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

by Michael A. Martin

  They came to a stop in the main living area, which Denak had left brightly illuminated to accommodate his guests, all three of whom— Ych’a and two Vulcan men who appeared considerably younger than Denak—were seated in one or another of the room’s few low chairs.

  The guests rose to their feet, and after T’Pol and Ych’a exchanged perfunctory greetings, Denak gestured toward the two other men and said, “T’Pol, this is Tevik of Raal Province, and Sodok, a dealer in kevas and trillium.”

  Tevik raised his right hand in the traditional split-fingered Vulcan salute, pairing the hand gesture with the time-honored greeting, “Live long and prosper.”

  The man beside her, Sodok, presented a stark contrast, inarticulately clearing his throat while wringing his hands awkwardly as though he didn’t know what to do with them. As she made the expected response to Tevik’s greeting, T’Pol blinked repeatedly in an effort to conceal her intense surprise. Despite the minor surgical alterations their faces had undergone since she had last seen either of them, T’Pol knew she was acquainted with both men, one via combat, and the other through far more intimate channels of communication.

  After her previous encounter with “Tevik”—it had occurred in a Romulan dissident stronghold on Taugus III, where she had stunned him unconscious with her phase pistol, thereby preempting a disruptor blast aimed squarely at Tucker—she had learned that Terix was a Romulan centurion. Although “Tevik” lacked Terix’s distinctive Romulan brow ridge, T’Pol recognized him.

  And although “Sodok” looked Vulcan, T’Pol knew his real identity as well: Commander Charles Anthony Tucker III, a man with whom she shared a unique bond.

  T’Pol held herself rigid and maintained her silence, restraining herself from reacting in an outwardly noticeable way. Although she found it enormously gratifying to discover that Trip was alive and apparently unharmed, she was not privy to how much the others present knew either about Trip’s real identity or his ongoing espionage work. She had no wish to compromise him, or worse, to place his life in any greater jeopardy than it might be already.

  And while she found it sorely tempting to blurt out a warning to everyone present concerning “Tevik,” T’Pol refrained, since that action, too, carried with it the possibility of compromising Trip.

  Belatedly, T’Pol noticed that Ych’a was speaking to her, though she had no recollection of what the other woman had said.

  “Pardon me?” T’Pol said, feeling foolish.

  The corners of Ych’a’s usually stern mouth curled slightly, making her appear almost amused. “I said that for one who has spent so much time lately among the adepts of Mount Seleya, your emotions are surprisingly close to the surface.”

  “Indeed,” Denak said with a slow and somber nod. “I was about to make much the same comment. Did you notice that as well, Sodok?”

  “Yes.” Trip mumbled, looking at T’Pol in an utterly dumbfounded fashion.

  “Do not be concerned,” Ych’a said, her gaze locked upon T’Pol’s. “We are all working toward the same goal.”

  T’Pol sat down heavily on one of her mother’s chairs. “Please explain.”

  SEVENTY

  The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus

  NIJIL HAD TURNED to leave the office once First Consul T’Leikha released him to return to his duties. But before he reached the door, her comm unit emitted a piercing electronic tone—a tone that Nijil knew heralded a high-priority incoming communication.

  He paused momentarily on the threshold and glanced back at her, prepared to move on instantly should she so much as scowl at him. But the look of dismayed surprise on T’Leikha’s face made his feet throw down roots. All of her color had abruptly drained away.

  “It’s from Valdore,” she said, incredulous.

  Nijil stepped back into her office and sealed the door behind him. “The admiral is alive?” he whispered in disbelief, though he found the notion curiously easy to accept; after all, in all the images of the post-detonation wreckage he had seen, he had never so much as glimpsed a body.

  The world suddenly began to spin wildly about him. Valdore doesn’t know about my involvement, he told himself. He’s not omniscient. He couldn’t possibly know.

  But he also wasn’t supposed to have been able to survive.

  The Krocton Segment, Dartha, Romulus

  “T’Luadh, I believe the First Consul may actually have soiled herself when my face appeared on her terminal,” Valdore said to the woman who sat across the dining room table from him, slurping her bowl of aafvun’in’hhui mollusk soup with noisy gusto. “I’m still more than a little surprised that she found the courage to strike at me so brazenly.”

  “This wasn’t about courage, Admiral,” the spy said, setting down her bowl. “If it were, T’Leikha simply would have challenged you to a duel.”

  Valdore pushed his own half-eaten plate of viinerine to the side— he had developed a taste for simple military fare decades ago, and had never lost the habit—and slowly swirled his glass of kali-fal. He savored the blue liquor’s pungent aroma as much as he did the continued rock-steadiness of his nerves.

  “True enough,” he said. For most of his adult life, in fact, Valdore had been keenly aware of the complex, indirect machinations of which members of the Romulan Senate were capable. This knowledge was the primary reason he had over the years established a number of safe houses such as this one, in Dartha and elsewhere, some of which he felt certain that not even the Tal Shiar knew about. He’d spent enough time in the Senate prior to his initial fall from grace—and before his subsequent military career—to gain a thorough understanding of the lethal deviousness of the Empire’s political schemers.

  Which was why he had sent Darule, Vela, and Vool away to one of his most remote safe houses just yesterday, shortly after Tal Shiar operative T’Luadh had initially apprised him of the First Consul’s plot—a scheme that his own Commander Khazara had not only corroborated, using discreetly intercepted comm traffic, but which he had also successfully backtraced through Chief Technologist Nijil’s office. Thanks either to skill or blind luck, a number of communications between Nijil and known associates of the antigovernment Ejhoi Ormiin dissident faction had turned up. It appeared that Nijil had used his dissident connections to engineer last year’s assassination of Doctor Ehrehin, the original developer of the still uncompleted avaihh lli vastam stardrive project.

  Using the dissidents to arrange Ehrehin’s murder may simply have been Nijil’s most expeditious means of poaching the most prestigious undertaking of Ehrehin’s long career. Or it might have been indicative of a deeper, far more dangerous ideological bent. It left Valdore wondering whether Nijil’s slow progress on the high warp project came from the difficulties of the physics or from a desire to confound the Empire’s efforts. Whatever Nijil’s agenda might ultimately prove to be, Valdore was certain of at least two things: first, Khazara was now in line for a promotion; and second, Valdore had something quite different in mind for both Nijil and T’Leikha.

  “How is your family adjusting to their present... low profile?” T’Leikha said as she helped herself to another osol twist from the platter. Judging from her lean proportions, he doubted she ate such trifles very often. Valdore himself had never developed a taste for the damned things—they were far too sour—but his servants often left heaps of them out for his visitors, perhaps guided by the knowledge that the confections wouldn’t tempt him to overindulge.

  “Darule says that Gal Gath’thong is lovely this time of year,” he said. “Vela and Vool haven’t seen the firefalls since they were in secondary school.”

  T’Luadh answered with a knowing nod. “Gal Gath’thong. Good choice.”

  Of course, Valdore had sequestered his family nowhere near Gal Gath’thong. As trusted an adviser and ally as T’Luadh had become, he never allowed himself to forget that she was attached to the Tal Shiar, which commanded her primary loyalty. And he was not about to reveal his family’s present whereabouts to the Tal Shiar
. Let them unearth the truth themselves, if they really considered it worth discovering. For all he knew, T’Luadh already knew that his family was actually elsewhere in the Krocton Segment’s southeast district this very moment, and she was simply humoring him.

  “Are you pleased with the progress your Haakonan-front forces are making in redeploying to Coalition space?” she said, adroitly changing the subject between bites of her osol twist. “Commander Khazara’s report on the subject indicated that the redeployment was proceeding more quickly than even some of the most optimistic logistical projections.”

  Valdore wondered how T’Luadh, or her Tal Shiar puppet masters, had gotten hold of Khazara’s report, which was intended for his own eyes alone. Her personal interest in the fleet’s redeployment was probably perfunctory at best; he knew that she was really delivering a subtle reminder that he’d be hard pressed to keep anything truly secret from her.

  “I think the fleet still needs some serious shoring up at our Coalition lines,” he said, deliberately sticking to safe generalities.

  “Yes. The loss of D’caernu’mneani Lli was an alarming development. But our new praetor trusts it will not be repeated elsewhere.”

  “Thanks to the redeployment, I will not only avoid repeating it, I will undo it.”

  She raised her glass of kali-fal in a salute. “The praetor will be delighted when I report that to him. I drink to your making good on that promise, and to the Empire.”

  Valdore raised his own glass in response, but remained silent. So not only must you remind me that you can read my mail with impunity, he thought, but you also must reiterate that the Tal Shiar has at least as much access to Karzan’s ear as I do.

  T’Luadh drained her glass and set it down on the table. “What will you do next, Admiral?” she said. “Regarding First Consul T’Leikha and your chief technologist, I mean.”

  Valdore allowed a death’s head grin to split his craggy, weather beaten face. “I am content to leave Nijil working in his present position—for now. He may become complacent, grow careless again, and expose whole nests of Ejhoi Ormiin vermin as a consequence.”

  T’Luadh grinned. “Well played, Admiral. You’re beginning to think like a veteran Tal Shiar field operative. And what of the first consul?”

  “I shall bide my time with her as well.”

  “Wise, Admiral. Now that Senator Vrax is out of prison, I would think you’d have to get in line behind him to get revenge against T’Leikha.”

  “Perhaps,” Valdore said. “Vrax is considerably more patient than I am, T’Luadh.”

  “Does that mean you do plan to retaliate against the first consul before Vrax does?”

  He shrugged. “Retaliate for what? The destruction of my residence has been officially recognized as purely accidental, has it not? Therefore I needn’t be in a rush to seek revenge.”

  She nodded, finally seeming to take his meaning: Once a suitable time interval had passed, similar “accidents” could be relied upon to befall both T’Leikha and Nijil, no doubt at the times and in the places they were least likely to expect them.

  Provided, of course, that Valdore did not wait so long as to allow T’Leikha to strike preemptively against him.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  Northern ShiKahr, Vulcan

  IN ONE OF THE HOUSE’S spare bedrooms, Tucker stood regarding T’Pol in silence, utterly at a loss for words as she stared back at him with equal intensity. Neither of them spoke, and although they weren’t in physical contact, he could feel her presence intensely, the durable telepathic bond they shared no longer attenuated by parsecs of distance. The bond nevertheless still apparently functioned as a kind of open carrier wave, the conductor of a telepathic reverberation that reminded him of the echo that occurred when one spoke to someone in person and through an open comm channel simultaneously.

  At the moment, however, the link served as a conduit for the loudest silence Trip had ever heard, a roaring ocean of emotional white noise.

  This was the first time he’d been alone with her—hell, it was one of the very few times they’d even both been in the same sector—since that memorable day on Taugus III, more than eight months ago. Now, as then, he wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms and disperse all the built-up tension he could feel roiling within them both—and maybe break some of the furniture in the process.

  Down, boy, he told himself in some private corner of his innermost thoughts. He felt like a randy teenager, knowing that T’Pol’s mother had lived in this house not all that long ago. Besides, we still have company out there in the living room. True enough, Ych’a had all but banished them both from the main living area in order to rid herself of anything that might break her concentration or distract her from her present task. The time had come for one of Centurion Terix’s “therapeutic mind-melds,” the latest in a series of telepathic treatments necessary to maintain the fiction that the Romulan Centurion Terix was actually the Vulcan V’Shar operative Tevik.

  T’Pol’s eyes were aflame in the room’s dim light, confirming that she, too, had to struggle against the same impulses he was experiencing.

  “I need...” she said.

  “Yes?” Stepping toward her, he realized he was bracing himself, his muscles tensing. He hadn’t forgotten the wicked shoulder bruise she’d given him on Taugus III, when in her passion she’d slammed him into one of the seats on the small Romulan scoutship he’d been using at the time.

  She shook her head, as though rousing herself from the thrall of some magical spell. “I need... to sweep this room for listening devices.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Of course, right.” Putting aside his commingled disappointment and relief, Trip realized that her idea was a sound one; even before he’d started working alongside a telepathically tamed Romulan, he’d come to appreciate the survival value in keeping his guard up as much as possible. And T’Pol had already mentioned that this house had been in the care of the master spy Denak ever since T’Les’s passing almost two years earlier.

  Once T’Pol appeared satisfied that no one was eavesdropping on them, Trip said, “Ych’a told you what I’ve been up to lately, more or less. But you haven’t said what brought you back to the old hometown.”

  “Captain Archer sent me,” she said with no hesitation. “My mission was to persuade Administrator T’Pau to bring Vulcan into the war.”

  “Was,” Trip said. “I take it that T’Pau didn’t listen to you.”

  “No,” T’Pol said, looking almost sad as she sat at the foot of the low, futonlike bed. Her eyes, however, were still aflame, though Trip did his best to pretend not to notice.

  “Did she have a better excuse than the one she and Soval gave to the Coalition Council?” Trip wanted to know.

  T’Pol stared off into the middle distance, apparently gathering her thoughts. “Administrator T’Pau has... a great deal on her mind at the moment,” she finally said, effectively explaining nothing.

  Though he remained standing—he didn’t trust himself at the moment to touch her, or even to sit beside her—Trip wanted to do whatever he could to bolster her spirits.

  “Maybe she just needs more time to think the problem all the way through,” he said. “Maybe if we both went to see her togeth—”

  “I do not wish to disrupt your mission,” she said, interrupting. “Your objectives may suffer if you involve yourself in this. Besides, it is an endeavor that is likely to prove futile.”

  “T’Pol, once I finish debriefing with the V’Shar about the Achernar mission, I expect to be done with all of this covert cloak-and-dagger crap, forever and ever, amen. I have no other objectives at the moment.” He paused, pointing at the sides of his face with both index fingers. “Other than hanging up these ears and heading home, that is.”

  “Will you return to Starfleet?”

  He nodded. “They’re not gonna be able to keep me away, at least as long as the freakin’ Romulans keep trying to finish what the Xindi started. But I’ve had a bellyful of pretend
ing to be dead for some spook bureau, whether it’s attached to Earth or Vulcan. Besides, I want my life back.”

  “And what do you plan to do with that life?”

  “I haven’t quite figured that part out yet,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe I’ll go back aboard Enterprise and take charge of the old gal’s engine room.” With a playful grin, he added, “Wanna come along?”

  She looked up at him. Something changed very subtly along the invisible cable that connected them, like a modulation in either amplitude or frequency, or a sudden increase in the distance between the line’s two end points. Or perhaps it was something else entirely, something that defied any engineering-metaphorical description. He searched her eyes and found it; alongside the passion he knew they were both still struggling to keep at bay, he saw misery and regret, emotional floodwaters that threatened to inundate the levies of her Vulcan reserve.