The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [29]
Theras spoke up. “We also suspect that those to whom we had to appeal may also have resented the time that Shran spent among the Aenar.”
“’Vacation among the pacifists’ is not high on most Guard officers’ ‘to-do’ lists,” Shran said wryly. “So we used the craft I have now. Not very fast, and no weapons to speak of, but it can still follow a trail. We’ve been tracking the slavers for six days now. Their vessel has a unique warp signature.”
“What I don’t understand is why the Orions acted so boldly,” Malcolm said, gesturing with his hands as if they were claws descending on prey. “Andoria’s military isn’t exactly known for its lack of readiness. Why would they directly attack a city there and risk capture… or worse?”
Theras turned in Reed’s direction. “The relationship between the Aenar people and the Andorian majority is largely one of mutual suspicion. When you add to that the inherent conflict between our pacifistic beliefs and the frequent belligerence of the Imperial Guard, it’s not hard to understand why the military isn’t highly motivated to help us. During the conflicts against the Vulcans and the Tellarites over the past few years, Imperial Guard protection for the Aenar has waned to almost nothing. Given their predilections, it’s highly likely that the Orions have kept abreast of these facts, and therefore saw us as easy prey.”
“The Orions also appear to be taking advantage of local peculiarities in Andoria’s magnetic field lines,” Shran added. “The effect is most extreme at the poles, where the field is weakest and lets some of our star’s solar wind actually reach the surface in places. The infall of charged particles obscures Andoria’s planetary security sensors, and probably allowed the slavers to bring a small ship into the northern wastes completely undetected by the Imperial Guard.”
“So now we know how they did it,” Archer said. “But we still don’t know why the Orions are kidnapping Aenar.” He had already formulated an answer to that question, but he wanted to hear what the others thought before he articulated it.
T’Pol tilted her head, momentarily regarding him as a parent might an obtuse child. “It is logical to assume that the Aenar are not being used for physical labor, given their lack of a visual sense. However—”
“However, their telepathic abilities certainly give them a fair number of other uses for the slavers and their clients,” Reed said, interrupting her in his evident enthusiasm to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Trip cleared his throat, then spoke for the first time in minutes. “What worries me is who the Orions’ customers might be. The last time we ran into something like this it was the Romulans. What if these wholesale abductions mean that the Romulans are planning to send their drone ships against us again? With dozens of Aenar telepaths at their disposal instead of the one they had last time, they could do one hell of a lot of damage.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Shran said in somber tones.
T’Pol looked down at a padd in her hand. “The trajectory the Orion warp signature is following does point toward Romulan space.”
“And about three dozen other star systems along the way,” Reed said grumpily.
Archer sighed heavily and considered the points of their discussion so far. The conjecture certainly seemed plausible, and if there was some kind of massed drone-ship attack being planned, it was certainly going to spell trouble for someone. But for whom?
Which planet would the Romulans attack first, if that’s really their plan? Will it be one of the core Coalition worlds? Or will it be a target in one of the nonaligned systems scattered between here and the Romulan Empire?
And therein lay the rub. They had no real proof of anything, other than the scanty evidence that Shran and Theras had provided them.
“Given the circumstances, and the lack of concrete information,