Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise)

by Michael A. Martin

“Looks like this Romulan remote-control thing needs some serious fine-tuning,” a stunned-looking Ensign Leydon said. “They tried for a hijacking but vaporized their target instead.”

  “The Romulans are nothing if not careful, Ensign,” Archer said. “I’d say it’s likelier that the Andorians did this themselves.”

  Leydon looked even more nonplussed than before. “They’d really commit mass suicide?”

  “If that was the only way to keep one of their best-armed warships out of Romulan hands,” Archer said with a grim nod. Turning toward Malcolm and T’Pol, both of whom were already busy running their respective scanners, he added, “Let me know the minute you find any survivors.”

  “No sign of survivors yet, Captain,” Reed said. “But I am picking up three Romulan vessels, at extreme range and retreating at about warp four, on a heading for Romulan space. Judging from the unusually high delta-particle counts I read in their warp trails, all three vessels sustained considerable damage during their encounter with the Krotus.”

  “We could catch up to them before they return to their own territory,” T’Pol said.

  Archer was sorely tempted to order Ensign Leydon to do exactly that.

  But only for a moment. Earth still needed Enterprise’s protection, and Archer knew he wouldn’t be able to provide it if the Romulans were to snare his ship with their remote-hijack weapon.

  “Continue scanning for survivors,” he said at length. “And find the log buoy. Once we’re done with recovery operations here, we’ll resume our heading for Earth, at maximum warp.”

  Within two minutes of having received Lieutenant Reed’s warning of incoming patients, Phlox was already well on his way to transforming his sickbay into a military field hospital.

  The three escape pods that Lieutenant O’Neill evacuated with the ship’s transporter yielded a total of fourteen living Andorians. Once the doctor had finished administering triage and first aid—with the able assistance of two Starfleet medical technicians and a MACO corpsman—Phlox decided that twelve of his new patients had a better-than-reasonable chance of recovery, despite the severity of their injuries. And although the remaining two were still critical even after being stabilized and sedated, they were not beyond all hope.

  As the doctor carefully ran an osteoregenerator over the broken sternum of a bloodied and unconscious Andorian shen, he thought, I could get used to this level of efficiency. But as Phlox moved from patient to patient, he continued to cling to the likely forlorn hope that he would never get accustomed to the carnage.

  Archer knew that there was always a chance of finding another escape pod, even after the recovery of the first three some six hours earlier. Malcolm had just found the Ka’Thelan Krotus’s log buoy. But Archer also knew it was a captain’s unpleasant duty to decide when the chance of rescuing any more survivors had become too remote to continue looking. Earth still needed Enterprise, and the two other Andorian vessels that were now minutes away from arriving could handle whatever rescue and recovery operations remained to be done.

  “Prepare to go to warp, Ensign,” he said to Leydon. “Engage once Doctor Phlox finishes handing the Krotus’s survivors off to the Andorians.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  A boatswain’s whistle drew his attention to the arm of his command chair. “Archer here,” he said after opening the channel.

  “Lieutenant Reed, sir,” the Englishman said. “I’ve been down in the armory reading out the data from the Krotus’s flight recorder.”

  Archer frowned slightly. “I thought you and T’Pol had already confirmed the cause of the Krotus disaster.”

  “We did, Captain. And what I’ve found since then doesn’t change that. At least, not exactly.”

  His frown deepening slightly in spite of himself, Archer said, “Well, what exactly did you find?”

  “It seemed to me that the Krotus succumbed to the Romulan hijack weapon a little too quickly. Same with the Miracht, come to think of it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, Malcolm.”

  “I mean that the Krotus should have put up more of a fight than she did, even given all the damage those retreating Romulan ships had taken. So I asked Ensign Sato to convert all the time indexes from both the Andorian and Tellarite log buoys to Solar standard time. Cross-comparing those indexes with our own logs confirmed that all the system failures on both the Krotus and the Miracht happened nearly twice as fast as those that Enterprise experienced while the Kobayashi Maru was getting scuttled. It looks as though the Romulans have made their weapon almost twice as effective as it was only a few months ago.”

  “Either that,” Archer said, “or else Andorian and Tellarite vessels are twice as vulnerable to this thing as our ships are.”

  Regardless, the captain knew one thing: certain people needed to know about this immediately.

  Heading toward his ready room, Archer said, “Ensign Sato, please get me Ambassador Thoris of Andoria.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dateline: Threllvia system

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE NOVEMBER 18, 2155, NEWSTIME JOURNAL SPECIAL COMMENTARY FOLLOWS:

  This is Gannet Brooks, with all the news that’s under the sun and beyond, reporting from the Andorian Imperial Freight Service Vessel Shesh.

  Imperial Guard forces from the remote Andorian colony world of Threllvia are reporting heavy ship-to-ship fighting, both in orbit about the planet and in the atmosphere. And the consensus among both military personnel and the civilian starfarers who have been pressed into emergency service—such as the crew of the freighter Shesh—is uniformly grim.

  The Romulans now hold Threllvia IV, which they assaulted today in a brazen sneak attack that no one in the system saw coming. Like the Earth colony at Deneva and the Vulcan and human settlements on Berengaria VII, the Andorian Threllvia system had been outfitted with a Vulcan warp-field detection grid designed to give the colonists at least a few crucial minutes to prepare for a Romulan attack.

  Like Deneva and Berengaria, Threllvia IV never got those minutes. And still nobody can say why.

  But despite the savage and unexpected nature of the Romulan assault, Andoria’s military and civilian fleets have risen nobly to the occasion, continuing to ferry hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of civilian refugees, many of them wounded, out of the system. They continue their efforts in defiance of the mounting danger, even as the situation on the ground looks progressively more hopeless.

  Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this fierce clash over a distant Andorian outpost, the Imperial Guard and their civilian counterparts have already distinguished themselves for centuries to come. This reporter hopes that their fighting spirit will inspire her own world to bear whatever burden needs to be borne to stop the Romulan scourge in its tracks, to break its will, and finally to send it back where it came from.

  From the Battle of Threllvia, this is Gannet Brooks.

  Thirteenthmoon, Fesoan Lor’veln Year 463

  Tuesday, November 18, 2155

  Northern Wastes, Andoria

  A chill wind blew across the soul of Hravishran th’Zoarhi, though it bore no connection to the blanket of ice and snow that covered the subterranean Aenar city.

  “At least three of my former subordinates from the Kumari were serving aboard the Krotus when she was lost,” Shran said to Jhamel after word of the latest Romulan outrages had come to him, fresh from Threllvia.

  “Thon. Keval. Tholos. All slain by the cowardly Romulans,” he continued, withdrawing to his quarter of the bed. “Who no doubt struck from a safe distance.”

  “I am so very sorry,” said Jhamel, Shran’s favorite shelthreth-mate. With Vishri and Shenar out at the moment conducting Aenar Council business with Aenar leader Lissan, Shran and Jhamel had the entirety of their spacious, thermally insulated house—and the huge shelthreth bed that dominated the main sleeping chamber—all to themselves.

  Her blind gray eyes brimming with moisture, Jhamel used her inherent Aenar-Andorian talents to speak
directly inside his mind, a space he had grown used to sharing with her only very slowly and haltingly.

  Didn’t that human journalist who reported from Threllvia mention survivors of the Krotus?

  Shran had to admit that he had lately become an enthusiastic viewer of the reportage and commentary of the pinkskin news correspondent Gannet Brooks, whenever he could find the time. For one so young, Brooks seemed to understand the immutability of the circumstances that necessitated war far more keenly than many in her profession, and he included a few Andorians in that comparison. Brooks’s viewpoint seldom left him irritated and enraged the way the fear-spawned naïveté of isolationists like Keisha Naquase nearly always did.

  I know that a handful of Krotus personnel were rescued, Shran thought to Jhamel, mentally “annunciating” his internalized words carefully to offset his own lack of Aenar telepathic ability. Trust me, neither Thon nor Keval nor Tholos would have willingly accepted anything less than a fight to the death.

  “You can hope, Shran,” Jhamel said aloud. She rearranged the pillows and sat up on the bed, a motion that accentuated the curve of her already slightly distended belly. The first child of their shelthreth, a living symbol of hope, was due in about seven months.

  That hope warmed the chill that had settled over his soul since he’d heard about the Krotus. But a volcanic anger burned beneath, stoking the violent interior fires that he had struggled to control every day since he’d first come to live among the pacifistic Aenar.

  Shran knew that the fire would win in the end, and he felt in a brief, fluttering touch of minds that Jhamel knew it as well.

  “Jhamel, I have to go back to the Imperial Guard,” he said. I have to do something.

  She withdrew to another corner of the bed. A look of resignation crossed behind her sightless eyes, and her already snow-white skin seemed to turn half a shade paler.

  “All right, my Thy’lek” she said aloud, pronouncing the Aenar form of his first name as she cradled herself in her own pallid arms. “I will help you break the news to Shenar and Vishri.”

  Laikan, capital city of Andoria

  “Yes, yes, this channel is indeed secure,” Ambassador Gora bim Gral of Tellar growled from the monitor that sat atop the desk of Andorian Foreign Minister Anlenthoris ch’Vhendreni. The Tellarite’s blunt, brown-bristled features made for a stark contrast to the delicate rime of ice and snow that had accumulated overnight on the office window beyond the Andorian’s desk.

  “Thank you, Gral,” Foreign Minister Thoris said. “I can afford to take no chances.”

  “I see. But I trust that you do intend to come to the point sometime today, don’t you, Thoris?”

  “My point is simple,” Thoris said, willing his antennae to a strenuous stillness in order to avoid showing his annoyance. “The analyses of the Imperial Guard’s forensics experts seem to be entirely in agreement with those of Tellar’s military.”

  “‘Agreement’?” the Tellarite diplomat interrupted with a snorting guffaw. “That is not a word one normally hears alongside the words ‘Andorian’ and ‘Tellarite.’”

  Despite his best efforts, Thoris’s antennae flattened backward slightly over his mane of snow-white hair. “Believe me, Gral, my surprise is as profound as yours.”

  “And what, precisely, have our respective worlds’ greatest brains agreed upon?”

  “Based on detailed examinations of the log buoys that Captain Archer’s crew recovered following the loss of the Miracht and the Ka’Thelan Krotus—as well as the general pattern of recent Andorian and Tellarite ship disappearances—my government has concluded that the military and civilian fleets of both Andoria and Tellar are particularly susceptible to a potent new Romulan weapon with a proven capability of seizing space vessels by remote control.”

  The Tellarite nodded, his small and deep-set obsidian eyes taking on a haunted cast, like a man who has caught a glimpse of the apocalypse.

  “Perhaps our respective governments should have heeded Soval’s warnings all those many moonturns ago.”

  “You may be correct,” Thoris said, returning the nod of his longtime nemesis. He knew that Gral had supported his government’s decision to disregard Soval’s quiet, back-channel request that they emulate Vulcan’s seeming cowardice, just as Thoris had done.

  But now a persuasive spine of logic actually seemed to support Vulcan Administrator T’Pau’s apparent lunacy, though Vulcan’s decision to sit out the Romulan conflict still flew in the face of the Coalition’s mutual defense provisions. Regardless of Vulcan’s diplomatic debacles, however, Andoria and Tellar still bore an obligation to the Terrans.

  “This information might prove useful to the humans’ ongoing defense efforts,” Thoris said.

  “Unfortunately, my government has already classified this information.”

  “As has mine. And matters will remain this way—at least pending the resolution of renewed internal debate about whether or not to pull our fleet back from the Romulan front in order to concentrate solely on Andoria’s own defense.”

  After a protracted and uncharacteristically thoughtful silence, Gral said, “Now I see why you were so insistent that we speak of this only on a secure channel. It seems that at least one of us must commit a serious breach of protocol.”

  “According to my intelligence sources, the United Earth government and Alpha Centauri are conducting specialized defense research on Centauri III, at the Cochrane Institute.”

  “Highly secret research, I’ll warrant.”

  “Let’s just say that certain individuals there are accustomed to handling... sensitive information.”

  “Even when it necessarily cannot be transmitted via official channels.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You must understand that I cannot support this, Thoris.”

  “I see,” Thoris said, disappointed though not at all shocked. After all, Tellarites were far more renowned for hiding in the mud than they were for their bravery.

  “Officially, I would have to denounce what you are proposing.” As he spoke, Gral looked down, perhaps in shame, or perhaps to tend to some other urgent business that had suddenly come across his desk.

  A gentle amber light suddenly began a rhythmic flashing on the left side of Thoris’s work station, indicating a large amount of incoming data—data apparently originating from Gral’s location via the same secure channel that was carrying their present conversation.

  “I would have to denounce it in the strongest possible terms,” Gral continued, giving no overt indication that he was sending a data attachment. “If I even knew about it, that is. Which I do not, of course.”

  As Gral droned on, Thoris examined the incoming data stream, which appeared to contain huge quantities of analytical data.

  This is Tellar’s official data about the new Romulan weapon, he realized in a pleasurable flash of surprise. Gral couldn’t have gathered all of this for me so quickly—unless he had already collected it with the intent to share it with the humans, just as I have proposed.

  “I hope I have made my position absolutely plain and clear of all mud,” Gral said.

  Thoris could feel his antennae trying to rise in a manner that signified delight and satisfaction, but he restrained them with an effort of pure will.

  “You have made your meaning as transparent as an Aenar icecarving, Mister Ambassador.”

  Gral signed off with a characteristically curt snort and a grunt, leaving Thoris to contemplate how badly he had misjudged Tellarite courage. Gral’s gesture brought to mind the pinkskins’ ancient political philosopher Benjamin Franklin, who had once said, “We must hang together, gentlemen. Else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”

  Resolve stiffening his spine, Thoris began setting up a second secure channel.

  But rather than Tellar, he directed this one toward the Cochrane Institute on Centauri III.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tuesday, November 18, 2155

  San Francisco, Earth

/>   DESPITE THE THICKNESS of the walls and windows at Starfleet Headquarters, Sam Gardner could hear the voices of the crowd out on Hitchcock Street and Harrison Boulevard quite clearly throughout the afternoon military briefing. Those voices had been proliferating steadily all morning, and the multitude outside seemed still to be swelling even now.

  “I’m glad my office isn’t as close to the street as yours, Sam,” Greg Black said as he peered out from behind the blinds.

  With an acerbic half-smile, George Casey, the general in command of United Earth’s MACO forces, said, “And I’m glad I’ve got a hovercar warmed up and ready on the roof.”