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By Root 560 0

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 khaidoa had 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 arrenhehwiua telecapture 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 quite familiar with all Romulan 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.

Lucky for me there arent too many people here, Trip thought. Less than a dozen others had come to the crypt, and most of these were fellow scientists or lab assistants with whom Tucker was already familiar, having worked alongside them fairly closely for the past few months. A few uniformed centurions and other military officers were present as well, the most conspicuous of which was a tall, broad-shouldered brute who seemed to be scrutinizing all the mourners very carefully as they came and went.

Trip recognized the man as the same brusque centurion who had been in charge of the security team that had come to Ehrehins lab after the Ejhoi Ormiin assassins had attacked. He had taken the lone surviving assassin away, promising to interrogate her. So whats he doing here, giving the stink-eye to all of us? Trip wondered, his hackles rising.

Trip watched as the others began to approach the raised granite bier upon which stood the half-meter-high ceramic tibulec vessel that contained Ehrehins mortal remains; per Romulan custom,