The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [130]
“Go ahead, Ensign,” Archer said as he ran back to his chair.
“I’ve reestablished a transporter lock, sir. I don’t know how, or how long it’ll last, but—”
“Save the explanations, Ensign. Get busy!”
“Our transporter circuits have been taking a beating from the Romulans,” Ensign Moulton said over the com channel in the boarding team’s suits, her words nearly lost in an intermittently oceanic wash of interference. “But I can’t risk transporting more than one of you at a time.”
“Take Jhamel first,” said Shran, who watched soberly as Commander T’Pol and Lieutenant Reed nodded in agreement. Now that Moulton had just finished transporting five Aenar, only Theras and his bondmates remained to be transported, along with three humans, one Vulcan, and Shran.
“- ust a moment,” Moulton replied, continuing to fight a losing battle against the static still being generated by the Romulan shroud field. Because all attempts to shut the field down from inside the transport ship had failed, Shran had become convinced that it was actually originating from one or both of the warships currently harassing Enterprise.
Several anxious moments later, the hum of Enterprise’s transporter effect reverberated through the ruins of the Romulan transporter room, and a sheet of sparkling blue engulfed the groggy Jhamel, who had been sitting disoriented on the deck. Though he didn’t want to do anything that might put her safe transit to Enterprise at risk, it had been all Shran could do to refrain from offering her a steadying arm to enable her to stand while she’d awaited transport.
The dematerialization effect seemed to labor more than Shran had ever seen before, as though it were having difficulty drawing sufficient power. He offered a silent prayer to all four of the First Kin to ensure that Jhamel emerged from the process unharmed.
“Got her,” Moulton said. The com channel hissed and fritzed around her words. “Powering up for another.”
“Take Theras next,” Shran said.
“Very well,” T’Pol agreed.
“No,” Theras said, once again surprising Shran.
Surprised or not, Shran couldn’t suppress a scowl. He approached the wall against which the Aenar thaan was leaning. “We can’t risk splitting up your shelthreth, Theras.”
Jhamel’s shelthreth, he thought, which she made you a part of, for whatever reason.
“Can there be room in any Aenar shelthreth for one who has taken lives?” Theras said over the com channel.
Shran had no response to that. He had once dared to hope for a positive answer to that question himself, before he had discovered that his beloved Jhamel’s future was already spoken for.
“Let’s start with the two other Aenar while you two finish sorting this out,” Reed said.
Shran nodded in response to Reed, though he continued studying Theras’s blind, pain-weary face, which was limned in the intermittent green glow of Shran’s damaged night-vision gear. The transporter continued its increasingly difficult work, taking Shenar first, then Vishri, followed by the injured male MACO, and finally by the female.
Then Reed and T’Pol had vanished as well, leaving Shran and Theras alone together in the darkness.
“I will go last,” Theras said. “I have… touched Ensign Moulton’s mind to make certain that you will be her next passenger.”
Clutching his modified transponder device nearly hard enough to shatter it, Shran searched the darkness for the other man’s milky, sightless eyes. He realized now that he had fundamentally misjudged Theras.
He raged at the realization.
He had mistaken a death wish for courage, self-flagellation for heroism.
“You have no intention of leaving this ship, do you?” Shran said, making a blunt observation rather than asking a question.
His lips unmoving, Theras spoke inside Shran’s mind. “Good-bye, Shran. Promise me that you will take care of Jhamel. And her bondmates.”
Shran started to protest, but the words caught in his throat as the transporter’s shimmering blue light and whining din enfolded him. A moment later he stood on Enterprise’s circular