“Small galaxy, isn’t it?” Trip said, not quite suppressing a small but determined grin.
“Sub-Commander T’Pol,” Sopek/Ch’uihv said, nodding in her direction.
“Commander,” she corrected.
The man nodded. “Ah. I’m pleased to see that you’ve prospered. It would be a pity were you to be less fortunate with regard to the ‘long life’ part of the traditional Vulcan greeting, however.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Malcolm, brandishing his weapon.
“Do you understand what the klaxon you’re hearing signifies?” After a pause, Sopek said, “It’s our automated intruder containment system.”
“Let me guess,” Trip said. “You’re going to blow up the whole building.”
Sopek nodded. “You have very little time.”
T’Pol brandished her weapon. “You’re coming with us, Captain. Your presence here raises a number of questions for which I require answers. I need to determine whether you are acting here at the behest of the V’Shar, or in pursuit of some other agenda.”
Sopek nodded, his face now a stony mask of dignified Vulcan equanimity. “Your curiosity is certainly understandable,” he said as he rose to his feet.
Trip gestured toward the unconscious centurion. “We need to take this man into custody, too.” A few moments later, he and Malcolm hoisted the surprisingly heavy Romulan soldier in a modified fireman’s carry while T’Pol covered the three of them with her phase pistol.
“What about the other people?” Malcolm asked, tipping his head toward the table where the academics were seated. “We’re not going to just leave them here to die, are we?”
The question made Trip feel a slight twinge of guilt, but he suppressed it. After all, these people were allied with the craven killers who had murdered Ehrehin.
Turning his back on the academics as he shifted Terix’s dead weight, Trip said, “If they’re smart enough to poach a great man’s research, they ought to be smart enough to find their own ride out of here.”
“What about the stolen data?” Malcolm said.
“To hell with it,” Trip said. “With any luck, it’ll burn up when this place goes boom.” Thoughts of all the harm the missing data might cause in the wrong hands expunged his remaining guilt over his decision not to extract anyone other than Sopek, Terix, and his friends.
Yet another voice spoke up loudly then, originating from behind the wardroom’s small dining table, directly behind Trip.
“No!”
Though he was still burdened by half of Terix’s dead weight, Trip turned his head and shoulders toward the speaker, who turned out to be one of the three Romulan civilians whom he and Terix had surprised when they’d arrived. It was the woman—and she held a disruptor pistol that one of the Ejhoi Ormiin paramilitary people had evidently dropped earlier; Malcolm must have overlooked it when he’d been rounding up their scattered equipment.
Trip sighed. Yet again, an unfailingly lethal weapon was pointed more or less straight at his head. Only now, there was no guarantee that either Terix or Malcolm wouldn’t be killed right along with him should that weapon go off in the woman’s shaking two-handed grip. T’Pol—who still held her phase pistol at the ready—might be able to stun the Romulan woman, but probably not before the academic released an energy discharge that would almost surely kill somebody.
“Easy peasy, there,” Trip said to the woman. “Why don’t you put that down? Let’s talk about this, all right?”
“There’s no time to talk,” she said, keeping the weapon up and apparently ready. “Ch’uihv is our leader, and he must leave with us.”
“How much time do we have?” Trip said.
Ch’uihv/Sopek shrugged. “Perhaps enough for you to get back to your rescuers’ ship. If you leave now, unencumbered, that is. Put the centurion down. I promise you, we shall take extraordinarily good care of him.”
“He could be bluffing,” Malcolm said, still holding up at least half the weight of Terix’s unconscious form.
Maybe, Trip thought. But you gotta know when to fold ’em.
“You know, I’ve survived a whole lot of bad stuff since all this craziness got started,” Trip said. “But I’m not fool enough yet to think I can roll sixes whenever I need ’em. Put him down, Malcolm.”
Great, he thought. I don’t get to recover the missing data, which was the whole point of coming here in the first place. And on top of that, I’ve just lost the option of destroying it.
On the other hand, he just might survive long enough to make plans to do something about all of that. Which was better, he had to admit, than nothing.
“Cover us, T’Pol,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here while that’s still an option.”
After engaging the launch thrusters, T’Pol checked the sensors for any evidence of either outbound Ejhoi Ormiin vessels or incoming Romulan patrol ships; she could find no sign of either so far, though she knew that the planet’s problematic ionosphere might conceal a multitude of dangers, at least until the shuttlepod attained a high enough altitude to clear the atmosphere entirely. Even then, another ship could always hide itself by flying just beyond the limb of the planet itself.
Satisfied that the shuttlepod was now relatively safe, at least for the moment, she watched in silence as the planet’s surface continued its swift retreat until it became a vast aquamarine curve far below Shuttlepod Two’s ventral hull.
Several soundless, nearly concurrent explosions appeared like rapidly blooming orange flowers a few moments later, despite the dense cloud layer that covered them.
“So Sopek wasn’t bluffing after all,” Trip said as he stared out one of the windows on the shuttlepod’s starboard side, just to the rear of the cockpit.
“Vulcans never bluff,” T’Pol said. “I suppose the same might be said of other related species as well.”
“It’s good to see you again, Trip,” Lieutenant Reed said, turning his copilot’s seat to the side to face Trip. “Even if you do look like Old Scratch himself at the moment.” Turning back toward T’Pol with wide eyes, he added, “No offense meant, Commander.”
T’Pol shook her head. “None taken, Lieutenant.” She made a mental note to do some research on Earth’s religious mythologies before deciding whether or not Mister Reed had given her any reason to take offense. Of course, the fact that yet another human knew the secret of her people’s genetic relationship with the Romulans was of far greater importance than her ethnic pride.
Setting those matters aside, she decided she had to agree wholeheartedly with his underlying sentiment; it was indeed good to see Trip again. And although she regarded it as an unlikely possibility, she found herself hoping for an opportunity to tell him that herself, away from Reed. She wanted to reach out to Trip, to touch him outside the surreal confines of the telepathic link that had finally drawn them back together.
“Likewise,” Trip said.
“You don’t sound very happy,” Malcolm said. T’Pol was inclined to agree.
Out of the corner of her eye, T’Pol saw Trip shrug. “I just wish your timing had worked out a little better, that’s all,” he said.
T’Pol frowned at the patent illogic of that comment. She was certain that the Romulan, whom Trip had identified as Centurion Terix, would have killed Trip where he’d stood had she and Reed entered the room only a few seconds later.
Before she could press him on this point, Trip asked, “What are the chances of anything surviving those blasts?” He seemed to be addressing no one in particular as he continued studying the distant embers of the explosion, which were moving swiftly beyond the planet’s eastern limb owing to the combined motion of the shuttlepod and the planet.
“I’d tend to doubt it,” Reed said. “The explosives they were using must have had one hell of a yield to produce a flash intense enough to be this visible right through such a heavy cloud deck.”
“But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have hotfooted it out of there a
t the last second, just like we did,” Trip said, his tone growing increasingly sour. “Between this planet’s cloud layer, the weird local ionospheric effects, and the electromagnetic pulse those fireworks just put out, Sopek could have flown a small ship right past our sensors and we’d never even know it.
“And if that’s happened, then that warp-seven drive data his people stole is still in some pretty damn untrustworthy hands.”
“It might already have been too late to prevent that from happening even before we arrived, Commander,” T’Pol said as she laid in a course away from the planet and began powering up the main drive. She wondered silently whether Trip actually considered the hands of an aggressive and expansionist Romulan military to be significantly more trustworthy than those of the political radicals who at least nominally stood against them. After all, the enemy of one’s enemy could sometimes be one’s friend, as Surak’s adversary T’Karik had pointed out on more than one occasion.
But such considerations could be complicated enormously by rogues such as Sopek—agents whose true loyalties were anything but clear.
“Don’t you think I know that?” Trip said, his evident anger creating a jarring counterpoint to his outwardly Vulcanoid appearance. “Data is the hardest thing of all to contain once it gets out. And your kicking down Sopek’s door didn’t make dealing with the thieves any easier, especially now that they’ve taken a Romulan centurion prisoner. They’ll take their time trying to wring everything they can out of him, just like they did with Ehrehin.”
Trip turned to the side, the planet’s reflected light surrounding him in a faintly bluish aura. Although she could see him only in profile, she noticed that his eyes had taken on a haunted, faraway cast that she could only wonder about. He seemed somehow disappointed, and perhaps a little angry as well. She wondered if his feelings stemmed from a mission that had ostensibly failed. Or whether he was disappointed by his apparent failure to extricate himself from a dangerous situation unassisted.
“I wish you two hadn’t come,” Trip said quietly, almost as though he had read her mind. As she watched him stare down at the slowly rotating alien world below, she considered their mental link again, and decided that he might indeed have picked up a cue from her on some subconscious level.
“You’re welcome, Commander,” Reed said sourly. “My apologies for misjudging the situation down there so badly. I should have realized you were just trying to lull this Terix fellow into a false sense of security when you let him get the drop on you.”
Malcolm’s mention of the Romulan’s name brought a shudder to T’Pol’s spine. Not because she recognized his name, but because she had recognized his face. She had seen him several days earlier, via the mind link, torturing Trip.
T’Pol watched in silence as Trip turned toward Reed, bristling. “At least I managed to get in there without setting off the goddamn self-destruct system.”
Reed seemed to be running out of patience. “Would you prefer we set you back down on the planet so you can have another go at this?”
Trip’s eyes widened as though he had suddenly become aware of just how ridiculous he sounded. Then he shook his head and chuckled. “Of course not, Malcolm.” He paused, apparently gathering his thoughts. “On the other hand, Terix and I left a scoutship down on the planet only a few klicks from Sopek’s base, just a short ways from the spot where you two parked the shuttlepod. If that ship is still intact, I can’t risk leaving it down there. It’ll be easy pickings for any Ejhoi Ormiin who might happen by.”
Though T’Pol desperately wanted to get the shuttlepod back to the relative safety of Coalition space as quickly as possible—and with Trip aboard it—she knew that she couldn’t dispute his logic.
An alarm sounded on one of the sensor consoles, persisted for perhaps two seconds, and then stopped by itself.
“What is it?” Trip said as he approached the front of the cockpit.
T’Pol studied the readout and frowned. For a moment, something that strongly resembled the profile of a large vessel had appeared. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished.
“Nothing, evidently,” she said, shaking her head. “A sensor ghost, perhaps. Or our reflection bouncing off the planet’s ionosphere.”
“Looks like it’s gone, whatever it was,” Reed said, facing forward again in order to study his own console. “There’s still no trail to follow, in any case.”
“I will take us back down,” T’Pol said, trying not to show how much the brief sensor apparition had rattled her. “Once the conflagration on the surface dies down somewhat.”
“Thanks,” Trip said, his expression grim.
Reed turned back toward Trip. “If I may say so, Commander, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody look quite this unhappy after receiving such a textbook hairbreadth rescue.”
Trip allowed himself the luxury of a small smile. “I suppose I made my peace with dying with my boots on months ago. Just as long as the cause is a good one. And I can’t think of a better cause right now than keeping the secret of sustained high-warp travel out of Romulan hands. Valdore’s or Sopek’s.”
“Too bad we weren’t able to get our own hands on a complete set of that data,” Reed said. “Imagine what it might do for Starfleet’s warp-seven program.”
T’Pol watched as Trip nodded, his eyes once again growing distant. “Captain Stillwell’s wet dream,” he said, puzzlingly. “But that’s moot for the moment, Malcolm. Hell, it might have been better for everybody if we’d decided to just shoot it out down there.”
T’Pol was having trouble believing what she was hearing. “At least one of us would almost certainly have been killed,” she said, frowning.
“But not all of us,” Trip said. Though his gaze was cold, his expression was otherwise as unreadable as that of a Kolinahr-disciplined Vulcan. “It would have taken only one of us to make sure that the stolen data never got off the planet.”
“But the only way to do that,” Reed said, clearly aghast, “would be to have somebody stay behind with the data until the explosives detonated.”
Trip nodded. “Like I said, that idea looks a lot less scary than you’d think to somebody who’s already dead.”
“But you’re not dead, Trip,” T’Pol said, convinced that she was largely responsible for that simple fact.
His cold eyes began to blaze with a fire that reminded her of the savage, destructive historical epoch that preceded Surak’s golden age of logic and intellectual discipline on Vulcan.
“No, T’Pol. I’m not dead. But I am all the way back to square one in terms of my overall objective, aren’t I? So I hope you’ll excuse me if I’m not overflowing with gratitude for your timely entrance, okay? I’m a little too busy at the moment trying to figure out what I’m going to tell Admiral Valdore about this little setback. If I’m really lucky, he might just assume the worst and have me summarily executed.”
“Then why don’t you simply come back with us?” T’Pol said almost before she realized that the words were leaving her mouth.
“Thanks for the offer,” Trip said, his voice more gentle. “But I’ve been officially declared dead, remember? We’d have to undo that somehow, along with a whole hell of a lot of expensive Adigeon Prime plastic surgery. I’d like to have a little more to show for all of that before I decide to pull the rip cord on this warp-seven-drive business.”
“Staying in Romulan space is a pretty risky proposition, Commander,” Reed said.
“Leaving strikes me as even riskier, under the circumstances,” Trip said, shaking his head. He turned to face T’Pol directly. “I’m sorry, T’Pol. The stakes are just too high right now for me to up and leave. I have to find a way to salvage whatever’s left of my mission here.” Then he turned back to stare again in silence at the cloud-streaked world below.
T’Pol felt a parsec-wide gulf open up between them. She had saved Trip’s life. She might even have prevented the Romulan military or the dissidents who opposed it from capturing him an
d subjecting him to tortures like those she’d glimpsed through the mind link.
But Trip’s sudden remoteness told her more eloquently than words that none of that really mattered to him at the moment. For the first time, she wondered if her rescue had inadvertently prevented him from executing some crucial contingency plan, thus closing some window of opportunity that might never open up again. And she discovered she felt extremely reticent about asking him whether or not this was so.
At last she began to understand the true enormity of her obsessive insistence on coming out here to Romulan space, as well as the ultimate futility of it. However anyone might attempt to excuse her actions—she could easily imagine an advocate at her upcoming court-martial citing her emotional vulnerability owing to residual trellium-D damage and the recent death of baby Elizabeth—she now understood in a deep and visceral way that she couldn’t run from their possibly ruinous larger consequences.
She understood now that she had done a good deal more than merely damage her relationship with her captain and friend, Jonathan Archer, to say nothing of having allowed Malcolm Reed to do the very same thing; she had also grievously damaged whatever might have remained of the intimate bond she’d forged with Charles Tucker—all because she had believed it necessary to save his life at all costs.
A bottomless abyss of pure, unalloyed shame opened within her. Perhaps I actually disrupted Trip’s mission. A mission that was the very reason he risked suffering a second, more permanent death inside the Romulan Empire in the first place.
To her horror, she realized that her illogical, emotional actions might have compromised the safety of both of their homeworlds.
Not to mention that of the entire Coalition of Planets.
THIRTY
Monday, July 21, 2155
Qam-Chee, the First City, Qo’noS
PHLOX MADE A STUDIOUS ATTEMPT not to count exactly how many armed Klingons had crowded into the medical treatment chamber. Though the warriors had to a man either ignored or failed to understand his polite requests that they stand outside the mobile sterile surgical field he had set up, he did his best not to appear intimidated. In fact, he was far more appalled than intimidated by the casual disregard these people seemed to have for even the most elementary surgical protocol.
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