by Diane Duane
The new interruption had nothing to do with the captain, or with anyone else on the liner’s bridge. Battered almost to incoherence by the energy-sleet of an activated cloaking device, it crackled from a speaker module on the comm station’s translator board. In the shocked stillness after the speaker cut out, Vega’s people looked at one another and then, helplessly, at McCoy and Reaves.
The young officer manning the liner’s external scanners didn’t look. He hit a bank of activator-toggles with a sweep of his hand and said, “Visual, sir.” Then he audibly caught his breath as the image he had tracked sprang to high-magnification life on the main screen.
The outline was vague at first, but rapidly became hard-edged reality. The warship decloaked—and they stared straight down the glowing maws of activated phaser conduits. That hailing transmission had been no idle threat; but then, neither Romulans nor Klingons were known for bluffing if superior firepower could be used instead.
“Oh, God,” said someone very softly. Four columns of glittering crimson fire swirled to life on the bridge, and nobody needed to hear the reports that abruptly began spilling from Vega’s internal communicators to know that the same thing was happening all over the liner. Each firespout collapsed into itself in a storm of glowing motes and became human.
No. Romulan.
Each trooper wore a helmet with his uniform and carried an ugly businesslike disruptor rifle, but the officer who accompanied them was bare-headed and held a phaser pistol nonchalantly in one hand. He looked about the bridge with that cool, neutral expression worn most commonly by Vulcans, then smiled at the man in the command chair. “I am Subcommander tr’Annhwi, set in authority over Imperial Vessel Avenger,” he said in good if heavily accented Federation Standard Anglish. “All aboard this ship are my prisoners.”
“Reaves, J. Michael, captain of civilian starliner Vega, out of Sigma Pavonis IV.” The words were spoken calmly enough, but his fingers were clenched too tightly on the arms of his command chair. “Subcommander, has there been a formal declaration of war between our governments? If not, then explain what you’re doing aboard my ship.”
“Your restraint does you credit, Captain h’Reeviss. It is a most wise attitude to adopt. I wish to see this vessel’s crew roster, cargo manifests, and passenger listing.”
“I’ll see you in hell first, you bloody pirate!” Reaves wasn’t even halfway out of his seat when a phaser-bolt melted the deck-plating between his feet.
“Carefully, Captain. Sit down.” Subcommander tr’Annhwi’s voice still carried its tone of cold amusement, but his smile was gone and the anger in his narrow eyes had killed whatever similarity he might have had to a calm, logic-governed Vulcan. “If you insult me again, you will die. If you try to attack me again, you will die. If you do anything other than by my order again, you will die. Is all of this quite clear, h’Reeviss, J. Maik’ell?” The captain didn’t reply, but tr’Annhwi nodded anyway. “Good. Run the information to this screen here; my antecenturion will do the rest.”
McCoy watched, saying nothing, as columns of data began to scroll past tr’Annhwi’s interested gaze. He turned an empty station-seat around and settled into it with the serenity of a man coming to terms with his own fate. It must have felt like this back in the twentieth century when the doctor told you it was cancer, he thought. We’ve beaten the disease, but not the feeling.
“These names: crew, or passengers?” tr’Annhwi asked. There was no reply until he touched his fingertips ominously to the firing-grip of his phaser, and even then Captain Reaves left the answer to one of his junior officers.
“The data is presented as you asked for it, Subcommander. Crew, then cargo, and passengers last of all.” The young man contrived to be subtly insolent in his brief explanation, but tr’Annhwi either missed it or chose to let it pass.
“Very well,” he said. “Proceed on my order. Erein t’Hwaehrai, h’tahfveinn lh’hde hnhaudr tlhei. Commence, please.” Every few seconds tr’Annhwi stopped the flow of data and waited while the antecenturion flickered her fingers across the keypads and took note of one item or another of interest to her commander. “The accuracy of these manifests will be checked, of course,” he said over his shoulder. “No comments, Captain?”
“They’re accurate,” said Reaves sullenly.
“So you say.” Tr’Annhwi tapped at the screen, which had completed its scrolling and gone dark. “Finished? Then screen off, and print it all.” The antecenturion glanced at him quizzically. “Lloann’na ta’khoi; t’Hwaehrai, haudet’s s’tivh quinn aedn’voi.”
“Ie, erei’Riov.”
A printer sat humming to itself in the silence of the liner’s bridge, and then dropped a sheaf of hard copy into Antecenturion t’Hwaehrai’s waiting hands. She leafed quickly through the flimsy pages to make sure that tr’Annhwi’s remarks had been emphasized properly, then handed them over to him.
“An eclectic assortment, is it not?” he muttered. It would have sounded more like a voiced private observation had he not spoken in Anglish. “Let me see. Hold A. Alcohol, beverage, one hundred fifty-seven hektoliters.” He tapped his teeth thoughtfully with a scriber, considering, then marked the page and read on. “Textiles—silk, wool, synthetics. Foodstuffs—basic, luxury, gourmet, stasis-secured. Salt and spices, total weight sixty-three kilos.
“Hold B. Pharmaceutical supplies.” Another mark, different this time by the way the scriber moved. McCoy stiffened. “A rock sample, weight one and one-half tonnes. Grain and associated phosphates, two thousand four hundred forty-one tonnes. Machine parts.” This time as he scribbled something down, tr’Annhwi was smiling to himself, a grim look. “Of course machine parts.”
McCoy relaxed a little. He was actually beginning to believe that this was going to work.
“And finally, Hold C. Art treasures—paintings, twenty; sculptures, three: helmeted head of a goddess, in marble, Terran Hellenic period; convolutions representing thought, in extruded crystal, Hamalket second T’r’lkt era; unfinished portrait, in several substances, Deirr modern. Mail, one thousand eighteen items. Alcohol, industrial, seven hundred ninety-five hektoliters.”
Tr’Annhwi’s smile was still there as he flicked a disdainful finger at the cargo manifest and stared at Captain Reaves. “Intoxicants and drugs. These goods are subject to confiscation, Captain, and you to a fine.”
Reaves wasn’t about to take that sitting down, but with the barrel of a disruptor rifle resting none too lightly on either shoulder he had little choice but to stay right where he was. Tr’Annhwi watched the impotent fury on the Earther’s face and grinned with pleasure. “You keep forgetting what I told you, Captain. Remember please, or you will surely die. Also, these ‘machine parts’; come now, not even the Klingons bother using that label for gunrunning anymore. And by the way, no matter what your Federation Starfleet may think of us, the Imperium regards the unauthorized transportation of weapons in just the same way as all other civilized persons. Illegal. There will be another fine.”
“This ship,” said Reaves, speaking slowly and carefully as if reasoning with a clever two-year-old, “isn’t carrying any form of illegal cargo. No drugs other than those requested by the new zeta Reticuli medical facility; no alcohol other than that intended for the Malory-Lynne-Stephens mineral processing plant on Sisyphos—and no weapons, concealed or otherwise, Subcommander tr’Annhwi. Run a physical check of the cargo holds if you like.”
“Oh, I will, Captain. But my thanks for your permission anyway. Of the four ships I have searched this past standard day, this one interests me most of all.”
“What?”
“Singular as the honor may appear, you aren’t my paramount reason for entering Federation space. Although this ship might well be. After reading your passenger list, who knows…?”
“We’ve upward of four thousand passengers aboard this vessel, Subcommander. I trust that you’ve plenty of time.”
“Enough to find the names I want. Afterward we shall determine if more
time is necessary, perhaps to blow your ship apart. Run sections K, M, and S.”
Finally, McCoy thought, and regardless of his relief, began to sweat again. Took the boy long enough. Thought I’d come all this way for nothing.
Sensing the increase of tension, even though they didn’t understand its source, the bridge crew of the Vega watched Subcommander tr’Annhwi as he read through the three subsections of their vessel’s passenger listing without comment or even drawing so much as an unnecessary breath. And then speed-scanned the entire list of four thousand two hundred and seventy-three names from beginning to end.
“What is the meaning of this question-symbol?” he said at last.
“That refers to a ‘no-show’ passenger,” explained the junior officer who had been so delicately insulting at first. Uncomprehending eyebrows were raised, and he elaborated. “It’s a passenger whose place has been booked in advance, and who then doesn’t arrive to claim it.”
“Ah.” Tr’Annhwi uttered the sound in great satisfaction, as though many things were suddenly clear. “There are only twenty-one out of all the names shown here.” He reached out for the single sheet that Antecenturion t’Hwaehrai had prepared in anticipation, and ran his fingertip down the single column of print. “Brickner, G.; Bryant, E.; B’tey’nn; Farey, K.; Farey, N.; Ferguson, B.; Friedman, D.; Gamble, C.; Gamble, D.; H’rewiss…. All of these persons were expected, but did not appear?”
“Yes.”
“So. H’rewiss, yes; Johnson, T.; Kh’Avn-Araht; King, T.; Meacham, B.; Meier, W. and Meier, W…. Most interesting. Sadek; Sepulveda, R.; Siegel, K.; Talv’Lin; T’Pehr.” The Romulan shuffled both sets of hardcopy data together, and there was a look of faint loathing on his face. “I can comprehend why Vulcans and a Tellarite might travel on a Terran-registered vessel, Captain. But some of these others are not”—everyone saw how he looked at the Sulamid steward—“not even shaped like you!”
“That isn’t an issue under question, Subcommander,” said Reaves, staring at tr’Annhwi, “and I recommend you not to start.”
There was a brief silence, and then tr’Annhwi shrugged, apparently not understanding Reaves’s reaction, and not caring that he didn’t. “No matter. As you say, Captain. It is not under question.”
He turned back to t’Hwaehrai at the computer terminal. “So,” he said. “To work. I would think—would you not, Captain?—that some most interesting conclusions might be discovered if one correlated each passenger with his, her, or its supposed ports of embarkation and added on the cargo-loading manifests.”
Reaves blinked, not making sense of the Romulan’s words for a moment. Then realization dawned and he glanced from t’Hwaehrai, whose fingers were already pattering briskly at the terminal’s access console, to the satisfied little smile that tr’Annhwi was wearing. “Whatever you’re thinking, Subcommander,” he said, “you’re wrong.”
“Am I? Perhaps. Or perhaps not.”
“Ta-hrenn, erei’Riov!” Antecenturion t’Hwaehrai looked decidedly pleased with herself. “Eh’t ierra-tai rh’oiin hviur ihhaeth.”
“Hnafirh ’rau.” Tr’Annhwi leaned over to read what was on the screen and his smile became a wide grin. “Ie. Au’e rha. Khnai’ra rhissiuy, Erein. Much as I expected to find, Captain,” he said, “despite your protestations. You still insist that nobody on this ship has seen the passengers Sadek, T’Pehr, Kh’Avn-Araht, or the coincidentally identical Meiers?”
“Of course not. You saw the list yourself—all of those passengers failed to board before departure.”
“Yet items of cargo were loaded at each port of embarkation, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And the cargo holds of this starliner are maintained to the same pressure-temperature-gravity parameters as the life shell, yes?”
“Yes….”
“So conceivably, if aware of this, any ‘no-show’ passenger might be snugly ensconced within a cargo space, yes?”
“No!”
“You sound very sure of your facts, Captain h’Reeviss. Most decisive. And since you are so certain, you will scarcely mind opening the holds to space for fifteen standard minutes.”
“I will not!” Reaves thumped his clenched fist against the arm of his Command chair as violently as he dared while surrounded by armed and wary Romulan soldiers. “Maybe you don’t realize,” he said, forcing himself to behave more calmly, “that my contracts specify safe delivery of cargo.”
“And perhaps you do not realize, Captain, that if you do not vent the holds, I shall. My weapons officer on Avenger is very skilled. You have five standard minutes in which to make your choice.” Tr’Annhwi glanced at the image of his warship which filled Vega’s main screen and unclipped a communicator from his belt. “Ra’kholh, hwaveyiir ’rhae: aihr erei’Riov tr’Annhwi.”
“Ra’kholh, erei’Riov. Enarrain tr’Hheinia hrrau Oira. Aeuthn qiu oaii mnek’nra?”
McCoy listened, and began to sweat. Perhaps Captain Reaves might have suspected, but nobody else on the bridge could know about the translator nestling snugly against the brachial nerve in his forearm. Certainly even the captain wasn’t aware of how well it was working. After the Levaeri V incident, Starfleet’s intradermal translators had been reprogrammed with augmented details of the Romulan/Rihanha language, even down to the then-current military slang. There was no slang being used here, on either side of the conversation, and even the bridge centurion’s “all-well?” inquiry had been formally phrased. He guessed that Subcommander tr’Annhwi wasn’t an officer who encouraged familiarity—or who made idle threats.
“Ie, ie. Oiuu’n mnekha. Vaed’rae, Enarrain: rhi siuren, dha, iehyyak ’haerh s’ Vega rhudhe dvaer. Ssuej-d’ifv?”
Only the cargo spaces? McCoy shivered, and rubbed a film of moisture from his palms. No matter how good the Romulan gunnery officer was, he was far too close for that sort of precision fire with shipboard batteries. At less than five hundred meters, the weapon systems on the Avenger were more likely to crack Vega open like an eggshell than just puncture her holds.
Even so, McCoy thought to himself, don’t jump the gun. You have to give this a chance to look right…and give the boy a chance to chicken out.
“Ie, ssuaj-ha’, erei’Riov. Hn’haerht dvahr. Ra’kholh ’khoi.” The frigate shifted slightly, bringing its main phasers to bear, and then faded from the screen in a flicker of static as someone on its bridge transmitted an override. It wasn’t a view to inspire confidence—Vega as seen by the Romulan targeting computers, a schematic outline whose lower hull was marked in three places by the glowing orange diamonds of image-enhanced phaser locks.
“Five minutes and counting, Captain,” said tr’Annhwi, looking with unnecessary emphasis at the elapsed-time display onscreen. No matter that all the visible symbology was Romulan; this was easy enough to follow. And time was running out.
“Subcommander…!” There was an edge of desperation in Reaves’s voice now, and he turned hurriedly to his own crew. “Number One, activate the loading-monitors at full and free mobility—cut in full internal lighting. Exec, patch the signals through to the main screen. Insert mode—over that. And for God’s sake, hurry!”
It was common practice for a vessel’s cargo spaces to have track-mounted surveillance cameras, and there was one in each of Vega’s holds. The pictures they transmitted were high-definition, good enough to read the labels on the bulk flasks of Saurian brandy in hold A or the stenciled THIS WAY UP instruction on crated medicinal drugs. Certainly good enough to show if anything was amiss—or if anyone was there.
“Look, Subcommander! Can’t you see? There’s nothing that shouldn’t be there!”
Tr’Annhwi looked, not especially interested, and began to turn away. “Three minutes,” he said. And then his head snapped back toward the screen. “There! Something moved!”
“You’re imagining—” Reaves started to say, but shut his teeth on the words as tr’Annhwi leveled a phaser at his face.
“Close your mouth or I
’ll burn another one in your head to keep it company,” the Romulan snapped. And to the still-active communicator in his left hand: “Ie’yyak-Hnah!”
The screen went blank for an instant, then flicked back to a tactical sketch of a Federation liner with computer-graphic splatters of blue fire raking all across its belly.
And at the same instant, Vega’s substructure howled in protest as she was gutted. The vessel wrenched out of line in three dimensions at once, flinging both crew and intruders into bulkheads or onto the shuddering deck. Alarms and people alike were screaming. The bridge consoles overloaded in a convulsion of sparks and choking smoke, the screen was flashing HULL INTEGRITY VIOLATED and nobody was paying any attention….
Leonard McCoy clambered stiffly to his feet, coughing the stink of seared insulation from his lungs. He was bruised and shaken, his spine hurt from the three-way whiplash, and he was appalled that the Romulans had actually made good their threat. In that one instant, in the warship of one state firing on the unarmed civilian vessel of another, it had gone beyond piracy to war. And he was right in the middle of it.
Or was he…? The bridge extractors cut in and began to clear the smoke, and the first thing he saw was tr’Annhwi on hands and knees on the deck. The second was the expression on the subcommander’s face. It was a mingling of rage and terror such as McCoy had seldom seen on any face; terror at the consequences of a panicked action, and at the consequences yet to come, and fury at being placed in such a situation by all the circumstances which had led him there. Worst of all, the quickest way tr’Annhwi could cover his blunder would be by blowing Vega to subatomic particles. Maybe he might not be as ruthless as that, but his last overreaction and the way that he looked now made him more dangerous than the coldest, most efficient starship captain would ever be. Because tr’Annhwi had already shown that he might act without thinking, and he was scared enough to do it again—except that this time people were going to die….
Unless he was distracted.
McCoy stood up, the first man on the bridge to do so, straightened his rumpled, smoke-stained jacket, and met the stares and the leveled weapons with as much equanimity as he could summon. “Subcommander tr’Annhwi, I’m on your list. The name’s McCoy—of the Enterprise.”