Crossover - Michael Jan Friedman [69]
As a youth, the proconsul had heard a story about a master interrogator known for the subtlety of his work. On one occasion, the man so carefully manipulated the timing and circumstances of his appearance in his alien subject’s cell, the alien broke down—and provided all the requisite information—before the interrogator could pose a single question.
Eragian smiled to himself. Certainly, whether or not the story was apocryphal, it was a standard to which one might aspire.
Nor had Lennex objected to it. That implied his approval.
Abruptly, he heard the bleating of his communications device. Stopping, he took it out and activated it.
“This is the proconsul,” he snapped. “Speak.”
“Your Eminence,” said the voice on the other end, “this is Commander Hajak. We’ve received a message from the homeworld.” A pause. “I believe this is the one you were waiting for.”
The Tal Shiar shot him a meaningful glance.
Eragian frowned. “Relay it to the terminal in the outpost commander’s office. We’ll view it there. And, Hajak?”
“Yes, Your Eminence?” came the reply.
“Maintain security protocols,” the proconsul advised. “I do not wish any of this message to become common knowledge.”
“I understand,” the commander of the Vengeance assured him. “Hajak out.”
It didn’t take long for Eragian and Lennex to make their way to the office of the outpost commander, or to close the door so they could be alone. And it took even less time for Eragian to activate the terminal.
Then it was just a matter of accessing the message, which had already been downloaded from the Vengeance. Actually, the proconsul mused, it wasn’t really a message at all, but a packet of information.
On one side of the monitor screen, there was an image of the prisoner—the first one, who had perished in the explosion of the transport ship. On the other side, there was a block of data. Eragian leaned forward in his chair, to read the small-faced characters.
“Interesting,” he commented, “after just a few moments. Very interesting indeed.”
His instinct to check the homeworld data banks had been on the mark. There was a file on the human as long as his arm, and then some.
The man’s name was Scott. Montgomery Scott. Born—
The proconsul blinked, then leaned closer to the screen. “That date must be incorrect,” he said.
“It is correct,” the Tal Shiar insisted. “The central data banks do not contain mistakes.”
Eragian shook his head. “But, if this is the same Montgomery Scott—and the records show no other—”
Lennex finished the thought for him. “He would have to be one hundred and fifty years old, as the Federation counts time.”
For a Vulcanoid, 150 was merely middle age. But for a human …
He pored over the data a second time, and a third—just to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. They weren’t.
Scott had served on an earlier version of the Enterprise under James Kirk, right around the end of the first period of Romulan isolationism.
The proconsul grunted. “Barring a temporal incident, it seems almost impossible that it’s the same man. He would have been too elderly to participate in such an escapade. Too frail.”
“And yet,” said Lennex, “it makes sense in a way, does it not? The Montgomery Scott in the file was an engineer of considerable acumen. And the prisoner would have to have been in command of such expertise.
“Otherwise, he could not have set up a call for help in the form of an engine pulse, or taken charge of the transport that eventually proved his undoing. Perhaps we should not rule out a temporal incident.”
Eragian scowled. Too bad the human had decided to take his own life, or the Romulan would have gotten to the bottom of this mystery a long time ago. The proconsul fairly licked his lips at the thought of interrogating such a—
Wait, he thought, the color draining from his face. The Enterprise.
Excited, Eragian stored the Scott file and called up another—a detailed report on the Enterprise of a hundred years earlier. Scrolling quickly, he found the personnel