Even as the life‑support system gasped and died, Trip could feel a qualitative change in the vibration rising from the deck plating beneath him into his thick‑soled boots.

The scout ship’s warp drive was now receiving considerably more power, and the weakly glowing console display confirmed it. Warp five point three, and still not quite redlining,Trip thought, barely succeeding in restraining himself from letting out a jubilant warwhoop–at least until afterhe learned a little bit more about their pursuer’s maximum speed.

To his pleasant surprise, Valdore’s ship was no longer gaining on them. It wasn’t falling behind either, but the purloined scout ship didn’t appear to be in any danger of being overtaken now, at least not during the next few minutes.

We’re still well out of weapons range. And we’ll stay that way as long as the ship tailing us doesn’t suddenly sprout an extra nacelle.

Of course, Trip knew that there was no way he could be certain that their pursuer wouldn’t find some method of sharply increasing its ownpower output, and thus its speed. But he was reasonably sure that her commander wouldn’t shut down her life‑support system to accomplish it.

Just as he was absolutely certain that Valdore wouldn’t give up the chase while any breath remained in his body, or ships in his command.

But a respite was a respite. Trip knew he now had the luxury of thinking about the future, such as it was, at least for a brief while. In addition to having Doctor Ehrehin in his custody, he also possessed information that was absolutely crucial to the defense of the Coalition of Planets in general, and to the welfare of Coridan Prime in particular. He had to get it to Starfleet as quickly as humanly possible. With a few deft movements of his gloved hands, he restored the components he had removed from the com system a little earlier.

Now which one of these babies fires up the transmitter?Trip thought as he studied his console, as well as all the smaller panels adjacent to it. Fortunately, within a few moments he was pretty sure he’d identified the appropriate controls.

He entered a command intended to open a Starfleet channel on the subspace bands. He waited for at least a minute.

Nothing.

The faintly glowing blue pictogram that had appeared in response to his commands told him either that he hadn’t, in fact, accessed the com system, or that the com system had sustained just enough damage during their escape under fire from Rator II as to be completely inoperable.

He had a slow, sinking feeling that the latter scenario was the correct one.

“Why are you running away from Admiral Valdore, instead of toward him?” Ehrehin asked in an accusatory tone. “And why were you tampering with the communications components just now? Who are you, really?”

Though he realized now that his imposture had finally fallen apart completely, at least in Ehrehin’s eyes, he nevertheless clung to it, unable to shake his initial impression of the old man as fragile and vulnerable–and therefore unable to handle the brutal truth that his beloved Cunaehr was, in fact, dead.

He turned from his console to face the scientist, doing his best to make direct eye contact through the slight distortion created by two helmet faceplates. “What are you talking about, Doctor Ehrehin? It’s me: Cunaehr.”

“But you can’treally be Cunaehr. I can distinctly recall having seen Cunaehr die during the mishap on Unroth III. That is, I can do so on those rare occasions when I canrecall things distinctly.”

Trip sighed, then regarded the old man in thoughtful silence. While Ehrehin still seemed terribly frail to him, the old man also exuded a dignified, determined resolve that commanded respect. It occurred to him that the real Cunaehr had been fortunate indeed to have had such a man as his mentor.

“How can you be so sure I’m not Cunaehr?” Trip said at length.

Ehrehin smiled. “I ran an analysis of some tissue traces that either you or your late associate Terha inadvertently left behind in my quarters. At first, I attributed the strange results I obtained to the rather unreliable state of mind in which the Ejhoi Ormiininterrogators had left me. But your actions since then have not only confirmed that you are not, in fact, Cunaehr, but also that you aren’t even a Romulan.

“What I’d like to know, my kaehhak‑Cunaehr,” Ehrehin continued, “is how an alien like yourself could ever have expected to pass himself off for very long as a genuine Romulan, especially so deep inside Romulan territory.”

Unless things go really south on me again,Trip thought, we won’t be anywhere near Romulan territory by this time tomorrow.

Trip decided then to answer the old man’s accusations and questions as honestly as he could, figuring that admitting the truth now could harm him very little at this point. After all, either he would make it back to Coalition space with Ehrehin, and they would both live to tell the tale, or else he’d end up dead–and then the Romulans would move decisively against an utterly unprepared Coridan Prime.

Nevertheless, he instinctively glanced down at the side of his suit to make certain his weapon was still there, even though the scientist posed no physical threat to him.

“All right, Doctor. My real name is…” Trip paused, distracted. Besides the obvious lack of a functioning life‑support system, something else aboard the ship no longer felt quite right.

The deck plates. The vibration from the warp core had changed, and was continuing to change.

To his horror, Trip realized that it was fading steadily away.

He faced front, abruptly turning back toward the pilot’s console. It took only a fraction of a second for the status displays to confirm his worst fears.

Something had gone badly amiss with the little scout ship’s overtaxed engines, and she had consequently dropped out of warp.

And the vessel that pursued them was closing very rapidly.

Trip knew with the certainty of gravity that he had a scant handful of minutes to fix the problem, if he was to have a prayer of getting the old man out of Romulan space. After that, Ehrehin and his vast store of knowledge and expertise would fall back into Valdore’s hands. Trip knew that his own death would become reality rather than ruse very shortly thereafter.

And no one would remain alive to warn the Coridanites that the gates of whatever hell they might believe in were about to swing wide open.

Thirty‑Nine

Friday, February 21, 2155

Romulan Transport Vessel T’Lluadh

DECURION TAITH SAW A DIM but definite shape moving furtively toward him through the darkened passageway. With but a moment’s hesitation, he raised his disruptor and fired directly toward what was now clearly discernible as an armed, uniformed alien. He felt certain that he had never seen this species before, despite the creature’s superficial resemblance–it possessed a head, a torso, and one pair each of both arms and legs–to the overall shape of a male Romulan.

The initial shot apparently missed. Holding his weapon before him with both hands, Taith fired a second time, and the bright, sizzling beam struck the creature almost directly in its center of mass, forcing it backward as though it had been kicked by a wild hlaifrom the Chula wilderness. Wreathed in flames, the figure crumpled heavily onto the deck in a lumpen heap. Moving cautiously, Taith approached the fallen creature, hoping to examine it a bit more closely and make certain that he really had neutralized the threat it posed.

He cried out in anguish when he suddenly realized that the dead form that lay before him was not, in fact, the corpse of an alien interloper.