“Lieutenant Akeev,” he said, “is the self-destruct system operational?”

“It’s tied to the singularity containment field, sir,” Akeev said. “As long as it stays active…”

The containment field had been reinforced by the intruders, Vokar knew, with power being supplied to it through alternate relays. “Akeev, I want to find out where power is being routed to containment,” he said, “and sever it.”

“Yes, sir,” Akeev said. Although he sounded less than enthusiastic about the prospect of destroying Tomed,Vokar knew that the lieutenant would faithfully discharge the order assigned him.

Vokar sat down at the navigation console and reconfigured its panel, bringing up a control layout that would allow him to launch an examination of the ship’s power relays. Either he or Akeev would locate the flow of power to the containment field, and then Vokar would stop it. No matter what else happened, he would not permit the flagship of the Romulan Imperial Fleet to fall into the hands of the Federation—even if he had to destroy Tomed.

Main engineering spread out before Gravenor. Dominating the large space, two warp-power conduits reached high up from the deck, slanting diagonally from the center of the room out to the lateral bulkheads. Contrasting with the standard gray-green coloring favored by the Romulan Imperial Fleet, the conduits glowed the same vibrant blue as their counterparts on Starfleet vessels. Past the conduits, a transparent bulkhead stood tall and wide, containing a swirling mass of spectral light, ranging from the longer wavelengths of red to the shorter wavelengths of violet. Inside, Gravenor knew, the kaleidoscope of color marked the containment field that allowed the massive gravitational forces of an artificial quantum singularity to be harnessed as a power source, and that prevented the microscopic black hole from tearing apart both the ship and the space it occupied. Captain Harriman had sabotaged that containment field beyond repair. After the crew had abandoned ship, he had slowed the rate of its decay, but nothing could prevent it from failing completely; within a day, the quantum singularity would be loosed, endangering everything in its proximity.

Gravenor walked toward the warp conduits, before which sat a large master console, more than two meters wide and twice as long. On its surface, cutaway views of Tomeddetailed the layouts of major systems throughout the ship. She found the system she needed, saw the location of its primary equipment in relation to main engineering—in a separate room connecting to this one on the starboard side—and headed in that direction.

Though she expected no resistance, Gravenor held her disruptor at the ready. She had encountered the three Romulan engineers while on her way here, and she’d cautiously followed them until she’d been able to attack, taking two of them out. As she had headed to main engineering for the second time, Captain Harriman had contacted her to let her know that the third engineer had also been removed as a threat. That left three of Tomed’s crew with whom to contend, but a quick sensor scan had shown none of them to be in or near main engineering.

Gravenor walked past an impressive display of state-of-the-art equipment and consoles. She would have expected nothing less of Admiral Vokar’s vessel, not only because of its place as the flagship of the Empire, but also because of Vokar’s hubris. He draped himself unapologetically in his arrogant belief in the superiority of the Romulan people.

For this mission, the covert capture of any primary vessel of the Imperial Fleet would have sufficed. But Captain Harriman had expected that sending Enterprise—the Federation flagship—to Space Station Algeron to deliver the hyperwarp drive specifications would compel the Romulans to send Tomedto accompany it. His prediction had been correct, and while any Romulan battle cruiser and its commander would have served the needs of the mission, Tomedand Admiral Vokar would do so better than any other vessel and officer could have, specifically because of Vokar’s position and his staunch Romulan chauvinism.

Gravenor arrived at a set of doors in the starboard bulkhead, near the aft end of main engineering. She read the Romulan lettering that confirmed the equipment housed beyond, as well as issued warnings about unauthorized personnel being forbidden to enter the secured area. Reaching up and operating a control pad, she attempted to open the doors. She tried several different command paths, without success, the controls buzzing beneath her touch.

Stepping back, Gravenor adjusted the setting on her disruptor, taking care to select a power level that would compromise the doors without causing an explosion. She could not risk damaging the equipment she sought—not if the mission was to succeed andthe members of the special ops team to survive. Of the two goals, though, the safe return to the Federation of Gravenor, Vaughn, and Harriman was secondary to their accomplishment of the mission.

Gravenor raised her disruptor and fired. The whine of the weapon echoed in the cavernous engineering section. Blue pulses of energy struck the doors midway up, causing an almost immediate glow. Gravenor continued to fire until an irregular hole, about a meter in diameter, had been opened in the doors.

With a quick glance around main engineering—a long-standing habit that had developed as a consequence of her work—Gravenor approached the breach. Carefully avoiding the edges of the newly created aperture—which would be extremely hot from the disruptor fire—she lifted one leg through, then ducked her head down and entered the room beyond the doors, pulling her other leg in after her. The temperature in the enclosed space—already warm due to Romulan environmental preferences—had been raised several degrees by the blasts that had penetrated the doors.

Gravenor moved quickly to the center of the small room, where a circular console rose from the deck. Atop it sat the piece of equipment she needed, a cloudy sphere mounted on a tapering metal base. The entire assemblage measured a meter tall and about half as wide. Knowing the amount of time it would take to cleanly uncouple the equipment connections, Gravenor set to work immediately.

She first examined the console, and saw that it had been laid out differently than what she had seen in her intelligence briefings. But she had studied not just the details of the few such panels Starfleet had gathered, but the theory of the equipment as well. With an urgency fortified by confidence, Gravenor attacked the console, working as quickly as she could to remove Tomed’s cloaking device.

The hiss of air flowing into the shuttle compartment slowed, and then stopped. Linavil raised her disruptor in one hand, and used her other to work the control pad beside the outsized doors of the compartment. The metallic sound of locks being released rang in the corridor, and the doors parted and slid open.

Linavil stood motionless, waiting and listening. Hearing nothing, she waved her empty hand out from the side of the doorway, attempting to draw the fire of the intruders, should any of them have survived the dropping of the shuttle compartment’s forcefield. She assumed that the intruders had operated the outer doors from one of the shuttles, and therefore had probably been unaffected when the admiral had deactivated the forcefield.

Eliciting no response, Linavil braced herself, then sped into the shuttle compartment. She rushed to the nearest vehicle, one of Tomed’s work pods, and took cover beside it. Dropping down low, she leaned out around the curved forward hull and peered about the landing stage. Past the cluster of work pods sat the ship’s four shuttles, arrayed in two lines of two against the backdrop of stars visible through the opened outer doors. The thin blue line of the forcefield, reactivated by Linavil before she’d restored the atmosphere to the compartment, bordered the wide opening, framing the starscape.