by Andy Mangels
“You telepathically deceived them into firing upon one another,”T’Pol said, not asking a question.
Theras sobbed again. “Yes. And the last of them…just took his own life. Moments ago.”
Reed laid a comforting hand on Theras’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry this was necessary, Theras.”
Shran felt his antennae rising in surprise and pleasure. He did it. The coward actuallydid something.It suddenly occurred to Shran that he might have very badly misjudged Theras; he pushed the thought aside, however, in favor of making it his absolute top priority to complete Jhamel’s rescue, along with that of the other remaining Aenar captives.
After that, the boarding party itself would still have to get off this ship and return safely to Enterprise;he knew that this might prove challenging, since this ship’s bridge crew remained alive, and still could potentially put up a fight should Theras’s telepathy somehow cease concealing the rescue team from their notice.
“Let’s not waste any more time coddling him,” Shran said, addressing both Reed and T’Pol. Then he turned to face the nearest of the two pressure-suited MACOs. Though their faces were shrouded in darkness, Shran knew they must have been as eager as he was to get the group moving again toward the Romulan vessel’s transporter, from which Jhamel and the others could be sent to Enterprise.
“What will become of us now?”Jhamel said inside his brain, her mind still uncharacteristically disordered because of the sedatives she’d been given, her thoughts feeling jumbled and chaotic. “Too, too much dying here.”
“We still have a job to finish here,” Shran added as he tried to ignore the unfathomable sadness that now flowed freely into him from Jhamel’s obviously still drug-muzzled brain.
Theras trudged on with the rest of the group. He felt completely dead inside. And wasn’t he, really, so far as his society was concerned? After all, he had become something that his people regarded as anathema: he was now a killer.
A murderer.
He struggled to keep his concentration focused on the twists and turns of the corridors and passageways that he recalled from the minds of the dead Romulans. The route that led to the ship’s transporter.
Theras was thankful, at least, that the boarding party had not come close enough to any of the slain Romulans who now lay scattered throughout the vessel so that his suit’s night-vision apparatus could reveal them in any amount of detail. But he knew that he would be unable to escape absorbing the horrible visual imagery of what he had done from the thoughts of the other members of the boarding party. Although he recognized that it was cowardly, he nevertheless hoped that the Romulan corpses would never become more than death-sprawled silhouettes in his memory; even that, he suspected, would be nightmare enough to last for the rest of his days.
He was beginning to be distracted, however, by the feelings of grave apprehension he sensed coming from Enterprise—in space, somewhere near the transport ship—as her crew bravely held the line against the weaponry of two Romulan warships, risking death to enable the rescue party to complete its mission. He wished he could further influence the crews of the Romulan warships, inducing them to believe that Enterprisehad departed, but he was growing steadily more tired, and even now felt wearier than he had in recent memory. He felt that he had already stretched his telepathic talents to their limits, and perhaps even a good deal past them.
Another thing he found disturbing was the sluggish nature of the thought-auras of the Aenar captives, especially those of his bondmates, Vishri, Shenar, and Jhamel. Had the Romulans drugged them because they feared they might contemplate taking actions such as those he, Theras, had eventually taken?
Defensive actions, such as temporarily “blinding” the Romulans to the presence of the boarding party.
And offensive actions—such as causing the Romulans to slaughter one another while believing they were striking down invaders.
Would Shenar even have contemplated doing such a thing, had the Romulans left him able to do it?Theras thought as the team finally reached the darkened Romulan transporter room and herded him and the rest of the Aenar inside. Would Vishri?
Would Jhamel?
Malcolm Reed had expected to have to spend perhaps a few minutes puzzling out the Romulan transporter’s scanning, range, targeting, and transmission controls, after which he expected to execute a short series of swift beam-outs back to Enterprise.
What he hadn’texpected was to discover that the now-deceased Romulan guards had utterly destroyed the transporter with their disruptors, melting both the console and the stage to slag, no doubt to prevent their Aenar prisoners from getting off the ship once they had gotten free of the ship’s detention area.
“What now?”Shran said, exasperated.
Reed sighed. “What about Theras? Can’t he send our coordinates to Enterprisetelepathically?”
“ Perhaps,” said Shran, gesturing toward the environmental-suited Aenar. “If he hadn’t gone catatonic right after the firefight, that is.”
Reed turned and saw that Theras had slumped next to one of the walls. He sat motionless and limp, resembling an empty environmental suit that someone had neglected to stow properly.
“Firefight,” Reed said with a humorless laugh. “It was a slaughter.”
“Withouttheir slaughter, it would have beenour slaughter. He’ll just have to learn to deal with—”
“ Gentlemen,” Commander T’Pol said, stepping suddenly between them, interrupting. “There are still other alternatives.”T’Pol held up one of the small transponders. “I believe we still have a number of these, Lieutenant. Perhaps we can use several of them in tandem to restore our communications withEnterprise, and establish a transporter lock as well.”
Reed grinned. “Let’s get to work.”
“Continue evasive maneuvers!” cried Jonathan Archer, tightly gripping the arms of his command chair as the bridge rumbled and tipped all around him.
Archer wondered just how much more pounding Enterprisecould take before the constant barrage forced him to withdraw from weapons—and transporter—range. The forward viewer displayed an image of one of the two Romulan war vessels that had continued aggressively defending the transport vessel that carried the Aenar prisoners, despite the fact that Enterprisehad crippled the engines of all three ships.
The bridge shook and rattled again, and Archer was very nearly thrown from his captain’s chair. However crippled their adversaries’ engines might be, their complement of weaponry was in decidedly better shape. He knew he’d been lucky in managing to take out the engines of both escort ships while evading what could have been critical damage to Enterprise; he also knew that his luck was in very finite supply, and that it would run out entirely should the Romulans score many more hits.
“Sorry, Captain,” said Travis Mayweather, seated behind the helm, just ahead of the captain’s chair. “The hull plating can’t take much more of this. It’s down to forty-three percent and falling.”
“Understood, Ensign. Keep trying to evade their guns as best you can. But maintain maximum transporter distance.”
Archer knew that the time was rapidly approaching when he would have to make a painful and final decision, weighing the lives of his boarding party, Shran, and the few Aenar who remained to be rescued against the safety of his ship and her entire crew.
He knew that only one decision was possible.
The ship rocked again. Archer spoke toward the intercom pickup in the arm of his chair, into the channel to D deck that he’d left open. “Ensign Moulton, if you can’t reestablish a transporter lock now, we’re going to have to withdraw.”
“Understood, sir. I’ll keep trying.”She didn’t sound confident.
Rising from his chair, he walked to the side of the helm. “Travis, take us out of their weapons range.”
The helmsman nodded grimly. “Aye, sir—”
“Captain!”The voice coming from the arm of the command chair belonged to Ensign Moulton. Mayweather’s hand hovered over
the helm throttle control.
“Go ahead, Ensign,” Archer said as he ran back to his chair.
“I’ve reestablished a transporter lock, sir. I don’t know how, or how long it’ll last, but—”
“Save the explanations, Ensign. Get busy!”
“Our transporter circuits have been taking a beating from the Romulans,”Ensign Moulton said over the com channel in the boarding team’s suits, her words nearly lost in an intermittently oceanic wash of interference. “But I can’t risk transporting more than one of you at a time.”
“Take Jhamel first,” said Shran, who watched soberly as Commander T’Pol and Lieutenant Reed nodded in agreement. Now that Moulton had just finished transporting five Aenar, only Theras and his bondmates remained to be transported, along with three humans, one Vulcan, and Shran.
“ —ust a moment,” Moulton replied, continuing to fight a losing battle against the static still being generated by the Romulan shroud field. Because all attempts to shut the field down from inside the transport ship had failed, Shran had become convinced that it was actually originating from one or both of the warships currently harassing Enterprise.
Several anxious moments later, the hum of Enterprise’s transporter effect reverberated through the ruins of the Romulan transporter room, and a sheet of sparkling blue engulfed the groggy Jhamel, who had been sitting disoriented on the deck. Though he didn’t want to do anything that might put her safe transit to Enterpriseat risk, it had been all Shran could do to refrain from offering her a steadying arm to enable her to stand while she’d awaited transport.
The dematerialization effect seemed to labor more than Shran had ever seen before, as though it were having difficulty drawing sufficient power. He offered a silent prayer to all four of the First Kin to ensure that Jhamel emerged from the process unharmed.
“ Got her,” Moulton said. The com channel hissed and fritzed around her words. “Powering up for another.”
“Take Theras next,” Shran said.
“ Very well,” T’Pol agreed.
“ No,” Theras said, once again surprising Shran.
Surprised or not, Shran couldn’t suppress a scowl. He approached the wall against which the Aenar thaanwas leaning. “We can’t risk splitting up your shelthreth,Theras.”
Jhamel’sshelthreth, he thought, which she made you a part of, for whatever reason.
“Can there be room in any Aenarshelthreth for one who has taken lives?”Theras said over the com channel.
Shran had no response to that. He had once dared to hope for a positive answer to that question himself, before he had discovered that his beloved Jhamel’s future was already spoken for.
“ Let’s start with the two other Aenar while you two finish sorting this out,” Reed said.
Shran nodded in response to Reed, though he continued studying Theras’s blind, pain-weary face, which was limned in the intermittent green glow of Shran’s damaged night-vision gear. The transporter continued its increasingly difficult work, taking Shenar first, then Vishri, followed by the injured male MACO, and finally by the female.
Then Reed and T’Pol had vanished as well, leaving Shran and Theras alone together in the darkness.
“ I will go last,” Theras said. “I have…touched Ensign Moulton’s mind to make certain that you will be her next passenger.”
Clutching his modified transponder device nearly hard enough to shatter it, Shran searched the darkness for the other man’s milky, sightless eyes. He realized now that he had fundamentally misjudged Theras.
He raged at the realization.
He had mistaken a death wish for courage, self-flagellation for heroism.
“You have no intention of leaving this ship, do you?” Shran said, making a blunt observation rather than asking a question.
His lips unmoving, Theras spoke inside Shran’s mind. “Good-bye, Shran. Promise me that you will take care of Jhamel. And her bondmates.”
Shran started to protest, but the words caught in his throat as the transporter’s shimmering blue light and whining din enfolded him. A moment later he stood on Enterprise’s circular transporter stage, wobbling slightly from a thankfully brief wave of vertigo.
After he removed his helmet, the first thing he noticed was the absence of the rest of the boarding team except for the female MACO, who stood in her now-helmetless pressure suit beside a white-smocked human whom Shran assumed was a medic of some sort. He assumed that T’Pol and Reed were absent because Archer would have needed them urgently up on the bridge, and that the rescued Aenar and the injured MACO had already been taken to the ship’s infirmary, or elsewhere aboard Enterprise.
Shran launched himself off the stage, stopping in front of a small nearby console, behind which stood a human female whom Shran assumed was Ensign Moulton. The startled MACO raised her weapons defensively, but Shran ignored her.
“Beam Theras over, now!” Shran barked, unwilling to let the Aenar sacrifice his life merely for having defended himself and his teammates.
And for defending Jhamel, whose telepathic bond with Shran seemed to be growing stronger from moment to moment. Sickbay,Shran thought, listening to her presence as best he could along the subtle, diaphanous channel that connected them. She’s been taken to sickbay.
“I’m trying to establish a lock,” Moulton said, scowling alternatively at Shran and the console before her. She began toggling switches that Shran couldn’t recall ever having seen before, apparently trying to divert still more power to the already overtaxed system.
Then a small explosion sounded behind him, making his ears pop and his antennae retreat as though seeking cover. He turned to see a cloud of acrid-smelling black smoke slowly rising and spreading over the transporter stage.
“Dammit!” Moulton shouted, still examining the readouts before her. “The Heisenberg compensators are completely fused.” She focused a hard stare upon Shran as she snapped open an intercom switch. “Ensign Moulton here, Captain. I’m afraid I have some bad news about the transporter….”
As he made his way toward the bridge, escorted by the female MACO, Shran couldn’t help but wonder whether the machine had failed all on its own—or if Theras’s telepathic influence had had something to do with it.
They quickly reached the turbolift that Shran presumed ran directly through the primary hull’s midpoint, and therefore connected to Archer’s bridge along the most direct route. Shran felt his bond to Jhamel increase greatly in intensity as the lift doors slid obediently open before him.
A haggard but determined-looking Jhamel was inside the lift, leaning unsteadily against one of the walls.
“We can’t let the Romulans have Theras,” she said.
Then her eyes rolled shut and she collapsed into Shran’s arms.
“Captain, I’m afraid the transporter won’t be beaming anybody anywhere for at least a week,”Moulton said, frustration coloring her normally phlegmatic manner. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s not your fault, Ensign. I’m sure you did everything you could.” Archer now could no longer see any choice other than to withdraw immediately. He rose from his chair and stared at the pair of raptorlike Romulan spacecraft that loomed ahead like an augury of death, grimly aware that T’Pol, Malcolm, Hoshi, and Travis were all looking in his direction, anxiously awaiting his next order. Once again, he had no real choice, though it pained him to admit it.
“Travis, get us out of here. Maximum warp.”
“With pleasure, Captain,” the helmsman said with an unconcealed sigh of relief. He immediately began entering commands into his console. “Course laid in. Executing.”
Archer felt the subtle shift of vibration in the deck beneath his boots, which told him that Enterprisehad just gone to warp. Even as the image of the two semicrippled warships vanished from the viewer, the turbolift doors at the bridge’s aft port side whisked open. Archer turned toward the sound.
He watched a gaunt, careworn Aenar woman whom he recognized as Jhamel step unsteadil
y onto the bridge, with Shran—still partially clad in a Starfleet-issue environmental suit—gently guiding her arm, balancing her. A MACO exited the lift behind them, then took up a vigilant posture by the turbolift doors.
“ Enterprisemustn’t leave yet, Captain!” Jhamel said breathlessly, her gray eyes focusing directly upon his, despite her inability to see. Archer found the effect disconcerting.
Striding out of the command well toward the Aenar woman, Archer took her other arm and glared at Shran. “Why did you bring Jhamel up here? She belongs in sickbay, or in one of the emergency wards down in the launch bays.”
“I told her the same thing, Captain,” Shran said mildly, displaying a somewhat grim smile. “But she insisted on speaking to you immediately. I know better than to stand in her way when she’s being insistent.”
T’Pol rose from the seat in front of her science station, allowing Archer and Shran to guide Jhamel gently into it.
“Theras is still aboard that transport vessel, Captain,” said the Aenar woman, her skin as white as scrimshaw, her antennae flailing in slow motion like a pair of anemones.
Archer nodded sadly. In measured, sympathetic tones, he said, “I know he is, Jhamel. But I’m afraid we have no way of rescuing him.”
“I am not asking you to rescue him, Captain. And neither is Theras.”
“You’re in telepathic contact with him now?”
A single fat tear rolled down her ice-hued cheek. “Yes. Please, Captain. Do notallow the Romulans to take him. Theras is beggingme to help him prevent this. He wants you to kill him.”
“Kill him?” Archer was appalled by the suggestion, although he had to admit that he could see no good alternative. He was beginning to feel sick to his stomach.
Jhamel nodded. “He wants you to destroy the transport ship, Captain.”
Archer shook his head in disbelief. “There are still Romulan personnel alive on that ship, Jhamel, and they’ll die if I do that. And the Romulan government won’t be very happy about it either. They might even use it as a pretext to justify war. Frankly, I’m surprised that an Aenar would want me to do such a thing.”