Saturday, March 13, 2156
Vulcan Cargo Ship Kiri-kin-tha, near Achernar
“ARE YOU SURE he’s really ready to go on an assignment like this?” Tucker asked as he studied the slumbering features of the Romulan soldier, who lay on his bunk in the freighter’s small cabin.
Sitting at the side of the bunk, Ych’a appeared to ignore Trip’s question as she moved her long fingers in delicate, spidery patterns against the sleeping man’s temples as the therapeutic mind-meld progressed toward its conclusion. Centurion Terix, like Trip, now sported the smooth forehead of a Vulcan or a human, thanks to a simple plastic surgical procedure. The only difference between the respective surgeries experienced by Trip and Terix was that the former’s had restored the natural appearance of his brow, while the latter’s had been undertaken to disguise an inborn Romulan trait. Now all three of them—a human, a Vulcan, and a Romulan—were Vulcan nationals bound for Achernar II, at least so far as their outward appearances, their official identity documents, and Terix’s telepathically altered memories were concerned.
Ych’a took a deep breath, in tandem with Terix, before withdrawing her hands from Terix’s face, which slackened further as his post-mind-meld slumber deepened, the therapeutic blocks in his memory presumably growing stronger.
Or so Trip hoped.
Looking up at Trip, Ych’a finally answered his question. “Tevik of Vulcan is as ready for the coming mission as either of us are.”
Tevik, Trip thought with no small amount of regret. Because of the months of tampering Ych’a had performed inside the mind of Romulan Centurion Terix, the man now thought of himself as Tevik of Vulcan, a V’Shar agent who had dedicated his life to gathering intelligence on the Romulan Star Empire. As far as Tevik knew, Centurion Terix was merely another of the many aliases he had used during a long and distinguished espionage career. If Tevik’s own memories seemed to belie that convenient fabrication from time to time, well, that was only to be expected given the V’Shar’s routine use of telepathically implanted false memories on some its deepest-cover operatives.
Necessary though this sort of thing might have been given the danger posed by the Romulans, Trip couldn’t help but feel guilty for having abetted Ych’a’s ongoing subversion of the integrity of another man’s identity.
Apparently sensing Trip’s discomfiture and finding it distasteful, Ych’a stepped to the hatch that connected Terix’s cabin with the rest of the freighter and opened it. As she exited, she motioned for Trip to follow her out into the corridor.
They walked in silence along a passage that seemed wide, at least in comparison with what Trip had grown used to aboard Enterprise. When none of the Vulcan freighter’s crew was nearby, she said, “Tevik is as prepared as it is possible for me to make him, Sodok.”
It still took Trip a moment to grasp that she was addressing him when she used his Vulcan cover name. If the concept of Sodok, a Vulcan dealer in kevas and trillium, hadn’t yet become second nature to Charles Tucker, then why should anyone assume that a similar fake identity would work any better when involuntarily imposed on a battle-hardened Romulan soldier like Terix?
“He’s as ready as he’s ever gonna be?” Trip said quietly, only barely restraining the nervous imperative he felt to raise his voice until it echoed throughout the ship. “Is that what you’re telling me? That we have to do this thing now whether we’re ready or not, just because time has finally run out?”
Ych’a stopped walking and faced him, fixing him with her piercing dark eyes. “Mister Sodok, your emotional control borders on the execrable at times.”
“Sorry,” Trip said, trying to get back into character. “My apologies. I’ve been a bit... spacesick on this voyage.” Yeah, that’s the ticket, he thought, hoping nobody was listening to them who shouldn’t have been.
“Understandable,” she said. “But the time for such misgivings is long past. Captain T’Vran will deliver us to Achernar II in two standard hours. We will find ample resources there to carry out the task that awaits us.”
She didn’t need to outline those “tasks” aloud, both for security reasons and because Trip was thoroughly familiar with the current mission’s objective, having spent the last several interminable months preparing and training for it. During that time, Ych’a had been methodically building up the psychic bulwark of “Tevik’s” personality and memories.
Using the Kiri-kin-tha’s commercial itinerary for both cover and the bulk of their transportation, their mission was to slip into a clandestine shipyard located near the Achernar system and destroy the warp-seven prototype vessel the Romulans were in the process of preparing for its initial test flights.
To that end, the V’Shar had obtained fairly detailed plans of the shipbuilding facility’s layout, which Trip had committed to memory as though they were elementary warp plasma-flow diagrams. He had taken enormous pains to get every detail right, at least so far as they could trust their intel, which looked reliable inasmuch as it seemed to agree with the knowledge that Terix—or Tevik—had shared with them over the past few months. If their mission was to fail because of someone’s mistake, Trip was determined that it wouldn’t happen on account of his mistake.
Which was why Trip thought, even now, that having a fellow spycum-saboteur working alongside him—a man who might suddenly forget his carefully crafted identity and “go Romulan” at an inopportune moment—was such a terrible potential liability.
Trip suddenly noticed that Ych’a was still speaking, a look of something that closely resembled consternation creasing her usually composed features. “Mister Sodok, do I have your attention? It is far too late for you to decide that you cannot follow through on this assignment. There is entirely too much at stake.”
Despite his misgivings, he knew she was right. The time for doubt was long past.
“Don’t worry, Ych’a,” he said.
“Vulcans do not worry.”
“Sure they don’t. Anyway, this thing is going to work because I’m gonna make sure it works.” That meant, among other things, maintaining an engineer’s readiness to improvise at all times.
And keeping an extremely close eye on one Tevik of Vulcan.