether his answers continued to matter or not, he found he couldn’t resist offering plausible-sounding explanations whenever possible. “And you know what a quick study I am.” He punctuated his words with what he hoped was a disarming smile.
The scientist did not return it, however, either because he couldn’t see it through both of their faceplates, or because he simply was no longer quite so easy to amuse.
“I had no idea you were so fluent in reading the gauges and instrumentation on non-Romulan pressure suits.”
You have no idea, Trip thought as he examined his pilot’s console, confirming that the other ship was still inexorably creeping up on them. Would it be able to open fire on them in two minutes? Three?
“I’m going to have to coax a bit more power out of her,” Trip said just before entering yet another command into his board.
The cabin lights instantly shut off, and the resulting total darkness was replaced a beat later by dim, green emergency lighting. Trip could hear the sudden, conspicuous absence of activity in the air-circulating system as the ventilator fans abruptly died. He imagined he could feel the icy vacuum beyond the hull caressing his spine with delicate, chill fingers, although he knew it was far too soon for either of them to start feeling the cold of space through their heavily insulated suits.
Even as the life-support system gasped and died, Trip could feel a qualitative change in the vibration rising from the deck plating beneath him into his thick-soled boots.
The scout ship’s warp drive was now receiving considerably more power, and the weakly glowing console display confirmed it. Warp five point three, and still not quite redlining, Trip thought, barely succeeding in restraining himself from letting out a jubilant warwhoop- at least until after he learned a little bit more about their pursuer’s maximum speed.
To his pleasant surprise, Valdore’s ship was no longer gaining on them. It wasn’t falling behind either, but the purloined scout ship didn’t appear to be in any danger of being overtaken now, at least not during the next few minutes.
We’re still well out of weapons range. And we’ll stay that way as long as the ship tailing us doesn’t suddenly sprout an extra nacelle.
Of course, Trip knew that there was no way he could be certain that their pursuer wouldn’t find some method of sharply increasing its own power output, and thus its speed. But he was reasonably sure that her commander wouldn’t shut down her life-support system to accomplish it.
Just as he was absolutely certain that Valdore wouldn’t give up the chase while any breath remained in his body, or ships in his command.
But a respite was a respite. Trip knew he now had the luxury of thinking about the future, such as it was, at least for a brief while. In addition to having Doctor Ehrehin in his custody, he also possessed information that was absolutely crucial to the defense of the Coalition of Planets in general, and to the welfare of Coridan Prime in particular. He had to get it to Starfleet as quickly as humanly possible. With a few deft movements of his gloved hands, he restored the components he had removed from the com system a little earlier.
Now which one of these babies fires up the transmitter? Trip thought as he studied his console, as well as all the smaller panels adjacent to it. Fortunately, within a few moments he was pretty sure he’d identified the appropriate controls.
He entered a command intended to open a Starfleet channel on the subspace bands. He waited for at least a minute.
Nothing.
The faintly glowing blue pictogram that had appeared in respons
e to his commands told him either that he hadn’t, in fact, accessed the com system, or that the com system had sustained just enough damage during their escape under fire from Rator II as to be completely inoperable.
He had a slow, sinking feeling that the latter scenario was the correct one.
“Why are you running away from Admiral Valdore, instead of toward him?” Ehrehin asked in an accusatory tone. “And why were you tampering with the communications components just now? Who are you, really?”
Though he realized now that his imposture had finally fallen apart completely, at least in Ehrehin’s eyes, he nevertheless clung to it, unable to shake his initial impression of the old man as fragile and vulnerable- and therefore unable to handle the brutal truth that his beloved Cunaehr was, in fact, dead.
He turned from his console to face the scientist, doing his best to make direct eye contact through the slight distortion created by two helmet faceplates. “What are you talking about, Doctor Ehrehin? It’s me: Cunaehr.”
“But you can’t really be Cunaehr. I can distinctly recall having seen Cunaehr die during the mishap on Unroth III. That is, I can do so on those rare occasions when I can recall things distinctly.”
Trip sighed, then regarded the old man in thoughtful silence. While Ehrehin still seemed terribly frail to him, the old man also exuded a dignified, determined resolve that commanded respect. It occurred to him that the real Cunaehr had been fortunate indeed to have had such a man as his mentor.
“How can you be so sure I’m not Cunaehr?” Trip said at length.
Ehrehin smiled. “I ran an analysis of some tissue traces that either you or your late associate Terha inadvertently left behind in my quarters. At first, I attributed the strange results I obtained to the rather unreliable state of mind in which the Ejhoi Ormiin interrogators had left me. But your actions since then have not only confirmed that you are not, in fact, Cunaehr, but also that you aren’t even a Romulan.
“What I’d like to know, my kaehhak-Cunaehr,” Ehrehin continued, “is how an alien like yourself could ever have expected to pass himself off for very long as a genuine Romulan, especially so deep inside Romulan territory.”
Unless things go really south on me again, Trip thought, we won’t be anywhere near Romulan territory by this time tomorrow.
Trip decided then to answer the old man’s accusations and questions as honestly as he could, figuring that admitting the truth now could harm him very little at this point. After all, either he would make it back to Coalition space with Ehrehin, and they would both live to tell the tale, or else he’d end up dead- and then the Romulans would move decisively against an utterly unprepared Coridan Prime.
Nevertheless, he instinctively glanced down at the side of his suit to make certain his weapon was still there, even though the scientist posed no physical threat to him.
“All right, Doctor. My real name is…” Trip paused, distracted. Besides the obvious lack of a functioning life-support system, something else aboard the ship no longer felt quite right.
The deck plates. The vibration from the warp core had changed, and was continuing to change.
To his horror, Trip realized that it was fading steadily away.
He faced front, abruptly turning back toward the pilot’s console. It took only a fraction of a second for the status displays to confirm his worst fears.
Something had gone badly amiss with the little scout ship’s overtaxed engines, and she had consequently dropped out of warp.
And the vessel that pursued them was closing very rapidly.
Trip knew with the certainty of gravity that he had a scant handful of minutes to fix the problem, if he was to have a prayer of getting the old man out of Romulan space. After that, Ehrehin and his vast store of knowledge and expertise would fall back into Valdore’s hands. Trip knew that his own death would become reality rather than ruse very shortly thereafter.
And no one would remain alive to warn the Coridanites that the gates of whatever hell they might believe in were about to swing wide open.
Thirty-Nine
Friday, February 21, 2155
Romulan Transport Vessel T'lluadh
DECURION TAITH SAW A DIM but definite shape moving furtively toward him through the darkened passageway. With but a moment’s hesitation, he raised his disruptor and fired directly toward what was now clearly discernible as an armed, uniformed alien. He felt certain that he had never seen this species before, despite the creature’s superficial resemblance- it possessed a head, a torso, and one pair each of both arms and legs- to the overall shape of a male Romulan.
The initial shot apparently missed. Holding his weapon before him with both hands, Taith fired a second time, and the bright, sizzling beam struck the creature almost directly in its center of mass, forcing it backward as though it had been kicked by a wild hlai from the Chula wilderness. Wreathed in flames, the figure crumpled heavily onto the deck in a lumpen heap. Moving cautiously, Taith approached the fallen creature, hoping to examine it a bit more closely and make certain that he really had neutralized the threat it posed.
He cried out in anguish when he suddenly realized that the dead form that lay before him was not, in fact, the corpse of an alien interloper.
It was Centurion Rhai, whose still and lifeless chest was now a charred, bloody ruin.
He heard several other volleys of disruptor fire originating from different areas of the ship, each of them ending abruptly, and each punctuated by the all-too-brief silences that preceded the next salvo. Then the barrages ceased, and the entire ship was suddenly wreathed in a tomb-like silence.
Taith couldn’t look away from his commanding officer’s vacant, staring eyes. A feeling of despair more profound than any he had ever experienced before engulfed his every sense, swamping his soul as though it were the flood plain of the Great River Apnex.
Weeping, he raised his disruptor, placed its muzzle firmly against the base of his chin, and squeezed the trigger.
Theras wept like a disconsolate child after the echoes of the final blasts died away.
Shran could see the Aenar’s tears glistening even in the near darkness of the Romulan vessel’s narrow passageway. The sound of the other man’s sobs was sorely trying what little remained of his patience.
“Well, did it work?” Shran asked, addressing the entire team through his suit’s com system. The psionic bond he shared with Jhamel suddenly stretched taut, then sounded such a deep note of grief within his mind as to inform Shran that his question had been unnecessary.
I need to know for sure, Shran thought. We can’t risk exposing ourselves to their weapons again until I do.
“Give him a moment, Shran,” said Reed, who was standing at Theras’s other side. “Can’t you see he’s been traumatized by what you’ve asked him to do? He’s a pacifist, for pity’s sake.”
Shran took a step toward Reed, his fists clenched and his antennae thrusting aggressively toward his faceplate like enraged eels from one of the Zhevra continent’s cold and brackish lakes. “Don’t remind me, Lieutenant.”
“Gentlemen, I suggest you both give Theras a moment of quiet to enable him to collect his thoughts,” T’Pol said in an infuriatingly calm, reasonable tone, a mannerism that vividly reminded Shran why his people distrusted hers so viscerally.
Just before Shran succumbed to a nearly irresistible impulse to grab Theras by the shoulders and shake him, the Aenar spoke, “The Romulan soldiers… will not trouble us further.”
“You telepathically deceived them into firing upon one another,” T’Pol said, not asking a question.
Theras sobbed again. “Yes. And the last of them… just took his own life. Moments ago.”
Reed laid a comforting hand on Theras’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry this was necessary, Theras.”
Shran felt his antennae rising in surprise and pleasure. He did it. The coward actually did something. It suddenly occurred to Shran that he might have very badly misjudged Theras; he pushed the thought
aside, however, in favor of making it his absolute top priority to complete Jhamel’s rescue, along with that of the other remaining Aenar captives.
After that, the boarding party itself would still have to get off this ship and return safely to Enterprise; he knew that this might prove challenging, since this ship’s bridge crew remained alive, and still could potentially put up a fight should Theras’s telepathy somehow cease concealing the rescue team from their notice.
“Let’s not waste any more time coddling him,” Shran said, addressing both Reed and T’Pol. Then he turned to face the nearest of the two pressure-suited MACOs. Though their faces were shrouded in darkness, Shran knew they must have been as eager as he was to get the group moving again toward the Romulan vessel’s transporter, from which Jhamel and the others could be sent to Enterprise.
“What will become of us now?” Jhamel said inside his brain, her mind still uncharacteristically disordered because of the sedatives she’d been given, her thoughts feeling jumbled and chaotic. “Too, too much dying here.”
“We still have a job to finish here,” Shran added as he tried to ignore the unfathomable sadness that now flowed freely into him from Jhamel’s obviously still drug-muzzled brain.
Theras trudged on with the rest of the group. He felt completely dead inside. And wasn’t he, really, so far as his society was concerned? After all, he had become something that his people regarded as anathema: he was now a killer.
A murderer.
He struggled to keep his concentration focused on the twists and turns of the corridors and passageways that he recalled from the minds of the dead Romulans. The route that led to the ship’s transporter.
Theras was thankful, at least, that the boarding party had not come close enough to any of the slain Romulans who now lay scattered throughout the vessel so that his suit’s night-vision apparatus could reveal them in any amount of detail. But he knew that he would be unable to escape absorbing the horrible visual imagery of what he had done from the thoughts of the other members of the boarding party. Although he recognized that it was cowardly, he nevertheless hoped that the Romulan corpses would never become more than death-sprawled silhouettes in his memory; even that, he suspected, would be nightmare enough to last for the rest of his days.
The Good That Men Do Page 29
