Serpents Among the Ruins

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Serpents Among the Ruins Page 26

by David R. George III


  Linavil’s eyes went wide. “Lieutenant, full internal scans,” she said. “Find the intruders.”

  “Working,” Akeev said as his hands flew across his console. “The sensors show only six life signs,” he reported a moment later. “All Romulan.” But he continued operating his controls. “Broadening search for secondary indications,” he said.

  Vokar waited. “Time,” he said to Linavil.

  She walked over to the nearest console and glanced at its display. “Twelve minutes,” she said.

  “Sir,” Akeev said, looking up from his station to face Vokar. “Sensors are picking up a statistically significant heat fluctuation that could be caused by intruders.”

  “Where?” Vokar wanted to know.

  “Lower engineering deck, port side,” Akeev said, then checked his console again. “In a maintenance connector.”

  “They’re somehow cloaked,” Vokar said, sure that they had found the Federation saboteurs. “But they’re here.”

  Linavil’s features shifted, her emotions moving from a fear of reprisal for the blunder that had allowed intruders onto Tomed, to a desire for retribution.

  “Get the weapons,” Vokar said.

  Minus One: Serpents

  Commander Drysi Gravenor scratched at her ear, trying to eliminate an itch where the pointed Romulan tip had been attached to her flesh. She glanced up from her scanner and across the equipment junction at Lieutenant Vaughn. He leaned with his back against the bulkhead, his posture revealing his fatigue. A sheen of perspiration coated his features, even as two beads slid down the side of his face, leaving quicksilver trails behind. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt.

  The time aboard Tomed had been hard on all of them, Gravenor knew. The heat, the closeness in the equipment junctions and conduits, napping in abbreviated shifts, subsisting on condensed emergency rations—all had taken their toll. In addition, the complexity and arduousness of their tasks had pushed each of them, while the importance and pressure of successfully completing their mission had never left their minds. And right now, they’d reached one of the most critical stages of the operation.

  Gravenor checked the display on her Romulan scanner. Fiber-optic lines swept from the back of the device and into a cluster of exposed circuits within the bulkhead. She’d secured a connection to the ship’s helm, and while she hadn’t yet taken control of it, she monitored its function. Tomed’s helm officer had programmed it to engage six minutes before complete containment failure, taking the ship away from the evacuated crew and leaving them behind in safety. Once that had happened, Captain Harriman would slow the degradation of the containment field—it could not be stopped—and Gravenor would head the ship toward Federation space.

  The chronometer on the tricorder told Gravenor that in just four minutes, Tomed would go to warp. By that time, the entire crew would have vacated the ship, allowing her and Vaughn and Harriman to finish their mission. With full control of the ship, they could—

  The display on her scanner jumped. She’d been observing Tomed’s helm readouts, monitoring the programmed flight settings and the status of the warp drive. Now the set of Romulan characters marching across the display told her something different than they had only seconds ago. She quickly read through the new text, and saw in an instant that everything had changed.

  Gravenor raised her arm and activated the Romulan communicator encircling her wrist. As she did so, she saw Vaughn straighten and push away from the bulkhead, his attention firmly on her. “We’ve got a problem,” she told him, and as though confirming that fact, she risked contacting Harriman. Until now, they’d refrained from using their communicators, which could have betrayed their presence aboard Tomed.“Aerel to Ventin,” she said, employing the names of two of the Romulan crew that they’d chosen for themselves should the need arise.

  “Ventin,” Harriman responded at once.

  “The ship is no longer programmed to go to warp,” she said. “Flight control has been transferred from the computer back to the helm station on the bridge.”

  Silence followed, only a second or two in duration, Gravenor was sure, but the time seemed to elongate for her. She awaited Harriman’s orders, anxious to take action. “Check internal sensors,” Harriman said at last. “How many are left aboard?”

  Gravenor worked her scanner. She had established a link to the ship’s internal sensors as a contingency measure, and she accessed that connection now. She executed a high-level scan, casting a shipwide net for Romulan life signs. “Six of the crew are still aboard,” she reported to Harriman. “Three on the bridge, three in engineering—wait. Some of them are now on the move.”

  “Take control of the helm,” Harriman ordered. “Get us away from here.”

  “Aye,” Gravenor said simply.

  “I’ll do my job,” Harriman said, obviously meaning that he’d do as planned, reducing the rate of decay of the containment field. “I’ll rejoin you shortly. Out.”

  Gravenor deactivated the communicator, then dropped her hand back to her scanner. She brought up the helm readouts on the display, studied them for a moment, and then went to work. In only a short time, she had taken over operation of Tomed’s flight-control systems. Utilizing the course the Romulan navigator had earlier plotted and programmed into the computer, Gravenor engaged the ship’s warp drive.

  The deep hum of the faster-than-light engines rose in the equipment junction. The throbbing character of the sound differed from that of Enterprise’s steady drone. Here, the pulse seemed like the beating of Tomed’s singular heart.

  As Gravenor worked, Vaughn stepped up beside her and peered at the scanner display. She waited enough time for the ship to be beyond the reach of the limited sensors in the escape pods, then adjusted Tomed’s course and increased its velocity to warp nine. “We’re on our way,” she said to Vaughn. She accessed the ship’s internal sensors again, wanting to check on the location of the Romulans. She saw that the three of them in main engineering had left that location and now headed in this direction. It would not take long for them to reach—

  The display went blank.

  Gravenor coolly worked the controls of the scanner, even as she understood what had happened. She checked both the device itself and its connection to the ship’s circuitry, confirming her suspicion: her access to the sensors had been severed. “They found us,” she said to Vaughn. She activated the communicator wrapped around her wrist and raised it once more toward her mouth. “Aerel to Ventin,” she said. “They found us.”

  “Get out of there,” Harriman ordered. “You know your jobs. Out.”

  As with any special operation, alternative courses of action had been established wherever possible. Being discovered at this point, with Tomed almost entirely abandoned by its crew and now streaking away toward Federation space, Gravenor’s duty would be to prevent the Romulans from taking control of the warp drive. If she and Vaughn and Harriman were to succeed in their mission, they could not allow the ship to be stopped, slowed, or diverted.

  Gravenor reached forward, grabbed the bundles of fiber-optics, and ripped them free of their connections to the Romulan circuitry. After disengaging the lines from her scanner, she stuffed them into the bulkhead. Beside her, Vaughn had already reached down and retrieved the access plate, which he replaced as soon as she had moved away. When he turned to face her, she said, “Proceed as planned, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, Commander,” he said. The muscles of his face had tensed visibly, and he looked serious and concerned. But young as he was, Vaughn didn’t give in to panic—and wouldn’t, Gravenor felt certain. If she had believed otherwise, she would not have selected him for this assignment.

  “Go,” she said. Vaughn drew his disruptor, then turned and climbed into a conduit. Gravenor attached her scanner to its holder at her waist, then reached for her own weapon. As Vaughn’s legs and feet disappeared from view, she whirled and scrambled into a different conduit, headed for Tomed’s main engineering section.

&
nbsp; As he watched Linavil stride to the weapons cache, Vokar stepped up to the nearest console—the navigation station—and opened a comm channel. “Vokar to engineering,” he said.

  “This is Elvia,” replied the ship’s lead engineer, rushing through the words, her voice loud. She sounded harried, and perhaps also annoyed. “Admiral, we have only a few—”

  “Cease your work, Lieutenant,” Vokar interrupted. “There are intruders aboard. Arm yourselves and proceed to the lower engineering deck, port side, maintenance connector—” He looked over at Akeev for the location.

  “Connector forty-seven,” the science officer said. Vokar repeated the information to Elvia.

  “Admiral,” she said, “we haven’t been able to slow the containment loss. My engineers and I were just about to head for the evacuation pods.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Vokar said, fighting back anger at having his orders questioned. Linavil started back across the bridge, he saw, three disruptors in her hands. “The source of the containment problem has been located, and another crew is making repairs. I need you and your engineers to arm yourselves and find the intruders. You’re closest to them.”

  Elvia did not respond immediately, and Vokar thought that she might not respond at all. Obviously fearing the collapse of the containment field and the unleashing of the quantum singularity, Elvia might simply flee the ship, choosing to suffer the consequences of her cowardice later. But then she said, “How many intruders are there?”

  Again, Vokar looked to Akeev. “Probably not more than two or three,” the science officer speculated, just as Linavil walked up to him and handed him one of the disruptors.

  “Three,” Vokar told Elvia. “And they are impervious to direct sensor scans.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “We’re on our way.”

  “Vokar out,” he said, jabbing at the control on the navigation console to close the channel. Linavil stopped beside him and held out a disruptor. He took the proffered weapon and affixed it to his uniform at his hip, and Linavil did the same with her own. “Subcommander,” he said, “cancel the program that would automatically take the ship out of the area.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. She moved quickly to the helm.

  “Sir,” Akeev said from the sciences station, “there’s another crew working on the containment field?” As with Elvia, he sounded distressed.

  “The intruders,” Vokar explained. “The Federation saboteurs.”

  “I don’t understand,” Akeev said. “I know what the sensors indicated, but even if the intruders are still aboard, how can you be sure that they can fix the problem?”

  “They are still aboard,” Linavil offered as she worked the helm controls, “because they want this ship.”

  “Yes,” Vokar agreed. “They executed the damage to Tomed, and now they’ll repair it. They can’t very well have the ship if it’s destroyed.”

  Akeev nodded slowly, but seemed unconvinced. “How do you know they don’t want to destroy the ship?” he asked.

  “Because they’re still aboard,” Vokar said, “and the Federation doesn’t launch suicide missions.” He thought of the Romulan commanders who over the decades had sacrificed their lives and those of their crews rather than allow their vessels and themselves to fall into the possession of an enemy. Vokar knew firsthand that Starfleet personnel did not always lack for courage or the ability to plan strategically, but willingly giving up their lives for the greater good was an action beyond their capabilities.

  “I’ve canceled the helm program, sir,” Linavil announced. “Tomed’s not going anywhere.”

  “So the intruders sabotaged the ship to force the crew to evacuate?” Akeev asked. “And their plan was to fix it and escape when the ship automatically left the area?”

  “Yes,” Vokar said, “but they didn’t intend for there to be any Romulans left aboard to…” Vokar’s voice trailed off as something else occurred to him. “…to thwart them,” he finished flatly as he began to work through his realization: the plan of the Federation operatives demanded secrecy. Even if they successfully captured Tomed, it would do them no good if the Romulan Empire could demonstrate that the Federation had been behind the theft. The Klingons had threatened to side against the aggressor in a conflict between the Empire and the Federation, and the meticulously planned appropriation of the Romulan flagship from this side of the Neutral Zone would certainly qualify as aggression.

  “We need to send out a message,” Vokar said to Linavil. “To Romulus, to another vessel, even to the crew in the evacuation pods. We must expose the Federation plot.” The intruders had obviously sabotaged communications so that the crew would not be able to broadcast a distress call, but probably also as a precaution should not all of the crew evacuate the ship.

  “There’s long-range communications equipment in the shuttles,” Linavil noted.

  Vokar nodded. “Go now,” he said. Linavil headed for the turbolift, but stopped when Akeev spoke up.

  “Admiral,” he said, urgency in his tone. “Sensors have detected a comm signal…originating in…” The science officer tapped at his panel. “…lower engineering deck…” He looked up, the pale glow of the sciences display reflecting on his face. “…port maintenance connector forty-seven.”

  “Can you get a fix on their life signs?” Linavil asked.

  “Trying,” Akeev said. “Negative, but…they’ve tapped into internal sensors from the same location.”

  “Shut them out,” Vokar ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” Akeev said. He worked his controls for a moment, and then said, “I can’t isolate their connection for some reason.”

  “Disable the surrounding links into the network,” Linavil said.

  Vokar felt the change in Tomed before he heard it: the initial vibration of the ship, carried through its structure, through the bulkheads and decking, as the warp drive began operation. He raced to the helm, seeing confirmation there of Tomed’s transition to light speeds, even as the bass pulsation of the engines rose around him. He began working the panel, attempting to regain control of the ship.

  Linavil dashed up beside him. She observed for a moment, and then said, “They’ve locked us out.” She quickly dropped to the floor, onto her back, and reached up beneath the console. “The helm’s still operational, though. I can reroute the panel, manually bypass the lockouts.”

  “I can do that,” Vokar told her. “You get to the shuttle compartment and send out a message.”

  “Yes, sir,” Linavil said, rising back to her feet. Once more, she headed for the turbolift.

  “Admiral,” Akeev said, “I’ve shut down their sensor access. I’m also reading a major decrease in the destabilization of the containment field; it’s suddenly drawing power through different relays.”

  Vokar acknowledged Akeev, then stopped Linavil before she left the bridge. “Subcommander,” he said. She turned back toward him as the turbolift doors glided open.

  “Sir?” she said.

  “Make sure your disruptor is set to kill,” he told her.

  Harriman clambered through the equipment conduit, his muscles no longer aching as badly as they had been. The repeated, awkward movement through the cramped maintenance tunnels during the time on Tomed had taxed his body, but the flow of adrenaline eased much of that pain right now. Still, he would have preferred his own discomfort to the reasons for his heightened physical state. The continued presence on the ship of six Romulans endangered not only this mission, but the Federation itself. If word of Starfleet personnel attempting to commandeer Tomed reached Romulus and Qo’noS, war would be the consequence, with the two empires uniting against a common foe. The loss of life in the Federation would be unimaginable.

  Around a corner in the conduit, the beam of Harriman’s beacon picked out a maintenance hatch just a few meters ahead, where he’d expected to find it. He crawled forward, anxious both to be free of these restrictive surroundings and to meet the threat of the Romulans still on board. Since he had
first conceived of this plan so many months ago, and through the more detailed plotting that had begun after the Romulans had taken the world of the Koltaari, this had always been the stage most susceptible to failure. Had the entire crew abandoned ship, the flight to the Neutral Zone would likely have been uneventful, but now…

  Harriman could only hope that the Romulans in the escape pods knew nothing of the special ops team aboard their vessel. The timing of events suggested that to be the case, but if not, then all had already been lost. Providing he, Gravenor, and Vaughn could subdue the remaining Romulans, he could take the ship back to the escape pods and allow the containment field to fail. The result would be the deaths of all of them—Tomed’s crew and the special ops team. But even if Harriman could find the justification to take such an action—and he did not know that he could—such an uncommon accident occurring within Romulan territory, after Tomed’s close contact with Enterprise, would rightly be construed by the Empire as an attack by Starfleet. In that circumstance, Ambassador Kamemor might well come forward to confirm what little she knew of the plan, and how she had been duped by Harriman. Again, the outcome would be war, with the Klingons siding against the Federation.

  No. The only course of action he could take right now would be to attempt to complete the mission.

  Harriman arrived at the hatch. He set his beacon down and reached for the tricorder hanging at his waist. Using the device to scan for life signs would reveal his position, but better to risk that than to open the hatch and find a disruptor pointed at his head; he would not be staying in this location anyway. He performed a sweep of the surrounding deck. No life signs registered.

  He deactivated the tricorder and returned it to his waist, along with the beacon, exchanging them for his phaser. The hatch opened beneath a heavy push, and Harriman scrambled out of the conduit. As he dropped onto the deck, he ducked low, flattening himself against the near bulkhead. Despite what the tricorder had told him, he looked hurriedly from side to side, ensuring the absence of any Romulans here.

 

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