With Starfleet Command’s attention being the most serious of all.
“This is Gannet Brooks,” said the intense young woman, “with all the news that’s under the sun and beyond, reporting from somewhere outside the Draken system.
Now would come the test. Now he would see if Gannet had taken to heart his request, sent earlier today via subspace radio to her aboard the Tellarite freighter that currently carried her on her travels. McEvoy had asked that she go just a little bit easier on those luckless souls whom fate, UESPA, and the United Earth government had lumbered with the awful charge of conducting the war.
She had not been enthusiastic about his request.
McEvoy held his breath, contemplating the hollow look in Brooks’s eyes as he waited for her to speak. Waited to see if Starfleet had misjudged her.
If he had misjudged her.
“Where the hell is Starfleet?” Brooks said after a seeming eternity had passed.
“Shit,” McEvoy hissed, allowing his breathing to resume as he continued to listen and hope.
“Draken IV is located in the Taugan sector. It lies somewhat closer to the Kaleb sector boundary than Calder does, but it’s still close enough to Earth to pose a credible strategic threat should it fall under Romulan control the way Calder II did.
“For the past decade, the Draken system’s fourth planet has been home to dozens of human scientists, researchers, and engineers. During that time, the outpost they built there and expanded steadily has prospered, despite the perils of Draken IV’s harsh climate and the occasional pirate raid.
“But all that has just changed, suddenly and completely, amid fire and screams and whistling projectiles launched from orbit. The Romulans came in the dead of night, and took Draken IV as she slept. So far there appear to have been no survivors. The dreams and futures of seventy-three men, women, and children appear to have been snuffed out in a callous bombardment, with a single rag-tag merchant vessel serving as the sole living witness to the slaughter. Starfleet has yet to tender an official comment.
“Of course, whatever Starfleet might have to say about the Draken IV massacre is neither here nor there. Words of sympathy or outrage won’t bring back the people who died, after all. What really counts is action— stopping the Romulans cold the next time they attempt such a cowardly sneak attack. But can we really rely on Starfleet to take that kind of action? Their record so far, and their persistent silence, does not inspire confidence with this reporter.
“This is Gannet Brooks, for Newstime.”
She vanished from the screen, leaving a lingering afterimage of her hollow, deadened gaze. Finally that, too, faded, leaving McEvoy alone with his dour thoughts and gnawing fears.
Perhaps Gannet Brooks was absolutely right to continue playing the maverick, despite his pleas for moderation. She was out in field, after all, free of the blinkered perspective of an Earthbound office. He had to concede that she just might understand what was going on a whole hell of a lot better than he did.
But there was that damned haunted look in her eyes. What horrors must she have witnessed out there? She may have seen terrors that he could scarcely even imagine.
Maybe Admiral Black is right, he thought. Maybe she really isn’t looking at things objectively anymore.
Maybe she no longer can.
Something occurred to him then that surprised him greatly: Even though he had always taken Gannet’s toughness for granted, he found that he was suddenly worried about her.
He decided then and there to recall her to Earth. If that made him appear to be knuckling under to Starfleet pressure, then that was fine with him. It was true enough that he didn’t want to tempt Admiral Black to follow through on his threat to tie up Newstime indefinitely in planetary security red tape. But it was equally true that he no longer cared about appearances. He had to bring Gannet home.
Wait a minute, he thought. This is Gannet Brooks you’re talking about here.
He knew that reeling her all the way back to the home office might turn out to be a lot easier said than done. She was more than likely to dig in her heels. He would have to exert some leverage if he wanted to short-circuit that.
McEvoy touched a button on his desktop computer, activating the unit’s audio note-recorder.
“Note to self,” he said. “Remember to revoke Gannet Brooks’s credit chit... tomorrow.”
SIXTY
Aeihk’aeleir Shipyard
TRIP FELT A FAMILIAR VIBRATION coming through the floor of the Vulcan vessel’s turbolift.
“The lift is moving again,” Tevik said. Ych’a nodded but added nothing.
Trip’s nervous system made a nuanced but emphatic counterobservation. “It’s not the lift,” he said. “The ship is moving.” His years serving as Enterprise’s chief engineer had made him intimately familiar with the sensation of forward motion coming slightly ahead of a ship’s inertial damping system; apparently Vulcan inertia-canceling technology possessed a similar lag.
A few moments after the slightly disconcerting feeling of sudden acceleration had passed, the turbolift came to an even more noticeable stop. The hatchway bifurcated, a hissing pneumatic mechanism propelling it open almost instantaneously.
Another pair of armed Romulan soldiers stood just across the threshold of the Vulcan ship’s busy bridge, their disruptor pistols raised and ready as black-garbed crew members busied themselves with various technical tasks all across the bridge. Although Tevik appeared ready to leap upon the nearest of the armed guards, it was obviously a lost cause.
“Move,” said the closest of the soldiers, and Trip allowed himself to be led out of the lift toward the bridge’s bustling center. He was relieved to note that neither Tevik nor Ych’a seemed to be of a mind to try anything stupidly heroic—at least not yet. And he suddenly noticed a certain familiarity about the decidedly nonregulation clothing worn by the bulk of the bridge crew. It occurred to him that their black, paramilitary clothing bore a more than passing resemblance to that of the Ejhoi Ormiin assassins who had killed Doctor Ehrehin last year.
The soldiers brought the trio to a halt at the command deck’s center, just behind the equivalent of the captain’s chair on a Starfleet vessel. The troops withdrew to a discreet yet easily crossable distance, leaving Trip and his colleagues to stare at the back of the salt-and-pepper-haired male who occupied the center seat, his attention evidently focused tightly upon the image being displayed on the broad forward viewscreen.
It was easy to see why. The viewer was presenting a departure view of the Aeihk’aeleir Shipyard, its roughly spherical shape dwindling quickly into the darkness of the outer Achernar system. In the foreground, another vague shape was just as steadily increasing in apparent size. Despite its lack of running lights, Trip could see enough of its outline in the dim ambient light to ascertain that it was another ship.
It wasn’t until the shipyard’s reactor detonated silently, temporarily transforming the giant facility into an artificial sun, that Trip could discern the approaching vessel’s sleek lines amidships and its delta-shaped aft section. Trip’s jaw fell open. His heart could scarcely have beat faster if it had just crossed a black hole’s event horizon. Though the shipyard had been destroyed, the mission had failed spectacularly.
The Romulan warp-seven prototype, the late Doctor Ehrehin’s dream and Earth’s nightmare, was intact and flying, apparently after a last-minute rescue from destruction by whatever skeleton crew had been aboard her.
The man seated in the command chair chose that moment to swivel around to face his “guests.” As he recognized the man in the chair, Trip felt his jaw fall open further still; he managed to close it only with an act of pure will.
“Sopek,” he said when he had at last recovered his voice. “Or Ch’uivh. Or whatever it is you’re calling yourself these days.”
“Traitor,” Ych’a accused the man in a matter-of-fact tone.
The man in the chair seemed content to allow Trip and his colleagues to wonder abou
t him; he turned toward the black-garbed woman who had just approached him, and took the padd she had extended in his direction.
“It’s a new status report from the crew aboard the avaihh lli vastam prototype,” the woman said.
“Very good,” said Sopek/Ch’uivh, his eyes moving quickly across the padd’s display as his thumb quickly scrolled the information.
“What’s your angle this time?” Trip asked the man in charge after he’d handed back the padd and dismissed the woman. Although Sopek had the smooth forehead characteristic of a Vulcan, his true origins and affiliations remained obscure to Trip. “Still working for the Ejhoi Ormiin dissidents? Or have you secretly been on Admiral Valdore’s payroll all along?” Trip knew that the likeliest possibility was that he was really playing both ends against the middle, operating purely for his own benefit.
Something like a smirk pulled at Sopek’s lips for a moment before he answered. “If you must know, Commander Tucker, I have lately been working very closely with one of your closest colleagues.” He gestured with his open hand toward Ych’a.
Trip wondered when his capacity to feel surprise would atrophy.
“Please do not blame Ych’a, Commander,” Sopek continued. “She did not make the essential arrangements: V’Shar headquarters on Vulcan handled those.”
“Arrangements that you have betrayed,” Ych’a said, her frosty gaze focused solely upon Sopek.
“Nonsense,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I never agreed to lay my own agenda entirely aside in favor of that of the V’Shar.”
“And which agenda might that be?” Trip said. “It can be pretty damned difficult to keep track with you.”
Sopek regarded him curiously. “Have I ever been anything other than straightforward in my commitment to the revolutionary goals of the Ejhoi Ormiin?”
“As near as I could tell,” Trip said, “the word ‘straightforward’ has never been part of your vocabulary.”
The man in the chair shook his head slowly in an exaggerated show of patience. “I have always regarded the expansionist ethic of the Romulan Praetorate, as well as the vast military might it has at its disposal, as a threat to galactic peace. Just as the V’Shar does.” His dark gaze locked with Trip’s. “Just as you do.”
But Trip wasn’t ready to buy it, and doubted he ever would. “Sure. That must be why you murdered my partner in cold blood. To protect galactic peace.” In Trip’s mind, “cold blood” was a barely adequate description of what this man had done to Tinh Hoc Phuong, his late partner and mentor in Section 31 field operations. Tucker doubted the image of Sopek burning Phuong to a crisp with a disruptor pistol would ever dim in his memory.
“Mister Phuong,” Sopek said. “Or Terha of Talvath, as he called himself when he infiltrated us. He was an unfortunate casualty of our covert war for survival. My regret over his death has probably disposed me to treat you more gently than I might have under other circumstances.”
“Gee, thanks,” Trip said.
“You must admit that I have ample reason to be aggrieved. You did, after all, cause the destruction of my ship out in the Gamma Hydra sector.”
Trip grinned.
Sopek spread his hands in a gesture of magnanimity. “I do not bear grudges, Commander—even though the destruction of my vessel caused interminable delays in the operation you just watched us conclude.”
“An operation whose scheduling you coordinated with ours for some reason,” Tevik said. Trip realized that a secret Ejhoi Ormiin operation was the best explanation for the dead Romulan soldiers they had encountered during their attempt to exit the shipyard—soldiers who had obviously been killed by someone else.
Sopek nodded. “I supplied much of the intelligence that Ych’a used to carry out your plan to destroy the Aeihk’aeleir facility. My intention was to use that mission to conceal my own.”
Trip thought he was finally beginning to grasp Sopek’s plan. “You snatched the warp-seven ship for your Ejhoi Ormiin buddies, and also grabbed a state-of-the-art Vulcan military vessel while you were at it. And you used the detonation we rigged to cover your tracks and make it look like both ships got destroyed along with the shipyard.”
“Very good, Commander Tucker,” Sopek said. “My only regret was failing to coordinate my efforts precisely enough to leave you and your colleagues believing that scenario as well.”
But Trip was having trouble buying that as well. “That’s bullshit, Sopek.”
Sopek appeared taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“If you’d really intended us to go on believing anything,” Trip said, jabbing a finger at the other man’s chest, “then I doubt you would have destroyed the shuttle we left parked outside the shipyard. That is why we couldn’t get the shuttle’s computer to beam us out, isn’t it? Because you destroyed it?”
“Is this true, Sopek?” Ych’a said. Tevik continued to stare at the man.
Sopek/Ch’uivh went silent, his jaw setting in a hard line. He made a wordless gesture that summoned the two armed guards back into close proximity.
Sure, Trip thought, coming to a grim understanding of what had to be coming next. We know way too much now. There’s no way we’re getting off this tub alive.
“Please escort these... gentlemen off my ship,” said Sopek/Ch’uivh. A moment later Trip was walking toward the turbolift, alongside Tevik.
Only belatedly did he realize that Ych’a had remained on the bridge, standing beside the vessel’s slippery commander.
As the soldiers herded Trip and Tevik into the turbolift—which was no doubt bound for the nearest airlock—Trip realized that Sopek hadn’t just double-crossed him, Ych’a, and Tevik.
Sopek and Ych’a appeared to have just double-crossed everybody.
SIXTY-ONE
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
“I’M AFRAID there is no easy way to tell you this, Admiral,” Chief Technologist Nijil said, fidgeting as he stood before Valdore’s sherawood desk. His eyes kept shifting to Valdore’s Honor Blade, which was back in its usual position of pride on the office’s rear wall.
“Why don’t you simply come out and say it, Doctor?” Valdore said. He reflected that much about his life was anything but easy at the moment. How difficult could it really be to assimilate one additional morsel of misery?
Nijil nodded. “The Atlai’fehill Stelai shipbuilding complex is gone.”
“Gone?”
“Destroyed. In an apparent Coalition sneak attack.”
A pit of apprehension opened up deep within Valdore’s guts. “And the avaihh lli vastam prototype?”
“Destroyed along with it,” Nijil said, his face rapidly turning a livid green. “A year or more of work has been scattered to the winds. I am sorry, Admiral. I do not understand how this could have happened.”
Valdore struggled to keep his roiling emotions in check. The horrible fact was that he understood precisely how such a thing could have happened.
He had let it happen, because he had permitted Praetor D’deridex to compel him to allocate his forces imprudently.
“Relax, Nijil,” he said in the gentlest tones he could manage under the circumstances. “Security is not within the purview of the Empire’s scientists. It is the responsibility of the military. It is my responsibility.”
Nijil looked like a condemned prisoner whose executioner had fortuitously dropped dead moments before the sentence was to be carried out. “Thank you, Admiral.”
“See if anything can be salvaged from the wreckage, and keep me informed of your findings. You are dismissed.”
Nijil wasted no time exiting Valdore’s office, leaving the admiral alone to contemplate what he needed to do next. He feared he already knew what D’deridex would do, once he learned what had happened at the Atlai’fehill Stelai facility.
Darule, Vela, and Vool were all as good as dead unless he made his move now.
With disciplined, measured movements, Valdore activated the private, scrambled comm channel on his
desktop. A moment later, First Consul T’Leikha’s emotionless face appeared on the viewer.
“We can delay no longer,” he said.
Day Forty-Three, Month of K’ri’lior
Monday, March 15, 2156
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
Though the skimmer accident was an enormously unlikely occurrence, Doctor Nijil had pronounced it well within the bounds of possibility. According to the official record, there had been a rash of defects in several recent lots of antigrav motivator parts. Since such carelessness could not be tolerated, Valdore wasted no time ordering the first round of ad hoc military investigations and summary executions.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 45
