“I really can’t see what Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Trip have to do with this,” Owen said. “And I don’t need Grandma and Grandpa Tucker’s permission any more than I need yours. But I was hoping for your blessing.”
“Owen, you’re only sixteen!” said Dad, his tone and manner almost begging. Owen was finally beginning to understand why most adults found the whining and wheedling of children so irritating.
The shuttlepod struck the upper troposphere with the force of an asteroid collision, interrupting Private Salazar-Tucker’s retrospective musings.
He prayed silently that everything that was inside his body would remain there, at least until after he and his fellow MACOs had debarked on the bright blue world that now completely filled the port.
The ground rushed swiftly upward to greet the shuttlepod, which completed its descent moments before Owen’s breakfast could begin the ascent it was threatening to make. He unharnessed in tandem with the rest of the assault team and rose unsteadily to his feet. His stomach slowly backed away from the slippery edge of reverse peristalsis. Like everyone else, he gathered his pack and phase rifle, letting his training put his body on autopilot.
“I’m only seventeen,” he said before he even realized his mouth was moving.
“If you want to get any older, stay alert and stay frosty,” said a gear-encumbered Sergeant Guitierrez as she led the way out of the shuttlepod and into the field of lush greenery beyond.
“The MACO is no place for a kid your age,” Miguel said, backing up Dad completely. “Sixteen is nowhere near old enough to make this kind of life-or-death decision.”
“Sixteen is as old as I have to be,” Owen said. “Go look it up.”
Owen suddenly became aware of the tree-lined canopy outside the shuttlepod. Standing beneath that dazzling backdrop, Sergeant Guitierrez was shouting—and shouting at him specifically. “Let’s see a little more of that laser focus, Private,” Guitierrez yelled, her irritation plain. Owen heard more scattered laughter from the ranks, which the sergeant dispatched instantly by flashing a withering look across the rest of the assault team.
Maybe the folks back home were right, he thought as the team fell in and began crossing the indeterminately wide grassy span that separated the landing site from the endangered science lab. Maybe I wasn’t really ready to join the MACO after all.
Realizing he could not afford the luxury of misgivings, Owen Salazar-Tucker clutched his weapon and marched forward, matching the pace of the rest of the team.
Romulan Imperial Warbird Raon
Silence reigned on the soot-streaked command deck, though the eyes of the junior officers displayed fear and accusation. Commander Chulak studiously avoided looking at them. The viewscreen images of the hevam starship and the world it appeared to have stolen from the Romulan Star Empire quickly shrank until the blackness of the infinite swallowed them both. No one dared to speak.
No one save Subcommander Taith, Chulak’s second in command. “We cannot just…retreat from the hevam,” Taith said in icy tones that reverberated starkly throughout the otherwise silent command deck. “No matter how badly outgunned we may be.”
Chulak smiled at his exec. “Do not worry, Subcommander.”
“But, Commander, we still have personnel on the planet’s surface. We cannot recover them by running.”
Chulak’s tone grew stern. “I have no intention of running. It will be enough to misdirect the hevam into believing that we have done so.”
“Commander?” Taith said, looking surprised. Had she expected to have cause to draw her Honor Blade and slay him? If she had, Chulak realized, he had just disappointed her.
Leaning forward in his chair, Chulak said, “Helm, take us to the comet field at the system’s periphery. Maximum warp.”
“Yes, Commander,” said Yienek, immediately busying himself at the helm.
Turning back toward Taith, Chulak said, “Fortunately, the hevam vessel did not do significant damage to our stardrive.”
Taith frowned. “Commander, we would be fortunate to attain warp factor four in our current condition. I believe that qualifies as ‘significant.’”
“Warp four will more than suffice for our purposes, Subcommander,” Chulak said.
“What are you planning, Commander?” Taith said, her eyes narrowing with evident suspicion.
Chulak said nothing until Yienek reported the Raon’s arrival in the system’s cometary zone.
“Full stop,” Chulak said. “Helm, set a course for Galorn’don Cor. Warp four.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Chulak felt the slight shuddering of the deck plates, confirming that the Raon had gone back to warp avaihn mne, four times light speed, cubed.
“Commander?” Taith said in undisguised perplexity. Or perhaps disbelief.
Chulak faced Taith squarely. “Subcommander, are you familiar with a world known as Cor’i’dan?”
Enterprise NX-01
“Sensors are picking up a subspace wake,” Malcolm shouted from the tactical console. “An incoming vessel.”
“It’s the Warbird Raon,” confirmed T’Pol, who was hunched over the hooded viewer that was built into the science station. “Approaching the inner system at approximately warp four point one six.”
This was the other shoe Archer had been waiting for; he had never believed that the Raon’s commander had run away. Not when Enterprise and that warbird are so evenly matched, the captain thought as he rose from his command chair in a single fluid motion.
“Pinpoint her angle of approach, Malcolm,” Archer said. “Ensign Leydon, prepare to execute an intercept course from Commander Reed’s scans. T’Pol, keep an eye out for reinforcements. The Raon might have brought along a few friends this time.”
“I’m reading only one ship’s warp signature,” said Malcolm, shaking his head in frustration as he scowled into his readouts. “But the Raon’s still approaching at high warp, even though she’s already come pretty far in-system.”
Archer considered his opponent’s tactics. “Commander Chulak will do whatever he can to keep us from aiming our first salvo accurately. So he’ll come out of warp right on top of us, just to keep us off balance.”
“I’ll be ready for him, Captain,” Malcolm said.
“Captain,” said T’Pol. Archer turned in time to see an un-characteristic flicker of apprehension disrupt her Vulcan impassivity. “If Chulak is returning to Galorndon Core without the benefit of reinforcements, then it is entirely possible that he has no intention of coming out of warp at all.”
An all-too-familiar queasiness seized Archer’s guts.
“T’Pol, get me a fix on Shuttlepod One,” he said. “Hoshi, recall the rescue team. We have to get them back to Enterprise—immediately.”
Galorndon Core
The rescue was at first uneventful, so much so that Owen doubted he’d remember very much about it other than the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the stolid weight of his pack and phase rifle, and the stark bone white of the science station’s handful of small, modular structures. His intense apprehension seemed to etch these aspects of his first real MACO operation indelibly into his memory.
But it was the men in the black body armor, their featureless silver helmets gleaming enigmatically in the afternoon sun, that Owen thought he’d remember for the rest of his life.
“Who the hell are these guys?” Owen shouted over the weapons fire. He had dived behind the scant cover of a small berm and noticed that Corporal Costa was there as well.
“Who the hell do you think?” Ogilvy shouted back as she returned the enemy’s fire, which flashed uncomfortably close just overhead.
Romulans, Owen thought as his MACO training grappled with millions of years of endocrine-ruled fight-or-flight reactions.
Owen couldn’t say how long the back-and-forth salvos went on. Then the word had gone out that Enterprise had recalled them. He remembered seeing a pair of gray-haired humans, terrified though otherwise none the worse for we
ar, being escorted aboard the shuttlepod.
He remembered staring at the outside of the shuttlepod for an eternity, apparently long after most everyone else, MACO or civilian, had already gone aboard. He recalled the sound of the thrusters firing, though the craft remained on the ground despite somebody’s continued urgent demand that she take off without delay. He remembered looking down and seeing silver-helmeted bodies on the ground and wanting to remove one of those helmets to see what a Romulan actually looked like. But there was no time for that: The greenery beckoned, and Owen ran headlong into it.
Then someone was shouting at him, and the shouts seemed to come from somewhere very close, as though they were being delivered directly into his ear. His arms ached, and his back felt strained; his movements were sluggish, his body meeting resistance, as though pushing through water, or gelatin.
Then the shuttlepod reappeared. It was now a couple of meters off the ground, hovering.
More shouting. “I told you to leave me, Private!”
Confusion. He realized only then that Sergeant Guitierrez was in his arms, bloodied and grimy. But alive.
“We don’t have time for heroics!” Guitierrez yelled. “Enterprise has given us an emergency recall order! The Romulans—”
Her voice broke up, disintegrated by a fit of coughing that brought a bloody foam to her lips. Owen thought he might have told her something about MACOs never leaving anybody behind. But he wasn’t sure.
From somewhere far behind the tree line, a brilliant light flashed, forcing him to close his eyes momentarily.
He focused on the shuttlepod as it settled back to the ground. The starboard hatch opened, and strong arms relieved him of his burden. When Guitierrez was safely aboard, some of those same arms seized him with surprising gentleness.
The next thing he remembered was staring out the shuttlepod window at the spreading, all-consuming fire that was rolling in from the eastern horizon. In the distance, thunder rumbled, sounding like the combined rage of all the gods of every civilization in the galaxy.
Enterprise NX-01
“Galorndon Core is already no longer a Minshara-class world, Captain,” T’Pol said.
Archer stood before the main viewer, arms at his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists. On the screen, an entire world was aflame. What had once been a cradle of life was rapidly becoming a planet-sized crematorium. A volcanic fissure was opening right before Archer’s eyes, spewing magma skyward for tens of kilometers. According to T’Pol’s initial report, the multiwarp impact that Galorndon Core had just endured was even creating havoc with the planet’s magnetic field, unleashing all manner of unpredictable and potentially lethal atmospheric effects. Even the oceans appeared to be igniting.
And there’s nothing I can do to stop any of it, he thought. Recalling T’Pol’s earlier report about magnetic-field anomalies, he said, “What’s the status of Shuttlepod One?”
Pressing a small white receiver to her ear, Hoshi turned her seat toward him. “She’s just cleared the planet’s atmosphere and is preparing to make her approach. The MACOs accomplished their mission.”
In the proverbial nick, Archer thought. “Thanks, Hoshi. Ensign Leydon, take us back to our regular patrol route once the shuttlepod’s secure in the launch bay.”
“Aye, Captain.” The helmswoman began adjusting the settings on her board.
“I can’t believe that the Raon just…rammed the planet at better than warp four,” Malcolm said, his tone tinged with shock. “Why would anyone do that?”
“I can believe it,” Archer said. “I think the Romulans have done this before.”
“Where?” Ensign Leydon said. She sounded just as shell-shocked as Malcolm had.
“Coridan Prime,” Archer said. “Two and a half years ago.”
Like Coridan, Galorndon Core’s crust was widely believed to contain countless large deposits of high-grade dilithium ore—enough to create a lengthy and catastrophic conflagration under certain circumstances, such as the abrupt release of warp-engine levels of kinetic and thermal energy.
“What a waste of biodiversity,” Hoshi said.
“Illogical,” T’Pol observed.
Coridan’s burning sea, an inferno of dilithium, had the potential to continue blazing for centuries. The prosperity the Coridanites enjoyed prior to the catastrophe would remain forever out of their reach, unless and until they could find a way to capitalize on what remained of their underground dilithium supply.
“There was so much here that either side could have used, from medicine to warp-flight to weaponry,” Malcolm said. “It’s hard to believe that anyone could be so callous as to destroy a whole world, just to deny us access to it.”
“That’s because you’re not as paranoid as the Romulans,” T’Pol said.
To Archer’s surprise, a snatch of half-remembered John Milton sprang to his lips: “‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’”
Malcolm smiled wryly. “Paradise Lost.”
Archer met his tactical officer’s gaze. “I wonder how many more paradises Earth can afford to lose.”
FOURTEEN
Thursday, November 10, 2157
Enterprise NX-01
Near Prantares
HOSHI SATO FELT thoroughly numb as she completed her tasks at the comm station. The medical and damage-control teams had all been dispatched, both aboard Enterprise and among the Starfleet task force’s handful of surviving vessels. The captain had just silenced the Tactical Alert klaxons.
Except for the dull background noise generated by the automated systems, the bridge sounded, at least to Sato’s sensitive ears, as still as a tomb. She found that simile appropriate, since the vista through the main viewer was essentially a graveyard—a quietly cooling remnant of a killing field through which countless starship hulls, or fragments thereof, tumbled in a weird billiard-ballet of angular momentum, inertia, and chaos. Some of the debris shards moved uncannily fast, their motions set to crazed intensities by whatever weapon had shredded them in the first place; others appeared to move much more slowly, wandering and drifting as the laws of physics decreed.
The intense fireworks had begun precisely thirty-six minutes earlier. Weaponry encompassing everything from phase cannons and photonic torpedoes to disruptor tubes and old-style atomic warheads had done a thorough job of converting three dozen ships into countless hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of fragments. Many of the drifting pieces were so small, burned, or twisted that she could scarcely tell which had come from members of the Starfleet task force and which were formerly Romulan warbird components.
In the end, does it really even matter? Sato thought.
Very gradually, Sato became aware that not all life in the universe had been extinguished by the battle Enterprise had just survived. T’Pol calmly recited an inventory of Starfleet’s losses.
Losses, she thought, her breathing suddenly inhibited by a chest-crushing sensation of futility. And we won this one. I think.
For some unmeasurable interval, the bridge once again went quiet.
Then she noticed with a jolt of surprise that Commander T’Pol and the captain were standing beside her seat. A moment later she became aware that every eye on the bridge was now focused on her. Great.
“Lieutenant, I hardly think laughter is an appropriate reaction,” the Vulcan XO said, her words underscored by her slight frown and a noticeably disapproving tone. “Even for a human.”
Sato could only blink mutely as she tried to contain her surprise. Finally, she said, “I…I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“You started laughing, Hoshi,” Captain Archer said quietly, lines of concern etched into his craggy face. It occurred to Sato only then how the war seemed to be aging him. “Are you all right?”
She couldn’t remember laughing. Tears felt more likely, but her eyes remained stubbornly dry. She tried to draw a deep, cleansing breath and found she couldn’t quite fill her lungs. Som
ething close to panic rose within her.
“I don’t know, Captain,” she said. She shook her head and released a small, self-deprecating smile. “Maybe it’s battle nerves.”
“I want you to go down to sickbay,” said the captain, softening his words with a gentle smile. “Have Phlox check you out.”
Though she knew he was probably right, she hated the idea of being the only member of the entire bridge crew to fold under pressure. “But, Captain, I don’t thi—”
“That’s an order, Lieutenant,” he said, speaking more sharply this time.
With a sigh and a nod, Sato rose unsteadily to her feet.
Evading the glances of all of her fellow bridge officers except for Ensign Leydon, she stepped into the turbolift. I wonder if there’s anything in Phlox’s little menagerie that can cure war.
T’Pol was surprised to hear her door chime ring so late in the ship’s night.
She was even more surprised by the identity of her visitor.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” she said as she rose from the mat she had set beside her burning meditation candle.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late in the evening, Commander,” Hoshi Sato said, her nervousness evident in that she continually shifted her weight from foot to foot as she stood on the threshold.
“It’s no bother,” T’Pol said as she increased the illumination to half the daytime level. She gestured toward the spartan interior of her quarters. “Come in, Lieutenant.”
“I’d prefer it if you’d just call me Hoshi, Commander,” the human woman said as she stepped into the room and let the hatch hiss closed behind her. She stood just inside the room, wringing her hands.
“Are you all right, Lieutenant?” T’Pol said. After a slight hesitation, she added, “Hoshi?”
T’Pol’s use of the lieutenant’s first name appeared to put the human woman at ease, at least somewhat. “I don’t know. Doctor Phlox seems to think so. He couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so he chalked up my little…performance on the bridge this morning to post-traumatic stress.”
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War Page 13