“Good. The Praetor has new orders for you. You are to turn over whatever you have acquired and then be dispatched on a new mission.”
Lucius made no effort to hide his confusion. “With all respect, Commander, this is…a bit unusual. May I see the Praetor’s orders?”
“You doubt my word? My word?”
“Not…at all, Commander, but—”
“I do,” Soleta suddenly said, stepping forward. “I answer to the Praetor, Commander Aurelius, not to you. I deal in espionage and sabotage, and it is not in my nature nor in my command prerogative simply to take anyone’s word for anything. This is highly irregular…”
“These are highly irregular times, Soleta, and I do not suggest you defy me in this manner.”
“Saying no is the only manner in which I know how to defy someone, Commander.”
Aurelius’s face started to flush green with anger, but then he visibly reined himself in and even managed to force a thin smile. “All right, Commander Soleta,” he said coolly. “You make some valid points. How about this…”
Suddenly Soleta clutched at her stomach and moaned. The gesture clearly surprised everyone watching. “Commander Soleta…?” Aurelius called.
Soleta stumbled toward the tactical station and grabbed it for support. Immediately a concerned Vitus leaned forward, and the moment he did so, Soleta spoke quickly, urgently and barely above a whisper: “Scan for motion detectors and plasma trails.” She waited just barely long enough to satisfy herself that her words had registered on Vitus. Then she made a show of turning back to the screen, wincing in pain. “My…deepest apologies, Commander,” she managed to get out before taking a deep breath and acting as if she had just fought off a wave of pain. “I have been having…severe abdominal cramps. Mild case of food poisoning, I fear. It is a trial, but I endure.”
“My condolences, Commander,” said Aurelius. “Now…I was about to say—”
“Yes. Speak, Commander,” she said, rubbing her stomach delicately. “You have my full attention. You were saying…?”
“I think the simplest solution to this issue would be for me to beam over there so we can discuss the matter face-to-face. That doesn’t present a problem for you, does it?”
“Of course not,” she said. She turned to Lucius. “Tribune…do you see that as presenting any sort of problem?”
“I…no, Commander, I…do not,” said Lucius, but he was looking at her oddly, as if trying to peer directly into her mind and figure out what she was thinking.
“Good. How about you, Centurion?”
Aquila looked around and up at her, bewilderment on his face. “Me, Commander?”
“Yes. You. I am wondering if you have a problem with Commander Aurelius’s plan.” She cocked an eyebrow and looked at him expectantly. “Do you feel that your opinion has no worth?”
“No, I…I do not feel that way, Commander. I’m just…” He cleared his throat and straightened his back. “No, Commander. I do not have any problem with it.”
“Commander Soleta,” said Aurelius, his suspicions obviously on the rise. “Is it your habit to poll your bridge crew on all your command decisions?”
“It’s an experiment, Commander. I’m still a scientist at heart. Indulge me, won’t you?”
“Commander, this is—”
She didn’t give him the chance to finish the sentence. Instead she turned to Vitus and said, “Praefect? Your thoughts?”
Very slowly, ever so slightly, Vitus nodded and held up two fingers.
It told Soleta exactly what she had suspected.
Vitus had checked the immediate area, at Soleta’s instructions, to determine whether there were any other Romulan vessels around that were cloaked.
He had found two. Two more ships, in addition to the ones they were facing, were hiding nearby.
There was only one possible reason that Romulan ships would be cloaked.
Options raced through her mind in seconds. Four against one: the odds didn’t favor them for a shoot-out, and the Spectre was built more for stealth than battle anyway. They could cloak and try to sneak away, but the cloak drained power from the engine, and they wouldn’t be able to use anything approximating maximum speed, or be able to use shields. The moment the ship vanished, all the ships in the area would start firing in as wide a dispersal as possible. All that was needed was for one stray shot to make contact before they could get clear, and that would provide sufficient target for all four ships—or, at least, the four ships that they knew of—to open fire.
Allow Aurelius to beam over? Take him as hostage, try to bargain their way out that way? No. That was Federation thinking. If Aurelius was a hostage, he would just die with the rest of them.
She considered other possibilities as well, discarded them, and then turned and strode over to the com station. “Well, that settles it, Commander,” she said calmly. “Just give me a moment to contact the transporter room. How many to beam over?”
With one quick movement, she reached down and shut off the transmission. Aurelius’s face disappeared even as he started to make his response. His image hadn’t even faded as she called out, “Shields up! Helm, set course for the Neutral Zone! Best possible speed, now! Now!”
Some small part of her had been concerned that there would be confusion, vacillation. That they would ask her what was going on. Any hesitation on the part of anyone to whom she had just barked orders could be fatal, because the clock was ticking down for them the microsecond she severed communications.
Fortunately enough, the urgency in her voice and long years of training were all that was required to spur her men to action. The shields went up instantly, which she had expected since Vitus already had some clue as to their situation. But Aquila was no slower in laying in their path back, and an instant later, the engines came online at full power. The Spectre whipped around and started heading with all possible speed back the way they’d come.
They made exactly ten thousand and thirty kilometers before they collided with a cloaked Romulan vessel.
It wasn’t a total surprise. Soleta had factored in that possibility when calculating her next move. But space is vast, there were any number of directions they could go, and the odds of them actually coming into contact with a cloaked ship were small enough that Soleta felt it was worth the risk. This was one of those rare instances where Soleta “beat” the odds in an adverse way.
They slammed into the cloaked vessel, sending everyone and everything on the Spectre crashing to the floor or into one another. Alerts began screaming all over the ship. Their shields had afforded Soleta’s ship a measure of protection, but Romulan energy shields were designed to withstand blasts from pulse weapons or phaser fire. They were intended for deflecting and blocking weaponry that was of the same fundamental nature as the shields themselves. They were not prepared to ward off the full impact of another ship’s hull.
Although they were in space where sound didn’t travel, Soleta fancied she could almost hear the sounds of tearing, shredding metal mixed in with voices crying out in terror.
“Dammit, Centurion, get us out of here!” Soleta shouted over the din.
“Trying, Commander!” Aquila called back. He eased the ship back, endeavoring to disentangle it from the other vessel. The cloak on the other vessel fizzled and lost power, and a Romulan warbird blinked into existence all around them. Soleta watched in mute horror as the Spectre’s efforts to disengage from the warbird caused the warbird to shred from the stress. The Spectre’s own shields practically groaned under the strain.
Suddenly the Spectre shuddered from several violent impacts. “Commander, the other vessels have opened fire on us,” called Lucius.
Right there on the viewscreen, the two already-visible ships were angling toward them, firing as they came. Stray shots would hit the ship they were still tangled with, but obviously they didn’t care about that. Now a third Romulan ship was decloaking as well, which could only mean that it was preparing to fire upon them.
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The Spectre shook once again, but this time it felt different. “We’re clear, Commander!” shouted Aquila.
Soleta saw the shattered remains of the other ship floating away from them, along with a number of Romulan bodies. “Vitus, arm rear plasma torpedoes! Aquila—”
“Full speed, aye!” he said, anticipating her next words.
The Spectre angled away from the other ships and, seconds later, unleashed a volley of torpedoes behind itself to try and slow down their pursuers.
“Damage report!”
“We’ve lost forward shields; aft shields at half power,” Vitus told her. “Warp engines beginning to run hot; engineering thinks we sustained damage to the coils and recommends shutdown until they can lock it down…”
“We shut down the warp engines, they’ll overtake us and blow us into scrap.”
“Understood.”
“What about the ion glide? Can we still go silent?”
“Yes, but the energy drain by the cloak could leave all other systems, including life-support, dangerously low…”
That was when the ship was struck yet again. Soleta staggered and would have fallen except for Lucius reaching out and snagging her, practically shoving her back into her command chair. “Sorry, Commander,” he muttered.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Commander, aft shields cannot survive another hit!” said Vitus.
“That, on the other hand, we can worry about. Helm, evasive maneuvers!”
“There’s too many of them, Commander,” replied Aquila, who was doing his best to comply with her orders. The Spectre was deft and maneuverable, and plasma cannon blasts exploded around them, just barely missing. But their luck was going to hold for only so long.
Soleta took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Vitus,” she ordered, “divert all power into the cloak and ion glide. Take us silent.”
“Taking us silent,” said Vitus without hesitation.
“Commander, I won’t be able to maintain us at full warp speed,” said Aquila. Soleta was fully aware of that, and naturally Aquila knew that she knew. But standard operating procedure required that he inform her of that fact.
“Best possible speed, Aquila,” she told him, praying that it would be enough.
She watched the pursuing ships on the monitor screen and waited to see what reaction they would have when the Spectre vanished. The problem was, she had absolutely no clue what in the world had happened that would cause this sort of action on their part. Anything seemed possible at this point. And if that was the case, then for all she knew, they’d managed to develop some new technology that would enable them to pursue the Spectre even when fully cloaked and running silent on the ion glide.
Certainly the exact same thoughts occurred to the rest of her crew, for they were watching as anxiously as she.
“Shield engaged. Ion glide engaged. We are now running silent,” said Vitus grimly, knowing as well as she that the next few moments would determine their fate.
Space, which had been hurtling by them, seemed to slow, and their surroundings shimmered and distorted slightly, as they always did when the shields first came on. The pursuing ships, however, did not appear to be slowing down, and were instead gaining on them steadily.
“Helm, change course,” Soleta said quietly. “Bring us to a new heading of 227 mark 3.” That would keep them heading in the direction of the Neutral Zone and out of Romulan space, but at a different angle.
Aquila immediately obeyed. Soleta only belatedly realized that she had stopped breathing altogether as she watched them move away from the other vessels. She was waiting for them to realize, to adjust their own courses so that they could continue their pursuit.
No such course adjustment came. Instead the pursuing ships continued in the same direction, moving in a V formation.
“Thank the gods,” muttered Maurus.
“Considering what we just went through, the gods have a lot to answer for,” replied Soleta, who nevertheless let out a heavy sigh of relief. “Helm, keep us moving hard and steady for the Neutral Zone.”
“Commander, that’s going to drain our energy reserves to the breaking point,” said Vitus. “By the time we make it there, we may be virtually dead in space.”
“I’m aware of that, Praefect,” she said. “But we have no idea how many other ships are out here, and on what sort of search-and-destroy mission they’re on. We have to get clear and into Federation space as quickly as we can, and if we do it uncloaked or with normal engines, we might well not make it and be literally dead in space rather than virtually.”
“But Commander,” said Maurus, “I…I still don’t understand. Why did they fire on us in the first place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did they attack us…?”
“I still don’t know!” said Soleta, wiping sweat from her eyes. She felt a hundred years older and as if she hadn’t slept in days. “I can, however, take a guess.”
“The Praetor,” Lucius spoke up grimly, “is no longer in power?”
Slowly Soleta nodded. “That is my guess as well. And until we know for sure…we don’t dare go home again.”
It was certainly not the first time that Soleta felt no sense of belonging. She had just hoped that the previous time would be the last. Obviously that was not going to be the case…and she wondered how often it was going to happen to her before she went completely insane from it.
New Thallon
Excerpted from Lefler’s logs:
It’s been ages since I maintained a first-person log of what’s been going on in my life. It was a practice of mine when I was much younger, and I continued it naturally during my service on shipboard when such logs are standard procedure. But having taken a planetside assignment here on New Thallon, and since marrying Si Cwan, I’ve fallen out of the habit. Matters, however, have taken a violently downward spiral, and I find myself more isolated and frustrated with each passing day. I crave someone to talk to. But Si Cwan is barely there for me. No one is there for me. And so I must console myself with the sound of my own voice.
Si Cwan has put the planetary defenses on full alert. They are well prepared for any potential attack from the forces of the House of Fhermus. Of the fifty-seven member worlds of the Thallonian Protectorate, they have split almost evenly between supporting Fhermus and Cwan, with a slight edge toward Cwan due to ancient treaties. Thirty of them have sided with Cwan, twenty-seven with Fhermus.
It’s madness. All of it, madness.
It’s not even as if the alliances necessarily mean anything. Many of them are simply economic agreements over boycotts. Various worlds agreeing not to conduct business with the Nelkarites or anyone associating with them. That sort of thing. In terms of actual military might, only a few on either side bring much to the table.
Again, madness I say.
Once upon a time, they were called “member planets” and they sent “representatives.” Now they’re referred to as “allies” and the representatives have been designated “warlords.” In that way, they are unilaterally granted the right to make decisions and plans in accordance with what Si Cwan wants.
What does Si Cwan want? I can’t even begin to know.
He wants Kalinda’s name and reputation cleared, that much I can say. He believes Fhermus savaged both by claiming that Kalinda had brutally murdered Tiraud in cold blood. And I think Cwan still burns with fury every time he contemplates Tiraud bruising and battering Kalinda. Tiraud, dead, has escaped his wrath. But Fhermus is of course alive and can still be punished. The father being made to suffer for the sins of the son. There’s a twist.
I’ve tried to talk to him. I’ve tried to talk to Kalinda. It’s as if I’m addressing strangers. Si Cwan is consumed by anger and frustration, and Kalinda…I swear, it’s as if she looks at me through the eyes of a stranger. Could Tiraud’s actions have been that traumatic that she regards the entire world with suspicion? Or is there something else, something more sinis
ter?
I’m probably just imagining it. These days, with everyone so tense and a general sense of paranoia in the air, it’s understandable that I see plots and schemes everywhere I look.
Si Cwan is meeting today with the warlords to go over the final plans for a major strike against Fhermus. He is one of the most powerful and influential members of the Nelkarite race, and has managed to align most of his world against the House of Cwan. That means that, for Cwan to attack, his plans must encompass the entirety of Nelkar. I’ve tried to talk him out of this. To remind him of all the Nelkarites who are essentially innocents, caught in the middle of all this. Si Cwan’s response? “Anyone who casts their lot with Fhermus is, by definition, not innocent.”
Can he really believe that? Is he so far removed from the noble, compassionate man I married that he truly thinks there’s no such thing as innocents caught in the crossfire at a time of war? Has he simply gone out of his mind with anger?
Personally, I think he doesn’t want to do this. I think he would give anything he could to avoid it. But because he knows he can’t—because Cwan is so blinded by fury—I think he’s created this…this persona for himself. One that’s cold and distant and focused entirely on war, because that takes him out of himself and allows him to do what must be done, even though he has neither desire nor taste for it.
Then again, I suppose he opened the door for this possible “persona” the day he ordered Xyon to be tortured for no damned good reason. It’s strange. The very first day I met Si Cwan, I felt as if I had known him forever. But that day when he ordered his major-domo, Ankar, to oversee Xyon’s torture…that was the first time in my entire life that I felt I didn’t know him at all.
I miss the Si Cwan who would never torture a helpless victim just out of a sense of political expediency. I miss the Si Cwan who was decent and honest and true, and those qualities shone like a beacon above all else.
I miss him so much.