“Settle down, Shran,” Archer said. “Hear her out first before you run away.”

“Don’t push your luck, pinkskin,” Shran muttered.

T’Pol shook her head and adopted a long‑suffering expression that was clearly intended for both men. “Actually, I am proposing no such thing.” She turned back toward her console and silently entered another command.

An image appeared on the monitor screen at the center of her console, a depiction of a small, delicate mass of improvised‑looking wiring and circuitry. Archer recognized it immediately, and understood. The device made him think somberly of Trip.

Archer glanced at Shran, whose approving nod showed that he understood T’Pol’s plan as well.

The Vulcan rose from her chair and stood for a moment at crisp attention beside her station. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain,” she said, “I have some work to do elsewhere.”

Archer grinned. “Agreed.” She nodded once, turned on her heel, and disappeared into the turbolift.

“Perhaps you won’t need to offer the administrator that bribe after all,” Shran said, his azure face split by a fierce gird‑for‑battle smile.

Archer chuckled, then headed back for his command chair.

Before he could settle into it, he noticed the look of horror that had colonized the death‑white features of Theras, whose antennae both sagged toward his shoulders, displaying his obvious emotional distress.

“Theras, what’s wrong?” Archer said.

“I fear I have erred grievously in not informing you earlier about Shran’s link to Jhamel,” Theras said. He appeared to be on the ragged edge of tears. “In the name of Infinite Uzaveh, what have I done?”

“What have you done?” Archer said as he laid a hand gently on the albino’s slight shoulder. “Theras, you may have just saved the day for us all.”

Twenty‑Two

Thursday, February 20, 2155

Somewhere in Romulan space

AN ALARM ON THE HELM CONTROL of the Bransonsuddenly began blaring, causing Trip’s sleepily drifting attention to focus like a mining laser.

“We’ve got trouble!” he yelled to the aft part of the vessel, where Phuong had lain down to rest several hours earlier.

Even as the other agent ran forward, the communications light flashed. Trip tapped a control in the center of the instrument panel.

“Ullho hiera, mos ih ihir nviomn riud ih seiyya!”The voice was stern and angry. The translator implanted within Trip’s ear immediately translated the warning. “Unidentified vessel, prepare to be boarded or destroyed!”

Phuong put a finger to his lips and tapped the communicator off as he sat down hurriedly in the main pilot’s seat. “We don’t respond to them,” he said. His newly elevated eyebrows enhanced his look of surprise.

Trip’s eyes widened, both surprised and alarmed himself. “What do we do,then?”

Phuong began manipulating verniers and toggles and tapped the buttons at the helm. “We polarize the hull plating and run like hell. And find a way to shake them.”

Trip felt the ship accelerate, and strapped himself into the copilot’s chair with the seat’s safety harness. He tapped the console, activating a small screen, which displayed an image of a semi‑familiar ship. It was gracefully curved, with two struts on either side holding up the engine nacelles. The hull of the ship was greenish and had an intricate design painted on its ventral surface: the stylized image of a swooping predatory bird.

“It’s a Romulan warship,” Trip said, remembering the encounter that Enterprisehad had with two similar ships two years earlier. “I don’t know where the hell they came from.”

“They’re opening fire,” Phuong said, sliding his hand over the controls. A moment later, the Bransonshuddered from what must have been at least a glancing impact, and the two men braced themselves against the helm as the hull plating and the inertial dampers struggled to keep the ship intact and level.

Trip’s eyes were drawn to a red warp‑engine warning light that began flashing urgently as the demands of the hull‑polarization relays began redlining the warp core. Realizing he had only seconds to act, he swiftly entered a command into his console.

“What the hell are you doing?” Phuong said, looking at him as though he’d just lost his mind.

“Taking us out of warp. Slowing to impulse until the warp core cools down.”

“ Now?” Phuong was beside himself.

“It’s better than redlining the antimatter containment system and blowing ourselves to quarks,” Trip said in the calmest tones he could muster.

“It’s not all thatmuch better, Commander. Look at the rate they’re gaining.”

“We can’t outrun them,” Trip said. “And we can only dodge them for another few seconds. So unless you’ve got some kind of new souped‑up hull plating folded up in your back pocket, what the hell are we going to do?”

Phuong paused momentarily to study some readings, then tapped another control. An old‑style aviation joystick rose up from a recessed panel at the helm in front of Trip.

“I hope you can steer manually,” Phuong said, a grim smile on his lips.

Probably not as well as Travis can,Trip thought. He grabbed the stick. “Where are we going?”

Phuong tapped on the controls, and a viewscreen located just below the forward windows magnified the section of space directly in front of the ship. “There,” Phuong said, pointing to a field of space debris that lay ahead, faintly illuminated by the glow of the nearby orange star around which the debris field orbited. “That’s where we’ll lose them.”

It never failed. It often seemed to Trip that hot pursuits through space involved a nearby debris field or nebula or other such sensor‑obscuring cosmic feature far more frequently than dumb luck alone could account for. He wondered if the Romulan military staked such places out, watching and waiting the way the highway cops of previous centuries used to trap speeders, and the Bransonhad merely had the bad fortune–or her pilot and copilot had exhibited the poor judgment–to fly too close to such a place.

Keeping his eye on the image of the pursuing ship, Trip jammed the control stick hard to the right, then forward. The two blasts of energy the Romulans had fired at them shot off into space, missing them entirely.

“That’s something like four million kilometers away,” Trip said. “While we’re stuck at impulse, we aren’t going to get there in time to do us any good.”

Phuong got up from his seat and moved to some wall‑mounted controls. “We will if we go back to warp.”

Trip’s eyes widened. “Not a good idea while the core’s still this hot. It could be an hour or more before I can verify that the containment field won’t collapse under the stress of a fully operational warp field.”

“So let’s go to warp withouta fully operational warp field.”

Trip was beginning to see where Phuong was going, and he was a bit embarrassed that he hadn’t seen the solution first. “We’ll set up a warp burst, just enough to kick us forward a few million klicks, then drop back into normal space.”

“We can lose them in there,” Phuong said. “These engines are tough. They can take it.”

“As long as we don’t overshoot the mark,” Trip cautioned. “Or smash into any debris too big for the hull plating to handle.”

Phuong shrugged. “We don’t have time to be choosy, Commander. They’re powering up their weapons again. Hit it!”

Trip jammed the controls to the side again, spinning the ship away from another pair of energy blasts.

“You ready?” Phuong asked, returning to his chair.

“Do I have a choice?” Trip answered.

“They’re my engines, Commander, so maybe I ought to be the one to handle the warp burst. Get ready to do some fancy flying.”

“I’d rather you fly while I handle the engines, Tinh. But she’s your ship.”