T’Pol and Reed exchanged silent and uncomfortable looks.
“You guys are both behind him, right?” Trip asked. “He must have sent you here before he knew about the Klingon-Draylax thing.”
Reed paused to cough into his fist. “Not exactly. We sort of…came on our own. Without telling the captain.”
Jesus! Trip thought. Why am I not surprised?
Shaking his head, he said, “Well, you’ve just given me another good reason not to go back with you. I wouldn’t want to be standing anywhere near ground zero when you report to him.”
T’Pol raised an eyebrow. “Ground zero?”
“Wherever the captain happens to be when he sees us again,” Malcolm said.
“I have to stay behind for a much better reason: I’m still the only one close enough to the Romulan stardrive problem to prevent it from becoming an even bigger threat. Whether it’s the dissidents or the Romulan military who eventually get control of the stolen data and get the damned thing into production, when it happens it’ll make the Klingon Empire look about as dangerous as a basket of day-old kittens in comparison.”
T’Pol’s mouth formed a grim slash, but she said nothing further. She evidently knew when it was illogical to keep trying to change Trip’s mind, even if she didn’t find his mind to be a particularly logical one.
Trip wished he could gather her up in his arms right now, reassure her that everything was going to work out just fine in the end. But there was no time for that, and he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. Besides, she just might break his arm if he got physically demonstrative with her now, right in front of Malcolm.
“So you’re just going to hop into this thing and fly it right back to Romulus,” Malcolm said, gesturing toward the open hatchway of the Scoutship Drolae.
Trip nodded as he set one of his boots on the little vessel’s open threshold. “Yup. If I want to maintain my cover here, it’s really the only thing I can do.”
“Even though it’s probably even money that Admiral Valdore will decide that you’re actually a spy who gave his centurion watchdog the heave-ho sometime during the last mission. And then he’ll kill you.”
“I’ll just have to hope he accepts my word that I’m a loyal Romulan. The fact that I’m going to Romulus as opposed to running will have to mean something to him. Anyway, it’s our best hope of neutralizing that warp-seven drive. Or better yet, getting the equivalent of it to Captain Stillwell’s people.”
T’Pol held up her right hand, which she bifurcated into a familiar “V” gesture. Her stoic features looked as hard as the boulders that surrounded the shuttlepod behind her, though her eyes glistened with what appeared to be excess moisture.
“Live long and prosper,” she said.
Standing on the threshold of the Drolae’s hatchway, he faced her and returned the gesture. He tried to make himself repeat the traditional words of both greeting and farewell, but found he couldn’t get them through a throat that had suddenly gone as dry as Vulcan’s Forge.
“Ah, hell,” he said, lowering his hand.
He dropped back to the rocky ground, closing the meter or so that separated him from T’Pol in less than a second. Gathering the extremely surprised Vulcan woman in his arms, he kissed her, full on the lips. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a huge grin spreading across Malcolm’s face as the kiss lingered ever so slightly longer than even the laxest interpretation of Vulcan propriety might have excused.
His eyes widened in surprise when she squeezed him tight and returned the kiss with a passion that he doubted most Vulcans—and probably quite a few humans—could tolerate. The moment stretched as their very essences seemed to blend together, and he only became truly conscious again of the passage of time when he realized that she was squeezing him nearly tightly enough to crush his rib cage.
It took most of his strength to break off the kiss, and the rest to hold her at arm’s length with his hands on her shoulders. He suspected that another three to five seconds might remain before she either kissed him again, or got really angry with him for stirring up such intense emotions within her.
“I’m going to, um, take a walk,” Malcolm said. “Check on the shuttlepod. For, say, twenty minutes?”
“Thirty,” T’Pol said.
Trip watched in mild puzzlement as Malcolm abruptly turned on his heel and walked away, quickly disappearing over a nearby rise. T’Pol joined Trip in the scoutship’s open hatchway a heartbeat later, shoving him unceremoniously across the threshold and following him inside.
“Thirty minutes,” Trip said as she approached him closely and the hatch hissed shut behind her. “What do you suppose we can do—”
Her eyes aflame, she grabbed his shirt and tore it open. “Do not waste the time talking.”
Reed dutifully waited thirty full minutes before walking slowly back to the scoutship.
The Romulan vessel was still right where he’d left it, though neither Trip nor T’Pol were anywhere within view. The main hatch was closed.
At least the ship isn’t rocking, he thought, thankful for small mercies. But please, don’t let me have to knock on the door….
As though in response to his thoughts, the scoutship’s main hatch hissed open. T’Pol emerged, looking like a portrait of staid dignity, with every hair in place.
Trip followed her out of the craft a moment later. He was flushed, sweating, disheveled, and grinning like an idiot.
Reed returned the grin. This was the image of Trip he wanted to keep in his memory forever.
In case, he thought, he never manages to come in from the cold.
“Till next time, okay?” Trip said, gathering T’Pol into another embrace near the scoutship’s open hatch. Trip felt as torn about parting from her now as he had before this whole damned spy business had begun.
T’Pol nodded, apparently at an uncharacteristic loss for words.
He released her and turned back toward the hatch. Malcolm was standing in the way, and caught him in a quick bear hug.
“Keep safe, Commander,” the tactical officer said as he released Trip. “Or I’ll murder you. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough, Malcolm.” Trip grinned as he hopped back up into the open hatchway, alone this time. “And let’s all hope that fortune really does favor the foolish.”
Which covers all three of us, he thought as the hatch hissed closed, separating him from his friends.
Perhaps for the very last time.
THIRTY-TWO
Tuesday, July 22, 2155
Qam-Chee, the First City, Qo’noS
TO ARCHER it felt as though only hours had passed since he had last entered the Klingon High Council’s main assembly chamber, though he knew he had little grasp of time as it was reckoned on alien planets. Qo’noS, like countless other worlds, had its own calendar based upon the unique motions of the planet and its satellites, none of which corresponded neatly to United Earth Standard. Combined with his time in the arena and in the medical facility afterward, Archer wasn’t at all certain exactly what time it was when Krell began presenting the evidence that M’Rek had promised would exculpate the Klingon Empire over the attack on Draylax.
With his doctor husband looking annoyed nearby, Admiral Krell moved slowly but restlessly about the front of the otherwise nearly empty chamber, using a crutch tucked under his good arm to support his considerable weight. Although Krell once again had two arms—a hard cast held the reattached limb immobile against the admiral’s side—it was clear that his every movement was causing him excruciating pain. Though he had emerged from the duel in slightly better shape than Krell had, Archer felt grateful for the hard bench on which his weary weight rested at the moment; with the wound in his side still smarting even as it was healing under Phlox’s ministrations, he certainly wouldn’t want to have to stand for any length of time, despite his own restive desire to get back to work protecting Earth and the Coalition. This guy obviously doesn’t deal with enforced idleness any better than I do,
Archer thought, feeling a surge of sympathy for a kindred spirit as he watched Krell’s unconscious fidgeting.
Mounted on the wall beside Krell was a giant flat screen, not unlike the central viewer that adorned the forward wall of Enterprise’s bridge. Standing sentry at the door were several armed Klingon warriors, all of them evidently carrying enough rank and privilege to be allowed to witness the admiral’s presentation; because of the sensitive nature of Krell’s briefing, Chancellor M’Rek had insisted that Archer’s MACO escorts wait outside the chamber, and Archer had nearly had to fight another duel to convince the chancellor to overrule Krell’s initial refusal to allow Phlox to stay.
Using his one functional hand, Krell gestured toward the screen, which had shifted to an oblique overhead starboard view of the busy bridge of a Klingon battle cruiser. “As you can see, the captain and crew of the I.K.S. Kaj’Deel were taken completely unawares by the total loss of instrumentation control on their bridge,” the admiral said.
“Why is the system still generating an audiovisual record if all the other bridge systems have failed?” Archer asked. Beside him, Phlox moved his medical scanner over the captain’s shoulder area, and Archer turned his head just enough to see the doctor frowning at the results. Though Phlox’s reaction certainly piqued his curiosity, he had no time to pursue the matter at the moment.
“A secondary crew happened to be aboard the Kaj’Deel at the time, recording these images for instructional and training purposes,” Krell said. “Their equipment was not tied in to the ship’s systems.”
On the screen, Klingon personnel rushed around, shouting at one another in evident anger and frustration. Several even pounded their fists ineffectually at the consoles in front of them.
Then, in a scene inset within another, the Klingon battle cruiser’s bridge viewer changed images; instead of displaying a neutral star field, it now showed a dark emerald Romulan bird-of-prey. The orientation of the warship didn’t permit Archer to see its ventral underbelly, which the captain knew from experience usually carried a garish, predatory bird design; nevertheless, there could be no mistaking the horseshoe-crab configuration of this vessel as anything but Romulan.
The image on the screen-within-the-screen changed again, backing off to a longer view, even as the agitation of the Kaj’Deel’s crew ratcheted even higher. The audio quality of the recording played havoc with the language matrix of Archer’s translation device, enabling him to parse only every fourth or fifth word at best. But he was absolutely certain he understood why the Klingons on the screen were so excited.
The Kaj’Deel’s viewer showed a second Klingon vessel, this one apparently a fuel tanker, of the same class that the Klingons had used to carry deuterium fuel when Enterprise had aided the pirate-besieged deuterium miners of the settlement on Yeq three years ago.
“What are they saying?” Archer asked.
“They were shouting that most of the ship’s systems had gone offline,” Krell said. “Life support and communications were among the first to fall. The weapons systems were apparently still functioning at this point, though the weapons control interfaces were not. Therefore the Kaj’Deel could neither call out for help nor warn the freighter PeD NIHwI’ that their weapons systems had targeted the vessel, all on their own.”
“Was the freighter similarly affected?” Archer said, scowling. Phlox had begun scanning him again, and he waved his arm in mild annoyance to encourage the doctor to back away.
Behind him, M’Rek spoke up, apparently having grown irritated by Phlox’s kibitzing as well. “DenobuluSngan! Is it necessary for you to coddle your captain during a classified briefing?” A pair of Klingon soldiers began to advance toward Phlox, evidently taking a hint from the chancellor’s stern tone and Krell’s decision to pause his audiovisual presentation.
Phlox nodded toward the otherwise empty Council bench where the chancellor sat, and showed no sign of even having noticed the Klingon officers who now flanked him. “Chancellor M’Rek, despite his victory today, Captain Archer could still face grave complications because of the injuries he has sustained. I fear that his tertiary lung might have suffered an undetected laceration, and that he is developing a severe penile-craniotomological distension.”
What the hell? Archer bit his tongue slightly. Clearly Phlox was up to something, but he wasn’t about to inquire into it at the moment. Turning to M’Rek, he said, “My apologies, Chancellor. I will instruct my physician to be a bit less obtrusive. But he is right to point out that humans react differently to trauma than Klingons do.”
M’Rek scowled, but said nothing further, pointing instead toward the viewscreen on the wall. Archer saw the two soldiers back away from Phlox as Krell depressed a small switch on a hand-held device, allowing the images and sounds to begin playing again.
On the Kaj’Deel’s screen, blue-green weapons-blasts suddenly became visible, arcing forward toward the relatively defenseless fuel freighter. Moments later, the tanker exploded in a series of brilliant plasma bursts, sending an expanding cloud of metallic debris and superheated gases roiling into the void of space.
Krell paused the images again. “If it was not clear, Captain, that salvo came from the Kaj’Deel, not from the RomuluSngan ship. Those treacherous ghargh have found a means of turning our own weapons against us.” He turned back toward the screen, allowing the images to resume.
On the Klingon warship’s viewscreen, the Romulan vessel reappeared, and then all hell seemed to break loose. A loud gonging sound and random shouts rose to a frantic crescendo almost instantaneously as the picture begin to waver and shake. Archer surmised that whoever had been capturing the images was no longer entirely in control of his equipment, or of much of anything else.
Which, Archer realized, was exactly the case.
“As you can see, the artificial gravity of the Kaj’Deel was then compromised along with the rest of the basic life-support functions,” Krell said. The images on the screen gradually became a bit more coherent as whoever was holding the recorder seemed to acclimate himself or herself to the null-gravity environment. “The failure of the life-support systems eventually forced the crew into a barely conscious state.
“Any external sensor scan would have revealed that most of the crew were still alive, even days later,” Krell said.
“But there would be no way anyone outside could know that the crew was utterly unable to access or control any of the ship’s systems,” Archer said, a resigned frustration creeping into his voice. He willfully ignored Phlox, who had continued quietly scanning him from a meter or so away.
Krell nodded. “From this evidence, gleaned from the emergency log buoys of both ships and transmissions relayed directly from the recording equipment used on the Kaj’Deel, the Klingon Defense Force has concluded that the RomuluSngan ship somehow gained remote access to, and control over, not only the Kaj’Deel, but the PeD NIHwI’ as well.”
On the screen, Archer saw a familiar face float past the weightless camera’s eye for a moment. “Freeze that,” he shouted, mindful a millisecond later that shouting commands at Krell was probably poor protocol, to say the least.
After casting Archer a cold glare that could have made a snowman shiver, Krell stopped the recording. The face that Archer had recognized was still on display, nearly dead center, trapped in place like a fly in amber.
Archer turned toward M’Rek, though he gestured back toward the screen. “That is the Klingon woman we found in the wreckage at Draylax. The only survivor we came across.”
“The one who died so swiftly under the tender mercies of your chief medical officer?” Krell said. Archer turned his head in time to see him cast a withering stare directly at Phlox.
“The woman was too far gone for anyone to save, Admiral,” Archer said. “My doctor did everything possible for her, even if all he could do in the end was make her journey to the afterlife as smooth as possible. She fought death until the end, and died with honor, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
> “Her family will be pleased to hear that,” M’Rek said. “She will have a place in Sto-Vo-Kor among the honored dead. Of course, you will return her body to us immediately so that we may verify the honorable nature of her death.”
Archer nodded toward the chancellor. “Of course. Just as soon as I am back in touch with my ship.” He turned back toward Krell. “If she was aboard the Kaj’Deel, that means your hijacked battle cruiser was among the ships that attacked Draylax.”
Krell nodded as he allowed the images to resume, though with muted sound. “Yes. Before they died, the officers running the independent imaging equipment managed to transmit images of that attack to one of our remote outposts. The data then reached the Klingon High Command via the outpost’s subspace relay station.”
The images on the screen moved through a quick progression of shots of the Kaj’Deel’s unconscious bridge crew, views of exploding Draylaxian vessels, and NX-class starships taking heavy fire from Klingon battle cruisers, and finally ended just as a trio of heavily armed, undamaged Klingon battle cruisers opened fire. The final image was a flash of an apparently dead Klingon male, his hair floating around his head as he drifted upside down in the Kaj’Deel’s microgravity environment.
“Had we received word of it sooner,” Krell said, sounding wistful at the prospect of such wasteful, honorless killing, “we might have prevented entirely what happened at Draylax.”
“If it hadn’t been for that camera crew, you might not have gotten there at all,” Archer said. Addressing M’Rek, he said, “Chancellor, I believe it would be in everyone’s best interests if you were to authorize me to show these images to the representatives of the Coalition of Planets. It proves that the Romulans have developed some kind of remote-control weapon capable of seizing control of the space vessels of other species. If they take what Admiral Krell has just shown me at face value, they will have to absolve the Klingon Empire of any responsibility for what happened at Draylax—”
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