“Llhusra,” he cursed. At least some of the ships and matériel he had just redeployed away from the Haakonan front would have to be turned around and redirected toward Artaleirh and the surrounding sectors. This wouldn’t be easy, since the fleet had reliable intelligence indicating that a combined hevam-Andorsu-Tellarsu fleet was massing even now near K’Feria, with the obvious intention of restoring that system to Coalition control. Romulus’s resources in that sector needed to be enhanced, not diluted.
Though necessary, this exercise in rearranging the playing pieces on the galactic latrunculo board would surely create a costly distraction from Valdore’s less urgent objectives in the hevam war. True, he could ill afford such disruptions, especially after the humiliating setback the fleet had suffered at D’caernu’mneani Lli, the planet the expansionist Terran hevam called Berengaria VII. But, faced with the Haakonan lightning that D’deridex had brought down upon the Empire, he knew he couldn’t avoid them.
It came to Valdore only now that he was as culpable for this development as the late D’deridex had been. He had spent too much time wrestling with his conscience prior to deciding to help replace a mad warmonger of a praetor with a saner, more manageable successor. He had hesitated, and no amount of tactical cleverness on his part could ever expunge that transgression.
For his hesitation had allowed Praetor D’deridex’s legacy of madness to continue bedeviling the Empire from beyond the grave.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Late in the month of re’T’Khutai, YS 8765
Saturday, May 22, 2156
Northern ShiKahr, Vulcan
THE WARM DAWN BREEZE CARRIED with it the faint tang of g’teth blooms and fast-growing gespar seedlings. T’Pol stood in the garden in the ruddy glow of newly-risen Nevasa, watching the approaching hovercar as it completed its slow, almost silent descent. She approached the vehicle after it settled gently onto the stone patio. The driver, a young male Vulcan with a deep olive complexion, wasted no time extricating himself from the idling craft’s cockpit blister; he offered to take the small travel bag that was slung over T’Pol’s left shoulder, but she politely declined.
Like most Vulcans, T’Pol had never been interested in the accumulation of things. In fact, she might have been even less inclined than most, having lived the necessarily itinerant life of a V’Shar field operative for so many years, followed by a stint in the Vulcan Defense Force and, most recently, Starfleet. As a consequence of her nomadic career path, she traveled light, never burdening others with the management of her sparse inventory of personal effects.
“A moment, please,” she said to the driver, who replied with a polite nod before returning to the cockpit to wait on her readiness. Crossing the garden, she approached Trip, who stood in the stone archway that connected the garden courtyard to her mother’s house—her house, she reminded herself yet again.
Something was obviously wrong, a fact she felt without having to see the deep frown that creased Trip’s ordinarily smooth Vulcan brow. He had been using the cover identity of Sodok the trader for some time now, but she didn’t think he made a convincing Vulcan. Once they left Vulcan and returned to Enterprise—they had both made plans to return prior to the starship’s next large, planned military engagement against the Romulans—it would be entirely irrelevant.
Trip had managed to get one aspect of his Vulcan persona exactly right. He, too, was not encumbered excessively by material possessions. In fact, he appeared not to have packed anything.
“I can’t go with you,” he said.
She found her surprise all but impossible to conceal. “I do not understand, Trip. Ever since you came to Vulcan, you have spoken of little other than your desire to return to your... previous life.”
“I know.” His frowned deepened, prompting her to shift her position so that the driver would have difficulty seeing anything untoward if he happened to look in Trip’s direction.
She dropped her bag onto the stone pathway and folded her hands behind her back. “What is wrong, Trip?”
“It’s Terix. Tevik. Whatever the hell I’m supposed to call him.”
“I don’t understand. Tevik has proved himself an invaluable resource to the V’Shar these past several weeks.”
“So Ych’a keeps telling me,” Trip said with a nod. “Denak, too. But I still have my doubts.”
For the past three weeks, T’Pol and Trip had her home to themselves while her investigation into Minister Kuvak’s apparent arms-smuggling conspiracy continued—with assistance from Trip, Denak, Ych’a, and a tightly supervised Tevik. Ych’a had even agreed to keep investigating after T’Pol and Trip departed Vulcan.
“Have you seen any evidence that Tevik may, as you say, ‘Go Romulan on us’?”
He shook his head. “Nothing specific, no. He’s been behaving himself, and Ych’a’s been keeping him on a short leash. But I still don’t feel comfortable leaving a land mine like Terix lying around. Romulans are sneaky sonsabitches.”
T’Pol thought she was beginning to understand. “You feel responsible for him.”
“Shouldn’t I? I’m the reason he’s here.”
“That’s not entirely true, Trip. You told me that you and Ych’a were working together when you found him in one of Sopek’s escape pods.”
Trip’s sloped eyebrows converged over the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Well, we couldn’t very well have left him there to die, could we?”
“No. But you do not bear responsibility for him merely because you rescued him.”
“He followed me home, Mom. I have to keep him.”
“Another obscure Earth idiom?”
Trip sighed. “I stood by and let Ych’a reach into that poor bastard’s brain and rewire it. After that, I didn’t even try to stop her from bringing him here. Now he’s on Vulcan, a Romulan soldier who only thinks he’s one of the good guys, and who might pop his cork at any time once he realizes the truth about his identity and what’s really been done to him. Sure, he’s been a help to the V’Shar. But that fact just gives them a perfectly respectable, logical reason to keep right on mining him for intel.”
She could feel his conflict. “Can you think of a more logical use for him, given the present circumstances?”
“Brainwashing is brainwashing,” he said. “Terix is dangerous, T’Pol. Leaving him behind on Vulcan while I go off to stage a career comeback feels wrong.”
T’Pol could not disagree with his assessment. She could, however, find fault with his priorities. “Trip, we have a much larger scenario to consider. The Romulans are on the move throughout Coalition space.”
“I know.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “They might even be receiving Vulcan weapons, right under Administrator T’Pau’s nose. Your own investigation has already revealed that much.”
“My investigation has yet to rule out that possibility, yes. But our work here is done. We have a larger war to fight, on Enterprise. There is nothing to be gained by remaining here.”
“Do you really think it’s wise to leave Ych’a running your government corruption investigation and watching Terix the time bomb?”
“Ych’a has been indispensable to both endeavors,” T’Pol said. “And she has kept Terix not only contained, but also utterly unaware of his true identity.”
“Except on that first night on Vulcan. I don’t think Ych’a ever came clean to us about how close Terix came to busting out of his cage then.”
Over the weeks that had passed since that fateful evening, T’Pol had come to regret having raised Trip’s suspicions. Because Ych’a had given T’Pol no subsequent reason to suspect her of treachery—Ych’a had, in fact, gone out of her way to assist T’Pol in her investigation of Minister Kuvak’s illicit activities—T’Pol’s own suspicions had faded away. And Ych’a had revealed, via mind-meld, that her own memories of the Achernar mission contained the same gaps as Trip’s and Tevik’s. If there was treachery to be found here, it had been perpetrated not by Ych’a, but upon Ych’a
, Trip, and Tevik together by one Sopek of Vulcan, aka Ch’uivh of the Romulan Star Empire.
“Captain Archer needs us,” she said.
“I know,” he said, looking pained. “But I still can’t go, T’Pol. What he really needs is you—the best XO he’s ever had.”
“Don’t...” T’Pol knew his mind was made up, immovable. “You must take care to maintain your Sodok identity, Trip,” she said, bowing to the inevitable. “You are an alien here. And you must remember to take your sulfatriptan drugs regularly.”
He grinned. “To keep my blood a nice, healthy green. Of course. I’ll even take the added precaution of not letting myself get cut, stabbed, folded, spindled, or mutilated, and I’ll stay out of the rain.”
“ShiKahr experiences little rainfall,” T’Pol said, struggling to maintain her composure. “But it can be a challenging place for an... outworlder.” His meandering and irrelevancy-strewn words both confused and amused her.
“Don’t worry about me, T’Pol. This isn’t permanent. Once I’m satisfied that Terix isn’t going to leave a rooster-tail of destruction behind him, I’ll come back from the dead.”
“To Enterprise?”
“If the captain’ll have me, yes.”
She nodded, satisfied. Her eyes stung. She heard T’Les’s voice echoing in the distance, chiding her for her lack of emotional control. She ignored it.
Trip gestured over his shoulder toward the house. “Mind if I crash on your sofa while I’m in town?”
Once she understood what he was asking, she nodded. “Mi casa es su casa.”
Trip looked surprised. “Wow. I figured you for having taken French, not Spanish.”
Tears threatened to rise, as did laughter. She tamped down hard on both.
He stepped toward her and took both her hands between his. “I’ll even stay on top of the maintenance around here.”
She swallowed, barely trusting herself to speak. “Thank you.”
“Least I can do,” he said. She saw that tears stood in his eyes as well. “I can’t let poor Denak do all the weed-pulling himself, you know. He’s not getting any younger.”
She wanted to embrace him.
Time passed, but T’Pol couldn’t say just how much.
“Your driver’s gonna start honking,” Trip said.
“Vulcan drivers do not ‘honk,’ Trip.”
He shrugged. “I should have figured. Not logical.”
Oh, yes, she thought wryly. You will blend right in on Vulcan, Charles Anthony Tucker III.
“Be careful,” she said.
He smiled gently. “If there’s one thing I learned from living among the Romulans, it’s how to get along while trusting nobody.”
He brought her hands up to his lips and kissed them gently. “Almost nobody,” he amended, and then released her.
Deciding she no longer cared about what the driver might see, T’Pol hooked her hand around the back of Trip’s neck, pulled him to her, and kissed him.
Then she grabbed her travel bag, turned silently on her heel, and walked very quickly back to the waiting hovercar. She could hear the echo of his last thought and knew he could hear hers. They were one and the same: I love you.
SEVENTY-SIX
Sunday, June 20, 2156
Endeavour, Altair VI
THE ADRENALINE RUSH that had sustained Lieutenant Commander Stephen B. Reynard, XO of the Starship Endeavour, throughout the battle suddenly collapsed, dropping him heavily into the big empty chair at the center of a bridge that was now in need of extensive repairs.
According to the chronometer on the arm of the captain’s chair, barely visible in the dim red emergency lighting, the entire gun-to-gun “conversation” with the Romulan invasion fleet—the second such armada that the sneaky bastards had sent to Altair VI—had taken just short of ten minutes to complete.
But those ten minutes had numbered among the longest of Reynard’s young life.
Despite the relative brevity of the engagement—or perhaps because of it—his recollections of the fight were still largely a jumble. In retrospect his own participation now seemed like the narrowest conceivable triumph of training over the good sense that inspired some people to tuck tail and run. But whatever errors he might have made in the heat of battle, he’d at least managed to remain focused on the fight, thanks in large part to Captain Shea’s calmly delivered orders.
The commander felt justifiable pride in that; that feeling gave him something positive to focus his mind on rather than the wholesale death that had been inflicted upon Endeavour and across the rest of the Coalition fleet. There would be plenty of time to deal with that later.
What Reynard recalled about the battle was that he had stayed at his post throughout the merciless exchanges of phase cannon fire and Romulan disruptor bursts. Through the ceaseless hail of torpedo strikes and the less frequent, if more terrifying, eruptions of spherical nuclear fireballs—one of which had detonated close enough to Endeavour to completely melt her portside defensive hull-plating system— Reynard had done his duty. Endeavour was crippled but still there.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the corpses that still littered the deck, and the forest of scorched consoles, dangling conduits, and burned bulkheads that surrounded him. He imagined Endeavour in her pristine state on the day he’d piloted her out of spacedock right after Captain Winchester, Endeavor’s first CO, had given him the traditional “take her out” order.
Your paint was barely dry, he thought, imagining he was communing with Endeavour herself. And look we’ve done to you already: eighteen days of service and you’re already an old lady before your time.
Opening his eyes again, Reynard resumed studying the large forward viewscreen, one of the few bridge components that still functioned, more or less. Some six hundred kilometers above Altair VI’s partially cloud-obscured surface, at least a dozen battle-ravaged ships were visible describing leisurely ellipses about the planet. Some of the vessels were still in one piece, like the Cooper and the Maryland, while others, like the Montgomery and the Tripoli, had been divided into several. Other starships were moving in to render aid to their crippled brethren. That was a real relief to see, since Endeavour herself wasn’t going anywhere for a while, at least not under her own power.
Reynard turned his chair slightly to the right and watched as Lieutenant Esther Stiles, her blue uniform jumpsuit scorched badly, her forehead bruised and bleeding, limped from an emergency stairwell to the bridge’s center. Obviously exhausted, and very likely in shock, the youthful weapons officer came to a stop beside the command chair and steadied herself on a length of twisted railing nearby.
“Looks like we get to chalk another one up for our side,” Stiles said, her eyes huge and haunted. Although Reynard had never gotten the time to get acquainted with her, he did know that this war had already cost Stiles a number of family members.
“I think we won,” she said, and Reynard nodded numbly in response.
Stiles’s remark reminded Reynard of something Captain Shea had said to him shortly after Commander Goldser had died during a Romulan sneak attack—just before Shea had field-promoted Reynard to the XO position he had occupied for the past one hundred or so hours. “Nobody really wins a war,” the captain had said. “You might prevail. Or they might prevail. But nobody really wins.”
His gaze once again riveting itself upon the main viewer, Reynard nodded noncommittally to Stiles, whom he realized with a start was the only person on the bridge, other than himself, who remained alive. “At least it looks like we... prevailed.”
More than half of the wrecked or damaged Coalition ships that now slowly tumbled around Altair VI were of either Andorian or Tellarite configuration. Endeavour had joined the largest nonhuman Coalition force yet assembled in the war.
Each and every vessel in the Romulan flotilla was a total loss. The ships either spent on desperate suicide runs or via deliberate self-destruction—the latter apparently being a last-ditch means of preventing boardi
ng and capture.
“We have to start doing a hell of a lot more than prevailing,” Stiles said, her voice quavering badly. “I think we might finally be turning the corner. Maybe we’ll finally start doing more then just stopping ’em from grabbing more systems. Maybe we’ll start pushing ’em back and rooting ’em out of the places they’ve already taken.” It seemed to Reynard that she was talking entirely too fast, on the ragged edge of hysteria. “Hell, we already pried Berengaria out of their claws. Why stop there? We have a war to win!”
“Stand down, Lieutenant,” Reynard said gently. “We’ve got to tend to the crew. Situation report.” With the comm system down both internally and externally, the bridge had to depend on runners for information on Endeavour’s various departments.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 53
