Terix swallowed hard as he offered the traditional elbow‑against‑the‑heart military salute. “Of course, Admiral. I beg forgiveness.”

“Dismissed.”

After the young officer had turned on his heel and exited, Valdore remained alone in his office, staring silently at the image of a devastated Coridan that the centurion had neglected to deactivate.

Despite its superficial resemblance to a military victory, the sight brought him no joy. Indeed, the suicide mission had been planned by First Consul T’Leikha and the interim military commanders who had been in charge of the Romulan Star Empire’s defense and war making during the time of Valdore’s recent imprisonment following the unfortunate drone‑ship affair.

In fact, Valdore’s direct involvement in Coridan’s devastation had extended only to giving the plan’s final “execute” order, lest he balk and face the wrath of both T’Leikha and the Praetor, and end up either executed himself, or find himself dwelling again in a dim, dank cell like the one the former Senator Vrax now occupied. Valdore had seen no alternative to authorizing the attack, though he felt confident that he never would have conceived such a plan had all the decisions been left up to him.

But these facts did little to expiate the guilt Valdore felt as he watched the image of Coridan’s wreckage continue in its slow, stately rotation through the glare of its virtual sun. Was this really a mission for a military man?he thought. Or was it simply the slaughter of innocent women and children and elders in their beds?

Though he was far too loyal a soldier to speak his misgivings aloud, the part of him that had decades earlier served as a senator alongside Vrax couldn’t help but wonder if the Coridan attack was truly worthy of the un‑sheathing of even a single fighter’s Honor Blade.

And the guilt he carried was exacerbated by the realization that the destruction he’d sanctioned had failed to achieve its intended political effect: the abortion of the signing of the official Earth alliance agreement, which was to have crippled the so‑called Coalition’s ability to defend itself.

But the official papers hadbeen signed, according to the Coalition worlds’ own public newsnets, which the Empire’s intelligence services had long made a habit of monitoring as closely as possible. Now the four remaining Coalition of Planets partners were apparently cleaving together more closely than ever before, and their civilian media were loudly asking when their governments intended to do something about “the Romulan threat.” Therefore Valdore’s hopes for a campaign of relatively resistance‑free–and therefore largely blood‑less–conquest now lay dashed at his feet.

There would be war, realwar rather than the mere subjugation of demoralized and therefore already half‑conquered worlds. And it would certainly come soon, despite the Coalition’s relative paucity of dilithium to power its ships.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Thanks to a recent extremely poor run of luck, Valdore lacked access to the new Aenar telepaths he’d need if the fleet’s newest telepresence‑piloted warships were to fly effectively and on schedule. He was also beginning to lose faith that the recently recovered and bizarrely incoherent Ehrehin was really capable of delivering a working singularity‑powered stardrive prototype any time in the foreseeable future. What had those dissidents done to him before he’d been picked up by the fleet, alone and nearly catatonic in a small escape pod? Of course, the hope always remained that Ehrehin would one day become lucid enough again to carry the project to fruition, but Valdore had long made it a practice never to rely overmuch upon hope as a tactical weapon. If Ehrehin’s revolutionary new stardrive remained an unrealized dream, then the destruction of all that Coridan dilithium–and the carnage associated with it–would all have been for naught.

With a weary sigh, Valdore reached across his desk and thumbed a control toggle, which caused the battered and charred remains of Coridan to vanish abruptly. Touching a button beside the toggle, he said, “Valdore to Nijil.”

“Nijil here, Admiral.”The chief technologist’s voice sounded logy and rough‑edged. Since Valdore knew that the abstemious scientist had never acquired the habit of drinking to excess, he chose to regard that as a good sign: Nijil also understood that war loomed near, and was therefore pushing himself as close to exhaustion as he dared in order to steer the inevitable conflict toward its most favorable possible outcome.

“Nijil, how is development progressing on the new generation of weaponry?” Valdore asked.

“So far, Admiral, all the development and testing have progressed exactly according to the Senate‑approved schedules.”

“Very good, Nijil. But it’s not quite good enough. I need you to expedite the project….”

After dismissing the harried engineer, Valdore considered the practicalities yet again. All previous attempts to create a practical invisibility cloak for the concealment of large, manned vessels had always resulted in the test ship’s destruction after a few brief siure.Despite the many failed trials he had authorized over the years, Valdore remained convinced that such a device could be the key to Romulan military supremacy.

They cannot fight what they cannot see,he thought, smiling a predator’s smile.

Fifty‑Two

Friday, March 21, 2155

Deep space

CHARLES TUCKER LEANED AGAINST the thick transparent aluminum observation port, watching as the ship’s warp field distorted the shapes and colors of the stars beyond far more slowly than seemed right. The private Rigelian passenger transport was by no means new, but Trip could at least be thankful that it wasn’t so ancient that it had to stay below warp three to keep from blowing itself up. Still, he found it difficult to get used to traveling across so many light‑years at such a leisurely pace.

He also found it hard to prevent that impatience from showing, though he knew that he needed to keep that emotion reined in–along with all the rest of his emotions, for that matter–for however many weeks or months remained in this voyage. He still appeared to be a Vulcan, and would pose as a kevas and trillium merchant from that world for the duration of his passage out to the galactic hinterlands, from which he planned to take a prearranged yet discreet ride on an Adigeon freighter back into Romulan space.

Once there, he would begin his next assignment on behalf of Section 31, the Coalition of Planets, and the people of the planet Earth.

And the great state of Florida,he thought, trying to picture the faces of his parents and his brother. He was dismayed at how difficult it was for him to imagine those faces smiling, rather than contorted with grief.

Tired of viewing the gently shifting starfield, and just as tired of the distinctly unfriendly stink‑eye he was receiving from the towering, fanged purser who apparently didn’t much like passengers getting handprints on his tidy observation ports, Trip began walking through one of the narrow guest corridors toward his modest stateroom.

Once the door was securely shut behind him, he kicked off his boots, then carried them to a small closet, where he stowed them neatly. He would have preferred either canvas deck shoes–which would have been conspicuously out of place on a Vulcan, even way out in the middle of nowhere–or at least something that felt more like real leather than his boots did. Unfortunately, he had to content himself with footwear made from vegetable fiber in order to continue passing himself off as a Vulcan, who were all essentially against the killing of animals, either for food or for apparel.

Trip stepped back to the stateroom’s desk, where he had left a small data padd beside the sample case that contained the gemstones that were part of his merchant cover‑identity. Raising the padd, he inserted the encryption‑protected data rod. He’d been carrying the rod since shortly after he’d recovered consciousness in a stolen Ejhoi Ormiinscout ship moving at high warp through Coalition space, very close to regions claimed by the Romulan Star Empire. He had already lost count of the number of times he’d played the rod’s message–a message that had clearly been recorded in haste while Trip had been lying insensate on the cockpit’s deck plates.