by Andy Mangels
“Thank Uzaveh you’re finally good forsomething,” Shran said acidly.
Instinctively, Reed looked over at the Andorian, then realized that even if Shran could see his glare of disapproval, he wouldn’t have cared anyway. Still, Shran’s unfairness rankled him. After all, Theras had askedto come along on this mission, insisting—perhaps because he had something to prove to Shran—that his telepathy could prove indispensable to the rescue effort. Although Reed himself had wanted to leave Theras behind, he now felt that Captain Archer had been correct in deciding to include him on the boarding team.
Ahead of them, two large, round-helmeted humanoids stood in front of the doorway, brandishing weapons.
As the quintet approached close enough for their booted footfalls to be clearly heard, one of the men said “Vah-udt,”his rising inflection on the final syllable suggesting that he was asking a question. “Dhaile hwai rhadam!”he added, raising his weapon without aiming it directly at anyone in particular.
“He can only hear us,”T’Pol said quietly over her suit’s com system.
Reed wished they’d had time to install Hoshi’s Romulan translation program into their environmental suits, but it simply hadn’t been possible under the circumstances. He hoped the men weren’t surrendering, but given their aggressive postures and their weapons, he sincerely doubted it.
“Take them out,” he said. “Quietly and nonlethally.” Reed saw T’Pol put a hand on Shran’s shoulder, holding him back, and then turned to look to the group’s rear. So far, it appeared that they’d yet to be discovered, or surrounded.
He heard a pair of sharp energy-weapon reports, and turned back around to watch the shadow-cloaked men slump limply to the deck beside the sealed doorway, the silhouettes of Chang and Peruzzi standing above them, their phase rifles still held at the ready, parallel to the deck.
T’Pol moved to the door’s control panel. “The controls are nonfunctional. The power source is down.”
“Help me pry it open,” Reed said. Everyone except Theras moved to help. After several seconds, the doors cracked open slightly, then widened to a gap that was just barely wide enough to squeeze through with a bulky environmental suit.
Inside the chamber, an eerie sight awaited. The Aenar were all standing, or supporting those who could not stand, and staring toward the boarding party with their sightless eyes. Their whitish skin gave off a strange phosphorescence in the glow of the night-vision gear, making them appear almost to be apparitions of some kind. The fact that their clothes were uniformly torn and ragged only enhanced the creepy image, sending a chill down the length of Reed’s spine.
“I see you got them all calmed down,”Shran said to Theras, his tone still edged with condescension. The Andorian scanned the crowd, and Reed assumed he was most likely searching for Jhamel.
“Theras, please tell them that we are going to distribute the transponders now,” Reed said over his suit’s com. “Each of them should have two, just in case one of them fails.” He thought it more likely that some of the drugged, frightened, and trembling Aenar would drop their transponders before any of the devices failed, but he wasn’t about to say that aloud.
“Tell them they don’t need to fear the transport process,”T’Pol added. “And that they’ll be safe again once they’re aboardEnterprise.”
“Understood,”Theras said. Reed could see from Theras’s profile that his antennae were pressed forward, touching his helmet’s faceplate as though trying to escape.
After the first several drug-numbed Aenar had received their transponders, Reed sent a burst transmission from his com unit to Enterprise,hoping the signal would penetrate the shroud. Long seconds elapsed, and suddenly, a shimmering light enfolded one of the Aenar.
As she sparkled into nothingness, the beam cast a glow that made the holding cell clearly visible for a moment. Reed was disgusted by the filth he saw around him, and felt relieved that the abductees were about to leave it behind.
Time seemed to stretch to an eternity, and he tried not to consider what would happen if their plan were to fail. Had the transporter just sent another Aenar’s atoms into oblivion? If so, the Enterprisewas not likely to beam anyone else out, the boarding party included, at least not before weighing the risks further. And there was precious little time for that.
Before gloom could descend over him completely, another Aenar disappeared in a glimmer of light. Twenty seconds later, another, then two, then another pair, vanished.
“Yes!”Corporal Peruzzi exclaimed over her suit’s com system. “It’s working.”He rarely heard the attractive young woman say anything; Reed noticed much earlier that whenever she didspeak, she tended to communicate about half of her thoughts via her restlessly gesturing hands.
“Where is Jhamel?” Reed asked, not specifying whether he was asking Shran or Theras. He didn’t want to seem to have taken sides in that particular affair of the heart.
“She’s still here,”Shran said.
“As are my other bondmates,”Theras added.
Reed turned his back on the door and tried to count the number of remaining Aenar. Three seemed to be the limit for simultaneous beam-outs so far. Moulton is smart not to overtax the system,he thought. But as he watched, the next beam-out only took two, then after long seconds, one other was transported away. He counted about nine remaining Aenar, in addition to the six-person rescue team. Jhamel was standing with Shran and Theras, but Reed thought their other two bondmates might have been among those last few who had just transported. He wasn’t sure.
“What’s happened to the transporter?”Shran asked as the seconds stretched out in silence.
Chang broke in before Reed could respond. “Lieutenant, I’m hearing some—”
A small but bright flash came from the doorway as Reed turned, and he heard a cry of pain. Even as he raised his own weapon, he saw that Chang was down, and Peruzzi was diving for cover.
“Everyone down!” Reed shouted into his com as a brace of muzzle flashes lit the room. The sudden brilliance played havoc with his night-vision sensors, but he couldn’t shut them off for fear of becoming blinded completely once the detention area plunged back into darkness.
He aimed his phase pistol in the direction from which the flashes had come and squeezed off multiple bursts, and was gratified to note that T’Pol, Peruzzi, and, behind him, Shran were doing the same.
More muzzle flashes from the doorway had Reed belly-crawling to the side of the room, where Chang lay. He heard a shriek behind him from an Aenar, and wondered who it was, and whether he or she was merely injured, or worse.
“Why aren’t they…beaming us out?”Chang asked, his voice suffused with pain.
“I don’t know, Chang,” Reed said, breathing a silent prayer of thanks that the MACO was still alive. “Maybe the Romulans found a way to jam our transponder signals as well as our communicators.” That seemed to be the most likely explanation.
A hot disruptor blast from the doorway nicked the heel of the boot on Reed’s environmental suit, and he shuddered at the closeness of the blast.
Another explanation for the sudden failure of the transporter was one he really didn’t want to consider, but it crept into his mind unbidden regardless. Enterprisemight have been captured…or worse.
Gritting his teeth in grim resolve, he took aim at the doorway. And, he hoped, at their shadowy, faceless attackers.
Thirty-Six
Friday, February 21, 2155
Rator II
TRIP ALMOST HADN’T BELIEVED that they would actually make it to the hangar before Valdore’s forces descended upon it, killing everyone in sight.
I guess it reallyis better to be lucky than good,Trip told himself as he helped a winded Ehrehin through the passage from the corridor into the large hangar that housed the Ejhoi Ormiin’s vehicle pool. Although the doors whisked shut behind him, they only muted slightly the noise and tumult of the running firefight that was swiftly engulfing the entire facility.
In the dim ligh
t, Trip saw the pair of guards stationed just inside the hangar at the same instant that they appeared to notice him.
He fired twice, sending both of the black-clad men—who had either been ordered to avoid the fight in order to defend the Ejhoi Ormiin’s small complement of space vessels, or else were about to make their own unauthorized escape from the bedlam outside—flaming to the deck, their weapons clattering impotently beside them.
In the light cast by their sickeningly burning bodies, Trip saw the corpse of Phuong, which still lay where it had fallen after Ch’uihv had so brutally cut him down. Evidently, between the distraction Ehrehin had created when he had conducted his long-winded warp-drive clinic—and the confusion that had engulfed the entire Ejhoi Ormiinfacility ever since—no one had yet been detailed to dispose of Phuong’s body.
Trip regarded the weapon in his hand with disgust. Haven’t these bastards ever thought about carrying guns that come with a stun setting?
“Just a minute, Doctor,” Trip said, and walked quickly toward his late associate’s still, charred form. Carefully, and with no small amount of revulsion, he reached inside the dead man’s ruined jacket and felt around for the inner pocket.
“What are you trying to find?” said Ehrehin, who had come up quietly behind Trip, his question tinged with as much revulsion as curiosity.
Using two slightly shaking fingers, Trip extracted a black, oblong-shaped object about the size of the palm of his hand. “This. There’s a data chip inside.”
“Hmmm. A data chip doesn’t seem likely to have survived such an intense disruptor blast.”
“Ordinarily, it probably wouldn’t have,” Trip said as he opened the small black box along its hidden hinge. The gleaming amber rod inside appeared to be intact. “But this container is made of pretty tough stuff.”
While recovering the chip, Trip had studiously avoided looking closely at the ruined corpse that he’d been forced to search, and he continued breathing carefully through his mouth so as to avoid the sickening, acrid-yet-cloying smell of burned flesh that suffused the hangar. Now, he forced the focus of his attention back onto the problems of the living, and onto their solutions.
One such solution now loomed directly ahead of him, in the form of the micrometeoroid-pitted hull of a cylindrical, twenty-meter-long spaceship whose design Trip didn’t immediately recognize—the very same vessel onto which Phuong had been about to lead him and Ehrehin before Ch’uihv had interrupted their escape and ended Phuong’s life.
Trip walked to the starboard hatch located approximately amidships, and quickly found the exterior control pad that would extend the gangway that someone had closed after Ch’uihv had made his appearance. A moment later, the open hatchway beckoned, and Trip helped the old man begin ascending the entry ramp, which was slanted at an almost forty-five-degree angle.
Trip cast a mournful backward glance at Phuong’s still form, which thankfully was visible only in silhouette thanks to the interior lighting now streaming from the ship’s hatchway. I can’t just leave him here,Trip thought. He knew that far more than simple human decency was at play here; if the Romulans were to autopsy Phuong, they might determine that he was in fact a human infiltrator, and the consequences for Earth could be dire. He also understood that while there was no stopping an acquisitive Empire from going to war as it pleased, there was also no good reason to provide it with any after-the-fact justifications for its actions.
The ground vibrated in response to a particularly loud exchange of disruptor fire elsewhere in the complex. The jarring sound ascended above the general background wash of combat noise that suffused the place, reminding Trip that time was growing short. At any moment, Ch’uihv and his people could come streaming in, expecting to use the various small vessels housed here to make a hasty escape.
Trip also surmised that Admiral Valdore’s patience wouldn’t be infinite either. Sooner or later, once Valdore finally realized that he wasn’t going to recover Ehrehin, he’d simply order his ships to obliterate the Ejhoi Ormiincompound from orbit. So we’ve got not one buttwo ticking time bombs to race against,Trip thought, desperately wishing to be anywhere but here.
Once he was certain that Ehrehin wasn’t going to take a bad fall and tumble down the gangway, Trip ran back to Phuong and dragged the dead man’s surprisingly light body up the ramp and into the vessel. He left it lying in a narrow passageway just aft of the entryway, then sealed the hatch before making his way forward to the cockpit.
He was more than a little surprised to see that Ehrehin had already begun running the pilot’s and copilot’s consoles through what could only be a standard pre-flight checklist.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Trip said, taking the pilot’s seat after the old man relinquished it to him and took the copilot’s station on the cockpit’s port side.
The elderly scientist smiled beneficently. “Seeing all the trouble you’ve gone through to keep me safe, Cunaehr, warming up the helm for you seemed like the very least I could do. I flew one of these old scout ships during my military days. I was once a pretty fair pilot myself, you may recall.”
In fact, Trip didn’trecall, but he made no response, busying himself instead with the various controls that were arrayed before him. As the vessel’s numerous interlocking systems continued powering up, Trip continued to study the consoles, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t reveal his imposture to Ehrehin by appearing hesitant or bewildered by the flight instruments and indicators. Fortunately, Romulan instrumentation was fairly streamlined and straightforward, lacking an excess of confusing redundancy. While he knew all too well that this deficiency might pose other potentially fatal problems after they got under way, Trip was grateful at the moment for anything that might enable him to get away quickly, and without unduly raising Ehrehin’s suspicions.
But could this battered little ship produce enough speed to evade Valdore successfully? Trip knew that he needed to do everything possible to make certain that she could— beforehe got her off the ground, and onto any of Admiral Valdore’s sensors.
Or weapons locks.With that alarming thought, Trip rose from the pilot’s seat, his hope and fear confronting each other like opposing armies. The vessel shuddered and rocked slightly, as though something had just exploded violently elsewhere inside the Ejhoi Ormiincomplex, perhaps not far from the hangar. If I’m going to get Ehrehin out of here and keep him away from Valdore, I’ll have to be ready to divert every last millicochrane of power this tub can produce.
And some of that just might have to come from life support,Trip thought, experiencing a chill at that moment that reminded him uncomfortably of the icy cold of space.
“Where are you going?” Ehrehin called to Cunaehr’s retreating back. He hadn’t expected his assistant to leap up at the precise moment the ship needed to get under way. They hadn’t even opened the main hangar bay yet in preparation for launch.
“I thought I passed some equipment lockers on the way to the cockpit,” Cunaehr said over his shoulder just before disappearing into an accessway located near the middle of the vessel. The ship rocked yet again, and an ominous rumble was faintly audible through the hull plates. Ehrehin wondered if Cunaehr hadn’t been far too correct earlier in voicing his worries that Valdore’s forces might kill them both entirely by accident.
How very strange,Ehrehin thought, feeling his apprehension slowly increase the longer Cunaehr was out of his sight.
After a seeming eternity passed, Cunaehr returned, awkwardly carrying a helmet and chestplate in each hand. What appeared to be a pair of heavy, rust-and-silver-colored garments, each of which had clumsylooking boots and gloves attached, were draped over each of his broad shoulders.
“Pressure suits?” Ehrehin said, frowning. “Cunaehr, why are you wasting our time with those?”
Cunaehr appeared more uncomfortable than he had since he’d been one of Ehrehin’s callow young graduate students taking his final exams back at the Bardat Academy on Romulus. “I didn’t like the look of the life-
support system readings, Doctor. We need to suit up as a precaution before we launch.”
Ehrehin felt his frown deepening involuntarily. “I didn’t notice anything wrong with the environmental systems.” On the other hand, the old man knew that his vision was no longer what it used to be….
“Please trust me, Doctor. This is for yoursafety more than mine. I’ll help you get suited up quickly.” Cunaehr had begun donning his own suit, getting into it with surprising ease and grace, as though he’d had a good deal of practice. That, too, struck Ehrehin as very strange.
“We’ll check each other’s seals and connections to make sure everything is working properly,” said Cunaehr. “Then we’ll strap in and take off.”
Ehrehin reluctantly accepted the main tunic piece of one of the two suits. He reflected that Cunaehr had never given him any cause to seriously doubt his judgment before—not even when the younger man actually hadbeen a callow young graduate student nervously taking his exams at Bardat. Besides, hadn’t he always taught the lad that a good, cautious engineer alwayswore both a good, stout daefvsash and heavy fvalo-straps if he wanted to make certain that his trousers stayed up?
“Very well, Cunaehr,” the old man said at length, then began slowly donning the oddly alien-looking pressure suit the younger man had handed him. As he worked his way into the suit with Cunaehr’s gentle assistance, Ehrehin noticed that a gauge on the copilot’s console was announcing with a cool, blinking orange light that the ship was now ready to fly.
Ehrehin only hoped the entire hangar wouldn’t come down around their ears before they finally got themselves strapped in and headed for orbit—and for the safety of Valdore’s fleet.
Thirty-Seven
Friday, February 21, 2155
Romulan Transport Vessel T’Lluadh
THERAS COWERED ON THE DECK as blast after blast slammed into the metal surfaces all around him. He imagined he could feel the fierce heat of the disruptor beams singeing his back through his heavy environmental suit. He hadn’t felt such terror since the day the raiders had invaded the Aenar enclave nestled beneath Andoria’s northern wastes.
