“It’s never easy to make a decision like that, Phlox. I’d rather chew one of my own arms off than have to repeat what I did that day.”
Phlox offered an encouraging smile. “If those decisions were easy to make, then ship’s captains would be a fairly inexpensive commodity.”
And we’re certainly anything but that, Archer thought as he considered just how expensive even a single wrong decision could turn out to be in the long run.
Aloud, he said, “I’m lucky you’ve agreed to stay on, Phlox. Even after you’ve seen how hard it is to do this sort of simple moral math in my head.”
“Jonathan, ‘simple’ is not the same as ‘easy,’” Phlox said, his good-natured smile succumbing to a gravity he displayed only rarely. “I would seriously consider leaving only if and when those ‘simple’ moral equations become too easy for you to solve.”
FORTY-FIVE
Day Thirty-Nine, Month of K’ri’lior
Thursday, March 11, 2156
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST NIJIL DREADED having to visit Admiral Valdore’s office when he was experiencing one of his “moods,” which had occurred with increasing frequency of late. But since the admiral’s orders had left him no discretion to do otherwise, he reported to Valdore’s office with all required haste.
Delay, after all, would only make Valdore’s mood uglier, if such a thing was possible. At least he had some good news to counterbalance the bad, assuming that the early reports he had just gleaned were reliable.
The grim-faced decurion conducted Nijil to the front of Valdore’s massive sherawood desk, then beat a hasty retreat to the exit. The office was in uncharacteristic disarray, with papers scattered about, a desktop computer lying broken on its side and staring out toward Nijil like a single blinded eye. The collection of blades and particle weapons that usually hung in such an orderly fashion on the rear wall was incomplete and askew, with some items strewn across the floor as though the admiral had been hurling objects about in a spittle-flying rage.
Most significantly, Valdore’s gleaming dathe’anofv-sen, his Honor Blade, lay across his desk, free from both its wall-mounted display rack and its scabbard, as though the admiral had foreseen an urgent need for its keen edge in the very near future.
Swallowing hard, Nijil tried to maintain a façade of coolness. “I trust you have seen the after-action reports from the Andorsu operation, Admiral.”
Valdore nodded, then spoke in surprisingly calm and measured tones. “I have read them all several times over. I have also made a close study of the recordings of the long-range sensor data, sketchy though they are.
“I find little reason for encouragement in any of it.”
“We needed more ships for the Andorsu operation,” Nijil said, struggling to remain composed. “Three or four Amosarr carrier vessels would have been much closer to optimal, along with at least double the complement of Nei’hrr-class sublight raptors on each.”
Valdore glowered in silence for an uncomfortably lengthy interval before responding. “Unfortunately, Doctor, that wasn’t an option, given the fleet’s... other military priorities,” he said, his words fairly dripping with bitterness as he wrapped his fingers around the pommel of his blade.
Ah, Nijil thought. The praetor’s recent renewed preoccupation with Haakona, his father’s folly. What a waste.
Valdore continued, polishing his Honor Blade with a cloth as he spoke. “There are times when we are not permitted to have the fleet that we might find ‘optimal.’ During those times, we must make do with the resources available, and seize victory regardless of any dearth of resources.” He lifted his gaze from the gleaming blade he held, and used it to pin Nijil where he stood. “Do we understand each other, Chief Technologist?”
“I believe we do, Admiral,” Nijil said, hoping he was reading his cues correctly, and that Valdore was about to dismiss him, rather than succumb to an apparent urge to leap across the desk and use his blade for emphasis.
Valdore shook his head, scowling. “No. No, I’m not at all certain that you really do. The Andorsu had detected our attack early enough to repel it, if only barely. That cost the lives of one of my most accomplished field commanders and his entire crew.”
Nijil supposed this specific point was the source of much of the admiral’s anger and frustration. Commander T’Voras, the hero of D’caernu’mneani, was a dynamic young officer whom Valdore himself had groomed as one of his possible replacements; now he was dead, incinerated along with all hands aboard the Bird-of-Prey Dhivael.
“And the real tragedy,’” Valdore continued, “is that the Andorsu operation could have succeeded, just as it was.”
It occurred to Nijil that the failure at Andorsu had occurred for tactical reasons as much as technological ones. The former was the admiral’s province, however, and that fact made it less than prudent for Nijil to stray too far from the latter.
“Had fortune favored us, Admiral, perhaps,” Nijil said noncommittally. “But the resources—”
“Were adequate, if sparse,” Valdore said, interrupting. “Having more ships on hand would not necessarily have prevented the Andorsu from detecting the attack as early as they did.”
While Nijil did not wish to provoke Valdore by arguing further with him, he hoped to improve his mood by trying to focus on whatever bright side the Andorsu debacle might present. Still, he noted with some relief that the admiral had released his death grip on his Honor Blade.
“According to the long-range observation vessels,” Nijil said cautiously, “one of the assault craft nearly made it all the way down to the Andorsu homeworld.”
Valdore shook his head. “And nevertheless missed the opportunity to obliterate the two most important Andorsu cities, if only by the width of one of their antennae. Unfortunately, such margins can determine entire outcomes in warfare, Nijil. There is no ‘almost victorious.’”
“Of course not, Admiral. But we stand to learn a great deal from the telemetry collected during the operation.”
“I certainly hope so, for your sake. For instance, have you learned yet how the Earth ships have managed to harden their systems against our arrenhe’hwiua telecapture device?”
“The hevam do not yet appear to be capable of resisting telecapture completely,” Nijil said, feeling defensive. “They are not invulnerable.”
“Not yet. But they now appear significantly less vulnerable than the ships of the other Coalition races. The telemetry data do not lie, Nijil. The Earthers have obviously devised at least a partial countermeasure.”
“We will redouble our efforts to overcome it, Admiral,” Nijil said.
With a curt nod of acknowledgment, the admiral stood, grasped the pommel of his sword and raised it before him. He approached Nijil and leveled the blade at his throat.
“See that you do,” Valdore said. “It would be inconvenient to have to seek a new chief technologist during times such as these. I really don’t want to have to find yet another new leader for the avaihh lli vastam project now that the prototype is so close to completion at the Atlai’fehill Stelai complex.”
His façade of calm now all but demolished as he contemplated losing control of his beloved warp-seven stardrive project, Nijil barely resisted a deeply reflexive impulse to flee, an action he knew would be a fatal error.
Instead, he held his ground and decided that this was the perfect time to do something completely unexpected: become the bearer of good tidings for a change.
“I have received some early reports of victory from our invasion force at C’pory, Admiral,” he said.
Valdore pressed the blade against the neck of the chief technologist, who shuddered as he felt a drop of blood beginning to exit from the tiny nick that the keen edge had made.
“I just received those reports, too,” the admiral said. “I have to wonder why the hevam forces are so thin at C’pory, but in light of the Andorsu disaster I will take any victory I can get.”
Lowering his blade, Valdore added, “You should consider C’pory the reason I’m in such a forgiving mood at the moment.”
FORTY-SIX
Dateline: Near the Beta Hydri system
The Borka system, home of the planet Capory
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE MARCH 11, 2156, NEWSTIME JOURNAL SPECIAL COMMENTARY FOLLOWS:
This is Gannet Brooks, with all the news that’s under the sun and beyond, reporting from close proximity to hell, on audio only today because of local difficulties with subspace bandwidth.
What should be a placid sky now probably looks like something that would have given Hieronymus Bosch nightmares, thanks to the detonations of Romulan munitions that are visible all the way to the outermost of this system’s several asteroid belts. Capory is a sparsely settled outpost world, noteworthy for little other than a native biosphere that consists largely of mold.
And for the fact that the Romulans have just seized it, giving them another beachhead even closer to Earth than the ones they have already established in the Calder and Berengaria systems. The faceless killers have commenced heavy aerial bombardments in an apparent effort to rid the planet of much of the apparently inconvenient life it harbors.
Including some two thousand human beings who never got an opportunity to evacuate, given Starfleet’s minimal presence here.
Now, thanks in large part to Starfleet’s no-show, the Romulan Star Empire has a staging post for war—one located only two-dozen light-years from the cradle of humanity.
This reporter has only a single question for Starfleet’s brass hats: Why do you appear to have fallen asleep at the switch?
Enterprise
Seated at her bridge station, Hoshi Sato shut off the Newstime feed to her earpiece in disgust. She turned her chair toward the forward viewer, which displayed the hypnotic Brownian motion of the superluminal starscape that lay on the current heading of Enterprise and the rest of the assault force bound for Berengaria.
She wondered, and not for the first time, whether Gannet Brooks’s reports, biased though they were in favor of Earth standing strong against the Romulans, was doing more harm than good.
FORTY-SEVEN
Saturday, March 13, 2156
Vulcan Cargo Ship Kiri-kin-tha, near Achernar
“ARE YOU SURE he’s really ready to go on an assignment like this?” Tucker asked as he studied the slumbering features of the Romulan soldier, who lay on his bunk in the freighter’s small cabin.
Sitting at the side of the bunk, Ych’a appeared to ignore Trip’s question as she moved her long fingers in delicate, spidery patterns against the sleeping man’s temples as the therapeutic mind-meld progressed toward its conclusion. Centurion Terix, like Trip, now sported the smooth forehead of a Vulcan or a human, thanks to a simple plastic surgical procedure. The only difference between the respective surgeries experienced by Trip and Terix was that the former’s had restored the natural appearance of his brow, while the latter’s had been undertaken to disguise an inborn Romulan trait. Now all three of them—a human, a Vulcan, and a Romulan—were Vulcan nationals bound for Achernar II, at least so far as their outward appearances, their official identity documents, and Terix’s telepathically altered memories were concerned.
Ych’a took a deep breath, in tandem with Terix, before withdrawing her hands from Terix’s face, which slackened further as his post-mind-meld slumber deepened, the therapeutic blocks in his memory presumably growing stronger.
Or so Trip hoped.
Looking up at Trip, Ych’a finally answered his question. “Tevik of Vulcan is as ready for the coming mission as either of us are.”
Tevik, Trip thought with no small amount of regret. Because of the months of tampering Ych’a had performed inside the mind of Romulan Centurion Terix, the man now thought of himself as Tevik of Vulcan, a V’Shar agent who had dedicated his life to gathering intelligence on the Romulan Star Empire. As far as Tevik knew, Centurion Terix was merely another of the many aliases he had used during a long and distinguished espionage career. If Tevik’s own memories seemed to belie that convenient fabrication from time to time, well, that was only to be expected given the V’Shar’s routine use of telepathically implanted false memories on some its deepest-cover operatives.
Necessary though this sort of thing might have been given the danger posed by the Romulans, Trip couldn’t help but feel guilty for having abetted Ych’a’s ongoing subversion of the integrity of another man’s identity.
Apparently sensing Trip’s discomfiture and finding it distasteful, Ych’a stepped to the hatch that connected Terix’s cabin with the rest of the freighter and opened it. As she exited, she motioned for Trip to follow her out into the corridor.
They walked in silence along a passage that seemed wide, at least in comparison with what Trip had grown used to aboard Enterprise. When none of the Vulcan freighter’s crew was nearby, she said, “Tevik is as prepared as it is possible for me to make him, Sodok.”
It still took Trip a moment to grasp that she was addressing him when she used his Vulcan cover name. If the concept of Sodok, a Vulcan dealer in kevas and trillium, hadn’t yet become second nature to Charles Tucker, then why should anyone assume that a similar fake identity would work any better when involuntarily imposed on a battle-hardened Romulan soldier like Terix?
“He’s as ready as he’s ever gonna be?” Trip said quietly, only barely restraining the nervous imperative he felt to raise his voice until it echoed throughout the ship. “Is that what you’re telling me? That we have to do this thing now whether we’re ready or not, just because time has finally run out?”
Ych’a stopped walking and faced him, fixing him with her piercing dark eyes. “Mister Sodok, your emotional control borders on the execrable at times.”
“Sorry,” Trip said, trying to get back into character. “My apologies. I’ve been a bit... spacesick on this voyage.” Yeah, that’s the ticket, he thought, hoping nobody was listening to them who shouldn’t have been.
“Understandable,” she said. “But the time for such misgivings is long past. Captain T’Vran will deliver us to Achernar II in two standard hours. We will find ample resources there to carry out the task that awaits us.”
She didn’t need to outline those “tasks” aloud, both for security reasons and because Trip was thoroughly familiar with the current mission’s objective, having spent the last several interminable months preparing and training for it. During that time, Ych’a had been methodically building up the psychic bulwark of “Tevik’s” personality and memories.
Using the Kiri-kin-tha’s commercial itinerary for both cover and the bulk of their transportation, their mission was to slip into a clandestine shipyard located near the Achernar system and destroy the warp-seven prototype vessel the Romulans were in the process of preparing for its initial test flights.
To that end, the V’Shar had obtained fairly detailed plans of the shipbuilding facility’s layout, which Trip had committed to memory as though they were elementary warp plasma-flow diagrams. He had taken enormous pains to get every detail right, at least so far as they could trust their intel, which looked reliable inasmuch as it seemed to agree with the knowledge that Terix—or Tevik—had shared with them over the past few months. If their mission was to fail because of someone’s mistake, Trip was determined that it wouldn’t happen on account of his mistake.
Which was why Trip thought, even now, that having a fellow spycum-saboteur working alongside him—a man who might suddenly forget his carefully crafted identity and “go Romulan” at an inopportune moment—was such a terrible potential liability.
Trip suddenly noticed that Ych’a was still speaking, a look of something that closely resembled consternation creasing her usually composed features. “Mister Sodok, do I have your attention? It is far too late for you to decide that you cannot follow through on this assignment. There is entirely too much at stake.”
Despite his misgivings, he knew she was right. The time for doubt was long pas
t.
“Don’t worry, Ych’a,” he said.
“Vulcans do not worry.”
“Sure they don’t. Anyway, this thing is going to work because I’m gonna make sure it works.” That meant, among other things, maintaining an engineer’s readiness to improvise at all times.
And keeping an extremely close eye on one Tevik of Vulcan.
FORTY-EIGHT
San Francisco, Earth
NASH MCEVOY FUMED as the two interchangeable Starfleet security officers escorted him deep into the interior of the office complex, all the way to the man who had precipitated this unscheduled visit.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 41
