The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [170]
But the official papers had been signed, according to the Coalition worlds’ own public newsnets, which the Empire’s intelligence services had long made a habit of monitoring as closely as possible. Now the four remaining Coalition of Planets partners were apparently cleaving together more closely than ever before, and their civilian media were loudly asking when their governments intended to do something about “the Romulan threat.” Therefore Valdore’s hopes for a campaign of relatively resistance-free- and therefore largely blood-less- conquest now lay dashed at his feet.
There would be war, real war rather than the mere subjugation of demoralized and therefore already half-conquered worlds. And it would certainly come soon, despite the Coalition’s relative paucity of dilithium to power its ships.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Thanks to a recent extremely poor run of luck, Valdore lacked access to the new Aenar telepaths he’d need if the fleet’s newest telepresence-piloted warships were to fly effectively and on schedule. He was also beginning to lose faith that the recently recovered and bizarrely incoherent Ehrehin was really capable of delivering a working singularity-powered stardrive prototype any time in the foreseeable future. What had those dissidents done to him before he’d been picked up by the fleet, alone and nearly catatonic in a small escape pod? Of course, the hope always remained that Ehrehin would one day become lucid enough again to carry the project to fruition, but Valdore had long made it a practice never to rely overmuch upon hope as a tactical weapon. If Ehrehin’s revolutionary new stardrive remained an unrealized dream, then the destruction of all that Coridan dilithium- and the carnage associated with it- would all have been for naught.
With a weary sigh, Valdore reached across his desk and thumbed a control toggle, which caused the battered and charred remains of Coridan to vanish abruptly. Touching a button beside the toggle, he said, “Valdore to Nijil.”
“Nijil here, Admiral.” The chief technologist’s voice sounded logy and rough-edged. Since Valdore knew that the abstemious scientist had never acquired the habit of drinking to excess, he chose to regard that as a good sign: Nijil also understood that war loomed near, and was therefore pushing himself as close to exhaustion as he dared in order to steer the inevitable conflict toward its most favorable possible outcome.
“Nijil, how is development progressing on the new generation of weaponry?” Valdore asked.
“So far, Admiral, all the development and testing have progressed exactly according to the Senate-approved schedules.”
“Very good, Nijil. But it’s not quite good enough. I need you to expedite the project….”
After dismissing the harried engineer, Valdore considered the practicalities yet again. All previous attempts to create a practical invisibility cloak for the concealment of large, manned vessels had always resulted in the test ship’s destruction after a few brief siure. Despite the many failed trials he had authorized over the years, Valdore remained convinced that such a device could be the key to Romulan military supremacy.
They cannot fight what they cannot see, he thought, smiling a predator’s smile.
Fifty-Two
Friday, March 21, 2155
Deep Space
CHARLES TUCKER LEANED AGAINST the thick transparent aluminum observation port, watching as the ship’s warp field distorted the shapes and colors of the stars beyond far more slowly than seemed right. The private Rigelian passenger transport was by no means new, but Trip could at least be thankful that it wasn’t so ancient that it had to stay below warp three to keep from blowing itself up. Still, he found it difficult to get used to traveling across so many light-years at such a leisurely pace.
He also found it hard to prevent that impatience from showing, though he knew that he needed to keep that emotion reined in- along with all the rest of his emotions, for that matter- for however many weeks or months remained in this voyage. He still appeared