Panting from his exertions, Trip suddenly heard noises coming from somewhere. The bridge deck, or this deck? he wondered as an adrenaline rush of fight-or-flight intensity sharpened his senses until he felt certain he was really alone in the narrow companionway—and quickly oriented himself. Noting that the escape pods were located near the back of the corridor, he began dragging Sopek toward one of them.
“Halt!”
The order came from a Romulan man who had appeared around a corner from the other direction in the corridor. Trip couldn’t tell whether or not the man was armed.
“Go to hell,” Trip said, firing his disruptor at the man. The bolt hit the bulkhead near his would-be assailant, and as the Romulan ducked out of the way, Trip let loose three more disruptor blasts as quickly as he could.
Working quickly, Trip yanked Sopek the rest of the way in a few steps, pulling him into one of the cramped escape pods with him. He smiled as he noted that the pod’s launch controls worked independently of the main ship’s systems, which stood to reason for something that was used only during times of shipboard emergency. Slamming his hand down on a control, he sealed the pod’s hatch, as well as the pod bay hatch beyond the escape pod’s hull. As the hatches closed, he thought he saw the Romulan man approaching from the end of the corridor. Trip didn’t even flinch, knowing that the man was too late to stop them now.
Working quickly, Trip entered the commands he thought would activate the pod’s ejection system, and saw, to his relief, that his assumptions—bolstered by the knowledge he’d gained about Romulan spaceship technology over the last few months—had proved to be correct.
All the onboard systems lit up as Trip felt the thrusters firing, the sudden acceleration shoving him against the wall of the pod as the little escape vehicle moved quickly away from the crippled bird-of-prey. Trip considered his options now. One pistol, one hostage, minimal impulse thrusters, and no powered hull-plating. He knew it was a meager list of assets, but it was better than what lay behind him.
Almost a minute passed before Trip felt a concussive wave bash into the hull of the pod, and the reinforced transparent aluminum viewport filled with a light so brilliant that he had to shield his eyes with his arm. The bird-of-prey had just self-destructed, right on schedule, instantly consigning everyone he’d left aboard her to the Romulan equivalent of hell.
Trip turned and rummaged around in a small supply box until he found some cables, which he used to bind Sopek. Using a trick Malcolm had taught him, he bound the man’s hands to his neck rather than behind his back; if Sopek woke up, any attempt he might make to untie himself would be entirely conspicuous. He also bound the man’s feet together at the ankles and knees, attaching one end of the cord to a nearby box of small tools. Let Sopek try to surprise me now, he thought, satisfied at his preparations.
Finally allowing himself a moment to relax, Trip looked down at the man, trying to ascertain which part, if any, of Sopek’s story might be true. Was he a Romulan who had infiltrated the Vulcan military structure? Or a Vulcan who led a Romulan paramilitary insurgency group? Or was he a free agent who was playing both ends against the middle for some other not-yet-revealed purpose?
Of course, the fact that Trip had brought Sopek along with him didn’t guarantee that he’d receive any forthright answers from the man. And he had more immediate problems, such as not knowing enough about what was happening in fairly close proximity to the escape pod’s thin skin. For all he knew, the Klingon ships Sopek had known were coming were still embroiled in a pitched battle against Enterprise. Or, Enterprise had won. Or, he thought, a wave of dread slowly cresting within him, she might have lost. He had never gained any degree of control over the psychic link that sometimes seemed to enable him to communicate with T’Pol, but he knew he couldn’t feel her now.
Don’t you go thinking that way, Charles Anthony Tucker the Third, he thought. After all, “Gracie” Tucker hadn’t raised him to be a defeatist. Or a nihilist. But she also didn’t raise you to shoot unarmed Romulans in the back, something deep in his mind said, something that felt like guilt. He pushed the thought aside, but something else his mother had told him as a child took its place.
She had read to him regularly at night before bedtime, often from books of fairy tales and fables. One particular fable came to him now, about a frog that carried a scorpion across a river. When they’d gotten halfway across, the scorpion stung the frog, poisoning him. As they slipped beneath the water, the frog asked the scorpion why he had stung him, knowing that they would both drown.
“Because it’s my nature,” the scorpion said. “You knew I was a scorpion when you picked me up.”
Was Sopek the scorpion and he the frog?
He cursed whatever had possessed him to agree to come to Romulus in the first place, the pride that had let him believe that he could stop these people. The Romulans were scorpions and vipers, and living beside them, hiding among them, he was becoming like them. He had not died from the poisonous sting—at least not yet—but knew that he had been poisoned all the same.
But instead of experiencing death, he had undergone a metamorphosis. And whatever he was developing into was not something he thought his mother would recognize, even if the master surgeons of Adigeon Prime were to bob his pointy ears and restore his original human appearance in every detail.
A light on the escape pod’s small, simple instrument panel began flashing green, the Romulan color of danger, and this was followed instantly by a shrill beeping. Trip turned away from Sopek and read the instruments, then peered out the narrow viewport to try to get a better sense of what was causing the proximity alarms to go off.
Dead ahead, far too close now for the maneuvering thrusters to miss, was a dark shape illuminated only by the escape pod’s external running lights. Despite the device’s slow tumble relative to the pod, and the fact that it was visible only as a silhouette, Trip recognized it immediately from his studies of Ehrehin’s files.
It was one of the many gravitic mines that the Romulan military had deployed throughout this region over the past several decades in their never-ending effort to discourage the Klingons.
And the escape pod was about to smack straight into the damned thing.
How do I keep getting myself into these situations? Trip asked himself, perhaps for the final time.
Then he closed his eyes and thought about T’Pol.
EPILOGUE TWO
Day Forty, Month of K’ri’Brax
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
THE DECURION FINISHED his report, snapping to attention the moment he finished speaking.
Valdore so loved when his subordinates did that, as if they were puppets who could speak only when he chose to permit it. “Khnai’ru rhissiuy,” he said, thanking the young man for his report. He dismissed the soldier by returning his salute, then leaned back in his chair, turning his head to favor Nijil with a broad smile.
“It’s all going according to my plan,” Valdore said. “The arrenhe’hwiua telecapture system is working flawlessly.” The assault on Isneih had been a brilliant success. The small settlement there had fallen quickly to the Vulcan vessels Valdore’s forces now controlled—ships that the Vulcan Defense Force had deployed in the system to protect Vulcan’s interests in the planet’s scientific outpost—and even now his soldiers were setting up a beachhead in the system, from which Valdore’s forces would mount their next wave of attacks against the so-called Coalition of Planets. The pangs of conscience he had felt in the wake of the deaths of so many on Coridan had faded, tucked away behind a barrier made of stuff as stern as the walls that the Vulcans built up around their emotions.
From a recess below the surface of his sherawood desk, he pulled out the bottle of carallun wine again. Luxuriating in the moment, he poured himself and Nijil two glasses of the amber liquor. Passing one to the scientist, he said simply, “Drink.”
Of late, something in Nijil’s manner had made Valdore feel ill at ease. He wasn’t certain w
hat it was precisely, and he had been unable to find any evidence that the brilliant scientist was anything but a loyal supporter who would rather cut his own throat with the green ehrie’urhillh glass from the carallun bottle than betray his master. But something still tickled the hairs at the back of the admiral’s neck.
Soon, he would create a level of comfort with Nijil in sharing a celebratory toast to Valdore’s successes. And one day, when I deem it most appropriate and necessary, you will drink, my ally, and I will not, Valdore thought. And then we shall see what secrets you are hiding.
“My only disappointment,” Valdore said, moving a sip of the sour liquor around in his mouth as he spoke, “is that we never succeeded in capturing control of either one of Starfleet’s NX-class starships.”
Nijil nodded gravely. “We still do not know precisely what happened to Columbia. She may well still be intact. If so, we will have other opportunities to determine whether she is more vulnerable to the arrenhe’hwiua than Enterprise proved to be.”
“When the fleet strikes in full against Sei’chi, we may yet learn Columbia’s fate,” Valdore said, smiling. He stood and walked over to the rounded window, outside of which the turrets and spires of the city speared the sapphire sky and framed the Apnex Sea beyond. “And we will no doubt soon make another run at Enterprise.”
The war he had just begun would be a glorious one for the Romulan Star Empire and for Praetor D’deridex. But he had been setting up his own plans as well as he moved the Praetor’s agenda forward, with no small amount of aid from one very well-placed and trustworthy agent in the Tal Shiar. An agent he felt he could trust as much as he trusted anyone other than himself, or perhaps Nijil, or even the late, lamented Centurion Terix.
When the time was right, and the Empire’s victory had become all but inevitable, he would finally make his move. T’Leikha, the First Consul who had once had him cast into one of the Praetor’s stinking dungeons, would pay for her crimes, as would the Senate that had ratified her decision.
And even D’deridex himself will tremble….
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WITH THEIR THIRD STARTrek: Enterprise literary outing, the authors would again like to recognize the contributions of the many who enriched the contents of these pages: Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who created Star Trek: Enterprise; uber-editor Margaret Clark, whose patience and enthusiasm kept us on track; Paula Block in CBS’s licensing department, for her keen eye and perspicacious observations; Mike’s wife, Jenny, and their sons, James and William, and Andy’s partner, Don, for both long-suffering patience and inspiration; the kind and indulgent folks at the Daily Market and Café, where much of Mike’s portions of this novel were written.
Harve Bennett, Jack B. Sowards, and Nicholas Meyer, who conceived and executed the Starfleet Academy Kobayashi Maru training test whose prehistory we have revealed in these pages; illustrator David Neilsen, whose 1983 conjectural designs and blueprints of the S.S. Kobayashi Maru inspired the descriptions of this novel’s eponymous neutronic fuel carrier; Ronald D. Moore, who christened two important warships, one Klingon (the Ya’Vang from DS9 “You Are Cordially Invited”) and one Romulan (the Terix from TNG “The Pegasus”), thereby supplying the names (and namesakes) of two characters who appear in these pages, and who also supplied the name (Qam-Chee) of the Klingon homeworld’s First City (DS9 “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places”).
David R. George III, whose 2003 novel Serpents Among the Ruins introduced one of the beverages in Admiral Valdore’s wine cellar on Romulus; David Mack, who unwittingly furnished us with an obscure Vulcan diplomat (Ambassador L’Nel), whom we stole from his 2005 Star Trek: Vanguard novel Harbinger; Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, for originating a Romulan unit of distance (the mat’drih, roughly analogous to the kilometer), which we stole from their 2006 Star Trek: Vanguard novel Summon the Thunder; Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, for creating the Vulcan V’Shar (ENT “The Forge”), supplying the original old Romulan name for the capital city of Romulus (in William Shatner’s Kirk novels), and (along with Manny Cotto) for shaping the canonical story arc that immediately precedes the time frame of Star Trek: Enterprise—The Good That Men Do and this book (ENT “Terra Prime” and “Demons”); Eric A. Stillwell, whose name became attached to a fictional Starfleet captain in the Enterprise series finale, a tradition that we have continued; Mike Burch of Expert Auto Repair, whose mechanical skills keep Andy’s own sturdy transport running and who graciously lent his name to Enterprise’s current chief engineer; actors Peter Miller and Frankie Darro, whose exploits in the Altair system in Forbidden Planet (1956) inspired the naming of Altair VI’s Darro-Miller settlement; S. D. Perry, whose novel Star Trek Section 31: Cloak anticipated Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens’ canonical revelations about Section 31’s distant past; Keith R. A. DeCandido and Susan Shwartz and Josepha Sherman, whose novels Articles of the Federation and Vulcan’s Heart enabled us to hide a historical Easter egg or three within these pages (as well as in The Good That Men Do); Keith DeCandido (again), for inspiring the name of a Klingon supernumerary (Qrad), as well as for insight into the Klingon calendar, both here and in Forged in Fire; Dr. Marc Okrand, whose seminal xenolin-guistic work The Klingon Dictionary (1992 edition) was an invaluable reference; the collected Romulan-related novels of Diane Duane (collected in 2006’s Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages), for guidance on Romulan culture, language, and naming customs; the online linguistic scholars who assembled the vast Rihannsu language database found at http://atrek.org/Dhivael/rihan/engto rihan.html, for furnishing various Romulan time and distance units, numerals, and word roots that helped us create several Romulan proper names. Wikipedia, Memory Alpha, and Memory Beta contributors everywhere, including the online codifiers of speculative Vulcan (and by extension Romulan) calendrical minutiae at Starbase 10; Franz Joseph, whose Star Fleet Technical Manual (1975) lent us the Vulcan outpost planet Trilan; Doug Drexler and Michael Okuda’s Ships of the Line hardcover (2006), which inspired certain events aboard Columbia, foreshadowed here and realized in detail in David Mack’s forthcoming Star Trek: Destiny trilogy; David Mack, for the extensive work he did on the aforementioned trilogy in creating the Columbia crew members, which allowed us to debut them in these pages, and for establishing the location of the Kobayashi Maru’s demise in his 2004 TNG novel, A Time to Heal; Geoffrey Mandel, for his Star Trek: Star Charts (2002), which kept us from getting lost in the galactic hinterlands many times; Michael and Denise Okuda, whose Star Trek Encyclopedia: A Reference Guide to the Future remains indispensable; Connor Trinneer and Jolene Blaylock, for breathing life into Charles Anthony “Trip” Tucker III and T’Pol in front of the cameras; the legions of Trip and T’Pol fans out there eager to see what the fates (and the authors) have in store for Star Trek’s most star-crossed couple; Scott Bakula for leaping into not one, but two, of science fiction’s most compelling and conflicted heroic roles, and thus providing his excellent characterization of Captain Archer; and Gene Roddenberry (1920–1991), for having created the entire universe in which we now play in the first place.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
MICHAEL A. MARTIN’s solo short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He has also coauthored (with Andy Mangels) several Star Trek comics for Marvel and Wildstorm and numerous Star Trek novels and e-books, including Star Trek: Excelsior—Forged in Fire; Star Trek: Enterprise—The Good That Men Do; the USA Today bestseller Star Trek: Titan—Taking Wing; Star Trek: Titan—The Red King; the Sy Fy Genre Award–winning Worlds of Deep Space 9 Volume Two: Trill—Unjoined; Star Trek: Enterprise—Last Full Measure; The Lost Era 2298: The Sundered; Deep Space 9 Mission: Gamma Book Three—Cathedral; Star Trek: The Next Generation—Section 31—Rogue; Starfleet Corps of Engineers #30 and #31 (“Ishtar Rising” Books 1 and 2, reprinted in Aftermath, the eighth volume of the S.C.E. paperback series); stories in the Prophecy and Change, Tales of the Dominion War, and Tales from the Captain’s Table anthologies; and three novels based on the Roswel
l television series. His work has also been published by Atlas Editions (in their Star Trek Universe subscription card series), Star Trek Monthly, Moonstone Books, Visible Ink Press, Grolier Books, The Oregonian, and Gareth Stevens, Inc., for whom he has penned several World Almanac Library of the States nonfiction books for young readers. He lives with his wife, Jenny, and their sons James and William in Portland, Oregon.
ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today bestselling author and coauthor of over a dozen novels—including Star Trek and Roswell books, and a story for Moonstone Books’ Tales of Zorro anthology—all cowritten with Michael A. Martin. Flying solo, he is the bestselling author of numerous nonfiction books, including Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Characters, and Animation on DVD: The Ultimate Guide, as well as a significant number of entries for The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes and its companion volume, The Supervillain Book: The Evil Side of Comics and Hollywood. His forthcoming books include Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation and The Wonder Woman Companion.
In addition to his publishing work, Andy has produced, directed, and scripted documentaries and provided award-winning Special Features for over forty fan-favorite DVD box set releases, ranging from such live-action favorites as Ark II, Space Academy, and The Secrets of Isis to animated fare such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The Archies, Flash Gordon, and Dungeons & Dragons.
A member of the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, Andy has written licensed material based on properties from numerous film studios and Microsoft. Over the past two decades, his comic-book work has been published by DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Dark Horse, Image, Innovation, and many others. He was the editor of the award-winning Gay Comics anthology for eight years. Andy has also written hundreds of articles for entertainment and lifestyle magazines and newspapers in the United States, England, and Italy. Writing as “Dru Sullivan,” Andy penned the exploits of “Miss Adventure, the Gayest American Hero,” for the late, lamented Weekly World News.
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