OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS the mission took shape, modified by the changes that Brodesser had suggested.
Trip learned to eat—if not enjoy—pisarko. He and the professor got that chance, at last, to catch up with each other, and even if Trip was still a little uncomfortable around him, for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that was still a good thing. He even learned to call him Victor without feeling strange about it.
Most important of all, Hoshi came out of her coma.
He’d been in the launch bay, preparing for the mission, when Trant summoned him down to the ward.
When he saw the smile on the doctor’s face, he thought for a moment she’d discovered a cure for their problem.
Instead, she led him through the ward to the isolation chamber where Hoshi was sitting up in bed, eating a bowl of pisarko.
Trip couldn’t say that he and the communications officer had been the closest of friends aboard Enterprise, but the sight of her without diagnostic sensors and feeding tubes, looking awake, alert, and as healthy as possible given the circumstances had him blinking away tears.
“Hey.”
“Commander.”
“You look about a million times better.”
She nodded and set down her spoon.
“I wish I felt that way.” She was looking at him a little funny. Trip followed her gaze and realized why.
He was wearing a Guild uniform.
Not that they didn’t do laundry aboard Eclipse—though certainly not with the regularity they had aboard Enterprise—but the uniform he’d been wearing since coming aboard the Denari vessel had seen more than its fair share of use—and abuse—over the last week.
“Time to retire that, Trip,” Trant—who he’d finally gotten used to calling Neesa, at least when the two of them were alone—had told him the other morning while he was getting dressed.
Hence, the new uniform. The first time Trip had seen himself in it, he’d felt a little funny, too. Like he was changing sides—even though, he felt that Starfleet and the Guild were on the same side, at least until Sadir was gone. And it was only a temporary thing—it had to be only temporary, because if he and Hoshi didn’t get back to Enterprise . . .
Which reminded him of something else.
Trant had left it to him to break the bad news. To tell Hoshi the real reason for her “allergic reaction”—and the fate that might be in store for the two of them if they couldn’t get back to Enterprise.
He sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I know,” he said, grabbing the shirtsleeve of the Denari coverall. “Feels a little funny, too. But when in Rome . . . ”
“I suppose. Anything would be better than this.” She gestured to the hospital gown she was in.
“I know how you feel.” They shared a smile.
“The doctor said you’d gotten sick as well. Had the same kind of reaction?”
“That’s right.”
“So . . . ” She looked from him to Trant. “It’s not just me, then. What’s happening?”
Trip cleared his throat.
“Hoshi,” he said. “You have to brace yourself for some bad news.”
And then he explained as best he could—about their common protein sensitivity, the stereoisomers—Trant pitching in as needed. One thing they did not have in common—Hoshi had to stay isolated. In the ward. Her sensitivity was so acute that Trant was afraid even the slightest exposure to those proteins might send her back into a coma.
The doctor did promise to bring in a workstation so that Hoshi could access the Denari archives and begin working on a design for the transmitting device they hoped to be able to reach Starfleet with.
Still, the ensign was not a happy camper when Trip left the ward that morning. He had promised to visit her as often as he could, a promise he kept to the best of his ability over the next few days. But as the mission grew closer, his free time shrank. There was a lot to do, and little time to do it in.
Fane’s communications gear—the equipment that would let her find and fix Sadir’s location once they got close enough to the Kresh—had to be modified to interface with the Suliban systems. A course had to be plotted for the cell-ship, and their initial insertion point determined as well—tasks Trip had thought would be relatively easy, but became more complex as he learned the extent of the defenses protecting the Kresh. Because Sadir’s complex was not only well-defended from within, but above as well—a heavily armored geosynchronous orbital platform with fixed gun placements and ships that patrolled far beyond what Trip would have considered a necessary distance.
There were also details to learn about the Kresh itself. They had a fairly complete picture of the systems that ran the Cap—power, communications, etc.—and the thinking was that those systems would be duplicated in Sadir’s residences above.
Kairn also wanted the three of them flying in the cell-ship—Trip, Royce, and Fane (Brodesser’s changes had allowed them to eliminate the fourth person, which pleased everyone once they saw how much room Fane’s equipment would actually take up)—to do at least a minimal amount of combat training—weapons and hand-to-hand—which Trip had initially been glad of.
But not after the first few sessions, after Royce and Fane both trounced him thoroughly in the hand-to-hand. It wasn’t that either of them was necessarily better—faster or stronger.
It was more like Trip’s reflexes were not responding the way he expected them to. The way they had in the past.
After the second day of sessions he asked Trant about it.
They were in his quarters—Hoshi’s old quarters, which Trip had taken over with only a modicum of guilt after Trant made it crystal-clear that Hoshi would only be leaving the ward in an EVA suit to go back aboard Enterprise.
The two of them had been spending a lot of time in each other’s company—surreptitiously, for reasons they were both dancing around for the most part. Trip rationalized what they were doing like this: after this mission, he was going to Enterprise. And sooner, rather than later, after that, Enterprise was leaving the Denari system altogether. Trant would go back to the life she had and, after a while, forget that he’d ever existed.
He didn’t know—exactly—how she was rationalizing it.
“And you’ve been noticing this problem for how long?”
“The last day or two.”
She sighed. “We should do some more tests.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No more tests. I’d just like to know that it’s probably being caused by this protein thing.”
“I can’t answer that without doing the tests.”
“Guess.”
“I don’t like guessing.”
“Speculate.”
“It would be uninformed speculation.”
Which Trant did not indulge in. She was like that, he’d come to realize. Vulcan-esque, when it came to her discipline. And as un-Vulcan-like as he could imagine in other ways.
“There are other foods we can attempt to incorporate within your diet. More variety might make a difference.”
“More variety would be fine with me,” Trip said, running his spoon through the bowl of pisarko in front of him. So far, it—and the fossum—were the only Denari foods he could tolerate. Not just because of the proteins—because of the taste. Every other dish Trant had put in front of him had made him gag.
“I’ll do some more research, then.”
She pushed back her chair from the table and stood.
“You don’t have to do it now,” he said. “Stay awhile.”
“I can’t. Too much else to do.”
“Don’t you have a staff?” Trip asked. He stood then and came up behind her. She had her back to him. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Let them do some work, for once.”
She shook her head.
“It’s not just that. I told Ferik that I would eat with him. Up in the mess.”
“Oh.” Trip nodded. He hadn’t seen Ferik in several days, busy as he was—but he knew she had. The man spent most of his time around the medical ward. That couldn’t be a lot of fun for Trant—not right now, especially . . .
“Sure,” he said, letting go. “Come back later.”
“If I can.”
“Try.”
She took a deep breath. “This is hard for me sometimes, Trip. You understand that?”
“I understand. Ferik.”
“Not just Ferik. Every time I go down to that ward, and I see the door to Hoshi’s room, I’m reminded that you can’t stay here. You have to get back to your ship, and the sooner the better.”
“I will. Once we have Sadir, we’re going after Enterprise.”
He had, in fact, already begun making plans to do just that. Had made one choice for his team to recapture the ship that seemed so obvious in retrospect that he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him immediately.
Victor could handle the engines. In his sleep, probably.
“That’s another thing,” Trant said. “The mission.”
“The mission?” He frowned. “You’re not gonna start in on that happy-pill thing again, are you?”
Though he’d thought about it himself, more than once, over the last few days. Now that he’d spent so much time with Kairn and Lind—it wasn’t just his skin at risk if he got caught. There were things he knew about the Guild—the fact that they had the coding algorithms, for one—that could cripple their war effort if Sadir caught him, and made him talk.
“No.” She smiled. “I know better now. But . . . it’s risky, Trip. Much more risky than the last one, in a lot of ways. What if you can’t locate Sadir?”
“It’s in the plan.” They’d gone over it several times. “If Fane can’t find the communications center, we abort. Simple as that.”
“And you’ll do it? Abort?” She shook her head. “Last time it was just a prison break, and you pushed the mission well past the safety margin.”
“Not to worry. If we can’t find Sadir—we’re not sticking around very long.”
“You promise?”
“Oh, yes. You have nothing to worry about on that score.”
The more he learned about the Kresh, in fact, the more nervous he got. Multiply redundant sensor systems, pulse weapons that if what Kairn was saying was true, were at least as powerful as their photon torpedoes. . . .
No. He would have second thoughts about sending Enterprise herself up against the Kresh. If even the slightest indication appeared that things were going wrong. . . .
“Good.”
But she still had something on her mind. He could see that.
“What?”
She took a long time before answering.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About what might happen. Afterward. When you go back to Enterprise. I thought . . . ” She smiled. “You don’t think your doctor would need an assistant, do you?”
Ah.
She caught the expression on his face, and her smile—ever so slightly—cracked.
“I didn’t think so.”
He sighed.
Trip had made his choice about what kind of life he was going to live long ago. Back when he first joined Starfleet. Not a settled life—at least, not for a long, long time.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She nodded. “It’s just—you think that part of you is dead. And then all at once—” Her voice broke.
Trip took her in his arms. “It’s all right.”
“No.” She looked up at him. “It’s not all right. But it’ll have to do.”
The com buzzed.
“Ferik to Trant. I’m in mess hall.”
She stepped back, and opened a channel.
“This is Trant. I’m on my way.”
She smiled—as forced a smile as he’d ever seen—and then she was gone.
* * *
Trant did not come back that night.
Probably a good thing, he decided. He needed to focus. Needed his strength.
Probably just what she’d been thinking.
He ate the last ration pack, one he’d been saving just for this morning, just for that little extra boost of energy he hoped it would give him. He put on not his Starfleet uniform, or the Denari one, but a black coverall—an exact copy (or as close as they could make) of the ones worn by the maintenance engineers who worked in the Cap. Fane and Royce wore the same thing.
Eclipse had moved as close as they could get to Denari itself—farther away from the safety of the Belt than they’d been in years, a precise maneuver through Sadir’s positions made possible only by extensive study of various fleet intercepts. As close as it was, though, when the cell-ship dropped, they had a four-hour journey ahead of them.
Halfway through that journey they engaged the cloak.
From this point onward, they were on subspace silence.
Fane powered up the gear she’d brought and went to work.
Her gear took up all the space behind Trip’s seat and barely left room for Royce at all. He’d flipped around her chair so that she faced to the side of the ship, the equipment surrounding her on either hand.
The first step was finding the transmissions she was looking for. She and Trip had modified the cell-ship’s transceiver to route all intercepted messages to a specially programmed computer, which was set up to listen for certain key phrases. Sadir. The general. Major offensive. A half-dozen others they’d decided on.
Thousands came in. The computer deciphered all of them. Fane picked a hundred at random and routed a third to listening stations in front of each of them. This was drudgery—no way around it. No computer could do the work of deciding what mentions of the key phrases were relevant to their search.
Trip picked up his earpiece, and cued up the first message.
“ . . . policy directive as per General Sadir, no additional funds authorized . . . ”
Nope. On to the next one.
“ . . . General Makandros wants . . . ”
Next.
“ . . . I don’t know whether or not he was deliberately trying to be offensive, but when he told me . . . ”
Trip rolled his eyes. Definitely not.
Nor did he find anything relevant in that entire first batch. Neither did Royce, or Fane.
He checked his sensors. An hour, traveling at this rate, until they reached Denari. He frowned. They might have to slow down a little. Not good. That would throw off everyone’s timing.
“Next group coming in,” the lieutenant said, and Trip picked up his earpiece again.
Royce straightened almost at once.
“Got something,” he said.
“Let’s hear it,” Fane said.
Royce punched a button on his station.
“ . . . additional security in residence, during the general’s stay. Confirming arrival of twenty-four more guards to the—”
Fane switched it off.
“That’s it. That’s from the com center,” she said, and smiled.
Then she got down to work.
This part was all on her shoulders. Now that they’d ID’d a message from Sadir’s com center, she had a frequency to listen in on. A way to fix its location. Every signal that came over that channel let her hone in a little closer.
They were near enough to Denari now that she could begin using some of the satellites orbiting the planet—those that predated Sadir’s rise to power—to help in the process as well. Access their reception protocols, see when the signal from the com center reached them, and use that information to triangulate a fix.
She was also able to pick up some of the other signals that those satellites were receiving.
“Got a visual,” she said abruptly, and all at once, the main display filled with an image of Sadir’s residence atop the Cap. A bird’s-eye view, a much more precise look at it than they’d had before.
The complex was shaped like an oval. There were six buildings scattered across it. Two towers, at opposite ends of the oval. A long, low building next to one of them—two smaller, squarish buildings flanking the other. A circular structure in the center.
“Could be any of them,” Fane said without looking up. “No way to tell yet.”
The sensors beeped softly, and Trip glanced down at his work screen.
“Incoming,” he said. “Six ships—five small ones, one big. Very big.”
Royce, who had the seat just behind him and to his right, leaned forward.
“Isn’t that a little soon?”
“Yeah.” Trip frowned. Based on the transmissions they’d intercepted, and what sensor data they had been able to gather from Eclipse, he would have thought they were at least half an hour from any of the patrols. Not that it made a difference, cloaked as they were.
He moved to clear the data from his screen—and his heart leapt into his chest.
The big ship. He knew those readings like the back of his hand.
It was Enterprise.
“That’s my ship,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s Enterprise.”
He watched the screen a second.
She was moving on impulse, heading almost directly toward them. On a vector away from New Irla—Sadir’s shipyards. Heading to where? He had no idea. There hadn’t been anything in the transmissions about this. And who was flying her? What about the engines? Who was on them? Had Sadir trained a crew—kept on a skeleton crew from Enterprise? Was he moving the ship into position to attack the Guild?
Trip’s first impulse was to break off their approach to Denari, and head after her. He shot that down immediately—not likely just the three of them could seize control. And there were those five ships flanking her. They wouldn’t stand by while he tried.
His second thought was to break radio silence, and let Eclipse know she was coming.
But they’d see that soon enough for themselves. In time, he trusted, to get safely away.
What could he do? Nothing.
“Something’s happening,” Royce said, leaning over his shoulder and looking down at the screen.
Trip looked, too. He was right—something was happening.
Enterprise was going to warp.
Her signal on the display wavered, and then disappeared from sight. A second later the other five signals did the same.
Trip stared at the empty screen and shook his head.
“Sonuvabitch,” he said.
What now? he thought.
“Got it.” The sound of Fane’s voice shattered his train of thought.
She pointed to the circular building, in the center of the residential complex.
“The com center.”
Trip nodded. He put Enterprise to the back of his mind.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fane send a burst transmission—that was the signal. The mission was a go.
He focused on the controls in front of him. Royce was on sensors.
“Let’s bag ourselves a general,” Trip said, and punched firing thrusters.