Archer shook his head. “What does M’Rek have to be embarrassed about? Is it that the Romulans have found a way to commandeer their ships?”
Kolos did a double take. “Why would you think that?”
“We found one survivor in the wreckage of one of the three battle cruisers destroyed at Draylax. She all but said that the Klingons were being controlled by the Romulans. But she didn’t know how, and she didn’t survive long enough to give us any more than that.”
His expression grave, Kolos nodded. “I don’t know that to be true, but if it were, that would be something that the military would not want exposed.”
“So they’d rather go to war against the Coalition than admit they were vulnerable to the Romulans?”
Kolos shrugged, opening his hands, palms pointed upward.
“Unbelievable,” Archer said, sighing heavily. Now he felt even more defeated.
“If that is the case, then you must defeat Krell decisively,” Kolos said. “And you must kill him.”
Archer stared at the older alien, incredulously. Gesturing toward Corporal Ryan, he said, “I don’t even know how to use that weapon properly.”
“We have nearly three of your hours before the combat is to begin,” Kolos said, standing up. “Let us use the time to find ways for you to use the blade that Krell won’t anticipate.”
He lowered his voice slightly, moving closer to Archer in order to speak at a volume intended only for the captain’s ears. “And let us hope that Krell’s strength isn’t what it once was because of the changes the metagenic virus has wrought.”
Archer’s breath was already growing ragged and labored, and it was still fairly early in the match. The gladiatorial chamber that he and Krell were in was un-godly hot; even stripped to the waist, he was sweating profusely. Probably gonna lose ten pounds in a hell of a hurry, he thought. Unless I lose my head first, that is.
The two of them had been led into the arena ten minutes earlier, wearing only their pants and boots, and carrying only their bat’leths. The chamber was part of a vast, torch-lit underground cavern that had apparently been excavated and enlarged for the sole purpose of conducting combat-to-the-death rituals such as this one. Rising from the ground all around were irregularly shaped stalagmites precipitated out of some hardened mineral that Archer couldn’t quite identify; even in the dusky light of the wall-ensconced torches, he could see that many of them were stained a dark purplish-black that was probably the residue of Klingon blood.
About twenty feet up, ringed around the cavern’s outer walls, was a secondary level surrounded by waist-high railings, behind which stood the assembled members of the Klingon High Council, various uniformed military luminaries, and a large cheering section comprised of growling, snarling Klingon civilians that might well have included his prospective undertaker and burial florist for all Archer knew.
Krell had barely said ten words since seeing Archer again in the combat chamber, and four of them had not been translatable. Archer knew he couldn’t hope to reason with the soldier, but he also knew that even if he somehow managed to prevail, he couldn’t find it in himself to kill him, either. I sure as hell can’t afford to let you know that, though, he thought as he regarded his opponent in much the same way he might a Cape buffalo getting ready to make a lethal charge.
Kolos’s accelerated training had been helpful enough to allow Archer to survive this long without injury, though mostly he had been defending himself rather than striking any blows of his own. As Kolos had explained and demonstrated various techniques for handling a bat’leth, Archer began to understand that some of the principles were not significantly different from certain types of terrestrial sword fighting, blended with a bit of quarterstaff or b stick combat. Kolos had also provided some guidance in the use of the bat’leth’s secondary blades and their multiple serrations; they were used mostly to trap the points of an opponent’s weapon. Executed properly, such a trapping maneuver could not only effectively block an otherwise lethal blow, it might also disarm a foe with little more than a simple twist and a yank.
With a roar, Krell attacked again, pulling Archer’s focus into laser sharpness. The Klingon’s blade swung around in an arc, coming up from below, the tip whistling as it cleaved the air; Archer could tell the move was meant to chop his hands out from under the handgrip. Feeling a stalagmite at his back, he couldn’t duck to the side, so he moved his own blade to counter, swiveling his bat’leth from an upward-curving angle to a down-turned position.
Krell’s blow and Archer’s parry brought the two blades together hard enough to strike sparks, and Archer felt the shock reverberate through his wrists as the Klingon’s momentum and greater weight rammed his blade upward. Pain lanced his arms, and as Krell attacked again, Archer scrabbled to retreat behind another stalagmite. He ducked, barely evading a horizontal slice that had come uncomfortably close to cleanly decapitating him; instead of Archer losing his head, one of the upturned rocky deposits lost its conical end, shattering into a gray-brown powder as the baakonite blade tore through it with all the force of Krell’s offended sense of honor.
As Krell’s arms followed through with the blow, Archer charged from his defensive crouch, stabbing the pointed end of his weapon toward his foe’s midsection. Krell sidestepped in time to avoid being impaled right through the gut, but not quickly enough to prevent Archer’s blade from inflicting a superficial flesh wound that announced its presence with a small spray of lavender Klingon blood.
Even as Archer continued moving forward, his boot caught on something he couldn’t see on the uneven floor, and he suddenly felt himself falling. In the quarter second or so it took his momentum to carry him to the cavern’s rocky floor, he willed his arms to move the bat’leth out from in front of him.
NotgonnastabmyselftodeathbeforeKrelldoes, he thought, his mind racing.
Even as he rolled to the side in an effort to get his feet back under him, he felt a sharp pain in his mid-chest area, then felt the breath whoosh from his lungs as agony struck him in earnest. He realized in a horrified rush that Krell’s bat’leth had pierced him at the ribs, and even now, before the red blood had dripped from its tip, Krell was standing above him, a look of rage commingled with triumph flushing his hard features.
Through his pain, Archer wanted to laugh, as in an instant he realized that he was about to die trying to prevent his world and its allies from going to war against the wrong enemy, all while the Romulans were setting Earth up for conquest. Given how little his sacrifice was evidently destined to mean, he hoped that he’d at least leave a good-looking corpse behind for posterity’s sake.
Krell brought the bat’leth down in a lethal arc straight toward Archer’s face, and the captain knew that his final wish would not be granted.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Monday, July 21, 2155
Taugus III
TRIP WAS SURPRISED at how easy entering the dissident complex had turned out to be once he and Terix had located a small, concealed emergency entrance, an aperture that must have been intended to allow easy ingress during times of bad weather outside.
And he was further surprised by just how few of the suspected Ejhoi Ormiin dissidents he and Terix had actually found within the indeterminate-sized complex once they’d managed to get inside it. The two middle-aged Romulan men they’d encountered in what looked to be an informal wardroom were thoroughly nonplussed at the sudden arrival of the two armed strangers who had just appeared in their midst, as did the somewhat younger-looking Romulan woman who had been sharing a meal with them.
“By the authority of the battle fleet of the Romulan Star Empire, you are all under arrest,” Terix said. He brandished his disruptor pistol, keeping it leveled more or less at all three dissidents, all of whom appeared to be academics rather than soldiers. Raising their hands in barely contained shock and fear, none of these people looked eager to rise from the small round lunch table around which they sat, or to do anything else that might provoke their captors.
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“This can’t be everybody,” Terix said curtly, leaning toward Trip.
Trip couldn’t help but agree. Holstering his own weapon, he pulled out the bulky Romulan military scanning device he’d kept strapped to the belt on his simple, black paramilitary outfit, which was a close match for Terix’s mission garb.
After consulting the palm-sized display screen for a few moments, Trip said, “There’s still no sign of life in this building other than these people and the two of us. Maybe the interference we picked up in the planet’s ionosphere is affecting this thing.” He shook the scanner as though something broken might have rattled inside it.
“All the way down here on the surface?” Terix shook his head. “That would seem to be a rather convenient technical failure.”
Already weary of the centurion’s thinly veiled accusations, Trip found it difficult to make his reply sound entirely civil. “I’m not just making this stuff up, you know.”
“Of course you’re not,” Terix said in an ironic tone.
Trip counted slowly to five, trying to calm himself as he turned his attention back to his scanner’s readout display. “We have to accept the possibility that Ch’uihv managed to get off the planet before we even got here. Maybe that flash of hull metal I detected on our way in was our man making his escape.”
Terix nodded. “Perhaps. But it is equally likely that he has somehow hidden himself here. And that he is using his compatriots as a diversion.”
Another man’s voice spoke up from directly behind Trip at that moment, making him start reflexively. It was a voice he recognized instantly.
“My associates are no diversion. I prefer to think of them more as bait for a trap.”
Trip turned toward the man who had just spoken, and found that Terix was already facing him. The centurion was crouching as though he had been about to launch a “spray-and-pray” pattern of fire from his disruptor pistol, but had thought better of it at the last instant—and for very solid reasons.
“Ch’uihv,” the centurion said through clenched teeth as he raised the barrel of his weapon so that it pointed harmlessly toward the upper curve of the domed ceiling.
Captain Sopek, Trip thought, mentally correcting Terix. Well, at least we won’t have to waste any more precious time searching for you, will we?
“Jolan’tru, Centurion Terix,” the dissident leader said as he strode calmly forward from underneath the very same open doorway arch through which Trip and Terix had entered the room. The man was obviously emboldened by the half-dozen or so armed, paramilitary-garbed young Romulans who had already deployed themselves very swiftly and efficiently around the ten-meter-wide wardroom. Ugly gray pistols were raised and ready, and Trip recalled having seen nearly identical weapons on two earlier occasions. The first was his brief captivity in the Ejhoi Ormiin compound on Rator II; the second encounter had occurred in the lab where just such a weapon had been used to assassinate Doctor Ehrehin.
The weapons Trip faced now were no doubt every bit as dangerous as those he remembered, and looked as hostile as the expressions on the pale faces of the men and women who wielded them. Trip harbored little doubt that a single word from Ch’uihv/Sopek, or one false move by either himself or Terix, would suffice to envelop the room immediately in a lethal cat’s cradle of crisscrossing disruptor beams.
Despite the death wish that Terix had seemed to exhibit behind the pilot’s console, the centurion proved himself eminently more sensible here by allowing the weapon in his hand to clatter to the floor tiles. He had even taken a moment to click a small switch on the disruptor’s handle, engaging what Trip assumed was a safety catch, a moment before releasing the weapon and kicking it toward their captors.
A single harsh monosyllable from one of the armed dissidents, punctuated by an aggressive gesture with the disruptor pistol in his hand, persuaded Trip to follow Terix’s lead; though he found no safety catch on his own weapon after he slowly unholstered it—he frankly doubted that Terix had allowed him to take a charged and functional weapon in the first place—he obediently dropped the heavy pistol to the floor, then gently tossed his scanning device after it.
Two of Ch’uihv’s other troopers knelt briefly to retrieve the discarded gear, which they stowed on the Romulan equivalent of Sam Browne belts.
Ch’uihv came to a stop directly between Trip and Terix. Turning toward Trip, he said, “And Jolan’tru to you as well, Mister Cunaehr. Or should I address you more properly as Commander Charles Tucker, late of the United Earth Starship Enterprise?”
Ah, shit, Trip thought. I really, really hate when this happens. He found himself reflecting, absurdly, that the only moderately enjoyable aspect of this situation was the thoroughly stunned expression on Terix’s vulpine face, which had flushed almost to the color of split-pea soup. After all, the centurion had suspected him of being a spy from Vulcan, not from Earth.
“Commander Tucker,” Ch’uihv said, evidently quite enamored with the sound of his own voice. “Risen from the ranks of the hallowed dead. And now, tragically, fated to return there all too soon.” The dissident leader’s smirk looked distinctly unpleasant on a face that appeared so outwardly Vulcan otherwise.
Trip felt shock at the sudden revelation of his real identity before Terix, but not all that much surprise. After all, a man like Ch’uihv had to have a talent for connecting the dots, or else he would have fallen into the hands of someone like Terix long ago, on one side of the Romulan border or the other. Besides, if Trip knew about the Romulan dissident leader’s other life as a Vulcan, why shouldn’t Ch’uihv be able to find whatever skeletons lurked in his closet?
“Ch’uihv of Saith,” Trip said, feeling a great deal calmer than he’d expected to feel on the occasions when he had tried to imagine something like his present circumstances. “Or maybe I ought to call you Sopek of Vulcan instead.”
Ch’uihv/Sopek raised an eyebrow, a gesture that instantly transformed his appearance from that of a treacherous, scheming Romulan outlaw to that of the logical, dignified Vulcan starship captain who had commanded the Vulcan vessel Ni’Var some four years earlier. Trip wondered which of the two identities was genuine, if either one was.
“Well done, Commander,” the dissident said. After a brief pause, he added, “I never got the opportunity to thank you for covering my escape when Valdore’s forces raided our facility on Rator II.”
“Well, I might be willing to call it even,” Trip said, his jaw clenching involuntarily as he remembered the bloody chaos that had accompanied his efforts to protect Ehrehin and evade both the Ejhoi Ormiin and Admiral Valdore’s forces. “But only if you’ll agree to let me reward you properly for what you did to Tinh Hoc Phuong.”
Ch’uihv made a brief but infuriating show of pretending not to remember the man he had callously transformed into a pile of smoldering ash on Rator II. At length, he said, “Ah, the man who called himself Terha of Talvath. Your fellow Terran spy who claimed to be a part of the Ejhoi Ormiin’s Devoras cell.”
Trip noticed the goggle-eyed stares of the three academics; Sopek’s revelation had left them all looking as stupefied by this as third-graders poring over a textbook on eleven-dimensional tensor calculus.
Though he knew it was worse than useless, Trip couldn’t keep the timbre of accusation and righteous anger out of his voice. “You had him captured, Sopek. He was in no position to hurt you. But you murdered him in cold blood.”
Ch’uihv scowled, shaking his head in an exaggerated display of mock disappointment. “Mister Tucker, I know that engineering has long been your primary area of expertise. Nevertheless, I thought you’d been in the espionage business long enough to understand the occasional need for thoroughgoing security purges in any clandestine organization. I’m certain your friend would have agreed that such things are an unavoidable hazard of our trade.”
Although Ch’uihv’s lips continued to move, Trip suddenly found that all he could hear was an intense whistling sound. An instant later, the dissident leader in
terrupted his own monologue, grimacing in apparent agony as he placed his fists over his sharply pointed ears. The armed troopers looked to be suffering every bit as badly; at least one of them dropped his weapon onto the floor.
Moving almost faster than Trip’s eyes could follow, Terix leaped on the nearest of the distracted guards, taking her down in a bone-crushing tackle that sent her weapon flying.
Trip wasted no time diving toward the floor. “Get down!” he yelled toward the owl-eyed academics, none of whom had yet taken the simple expedient of ducking beneath their table for cover.
Ch’uihv/Sopek had already collapsed to his knees, as had fully half his armed people. Of the remaining three, one was unconscious thanks to Terix’s quick action. Trip landed a hard right cross on another’s jaw before the disoriented man could get his weapon pointed in the right direction.
Terix blew a large, charred hole right through the chest of the last of them even as Trip grabbed up one of the fallen guards’ weapons.
“Stay right where you are!” Terix shouted, holding one of the troopers’ pistols before him in a double-handed combat grip.
It took Trip a startled moment to understand that the centurion was addressing him, rather than Ch’uihv or any of his people. A heartbeat or two later, Trip realized that he and Terix were the only people in the room who were still conscious.
“What the hell happened?” Trip asked. It had all started with that peculiar, transient whistling sound….
“Put the weapon down,” Terix said. His weapon’s muzzle was pointed straight at Trip’s head in a gesture of unambiguous menace. Across a distance of maybe four meters, there was no way the centurion was going to miss if he were to open fire.
“Settle down, Terix,” Trip said as he made a careful show of allowing a weapon to fall from his hand for the second time today.
When Terix spoke again, his voice seemed to be unnaturally loud. “That man has my weapon.” Pausing, he gestured toward one of the unconscious troopers who lay on the floor nearby. “Lift it out of his belt. Slowly. Then drop it on the floor and kick it over here.”
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