A little over ten minutes, Trip thought after doing a quick mental calculation.
Tevik and Ych’a finished placing the last of the charges. They had gone about their work so tidily, fastidiously hiding the charges among the farrago of control panels and cables and conduits that already festooned the place, that Trip couldn’t see any of the charges after they had been deployed.
Trip’s heart raced in a manner that would almost certainly have embarrassed any genuine Vulcan. This is the part where a whole pigpile of guards suddenly shows up and arrests us, then shuts down the bombs just before escorting us out the nearest airlock.
Instead, he watched in silence as an infuriatingly calm Ych’a activated the comlink on her wrist to transmit the prearranged we’re-all-done-now-so-beam-us-the-hell-out-of-here notice to the shuttle’s computer, which dutifully signaled its readiness to establish a signal lock.
Then he waited for the familiar ant-crawling, tingling sensation of a transporter beam.
And waited.
And waited a little longer still.
The small hairs on Trip’s neck rose to attention when Ych’a and Tevik exchanged matching raised-eyebrow glances.
“Aw, shit,” Trip said under his breath. “It freakin’ figures, don’t it?”
FIFTY-FIVE
Ir-Dartha, Romulus
PILOTING HIS PERSONAL FLITTER, Valdore raced alone to his family home in the capital’s suburbs moments after the centurion had brought him the unsettling news.
Someone had attacked the manor, breaching its security. And Valdore had been unable to make contact either with Darule, his wife, or with either of his teenage children. He could only hope that his daughter, Vela, and his son, Vool, had been safely in their classes at the Institute when the incident had occurred.
Now, as he surveyed the ransacked great room and each of the systematically upended bedchambers, even that narrow hope had begun to flee him. On some deep, gut level, he knew that his family was gone, utterly and completely. The only question that remained was why, though he had a strong suspicion that he already knew at least part of the answer.
A voice spoke almost directly behind him. “Admiral.”
Valdore spun toward the sound, his disruptor at the ready almost before either mind or body realized it. He saw T’Luadh, his primary asset within the Tal Shiar spy bureau, standing alone near the great room’s entry vestibule, her hands spread benignly before her.
“Never sneak up on me,” he said, holstering the weapon.
“I’m surprised to see you leave your back undefended, Admiral,” she said. She relaxed her posture and walked more fully into the room so that she, too, could take in what must have happened here. “Where are your personal guards?”
“I came alone,” he said.
“Of course,” she said with a nod of understanding. “It’s difficult to know whom to trust at times such as these.”
“Indeed. And I don’t, as a rule, trust the Tal Shiar.”
She appeared wounded. “Present company excluded, I hope.”
He narrowed his eyes as what little patience for double-talk he possessed rapidly sublimated away. “I suppose that remains to be seen, T’Luadh. Did you have anything to do with this?”
“No,” she said with no hesitation. “But I can’t rule out Tal Shiar involvement.”
“Lovely,” he said sourly.
“The bureau weaves a web that is both vast and tangled, Admiral,” she said as she pulled a small scanning device from the sash of her trousers and began moving it through the air in a slow, sweeping motion.
He frowned. “What are you looking for?”
“Something I believe should be quite easy to find,” she said. “That is, if my assumption proves to be true.”
“Your assumption?” he said, his frown deepening.
“That this deed was done to send you a message,” she said as her scanner began beeping insistently. Kneeling beside a moraine of clutter on the carpet, she extracted a data chip and plugged it into a slot on the device in her hand.
The deed was done before Valdore could protest—for all he knew, she might have just inadvertently detonated a hidden microexplosive device—and a heartbeat later an image of a withered old man seated on an ornate throne shimmered into view on T’Luadh’s device.
“Admiral Valdore, you may now consider yourself officially on notice of my displeasure,” Praetor D’deridex said, staring straight through to the back wall with transparent, prerecorded eyes. “Your handling of the Haakonan campaign has been marked by both a lack of punctuality and a dearth of competence. And your abortive attack on the Andorsu hasn’t exactly covered you in glory, either.”
“You may have my resignation any time you like, you motherless wort,” Valdore growled, though he knew the image’s ears were no more capable of listening to reason than were those of the genuine praetor. “Find somebody else to waste the Empire’s blood and treasure.”
“Until now, I have been remiss in providing you with adequate motivation, particularly regarding Haakona,” the praetor’s image continued superciliously. “To make up for this unforgivable negligence on my part, I have had your family brought to me.” He held up a placating hand, spreading his withered fingers. “Rest assured that they are alive and well, and are enjoying every benevolent protection of the Praetorate.”
Relief flooded Valdore’s body, followed immediately by a sharp rush of anger; the long months he’d languished in the dungeons beneath the Hall of State had given him a keener appreciation than most for the Praetorate’s “benevolent protection.” Despite his roiling emotions, he continued to listen attentively to the madman.
“They will continue to enjoy my largesse for the duration of the Haakonan campaign, Admiral,” the praetor said. “And they will be released to you—but only if the next engagement of Haakona goes significantly better than the first one did. I hope we understand each other clearly now. And that you can forgive my earlier negligence in tending satisfactorily to these troublesome matters of motivation.
“Jolan’tru, Admiral,” D’deridex said just before dipping his head as though taking a nap right on the throne. Then he vanished.
“Well,” T’Luadh said. “That’s certainly not something one sees every day, is it?”
Valdore ignored her. A protracted silence settled over the room. Whatever misgivings might have lingered in Valdore’s mind regarding the plot he and First Consul T’Leikha were in the midst of so carefully hatching—engineering the replacement of D’deridex as praetor with the far more reasonable and tractable Senator Karzan—had just been swept away.
“Will you save the Empire, or your family?” T’Luadh asked.
Valdore now knew with the certainty of gravity that he had to move against D’deridex—and that doing so would require him to take a good deal of care, both in planning and in acting.
What he didn’t know was whether either he or the Empire still had enough time to plan or act with care.
“T’Luadh,” he said. “I’m going to need your help.”
FIFTY-SIX
Aeihk’aeleir Shipyard
“ALL RIGHT,“ TRIP SAID, gesturing broadly at the complex confluence of control panels and power conduits into which the thermal charges had just been deployed. “Let’s shut these down until we can fix whatever’s gone wrong with the shuttle’s transporter.”
“No,” Ych’a said in that aggravating, too-calm tone. “The countdown cannot be rescinded once begun.”
“It’s a safety mechanism,” Tevik said.
“Safety?” Trip said.
“To ensure that nothing disrupts the attainment of the mission goal,” Tevik said. “Regardless of what might happen to any of us.”
“You ought to pay closer attention to the briefing materials, Mister Sodok,” Ych’a said, using the vaguely chiding “remedial lecturer” voice that he had come to dislike so intensely during their long months of association. He was now fairly certain that she was the one who mu
st have gifted T’Pol with that particular annoying tic.
“Beautiful,” Trip said as he gathered his jangled thoughts. “All right, since I didn’t sign on to a suicide mission, I have to assume we can still get out of here before the clock runs out. The reactor core must be interfering with the shuttle’s transporter lock. Let’s put some distance between us and the reactor, and then beam out—say, from the place where we first materialized. We know the transporter was working there.”
“Logical,” said Ych’a.
Moving as one, the three began retracing their steps as swiftly as possible back through the labyrinth of concealed accessways. Exiting was proving much faster than entering, since they were unencumbered by their toolkit once they’d found an inconspicuous place to hide it.
Just under five minutes into the countdown, Trip stood between his two colleagues in the same observation chamber into which the shuttle’s transporter had placed them. Ych’a activated the transmitter on her wrist and waited several seconds. Then her brow crumpled.
“Please don’t tell me,” Trip said.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Very well. I won’t. Nor will I mention the fact that I cannot determine whether the shuttle is even receiving my signal.”
Trip scowled and reached for her wrist. “Let me see that thing, Ych’a. Maybe it got damaged in one of the access crawlways.”
Ych’a quickly relinquished the transmitter rather than submit to being touched; Trip could see immediately that the device was still in good working order.
“Operational or not, the transmitter hardly seems to matter now,” Tevik said. “If the shuttle cannot receive its signals, then we would appear to have run out of viable escape options.”
Handing the wrist unit back to Ych’a, Trip looked up at the observation windows again. The two hulking ships in the hangar beckoned to him.
“Maybe,” Trip said. “But then, maybe not....”
FIFTY-SEVEN
Enterprise
A LOUD BRONX CHEER erupted over Hoshi Sato’s shoulder, drowning out the words of the earnest-looking woman on the communications console’s viewscreen.
“Shhh!” Sato said as she turned her chair away from the console, frowning slightly at Elrene Leydon, who appeared to be loitering about before the start of her duty shift. “Let’s save the commentary for after she’s finished speaking her piece.”
The young pilot suppressed a grin. “Sorry, Hoshi. Keisha Naquase isn’t exactly on my short list of favorite newscasters.”
“No kidding.”
“I didn’t realize you were a fan.”
“Who said I was a fan?” Sato said. “I just like to hear every side of an argument.”
“Naquase is definitely on my short list,” said Donna O’Neill, who was seated in Captain Archer’s chair during his absence.
“That surprises me, Lieutenant,” said Leydon. “I never figured you for a pacifist.”
“I’m not. The title of my short list is ‘Journalists I Would Keel-Haul If I Ruled the World.’”
Focusing past the chatter, Sato turned back toward her console and tried to pick up the thread of Ms. Naquase’s latest Newstime editorial comment.
“... one thing that has always been true, at least until very recently. The ideal behind humanity’s every advance outward into space has always been the promotion of the cause of peace, at least nominally.”
“The meek might inherit the Earth,” O’Neill muttered. “But only very small plots, about one meter by two meters by two meters.”
“... when man first landed on the Moon, we left behind a placard that read ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’ And this was in spite of the fact that humanity’s only planet was still divided into hundreds of adversarial nation-states, the largest and richest of which had thousands of nuclear weapons ready to wipe out one another in what amounted to a dispute over economic systems, if you can believe that.
“But humanity still strove for peace, regardless. So what’s happened to that striving of late? Have we allowed the Romulans to kill that spirit, that fundamental desire for and belief in peace? If so, then our mysterious adversaries may have taken from us something far more valuable than mere military victory.
“Good night. And good luck.” The image on the screen vanished, replaced by a neutral Starfleet logo.
“Right now,” D.O. said, “I’d settle for the military victory.”
“Preach it, Sister O’Neill,” Leydon said as she took her position behind the helm console.
A great sadness welled up within Hoshi Sato’s soul. She wished with all her heart that the universe really could work the way Naquase seemed to think it did. Perhaps someday it would. But mankind’s first order of business now had to be survival, all other lofty considerations aside.
Because the fight for Berengaria, along with who only knew what else, still lay ahead.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Aeihk’aeleir Shipyard
THE CORPSES HAD BEEN dumped unceremoniously in an alcove near an untended hatchway that led directly into the main hangar.
Both of the dead men were uniformed Romulan soldiers. From the severity of the burns to their chests and abdomens, Trip judged they’d been slain by point-blank disruptor fire. And the fact that the nearby hatchway was both unguarded and open was apparently related to the fact that the dead men had been the ones in charge of guarding it.
Trip was also bothered by the fact that he had never seen either of the men before. “None of us did this,” he said, glancing up at Tevik and Ych’a as he knelt beside the bodies.
Tevik knelt beside Trip and began cold-bloodedly rifling through the soldiers’ scorched and bloodied uniform tunics, until he located a small data chip.
“Identification,” he said, holding up the chip momentarily before rising and tucking it into his pocket. “This could prove invaluable.”
Ych’a glanced at her wrist chronometer, looking as close to nervous as Vulcans ever did. “Mister Sodok, I must point out that we do not have sufficient time to conduct a murder investigation.”
“Good point,” he said as he got to his feet. He then fell into step behind Ych’a and Tevik as they moved at a quick, crouching trot through the long, low-ceilinged run of umbilical scaffolding that ended at the outer hull of the Sh’Raan-class Vulcan ship.
Constrained by time, the three had agreed very quickly that the Vulcan vessel represented their best hope of getting out of here alive. Since Ych’a was most familiar with its systems, she would have a better chance of getting the ship clear of the hangar before the reactor blew. Using the Sh’Raan for their escape would also remove a valuable piece of captured Vulcan technology from Romulan hands, and the detonation of the Aeihk’aeleir Shipyard’s reactor core would take out the prototype, thus satisfying their mission objective.
Trip had lost track of precisely how much time remained before the thermal charges they’d planted in the reactor room went boom and sent this place to its reward. But as they reached the Sh’Raan ship’s outer hatch, he could feel in his bones that there couldn’t be more than a couple of minutes left, tops.
“If I understand this facility’s work schedule, the ship should be empty except for a few technicians,” Tevik said as he used the slain Romulan soldier’s ID chip to open the nearest access hatch that led into the Vulcan starship’s interior.
Moments later, Trip and Tevik were following Ych’a down the curving length of an empty, dimly illuminated corridor. “The nearest turboshaft with direct bridge access is this way,” she said.
In short order, the trio entered a turbolift car whose doors obediently enclosed them. Trip felt the slight heaviness in his boots that signaled the lift’s upward surge in response to Ych’a’s terse voice command.
Then the lift came to an abrupt, lurching stop. Ych’a and Tevik traded significant glances that made them both appear very nearly alarmed.
“Nuts,” Trip said.
At least when the big boom comes, he thought, I’ll be a
ble to get away with acting a little bit surprised.
FIFTY-NINE
San Francisco, Earth
ALONE IN HIS OFFICE, long after everyone else had gone home for the evening, Nash McEvoy sat and watched the one Newstime feed he knew had come directly from the front lines of his organization’s reporting.
It was the only story that genuinely worried him, as much for its content as its possible consequences, which could be quite dire for Newstime. Unlike Keisha Naquase’s semipoetical—some would say naïve—elegies to peace, Gannet Brooks’s ever more frequent fire-and-brimstone entreaties to humanity’s basic survival instincts were garnering serious attention across at least a half-dozen sectors of known space.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 44
