“Is that what you want?” Ehrehin continued, haranguing their captors. “Or would you prefer that we all sit down like civilized people, so that I can properly satisfy your curiosity about my work?”

At first, Trip had thought that Ehrehin had stood up to Ch’uihv; then he suddenly realized that the old man had just done the exact opposite, though he clearly had little choice in the matter.

The pistol withdrew from Trip’s neck, and a pair of Ch’uihv’s men hauled him roughly to his feet, manacling his wrists behind his back without showing an excessive amount of gentleness.

Though he was grateful still to be alive, he knew that Ehrehin had just made an enormous mistake–and very likely the final one of his long career.

A trio of guards dragged Trip unceremoniously out of the hangar, into the now brightly illuminated corridor, and finally into a nearby conference room, which was equipped with a large table, a half‑dozen chairs, and several small desktop computer terminals.

Without exchanging any words with him–or so much as looking at him–the guards shoved Trip down into one of the chairs. He wasn’t sure whether the manacles that secured his wrists behind his back were making him more uncomfortable than the disruptor pistols that were now trained on him.

Scant moments after Trip’s entrance, the conference room door slid open to admit Ch’uihv and another pair of guards. The men, who were half carrying and half dragging Ehrehin between them, deposited their charge somewhat more gently into the seat beside the one Trip occupied.

Ch’uihv took the seat directly across the table from Trip and Ehrehin as the guards looked on vigilantly. The Ejhoi Ormiinleader turned one of the computer terminals so that it faced him. He quickly entered several commands, apparently activating both his own terminal and the one closest to Trip and Ehrehin.

“There is an electronic stylus attached to the terminal in front of you, Doctor,” Ch’uihv said, his intense gaze locked upon the elderly scientist. “You will use it to enter whatever formulae or diagrams my people will need to master in order to replicate your latest work on avaihh lli vastam.”

The elderly scientist sighed in resignation, though he didn’t seem quite able to pick up the stylus before him.

“Doctor. I thought I had made myself clear back in the hangar. Please do not force me to do to your assistant what I was forced to do to his associate, Terha.” To illustrate his point, he unholstered his weapon and set it down on the table before him, tantalizingly out of Trip’s reach.

He’s going to kill me anyway,Trip thought. Hell, he’ll probably give Ehrehin the very same treatment once he thinks he’s got what he needs from him. There’s just no trusting this bastard.

“Don’t do it,” Trip whispered, leaning toward the scientist. A large, rough hand shoved him hard against the back of his chair.

“I will be watching your every entry most attentively, Doctor,” Ch’uihv said.

You’re not the only one, pal,Trip thought, his engineering reflexes kicking in nearly as strongly as his instinct for self‑preservation.

Ehrehin looked at Trip, a deep sadness in his rheumy eyes. With obvious reluctance and a trembling hand, the old man took up the stylus, then began slowly sketching directly on the monitor screen on the tabletop in front of him.

Trip watched in growing fascination as a detailed technical diagram began to take shape on the screen–an image that Ch’uihv seemed to be studying intently on his own terminal. Trip hoped that before Ch’uihv finally killed him, he’d develop at least a partial understanding of this new technology that purportedly allowed star‑ships to reach warp seven.

Unfortunately, it was a technology that would soon be in the hands of a breakaway Romulan faction that was probably at least as dangerous to Earth and her allies as all the military power of the Romulan Star Empire itself.

Thirty‑One

Friday, February 21, 2155

Enterprise NX‑01

ARCHER LEANED FORWARD in his command chair, staring straight ahead at the screen. The long‑range scanners were showing him exactly what he wanted to see.

“You’re certainthey haven’t detected us?” he asked.

“They’ve shown no sign of it so far,” Reed said from his station to the captain’s right. “They apparently aren’t making any active proximity scans, and they’ve neither sent nor received any outside messages since we found them.”

Ten minutes earlier they had finally almost caught up with the transport ship–thanks to Shran’s continued use of the telepresence unit–only to discover that what they were chasing was not an Orion ship, as they had assumed, but rather a completely unfamiliar class of transport vessel, presumably one of Romulan design. The prevailing theory among the bridge crew was that the Romulans had picked up their Aenar cargo from the Orions somewhere outside of Romulan territory, and had then headed back toward their homeworld.

“Cocky bastards,” Archer said. “They think that because they’re in their own space, they won’t have to worry about being brought to book for their crimes.”

“They may well be correct,” T’Pol said. “While we appear to be the only other vessel in the vicinity, we should remain alert for other countermeasures the Romulans may have deployed nearby.”

“We’re already scanning for cloaked mines,” Reed said. Archer saw him shudder, and knew he must have been recalling the time he’d been impaled by a Romulan mine attached to Enterprise’s hull, just months into the lieutenant’s tenure aboard the ship. Reed very likely would have lost his life in that incident, had Archer not rescued him.

“There could be other Romulan weapons of which we are unaware,” T’Pol said.

“Are we sure that the Aenar are aboard that ship?” Archer asked.

T’Pol studied her scanner’s readings, the bluish light from its hooded display brightening the area around her eyes. “We are still too far away for our sensors to identify individuals, but I can confirm the presence of several dozen humanoid life signs, some of them Aenar and some unidentified.”

Archer sighed heavily, considering whether to tell Shran the news. Better to keep him in plain sight so he doesn’t try to use his own ship to ram the Romulans, or do something else equally stupid,he thought. He looked to Hoshi. “Call Shran up here to the bridge, Hoshi. Make sure he’s escorted. Unobtrusively.”

He turned back to face the forward viewscreen. “All right, people, we’ve planned this out, now let’s make sure we pull it off perfectly. Travis, make certain that we’re on top of them before they know it. Malcolm, transfer as much energy as you need to our ventral hull plating. And ready all weapons.”

He turned his chair toward the other side of the bridge. “Hoshi, be sure to keep that translation program running, just in case we need to use it. But we are notgoing to announce ourselves or give them time to find a way to hang onto the Aenar.”

He raised his voice so that everyone on the bridge could hear it clearly. “Everyone, stay on your toes. We get in, we get dirty, we get the Aenar out, and we head back home. No mistakes.”

He tapped the intercom button on his chair arm. “Ensign Moulton, are you ready with the transporter?”

“Yes, sir,”the young officer said crisply. “We’ve calibrated the transporter to retrieveonly live Aenar. Anything else will be left behind.”He could hear the excitement in her voice; a transporter specialist, she was one of the new crew members who had come aboard after the conclusion of the Xindi crisis.

“Excellent,” Archer said. He kept the com channel open, and leaned forward again.