by Andy Mangels
“We’re being pursued,” Ehrehin said, leaning forward and to his left to observe the readings on Trip’s console.
“I’d be surprised if we weren’t,” Trip said.
“We need to hail them, Cunaehr. Otherwise, Valdore’s forces may kill us inadvertently, as you say.”
Trip shook his head, wondering how long he could continue dissembling, stringing the elderly scientist along—and when Ehrehin would finally figure out that he’d disabled the ship’s receiver to prevent the reception of any hails from their pursuer, which would certainly reveal the identity of the vessel that nipped at their heels.
“We don’t know for certain that the ship on our tail is one of Valdore’s,” Trip said.
Ehrehin fixed him with a hard stare that seemed to Trip to fairly ooze with suspicion. “Who in the name of Erebus could it possibly be if not Valdore?”
“It could be Ch’uihv’s people, Doctor. And hailing them would only confirm our escape for them.”
“If he’s pursuing us,” Ehrehin said, shaking his head. “Ch’uihv already knows we’ve escaped in this ship.”
Trip shrugged, pressing on even though his extemporaneous yarn-spinning was beginning to sound ridiculous even in his own artificially pointed ears. “Maybe, Doctor. Maybe not. If Ch’uihv is the one who’s chasing us, then all we know for sure that he knows is that somebodytook off in this ship without any launch clearance.”
Ehrehin leaned back in his copilot’s chair and sighed. Trip spared a glance at him and saw that he was staring straight ahead at the distant, uncaring stars. The old man was scowling deeply, apparently becoming lost in thought.
He must suspect by now that I don’t have any intention of taking him to Valdore,Trip thought as he leaned forward, entering commands intended to coax still more thrust out of the impulse drive, while simultaneously laying in his desired heading: Coalition space. So I’d better do whatever I can to keep him preoccupied.
He touched a few of the cockpit’s other thankfully simple controls. The deck plates beneath his feet began to rumble with a gratifyingly familiar vibration. That sensation alone told Trip that the warp drive was beginning to warm up to operational temperatures, pressures, and intermix ratios.
The little vessel suddenly shook and rattled intensely, as though it had been punched by the fist of an angry god.
“They’ve opened fire,” Ehrehin said dryly, one eyebrow arched upward as if to announce that he found making declarations of the obvious to be darkly amusing. He calmly studied the readouts on his copilot’s board. “At the rate they’re gaining on us, they’ll be in weapons range in only a few siure.”
Trip considered the grim fact that it could all be over for them both in a matter of only a few short minutes. He felt a knot of fear twisting in his stomach.
Fortunately, Trip often regarded his own fear as a wonderful source of motivation during a crisis.
“Put on your helmet, Doctor,” he said as his hands flew across the console. “We’re going to warp.”
Ehrehin scowled again, then reached under his seat and drew up his helmet with a pained grunt. A moment later, he was fitting it clumsily over his head and trying to mate its collar to his suit’s broad neck ring.
The vessel shook again, though not quite as roughly as on the previous occasion. Trip hoped that meant that their pursuers had scored only a glancing blow this time.
After noting the temperature and power-level readings, displayed graphically as well as in unreadable Romulan text on the warp field gauge, Trip heaved a brief sigh of relief that the weapons fire hadn’t disabled the warp drive.
Yet.
Eager to deny their pursuers another opportunity to strike, Trip wrapped his gloved left hand around a pair of levers. Here goes.He pulled the levers down quickly, then punched a button beside them.
A moment later the starfield that lay before them distorted into streaks around the edges, with the light of the stars near the center shifting toward the blue portion of the visible spectrum.
“We are now at warp,” Trip announced. I’m not the only one who gets to state the obvious around here.
“And I’m sure Valdore’s ship is still pursuing us, only much faster than before. Do you think it was really wise to go to warp so close to the planet?”
Trip knew very well that certain types of warp fields could unleash catastrophic gravimetric and subspatial effects if activated too deep inside the gravity well either of a star or a planet. Once again, he had no choice other than to defend his decision to gamble for the sake of his mission.
“Seemed like the best option at the time, Doctor,” Trip said as he unstrapped himself from his seat restraints.
He rose to help Ehrehin hook up the hoses that led from the back of his helmet to the environmental pack mounted on the back of his suit.
“Indeed,” the scientist said, obviously unconvinced.
Once he was satisfied that Ehrehin’s suit was completely sealed and functioning properly, Trip reached behind his own helmet, attaching his own air hoses and checking his suit’s seals in a series of swift, practiced movements.
Then he noticed that Ehrehin, who had already strapped himself back into his seat, was staring daggers at him through their helmet faceplates.
“These particularpressure suits were an interesting choice on your part, Cunaehr,” the old man said, his voice distorted slightly by its passage through two hel-mets before reaching Trip’s ears; Trip had taken the precaution of disabling the com systems in both suits, so that Ehrehin wouldn’t be tempted to find a way to use them to communicate with their pursuer.
Trip shrugged as he strapped himself into the pilot’s seat once again. “You have to use what you have on hand.”
“Indeed you do.”
Trip looked across his console’s orderly bank of gauges and monitors, noting with some apprehension that the pursuing vessel was steadily gaining on them. Although the scout ship’s sensors lacked the resolution to settle the matter definitively, Trip had no doubt that Ehrehin was right about their pursuer being one of Valdore’s military ships. Therefore the other vessel had to be more than capable of catching up with them at their present speed, which both the console gauges and the vibrations of the deckplates told Trip he had already pushed to within a millicochrane or two of maximum.
It’s time to push this baby a little bit past spec,Trip thought as he carefully began entering a new command string into his console.
“Tell me, Cunaehr: Are there no other suits aboard this ship?” Ehrehin asked.
He knows,Trip thought. Heis a genius, after all.
Aloud, he said. “There are, Doctor.”
“Suits of Romulan manufacture, rather than these… aliengarments?”
Trip was becoming increasingly certain that it wasn’t going to matter much longer how he answered the old man’s questions. “I think so.”
“Yet you chose thesesuits instead. And you seem quite expert in their operation, I might add.”
“The environmental packs on these suits were more fully charged than any of the others were,” Trip said. Whether his answers continued to matter or not, he found he couldn’t resist offering plausible-sounding explanations whenever possible. “And you know what a quick study I am.” He punctuated his words with what he hoped was a disarming smile.
The scientist did not return it, however, either because he couldn’t see it through both of their faceplates, or because he simply was no longer quite so easy to amuse.
“I had no idea you were so fluent in reading the gauges and instrumentation on non-Romulan pressure suits.”
You have no idea,Trip thought as he examined his pilot’s console, confirming that the other ship was still inexorably creeping up on them. Would it be able to open fire on them in two minutes? Three?
“I’m going to have to coax a bit more power out of her,” Trip said just before entering yet another command into his board.
The cabin lights instantly shut off, and the resu
lting total darkness was replaced a beat later by dim, green emergency lighting. Trip could hear the sudden, conspicuous absence of activity in the air-circulating system as the ventilator fans abruptly died. He imagined he could feel the icy vacuum beyond the hull caressing his spine with delicate, chill fingers, although he knew it was far too soon for either of them to start feeling the cold of space through their heavily insulated suits.
Even as the life-support system gasped and died, Trip could feel a qualitative change in the vibration rising from the deck plating beneath him into his thick-soled boots.
The scout ship’s warp drive was now receiving considerably more power, and the weakly glowing console display confirmed it. Warp five point three, and still not quite redlining,Trip thought, barely succeeding in restraining himself from letting out a jubilant warwhoop—at least until afterhe learned a little bit more about their pursuer’s maximum speed.
To his pleasant surprise, Valdore’s ship was no longer gaining on them. It wasn’t falling behind either, but the purloined scout ship didn’t appear to be in any danger of being overtaken now, at least not during the next few minutes.
We’re still well out of weapons range. And we’ll stay that way as long as the ship tailing us doesn’t suddenly sprout an extra nacelle.
Of course, Trip knew that there was no way he could be certain that their pursuer wouldn’t find some method of sharply increasing its ownpower output, and thus its speed. But he was reasonably sure that her commander wouldn’t shut down her life-support system to accomplish it.
Just as he was absolutely certain that Valdore wouldn’t give up the chase while any breath remained in his body, or ships in his command.
But a respite was a respite. Trip knew he now had the luxury of thinking about the future, such as it was, at least for a brief while. In addition to having Doctor Ehrehin in his custody, he also possessed information that was absolutely crucial to the defense of the Coalition of Planets in general, and to the welfare of Coridan Prime in particular. He had to get it to Starfleet as quickly as humanly possible. With a few deft movements of his gloved hands, he restored the components he had removed from the com system a little earlier.
Now which one of these babies fires up the transmitter?Trip thought as he studied his console, as well as all the smaller panels adjacent to it. Fortunately, within a few moments he was pretty sure he’d identified the appropriate controls.
He entered a command intended to open a Starfleet channel on the subspace bands. He waited for at least a minute.
Nothing.
The faintly glowing blue pictogram that had appeared in response to his commands told him either that he hadn’t, in fact, accessed the com system, or that the com system had sustained just enough damage during their escape under fire from Rator II as to be completely inoperable.
He had a slow, sinking feeling that the latter scenario was the correct one.
“Why are you running away from Admiral Valdore, instead of toward him?” Ehrehin asked in an accusatory tone. “And why were you tampering with the communications components just now? Who are you, really?”
Though he realized now that his imposture had finally fallen apart completely, at least in Ehrehin’s eyes, he nevertheless clung to it, unable to shake his initial impression of the old man as fragile and vulnerable—and therefore unable to handle the brutal truth that his beloved Cunaehr was, in fact, dead.
He turned from his console to face the scientist, doing his best to make direct eye contact through the slight distortion created by two helmet faceplates. “What are you talking about, Doctor Ehrehin? It’s me: Cunaehr.”
“But you can’treally be Cunaehr. I can distinctly recall having seen Cunaehr die during the mishap on Unroth III. That is, I can do so on those rare occasions when I canrecall things distinctly.”
Trip sighed, then regarded the old man in thoughtful silence. While Ehrehin still seemed terribly frail to him, the old man also exuded a dignified, determined resolve that commanded respect. It occurred to him that the real Cunaehr had been fortunate indeed to have had such a man as his mentor.
“How can you be so sure I’m not Cunaehr?” Trip said at length.
Ehrehin smiled. “I ran an analysis of some tissue traces that either you or your late associate Terha inadvertently left behind in my quarters. At first, I attributed the strange results I obtained to the rather unreliable state of mind in which the Ejhoi Ormiininterrogators had left me. But your actions since then have not only confirmed that you are not, in fact, Cunaehr, but also that you aren’t even a Romulan.
“What I’d like to know, my kaehhak-Cunaehr,” Ehrehin continued, “is how an alien like yourself could ever have expected to pass himself off for very long as a genuine Romulan, especially so deep inside Romulan territory.”
Unless things go really south on me again,Trip thought, we won’t be anywhere near Romulan territory by this time tomorrow.
Trip decided then to answer the old man’s accusations and questions as honestly as he could, figuring that admitting the truth now could harm him very little at this point. After all, either he would make it back to Coalition space with Ehrehin, and they would both live to tell the tale, or else he’d end up dead—and then the Romulans would move decisively against an utterly unprepared Coridan Prime.
Nevertheless, he instinctively glanced down at the side of his suit to make certain his weapon was still there, even though the scientist posed no physical threat to him.
“All right, Doctor. My real name is…” Trip paused, distracted. Besides the obvious lack of a functioning life-support system, something else aboard the ship no longer felt quite right.
The deck plates. The vibration from the warp core had changed, and was continuing to change.
To his horror, Trip realized that it was fading steadily away.
He faced front, abruptly turning back toward the pilot’s console. It took only a fraction of a second for the status displays to confirm his worst fears.
Something had gone badly amiss with the little scout ship’s overtaxed engines, and she had consequently dropped out of warp.
And the vessel that pursued them was closing very rapidly.
Trip knew with the certainty of gravity that he had a scant handful of minutes to fix the problem, if he was to have a prayer of getting the old man out of Romulan space. After that, Ehrehin and his vast store of knowledge and expertise would fall back into Valdore’s hands. Trip knew that his own death would become reality rather than ruse very shortly thereafter.
And no one would remain alive to warn the Coridanites that the gates of whatever hell they might believe in were about to swing wide open.
Thirty-Nine
Friday, February 21, 2155
Romulan Transport Vessel T’Lluadh
DECURION TAITH SAW A DIM but definite shape moving furtively toward him through the darkened passageway. With but a moment’s hesitation, he raised his disruptor and fired directly toward what was now clearly discernible as an armed, uniformed alien. He felt certain that he had never seen this species before, despite the creature’s superficial resemblance—it possessed a head, a torso, and one pair each of both arms and legs—to the overall shape of a male Romulan.
The initial shot apparently missed. Holding his weapon before him with both hands, Taith fired a second time, and the bright, sizzling beam struck the creature almost directly in its center of mass, forcing it backward as though it had been kicked by a wild hlaifrom the Chula wilderness. Wreathed in flames, the figure crumpled heavily onto the deck in a lumpen heap. Moving cautiously, Taith approached the fallen creature, hoping to examine it a bit more closely and make certain that he really had neutralized the threat it posed.
He cried out in anguish when he suddenly realized that the dead form that lay before him was not, in fact, the corpse of an alien interloper.
It was Centurion Rhai, whose still and lifeless chest was now a charred, bloody ruin.
He heard several other v
olleys of disruptor fire originating from different areas of the ship, each of them ending abruptly, and each punctuated by the all-too-brief silences that preceded the next salvo. Then the barrages ceased, and the entire ship was suddenly wreathed in a tomb-like silence.
Taith couldn’t look away from his commanding officer’s vacant, staring eyes. A feeling of despair more profound than any he had ever experienced before engulfed his every sense, swamping his soul as though it were the flood plain of the Great River Apnex.
Weeping, he raised his disruptor, placed its muzzle firmly against the base of his chin, and squeezed the trigger.
Theras wept like a disconsolate child after the echoes of the final blasts died away.
Shran could see the Aenar’s tears glistening even in the near darkness of the Romulan vessel’s narrow passageway. The sound of the other man’s sobs was sorely trying what little remained of his patience.
“Well, did it work?” Shran asked, addressing the entire team through his suit’s com system. The psionic bond he shared with Jhamel suddenly stretched taut, then sounded such a deep note of grief within his mind as to inform Shran that his question had been unnecessary.
I need to know for sure,Shran thought. We can’t risk exposing ourselves to their weapons again until I do.
“Give him a moment, Shran,”said Reed, who was standing at Theras’s other side. “Can’t you see he’s been traumatized by what you’ve asked him to do? He’s apacifist, for pity’s sake.”
Shran took a step toward Reed, his fists clenched and his antennae thrusting aggressively toward his faceplate like enraged eels from one of the Zhevra continent’s cold and brackish lakes. “Don’t remind me, Lieutenant.”
“Gentlemen, I suggest you both give Theras a moment of quiet to enable him to collect his thoughts,”T’Pol said in an infuriatingly calm, reasonable tone, a mannerism that vividly reminded Shran why his people distrusted hers so viscerally.
Just before Shran succumbed to a nearly irresistible impulse to grab Theras by the shoulders and shake him, the Aenar spoke, “The Romulan soldiers…will not trouble us further.”
