And now she would die beside him.
He suppressed a morbid laugh as he drew some comfort from a final absurd thought: At least I wont have to fess up to her about giving away that damned book.
NINE
Day Thirty-one, Month of KriBrax The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
A DMIRAL V ALDORE FROWNED, his face creasing sharply.
“What do you mean, you believethat it was destroyed? he asked, displeasure fairly dripping from his lips as he spoke.
The holographic image of Commander TVoras didnt blink, though Nijil did note that he cast a sidelong glancepresumably at some unlucky guilty party, or his corpsebefore he answered. “It seemed prudent to destroy any elements that might relate to this attack. The log buoy was following the same general trajectory of the Coalition ship when we sent it into the sun. But unlike the ship itself, we were unable to ascertain either its destruction or its safety.
Nijil cleared his throat slightly, and glanced over at Valdore. They had worked together for so long on and off over the years that most gestures between them were unspoken, though Nijil was always aware of the need to appear appropriately obsequious before the admiral in the presence of lower-ranking officers.
“Were the klivamsensors unable to target the buoy effectively? Nijil asked. “I was under the impression, from your reports, that their ships sensor systems were rather similar to those of our own vessels.
The holographic TVoras turned slightly to favor Nijil with his answer. “There is significant spatial debris obscuring close scans of the systems sun. Once the Coalition ship entered the photosphere, we could not easily locate a device as small as a log buoy.
Valdore put his knuckles to his forehead, clearly vexed. “So, what youre saying now is that the buoy mighthave been sent on an unknown independent trajectory, or it might possibly have dropped into the sun?
Now, TVoras looked a bit more nervous. “YesThe orders wereI was unclear on protocol, sir. In all of our previous attacks on theklivam vessels, we specifically jammed their communications and prevented them from sending out messages. It wasIt seemed prudent to do the same here. And, if I may remind you, Admiral, everyother aspect of this operation was a complete success.
Valdore leaned forward, sighing. “ Youdo not need to remind me of anything, Commander. Nor do I authorize you to punish anyof your crew for thislapse in judgment. But to be clear, Commander, we undertook all our previous attacks on klivamships for two reasons: to test the arrenhehwiuatelecapture system, and to seize some of their battle cruisers, bothfor technological study and covert sabotage.
“ Youwere engaged in both a technological test andan act of covert sabotage. The log buoy of the Coalition ship you destroyed would have furnished our adversaries with positive proofof Klingon aggression. It might even have been enough to spark a war between the Klingon Empire and this Coalition of Planets. Instead, we are left with no proof of any Klingon attack.
“But the test of our tactical system on the Coalition ship went flawlessly, Admiral,TVoras said. Nijil imagined he could see beads of sweat appear on the commanders heavily ridged brow.
“That is the reason you do not face disciplinary action, Commander, Valdore said, standing. “Yet, he added, his voice lowering to a near growl. “The next mission you undertake will answer whether or not you have a future withwell, lets just leave it at that.
As Valdore stabbed his finger down upon a button on the desk-mounted com system, the holographic TVoras saluted nervously, but the salute wasnt even finished before the image winked out of existence.
“I dont believe that Commander TVorass error in judgment will create any lasting repercussions for your plans, sir, Nijil said, hoping to soothe Valdore, whose head was bowed and shadowed.
Valdore lifted his face, smiling. “Neither do I, Nijil. We still have other tests to conduct, and there will be more than enough time and opportunity to implicate the Klingons or, conversely, to convince the Klingons that the Coalition has destroyed one of theirships. But Commander TVoras had gotten a bit too cocky after our last several triumphs; I needed to remind him that he is fallible, and can be replaced.
Nijil nodded, smiling at Valdores cunning. Although he had designs on furthering his own standing in the power structure of Romulus, for now, Valdore was the right man to back. Of all the officers in the Romulan military, Valdore appeared to be the one who was most adaptable to changing technologies, and to the myriad possibilities of the future.
Despite Valdores failure with the initial telepresence drone-ship remote-control units, which had required telepathic Aenar to operate them, the concept had led to this latest technological breakthrough. Nijil had been ecstatic when hed been moved from the mostly stalled project charged with the creation of a functional large-scale cloaking devicea unit capable, in theory, of rendering even large war vessels effectively invisible to an adversaryto his present post. Despite the best efforts of some of the finest minds on Romulus, the power needed to cloak a large ship still invariably resulted in a complete loss of fuel containmentand therefore the utter destruction of both a test ship and a hugely expensive cloaking-device prototype. By contrast, the prospect of overcoming an enemy by using direct subspace contact to remotely seize his own consoles and control computers had proved to be a much more fruitful area of research.
Nijil now felt extremely confident that the recent telecapture breakthroughs over which he had presided for the past couple of khaidoahad proven to Valdore that he had decided to back not only the right technology for the next war, but also the right technologist to bring the Praetors dreams to fruition.
Now, after the convenient death of Ehrehinat the hands of Nijils own agents, though no one seemed to have discovered this inconvenient fact as of yetand the success of the arrenhehwiuatelecapture system, Nijil was all but certain that a place of honor in the annals of Romulan scientific and military history awaited him.
Once his ideas had been thoroughly tested and properly deployed, of course.
As had often been the case during the last few months he had spent both on and off Romulus, Trip Tucker was feeling exceedingly ill at ease. Playing his public role of the junior engineer named Cunaehr, he was attending the funeral services for Ehrehin iRamnau trAvrak. Trip had discovered only today that the old man had no surviving relatives; his five sons and one daughter had all been killed in action during various Romulan military incursions. This revelation certainly made Ehrehins having balked at completing his warp-drive project easier to understand.
As he stood beneath the midday shadows cast by one of the great stone archways of Darthas ancient mausoleum district, Trip found he had little to do other than to concentrate on not making a public spectacle of himself. After all, none of his pre-mission intelligence cramming, or any of his other studies to date, had brought him up to speed on Romulan funerary customs, a fact that was especially unfortunate given that his covert persona was supposed to be quitefamiliar with allRomulan customs. Whenever he hadnt been working alongside Ehrehin, Trip had spent a great deal of his time poring over Romulan texts, which he absorbed as quickly as he could translate them. He had even gone so far as to improvise a text-scanning-and-conversion device, which read to him aloud in standard English through the translation units the Adigeons had mounted inside his ears.