The Good That Men Do Page 8

  Nog had followed Jake to the kitchen. “You hewmons and your territorialism. You think the history of the Grand Naguses is any different?” He smiled widely. “You should hear some of the ‘facts’ about even recent history I’ve been told during my visits to Ferenginar. Some of what’s being taught to my younger brother and sisters about Rom sounds almost like a fairy tale.”

  “Well, you have your world, I have mine,” Jake said, slicing some salami he’d pulled from the refrigeration unit. “I knew that World War III had pretty much caused havoc with files and data back in the twenty-first century, but I don’t think- I didn’t think that Earth’s history could have gotten so messed up since then.”

  Nog picked up the salami log and sniffed at it, then wrinkled his nose as if in disgust. “This smells awful.” He took another sniff. “Why don’t you go ahead and make me a sandwich from it as well?”

  Jake snorted a laugh and reached for the loaf of bread. “So, history is being rewritten all over the place, and this is no different, is that what we’re saying?”

  Nog put his hands up, protesting. “Not me. I think there’s something more to this.”

  “Okay, so returning to the mystery at hand, the accepted holoprogram of 2161 says that Shran was a military hero who disgraced himself in private business and had to fake his own death,” Jake said as he continued cutting the sandwich fixings. “And that he had a five-year-old daughter with Jhamel, whom he had met in 2154, and that it was their daughter that was kidnapped. The new holoprogram, that is reported to be from data recorded in 2155, says that Shran was disgraced due to the destruction of his ship, wasn’t even one of Jhamel’s bondmates, and therefore had produced no children with her, and reports that Jhamel was actually the one who got kidnapped.”

  Nog nodded, watching Jake cut the salami. “I don’t think Shran is the real focus of this mystery, though. I think it’s Commander Tucker. More of the foul-smelling meat, please?”

  Jake looked at his friend and affected a perplexed expression. “Commander Tucker has exactly what to do with foul meat? Oh, you want more on your sandwich.” He gamely sliced off a few more pieces, then began assembling the sandwiches with a graceful economy of movement he’d picked up over the years he’d spent working in his grandfather Joseph’s restaurant in New Orleans. “Thanks for spoiling the surprise for me, Nog. You, of course, have seen all this already, so you know what’s coming.”

  Nog shook his head. “Actually, I haven’t seen all of it yet. But I did watch and read through enough of it to get the basic gist before I decided to journey out here to see you.”

  Jake cut the sandwiches in half, then slid the knife under them and transferred them to small plates. He handed one to Nog. “Here. Feed yourself, and don’t spoil any more surprises for me.”

  “So, you don’t want to hear about the—”

  Jake put a hand up over Nog’s mouth, and glared at him sternly. “No. I’ve already gotten my history through one filter, and now I’m seeing it through another. I don’t need to hear yet another version through the Nog-filter.”

  He picked up his plate and his wineglass and padded toward the desk, a similarly encumbered Nog trailing after him.

  “Boy, you can be as grumpy as your dad sometimes,” Nog said, almost under his breath.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said, sitting down in his comfortable writing chair and setting his sandwich to the side. His hand trembled slightly as he moved to activate the padds again.

  “Now hush up, and let’s see what comes next.”

  Eight

  Day Twenty-One, Month Of Tasmeen

  Somewhere In Romulan Space

  DOCTOR EHREHIN WAS AWAKENED in the semidarkness by a hard jolt of confusion. He was unsure for the moment exactly where he was as he rose slowly in his bed, his back protesting as he moved carefully to a sitting position.

  “Cunaehr?” he called out, then listened attentively to the silence that answered.

  At length he rose from the bed and cinched his robe tightly about his slight frame, tiny lightning bolts of pain assaulting his lower spine. Ignoring the familiar discomfort, he padded barefoot across the thick white carpet toward the heavy curtains that lined the richly appointed bedroom’s wide transparisteel window. He pulled on the sash, letting in the wan of light of the dawn that was just beginning to tease the horizon of this arid, relatively undeveloped planet.

  Then, all in rush, he remembered where he was: safely ensconced inside one of the secret government villas on Nelvana III. It was the same place in which he had awakened with a quite similar jolt of confusion every morning since the drive-test mishap at the Unroth facility. He was beginning to believe that he would continue to arise each daybreak in temporary bewilderment, at least until such time as his project support people finally finished putting right the Unroth mess, so that the various tests and analyses could begin to go forward again.

  Perhaps that time would arrive soon, since at the moment he truthfully could not recall just how many confusing mornings had passed since the Romulan military had brought him to Nelvana to recuperate in this isolated if luxurious estate.

  “Cunaehr?” Ehrehin repeated, after turning away from the window to face the door at the broad bedroom’s opposite side. Still no one answered. Perhaps none of the staff had risen as yet. But that didn’t explain the lack of response of his bodyguards.

  “Cunaehr?” Cunaehr, his beloved favorite student and assistant, would never have abandoned him this way.

  Ehrehin stopped short, recalling in a sudden wash of grief that Cunaehr would never answer him again. If that really was Cunaehr I saw with his head smashed in back at the lab on Unroth, he thought.

  He raised a withered hand to a throbbing temple. Why was everything becoming so damned confusing?

  Ehrehin was startled out of his musings by a noise that seemed to come from the still dimly lit hallway in front of him. A footfall?

  Breakfast, perhaps, he thought, suddenly eager to get on with his normal activities.

  He crossed the room quietly and entered the plushly carpeted hallway.

  And realized with a start that a pair of large, dark-clad figures stood in his way. Behind them an indistinct figure lay slumped between the carpeted hallway and the tile floor of one of the villa’s kitchens.

  Ehrehin scowled as he looked over each of the men. “You’re not Cunaehr,” he said finally, addressing them both. “Have you come to bring my breakfast?” It was only then that he noticed that neither man carried a tray, cups, or any other food-related accoutrements.

  The man on the left raised a dark, blunt shape that Ehrehin recognized as a military-issue disruptor pistol, after spending a brief beat puzzling over it. The other man carried one as well.

  “Are you my new bodyguard detachment?” Ehrehin said.

  “Yes,” said the man on the right after an awkward pause. “Yes, we are.”

  Ehrehin took a cautious step backward, but froze when the man on the left brandished his weapon in a menacing fashion.

  “Get dressed quickly and quietly, Doctor,” he said. “You are coming with us.”

  When Subcommander D’tran entered Valdore’s office, the admiral presumed that he had come to convey the next in D’tran’s series of dierha-by-dierha intelligence updates. Then Valdore spared a quick glance at the wall chronometer that overlooked the desk behind which he had spent so much of his working life. The admiral saw at once that the other man had actually turned up nearly a quarter-dierha early.

  And from the look on the middle-aged subcommander’s pale, lined face, he had come bearing tidings that he wasn’t eager to impart.

  “Report, Subcommander,” Valdore snapped, having no patience with such stalling. “Just tell me what’s gone wrong.”

  D’tran took a deep breath. “It’s Doctor Ehrehin, Admiral. We have… lost him, sir.”

  Valdore instantly could see every tactical timetable that he had constructed since his release from imprisonment crashin
g like an incoming meteor. He rose to his feet, pushing his desk chair toward the weapons-lined wall several long paces behind him. He leaned forward across the desktop, planting both of his muscular arms on the sherawood surface to support himself. “Do you mean to tell me the doctor has died, Subcommander?”

  Somehow, the cowering subcommander avoided taking a step backward. “No, sir. At least, not that we can determine for certain. But I have just confirmed that Ehrehin has been taken from his secure compound, apparently by members of a Romulan dissident group. We are not entirely certain as yet which group is responsible, since no one has spoken up to take ‘credit’ for this crime.”

  Evidently it was an unusually competent dissident group, Valdore thought as he released a frustrated sigh. Who knew how far this could set back the development schedule for the new stardrive?

  Aloud, he said, “Get me the officers directly responsible for safeguarding Doctor Ehrehin. And see to it that his captors are tracked down. Spare absolutely no effort, Subcommander.”

  “At once,” said D’tran, who appeared more than eager to leave Valdore’s presence and set about his urgent tasks. “May I take my leave of you, sir?”

  Another thought suddenly occurred to Valdore. “Wait,” he said, and paused just long enough to let the subcommander realize that another order was forthcoming. “What is the status of the Aenar slaves the Adigeons are brokering for us?”

  D’tran regarded him with a somewhat curious expression. “Still en route to our intermediaries on Adigeon Prime, sir.”

  “But still no firm estimated time of arrival?” This was another matter that Valdore was finding increasingly vexing. “What is causing these continual delays?”

  “Our intermediaries are blaming the Orions, sir. They are evidently the procurers whom the Adigeons have retained to acquire the… commodity in question. And the Orions seem to be making numerous other stops and connections on their way to the delivery point for our cargo.”

  “I now need those telepaths sooner rather than later, Subcommander,” Valdore said in a low growl. “They could well turn out to be our only hope of tracking down Ehrehin and his captors.” The time had come to take a few drastic measures.

  “Subcommander,” Valdore continued, “I want you to explain to our ‘esteemed intermediaries’ on Adigeon that their continued safe passage through Romulan space depends greatly upon my continued patience and goodwill. And have them expedite the arrival of those telepaths any way they can.”

  “Immediately, sir,” the subcommander said, then snapped off a smart salute and exited the office.

  Valdore stood alone in the room for a protracted moment, then walked to the wall at the rear of his office where he kept his many edged weapons on display, now that he had retrieved them from the locker where they had been so haphazardly stored during his long confinement. With care and reverence, he took down his dathe’anofv-sen- his Honor Blade- which gleamed brightly again now that he had finally found the time to remove the faint patina of tarnish it had picked up in the dank, subterranean storage room. He placed the blade and its scabbard carefully on his uniform belt, straightened his posture, then exited the office to report the latest developments to T’Leikha.

  He wondered how much more would be permitted to go wrong before the First Consul required him to allow the Honor Blade to drink deep of his lifeblood.

  Nine

  Sunday, February 9, 2155

  Enterprise Nx-01

  THE SILVER-HAIRED EMINENCE stared impassively from across the approximately sixteen light-years that separated him from Archer’s ready room aboard Enterprise.

  “That’s essentially what happened, sir,” Archer said to Admiral Sam Gardner. “Based, of course, on what Shran and Theras told us.”

  His tie slightly askew, the admiral folded his arms in front of himself, displaying the heavily braided sleeves on his dark uniform jacket. “Captain, it sounds to me that you aren’t entirely convinced by Commander Shran’s assertion that the Orion slavers’ action against the Aenar represents a prelude to a large-scale Romulan military incursion.”

  Seated behind the cramped ready room’s small desk, Archer continued to stare straight into his computer monitor, despite the distraction of his chief engineer’s fidgeting; Trip was standing just inside the admiral’s line of sight, alongside a far more tranquil, but no less serious-visaged T’Pol. Trip had already made it clear that he vehemently agreed with Shran’s assessment, and Archer couldn’t fault him for that, so long as he maintained respect for the chain of command. And, truth be told, Archer felt no small amount of guilt for allowing his upcoming diplomatic duties to keep him from simply rushing into the breach on Shran’s behalf.

  Whether or not the Romulans really are about to attack us, Shran is definitely right about at least one thing, Archer thought. I do owe him. After all, he hadn’t forgotten the rescue on Coridan, or the Andorian’s invaluable help against both the Xindi and the Romulans, or Shran’s admirable restraint when V’Las had tried to start a Vulcan-Andorian war.

  On top of all that, Archer still felt a small pang of regret for having sliced off one of Shran’s antennae with an Ushaan blade. The incident had occurred at the time of last November’s Babel conference and the previous Romulan crisis- so recently, in fact, that Shran’s missing antenna had still only partially grown back. Though he knew that the truncated antenna would probably finish regenerating itself within another month or two, Archer would always suspect that the humiliation associated with the loss would take a good deal longer to heal.

  Archer nodded tentatively toward Gardner’s image. “Let’s just say I’m… concerned, Admiral. I think that Starfleet should investigate the matter as thoroughly as possible, if there’s any chance at all that Shran may be right—”

  “Captain,” the admiral said, interrupting. “Neither Starfleet nor Earth’s government- all the way up to Minister al-Rashid, and even Nathan Samuels himself- can afford to risk sending the fleet’s flagship off on what could very well turn into a lengthy and distracting snipe hunt. Not with the Coalition Compact signing ceremonies coming up so soon. And certainly not on the basis of such inconclusive evidence.”

  The longer Gardner spoke, the more Archer felt his spine stiffen- and the more he was coming around to Trip’s way of thinking. “Respectfully, Admiral, the signing ceremony is three weeks away—”

  Gardner interrupted again, causing Archer to bristle further. “The galaxy is a very big place, Captain Archer. And, unfortunately, the slave trade afflicts a fair chunk of it.”

  “Perhaps you’ve just identified a very good reason for us to stay out here and do something about it, Admiral,” Archer said, carefully schooling his tone to a fairly convincing degree of calm.

  Gardner nettled Archer still further by grinning indulgently. “I would have thought that four years out on the frontier would have taught you a little more patience, Captain.”

  Archer returned the admiral’s grin, but with considerably lower wattage. “Patience. Never had much time for it. Sir.”

  “Captain. Jonathan.” Gardner appeared to be changing his tack, trying to appear reasonable, rather than patronizing or outright authoritarian. “You’ve been around long enough to know how lawless most of the galaxy is. You and I both know it’s filled to overflowing with slave traders, pirates, gangsters, smugglers, and soldiers-forhire. The best chance we have of doing anything substantive about that sad reality is the Coalition of Planets. Therefore it’s my duty, and yours as well, to do nothing that might conceivably make any of the prospective members any more nervous about entering the alliance than they already are- at least until after the Compact is finalized and signed.”

  Not for the first time, Archer breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the fates that Starfleet Command had seen fit to entrust Enterprise to him instead of to Gardner.

  The Admiral continued: “And that includes taking risks that might provoke the Orion Syndicate into embargoing any of the Coalition worlds with which
they currently do business, such as Coridan or Tellar. Adopting an overly aggressive posture against the Romulans right now is a similarly bad idea, since we don’t yet understand all the repercussions for the allies should hostilities break out within the next three weeks.”

  Trip, who was already fairly vibrating with repressed frustration, had apparently reached the limits of his patience. “Admiral, does your list of ‘don’ts’ include leaving our collective ass exposed to a Romulan sneak attack? That’s one ‘repercussion’ that’s fairly easy to see.”

  “Trip!” Archer snapped, turning toward his engineer and rising from his chair.

  “You have something you’d like to share, Commander Tucker?” Gardner asked. Though he hadn’t raised his voice, he no longer sounded as though he wanted to play reasonable.

  “I do, Admiral,” Trip said, almost snarling as he stepped toward the computer on Archer’s desk. “Sir, have you even read the report I filed about the Romulans’ invisible mine field? It was a clear and present danger back when we found it, and I’d bet my commission that the Romulans haven’t gotten any friendlier in the two and a half years that have gone by since. They’ve even tried to install invisibility cloaks on their ships, and if they ever perfect that—” Trip’s anger-besotted features posed a remarkable contrast to T’Pol’s expression of slightly surprised calm.

  “Commander,” Archer ordered, “that’s enough.”

  Though still red-faced, Trip nodded to Archer and looked contrite as he stepped back beside T’Pol.