God, no. No, no, no.Trip’s heart plunged abruptly into a headlong freefall as he continued putting together stray bits and pieces of the farrago of highly agitated chatter that was coming through the console and echoing inside his suit’s helmet. A relatively small number of words and phrases predominated, and thanks to the translation gear the Adigeons had installed inside his ears, Trip heard them distinctly in what had to be at least a dozen human and nonhuman languages:
“–Coridan Prime–”
“–struck–”
“–Coridan Prime–”
“–projectile–”
“–Coridan Prime–”
“–impact–”
“–catastrophe–”
“–Coridan disaster zone–”
“–continents ablaze–”
“–dilithium fires–”
“–Coridan Prime–”
“–devastation–”
“–conflagration–”
“–Coridan Prime–”
“–billions dead–”
“–burning dilithium–”
“–Coridan Prime–”
All Trip could do was sit and imagine the ignition of the mother of all nuclear core meltdowns, touched off by a collision containing orders of magnitude more energy than the asteroid impact that killed off Earth’s dinosaurs. Coridan Prime’s rich veins of dilithium would have ignited as a result of the Romulan ship’s impact, a disaster accompanied by an enormously destructive, uncontrolled release of antimatter from the vessel’s engines.
Would the Romulans have sent a pilot on such a mission? Perhaps they’d been planning to use the kidnapped Aenar to remotely launch more such attacks against other worlds, using ever faster and harder‑to‑intercept ships. His stomach lurched at the thought.
Trip noticed belatedly that Ehrehin was standing beside his seat and leaning toward him, apparently trying to listen in via his own suit’s com system. “Tell me, Trip. What’s just happened?”
I wasn’t fast enough.That’s what’s just happened.
“The Romulans already launched their attack against Coridan Prime,” Trip said aloud, his throat suddenly feeling as dry as Vulcan’s Forge. “And it sounds like it turned out pretty much the way you’d expect. The Coridanites probably never stood a chance.”
I couldn’t protect them from the Romulans. Just like I couldn’t protect my sister Lizzie from the Xindi.
Trip felt Ehrehin’s gloved hand gently pressing against the padded shoulder of his environmental suit, in what Trip took to be a fatherly gesture of solace. He reached up and placed his own hand on the scientist’s arm.
It was only then that he noticed the length of cable that coiled away from his shoulder, leading down to the floor near Ehrehin’s seat to the not‑quite‑closed floor‑level compartment that housed the cockpit’s power relays.
“What the hell?” Trip tried to stand, but failed because of the unexpectedly hard downward shove the frail old man administered. Trip plopped awkwardly back down into his seat as Ehrehin scrambled away from him, retreating awkwardly toward the aft compartment. Trip struggled out of his chair again, laboriously regaining his feet as he tried to get hold of the cable that he only now realized was attached to the back of his own suit, rather than to Ehrehin’s.
But before his glove‑clumsy hands could get a solid grip on the cable, a brief flash of light sent blinding golden spots swimming before his eyes, and his muscles suddenly went rigid. Trip’s paralyzed body swayed, tipped, and finally crashed all the way down to the deck. He fell with a bone‑jarring impact onto his side, his body wedged ungracefully between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats.
The power relays,Trip thought woozily. He used the power relays to stun me.
Trip supposed it would have been worse for him had the old man opted to simply immolate him with some hidden disruptor pistol he easily could have picked up during the confusion of their hasty escape.
On the other hand, all he could do was look up helplessly through his faceplate as Ehrehin moved with evident caution back into view and began entering commands Trip couldn’t quite see into the pilot’s console. From the change in the vibrations in the deck beneath him, Trip could tell that the old man had dropped them out of warp.
Trip’s soul deflated as he struggled vainly to move a body that had essentially turned to stone. Soon Valdore’s ships would catch up to them, making his failure complete. Looks like somebody really oversold Spymaster Harris on how well I play with aliens.
Trip knew that his fate would soon be subject to the tender mercies of the Romulan military. And if Ehrehin could still be taken at face value on at least onesubject, Admiral Valdore wouldn’t be interested in taking him back to Romulus in irons. He fleetingly wished that Ehrehin hadjust burned him down with one of the Ejhoi Ormiin’s incendiary guns.
No. There’s no way I’m gonna let this happen.
Trip fought harder than ever to move his body. He was rewarded by a loud tapping sound that he quickly realized was one of his boots coming into sharp contact with the bottom of one of the cockpit chairs. He was elated to have achieved movement, albeit uncontrolled.
But Ehrehin must have noticed, because a second brief but crippling surge of current shot through the cable and into Trip’s body, penetrating his insulated suit as though it weren’t even there. As consciousness began to flee behind another salvo of bright, vision‑obscuring spots, his final coherent thoughts were of T’Pol, with whom he still shared an intimate if tenuous mind‑link. And whom he would never again see, nor bring any succor from the grief to which he had already subjected her.
He tumbled over the edge of oblivion wondering whether she would sense the distant echoes of his death.
Forty‑Seven
Monday, March 3, 2155
The Presidio, San Francisco
“IREGRET TO INFORM YOU ALL that my government cannot participate in the Coalition under the present circumstances.”
I’ve finally said it,Ambassador Lekev of Coridan thought as the chamber was engulfed by the surprised, collective hush of the assembled delegates and representatives from the four other prospective Coalition worlds. For good or ill, the deed has at last been done.
Suddenly it was Lekev’s turn to exhibit mute surprise when Ambassador Avaranthi sh’Rothress of Andoria–rather than the more senior Andorian Ambassador Thoris, or the ever‑argumentative Gral of Tellar–rose to disperse the shocked, murmur‑laced silence. Lekev expected that silence to devolve very quickly into a cacophonous gabble of raised and argumentative voices.
“Why would your government choose to withdraw now,of all times?” sh’Rothress said, her voice high‑pitched but resonant. “Your home planet has never been more sorely in need of the assistance and support of its allies than it is right now.”
A sudden outbreak of perspiration made Lekev’s simple, formfitting coverall bind and chafe against his skin, and he released a weary, resigned sigh behind his traditional Coridanite diplomatic mask. Lekev himself had made sh’Rothress’s present argument to Chancellor Kalev, as well as to the most influential members of her cabinet, but to no avail. Since he had failed to persuade his government’s intransigent senior leadership to alter their course, he’d been faced with a difficult choice: he had to resign, or else meekly fall into line. Even if doing the latter risked so escalating Coridan Prime’s ongoing civil strife that the seemingly inevitable collapse of Kalev’s government came sooner rather than later.
His furrowed brow concealed behind his mask, Lekev panned his gaze across the rest of the diplomatic assemblage, all of whose constituents seemed tensely anxious to hear his response. Minister T’Pau and Ambassadors Solkar, L’Nel, and Soval of Vulcan looked on in grim silence, while the Tellarite and Andorian contingents seemed almost to be vibrating with barely suppressed alarm. Even the human representatives–Prime Minister Nathan Samuels and Interior Minister Haroun al‑Rashid, both of whom were usually far less excitable than either the Tellarites or the Andorians–looked toward Lekev with pleading apprehension in their oddly Coridanite‑like eyes.