Even though the captain knew he wouldn’t be getting off the bridge any time soon, Archer was determined to take that battle all the way to the ground.
Even before the explosive bolts ejected the dropship from the Dykstra’s belly, Private Colin Idaho had known to expect his stomach to try to claw its way out of his body. But what he hadn’t expected was for his guts to attempt to escape through the top of his head before settling for his face. He vomited explosively moments after the dropship took up a fast, planetward trajectory that more than lived up to the little troop transport’s name.
“Why couldn’t these friggin’ dropships come equipped with those really efficient inertial dampers that Starfleet uses?” Idaho said while still in the throes of his agonies.
“You’re a shark, not a squid, trooper. You’ll live,” the corporal told him after he’d finished yakking, at least for the moment. But Idaho wasn’t ready yet to accept that he’d decisively quelled the rebellion of his internal organs; he’d consider that battle won only after his land legs returned, which wouldn’t happen until after the little transport ship was finished making its bucking, rattling, flame-trailed descent.
With nothing better to do at the moment, he recalled having asked Sergeant Mankiewicz just yesterday why the troops couldn’t have used one of the starships’ new cargo transporters to get to the planet’s surface, rather than the dropships. After the lengthy, complex, and decibel-enhanced answer he’d received—Mankiewicz had loudly emphasized both the unsuitability of the transporter equipment for mass human beamings and the tactical assumption that the Romulans could disrupt a transporter beam in such a way as to ensure that whatever it transmitted would arrive as so many kilos of ground chuck—Idaho now knew better than to question the natural MACO order of things.
The recollection made him rejoice that he’d never worked up the nerve to ask the sergeant about the many “here there be dragons” stories he’d heard about Berengaria VII.
But the drop was over soon enough. An immeasurable interval after the harrowing orbital descent had begun, the little dropship was finally on the ground. Idaho saw that the egress hatches were opening, letting in wide shafts of red Berengaria’s cloud-filtered light as the debarkation ramps extended. He also saw what appeared to be the telltale scorings of particle-beam weapons on the external metal gangways as they unfolded; he shuddered, nearly vomiting again as he realized how close he and his fellow MACOs must have come to being vaporized by the gauntlet of orbital Romulan guns they’d just run, and at nauseating ballistic speeds, no less.
He blinked against the intermittent flashes of brilliance he saw coming from beyond the nearest open hatchway as his fellow MACOs shouted in excitement and anger and fear while preparing to plant their boots on the alien ground they’d been ordered to take back from the faceless Romulans.
A strong arm grasped his, helping him get his feet beneath him. “Up and at ’em, trooper,” the corporal said. “You don’t want to let everybody else have all the fun, do you?”
“Thanks, Corporal Guitierrez,” Idaho said, his training finally kicking in and overriding his motion sickness—or at least most of it.
More flashes from outside assaulted his eyes as he checked the charge indicator on the stock of his pulse rifle. Then he tried to move toward one of the landing ramps to follow the other MACOs into battle.
But his boots seemed to be bolted to the deck.
“Come on, trooper,” Guitierrez said, the almost maternal compassion he’d heard in her tone earlier hardening to cast rodinium toughness. It was obvious that she was done coddling him.
Once he’d managed to get himself moving again, she said, “You’re lucky my husband lost the coin-flip, Private.”
“Coin flip?”
She nodded. “To settle which of us was going back into the MACOs to fight the Romulans, and which of us got to stay home to change the diapers.”
Idaho’s stomach lurched at the thought of soiled diapers. Bring on the Romulans instead. “How’s that lucky for me?” he said.
“If the toss had gone the other way, I can guarandamntee you wouldn’t be getting such gentle treatment from him.”
Although he had no memory of how it had happened, he was now outside the dropship, keeping pace as his squad sprinted through a scorched, stump-laden field toward a distant row of burned and blasted structures and even more remote, haze-shrouded towers. Columns of MACOs advancing from the other dropships toward the same destination were visible from both sides through the scattered remnants of an incompletely defoliated jungle that bore scant resemblance to the images of the vibrant, Cretaceous-era Berengarian jungle that Sergeant Mankiewicz had shown the company at the mission briefings. A fog-shrouded valley lay in the distance beyond the ruins toward which all the MACO units headed.
“Starbase 1,” Corporal Guitierrez said, maintaining a brisk pace as she walked slightly ahead of Idaho. “And the Vulcan science outpost. Or at least whatever bits and pieces are still there since last November.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder. “Stay sharp, kid.”
The squad walked on for what felt like hours as fear and residual motion sickness dilated Idaho’s sense of the passage of time. Berengaria sailed across the cloud-decked sky, oblating and spreading across the horizon as evening approached. The tumbledown structures in the distance appeared no closer than they had been a seeming eternity ago.
Idaho saw, or imagined that he saw, a group of small, dark figures approaching from the direction of the ruins.
On a cue from Lieutenant Stiles, Sergeant Mankiewicz raised a fist to signal the group to stop, and Idaho instinctively complied. Another hand signal ordered the troopers to take cover. Idaho did that as well, though he could see he had been among the last to complete the task. He willed his hands to stop shaking, but to little avail.
I’m gonna get everybody here killed, he thought as the dark, distant figures continued their relentless approach. It wasn’t his imagination playing tricks; whatever was coming was real. Following the lead of Sergeant Mankiewicz and Corporal Guitierrez, Idaho readied his weapon from behind one of the outsize charred tree stumps.
“Remember, kid,” Guitierrez said as she hovered beside him. “Stay cool. Do your job.”
He nodded dumbly. Idaho’s thoughts flew to his mother, who had fled to Earth once Alpha Centauri had started to look too vulnerable to a Romulan attack.
Mom’s never gonna see me again, he thought. I’m gonna die here.
The ranks of approaching figures had grown close enough by now to be positively identified as essentially humanoid, though their bright silver helmets obscured any other fine details. For all he knew, they were reptile men under that headgear, or bipedal starfish.
Romulans, he thought, his spine shuddering with dread.
Responding to Mankiewicz’s hand signals, the MACOs began to power up.
Another hand signal. Then MACO pulse rifles volleyed and thundered, just like in that damned Tennyson poem. More flashes of light assaulted Idaho’s eyes, and Sergeant Mankiewicz vanished from right in front of him.
“Get down, kid!” Guitierrez yelled, tackling him.
Weapons fired kaleidoscopically all around him, seemingly from every direction simultaneously. Fear grabbed his belly and squeezed, and he was almost certain he had vomited yet again in response. Something struck him, and he felt burning, followed by numbness and the stench of burned hair and ozone. I’m going into shock, or worse, he thought as he realized that he was lying on his back.
Idaho further realized that he couldn’t move, other than blinking and turning his head slightly.
He saw MACO bodies sprawled nearby, perhaps alive, perhaps not. He saw parts of bodies, and closed his eyes in an effort not to see any more.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the approaching Romulans, closing with obvious determination. Only a handful were coming, however, presumably because the MACOs had cut down many of them. But they had managed to survive in sufficient numbers to fi
nish off what remained of Idaho’s unit.
One of the hawk-eyed, silver-helmeted bastards drew a blade as he approached, apparently intent on killing Idaho with it.
Should have listened to Mom, he thought, closing his eyes again. Should have paid closer attention to that damned poem.
He opened his eyes and felt both relief and horror when he saw that the two nearest bedraggled Romulans had moved past him to get to Lieutenant Stiles, who appeared to be either unconscious or already dead. One of the enemy soldiers used his sharp blade to finish Stiles off. A shadow passed overhead, but Idaho still felt too stunned to turn his head toward its source. Idaho assumed it was cloud cover. Or perhaps the impending fall of night, which might as well last forever as far as he was concerned.
God. I’m gonna die. I’mgonnadieI’mgonnadieI’mgonnadie.
The Romulan with the knife turned toward him and approached, his blade still dripping with Stiles’s blood.
“V’rhaen-ao’au thea,” the Romulan said. Idaho needed no translation to recognize the ugly universal sentiment of I’m going to kill you now.
The shadow passed again overhead, like a portent of doom, and was followed by a faint whiff of sulfur. The Romulan crouched beside Idaho, smiling a cruel rictus as he raised his blade, poised to strike.
A heavy boot suddenly crashed into the Romulan’s side, sending him and the blade sprawling in opposite directions. Straining to get himself up onto his elbows, Idaho saw that Guitierrez had not only survived the firefight, but had also brought the enemy soldier down with one deft martial arts maneuver. Before the Romulan could react, she smashed him across the face with the stock of her damaged phase rifle, and then brought the heavy weapon down hard against his throat, apparently crushing the alien’s windpipe.
But three other Romulans were already converging on the corporal from different directions, their energy weapons held temporarily in abeyance to avoid the chance of catching one another in a crossfire.
With a huge effort, Idaho turned his head this way and that, but only managed to determine that no weapons lay within his reach. He still couldn’t move worth a damn, regardless. He and Guitierrez were both finished.
The shadow returned. But this time it was attached to something swift, muscular, and equipped with wickedly sharp claws.
More shadows, and the deep-green, scale-covered shapes that cast them, crossed the battlefield. The Romulans screamed and struggled, but their cries quickly grew faint with distance as their attackers bore them away on their leathery, scalloped wings. Had the arrival of the MACOs given them a long-awaited opportunity to take a little revenge?
Idaho forced his numbed body into motion, dragging himself to where Guitierrez lay. He was relieved to find that she was still alive and conscious.
“I thought the bastards had killed you,” he said.
“Uh-uh,” she said, her breathing labored. “That would just have made Sergeant Kemper mad. You wouldn’t like him when he’s mad.”
“Your husband? The coin toss?”
She nodded. “You hurt?”
He shrugged, and winced as his body responded with a sharp pain in his torso. He tried to force himself to be grateful, at least, that he wasn’t coughing up blood. “I think I’ll live, Corporal,” he said. “What about you?”
“Fine. What the hell just happened?”
He studiously avoided shrugging again. “I guess all I can say about that,” he said, catching his breath, “is ‘Here there be dragons.’”
Enterprise
The reports had been coming back fast and furious for the past fifteen minutes. There had been heavy losses, both in orbit and on the ground. Though Archer could hardly believe it, the Battle of Berengaria was already over. Earth’s single most decisive victory in the war thus far—Earth’s only solid victory, decisive or otherwise, some would argue—had taken slightly less than twelve hours to achieve.
It was hard to accept. He kept expecting the Romulan fleet to reappear. Instead, the Romulans had beaten a hasty retreat from the Berengaria system, taking care to leave behind next to nothing in the way of intact Romulan technology. According to the MACOs on the ground, they had even taken pains to either vaporize or collect all of their dead before their small surviving complement of ships had gone to warp. There were no prisoners to interrogate, nor even a corpse for Phlox to examine. Archer was relieved, given what would almost certainly happen to Earth-Vulcan relations once the Romulan-Vulcan relationship became known.
The victory had been decisive, but it had not come cheaply. In addition to MACO losses on the ground that numbered in the hundreds— about half of the troops that had landed—a similar percentage of the Starfleet attack group had suffered fatal damage as well.
“I have logged seven of the Daedalus-class ships as lost with all hands,” Reed said glumly as he delivered his after-action report to Archer in his ready room.
Sitting silently behind his desk, Archer looked over the list of ship names—names drawn from history and mythology that had earned yet another mark of distinction today: Olympus, Valley Forge, Cochrane, Dykstra, Probert, Ptolemy, Stephen Decatur.
“The Essex and the Roosevelt took the smallest amount of damage, Captain,” Malcolm said. “They could pursue the Romulans as they retreat.”
Archer shook his head. “No. They’d probably never catch up, unless the Romulans wanted them to. We’ll keep Essex and F.D.R. here with Enterprise for a while, along with Archon, Carolina, Lovell, and Intrepid. We all need some post-battle repairs, so we’ll get those under way here while Captains Ramirez, Narsu, Shumar, and I sift through whatever the Romulans left of Starbase 1—and whatever the Romulans built here since they arrived last November.”
“What about the Vulcan outpost, Captain? Do we claim salvage rights?”
Archer scowled. “Starfleet has decided to leave the Vulcan outpost to the Vulcans.”
Reed nodded. “Has Starfleet Command issued us new orders, sir?”
“Liberate Deneva. Once our flotilla is ready to rendezvous with the reinforcements that Starfleet is sending.”
“Understood, Captain,” Reed said with a small, wry smile. “Ready or not, Deneva, here we come.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
Early in the month of D’ruh, YS 8765
Saturday, April 3, 2156
ShiKahr Spaceport, Vulcan
THE CUSTOMS INSPECTOR’S FACE was a mask of impassivity, just as Colonel Talok expected, considering which world he was presently visiting.
“Welcome back to Vulcan, Minister Tavak,” the inspector said. “Your travel documents appear to be in order.” The inspector handed back the datachip after giving it a perfunctory examination. “Live long and prosper.”
“Peace and long life,” said Talok, whose normally prominent forehead ridge had been smoothed to a placidly Vulcan appearance to match his newly assumed name and mannerisms.
Carrying only a small valise, as was the real Minister Tavak’s wont whenever he traveled offworld, Talok made his way through the vast open spaces of the spaceport’s public gallery. He headed to the transit square, where a public antigrav vehicle would carry him into the government district in the capital city’s heart.
As long as he was not subjected to a comprehensive DNA analysis or a deep tissue scan, no Vulcan would ever discover that Talok had assassinated Minister Tavak and taken his place. Talok understood that suspicions would almost certainly be roused eventually. Questions would be asked. Sooner or later, somebody was bound to take a scan of him, or obtain a tissue sample. If he was both competent and fortunate, however, he would discover the source of Haakona’s Vulcan technology connection and melt away into the shadows—per his decades of Tal Shiar field experience—long before any of that could happen.
Mount Seleya, Vulcan
T’Pol wondered if she was losing command of her faculties as a consequence of the twenty-four consecutive days of deprivation she had experienced. She could draw some solace from the fact that the worst of the physic
al punishments of the last few weeks was behind her. Although the ascent from the blazing sands of the Forge to the chill, wind-carved peaks of Mount Seleya had been arduous, at least it was finished, and hadn’t been followed immediately by an equally harrowing descent through the forbidding darkness of the Osana caverns. She and Administrator T’Pau had even paused at Mount Seleya to take their first meal in weeks. And now, as T’Pol sat quietly on the stone floor between an equally silent Administrator T’Pau and Minister Kuvak—the latter’s presence being somewhat reassuring inasmuch as it meant that he couldn’t actively undermine T’Pau’s government at the moment—T’Pol found at least a fleeting interval of peace.
The other people present were the handful of adepts charged with the maintenance of Mount Seleya’s ancient, open-air cathedral. Today the adepts were conducting the solemn rites associated with the induction of a new Kolinahr master, who was kneeling respectfully before them. The ancient ritual progressed in stately fashion as T’Rukh stood sentinel duty overhead and Nevasa drew ever closer to the distant horizon, lengthening the shadows cast by the circle of dour, robed figures. The net diminution of the sky’s brightness made the fires that crackled in the central ceremonial brazier appear ever brighter by contrast. The only sounds were a few ritually intoned phrases of Old High Vulcan, the sporadic jangling clashes of the hexagonal racks of kus-vakh bells carried by two of the adepts, and the faint background keening of the wind.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 48
