The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [126]
Now which one of these babies fires up the transmitter? Trip thought as he studied his console, as well as all the smaller panels adjacent to it. Fortunately, within a few moments he was pretty sure he’d identified the appropriate controls.
He entered a command intended to open a Starfleet channel on the subspace bands. He waited for at least a minute.
Nothing.
The faintly glowing blue pictogram that had appeared in response to his commands told him either that he hadn’t, in fact, accessed the com system, or that the com system had sustained just enough damage during their escape under fire from Rator II as to be completely inoperable.
He had a slow, sinking feeling that the latter scenario was the correct one.
“Why are you running away from Admiral Valdore, instead of toward him?” Ehrehin asked in an accusatory tone. “And why were you tampering with the communications components just now? Who are you, really?”
Though he realized now that his imposture had finally fallen apart completely, at least in Ehrehin’s eyes, he nevertheless clung to it, unable to shake his initial impression of the old man as fragile and vulnerable- and therefore unable to handle the brutal truth that his beloved Cunaehr was, in fact, dead.
He turned from his console to face the scientist, doing his best to make direct eye contact through the slight distortion created by two helmet faceplates. “What are you talking about, Doctor Ehrehin? It’s me: Cunaehr.”
“But you can’t really be Cunaehr. I can distinctly recall having seen Cunaehr die during the mishap on Unroth III. That is, I can do so on those rare occasions when I can recall things distinctly.”
Trip sighed, then regarded the old man in thoughtful silence. While Ehrehin still seemed terribly frail to him, the old man also exuded a dignified, determined resolve that commanded respect. It occurred to him that the real Cunaehr had been fortunate indeed to have had such a man as his mentor.
“How can you be so sure I’m not Cunaehr?” Trip said at length.
Ehrehin smiled. “I ran an analysis of some tissue traces that either you or your late associate Terha inadvertently left behind in my quarters. At first, I attributed the strange results I obtained to the rather unreliable state of mind in which the Ejhoi Ormiin interrogators had left me. But your actions since then have not only confirmed that you are not, in fact, Cunaehr, but also that you aren’t even a Romulan.
“What I’d like to know, my kaehhak-Cunaehr,” Ehrehin continued, “is how an alien like yourself could ever have expected to pass himself off for very long as a genuine Romulan, especially so deep inside Romulan territory.”
Unless things go really south on me again, Trip thought, we won’t be anywhere near Romulan territory by this time tomorrow.
Trip decided then to answer the old man’s accusations and questions as honestly as he could, figuring that admitting the truth now could harm him very little at this point. After all, either he would make it back to Coalition space with Ehrehin, and they would both live to tell the tale, or else he’d end up dead- and then the Romulans would move decisively against an utterly unprepared Coridan Prime.
Nevertheless, he instinctively glanced down at the side of his suit to make certain his weapon was still there, even though the scientist posed no physical threat to him.
“All right, Doctor. My real name is…” Trip paused, distracted. Besides the obvious lack of a functioning life-support system, something else aboard the ship no longer felt quite right.
The deck plates. The vibration from the warp core had changed, and was continuing to change.
To his horror, Trip realized that it was fading steadily away.
He faced front, abruptly turning back toward the pilot’s console. It took only a fraction of a second