The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [61]
“So our plan is to use the Romulans’ own Adigeon Prime business agents to infiltrate them,” Trip said. “I guess the Adigeons’ discretion must come with a price, and that it’s a price the bureau was able to pay.”
Phuong offered Trip a lopsided smile. “Very astute, Commander. The Adigeons also have other talents that we’re going to need.”
“Ah. Our Romulan disguises.”
Phuong nodded. “The Adigeons can provide medical procedures ranging from simple plastic surgeries to genetic alterations that haven’t been available on Earth since the Eugenics Wars ended.”
“So far, no human has ever seen what a Romulan looks like,” Trip said. “So I take it that the Adigeons know a lot more about that subject than we do.”
“That’s correct, although the Adigeons have been well paid to keep such secrets to themselves. But thanks to a highly bribable Adigeon plastic surgeon, you and I will be going under the knife. We’ll not only receive all the appropriate surgical alterations, we’ll also be fitted with ear-implanted translation devices to help us communicate with any Romulans we encounter. By this time tomorrow, our own mothers probably won’t recognize us.”
The thought of his grieving mother almost made Trip wince. But the image also reminded him that the sooner this mission was completed, the sooner he’d be able to return home to comfort her in person.
“And is this process reversible?” Trip said.
“So I’ve been told.”
Trip wished Phuong had sounded a little more confident about that, but decided to table that particular question for now. “So what happens once we’re in disguise, Tinh?”
“We will meet with members of a Romulan dissident faction known as the Ejhoi Ormiin.”
Trip tried to get his lips around the name and failed utterly. “The what?”
“Ejhoi Ormiin. According to my intelligence sources, the phrase roughly translates from the Romulan Rihannsu language as ‘to decide with finality on the best of several options.’ It’s the name of a group that opposes the Romulan Star Empire’s current ethic of expansion and conquest.”
Hope warred with suspicion deep in Trip’s gut. “And you trust them.”
“We have to make our leaps of faith somewhere, Commander, or else we’ll never get anywhere. At any rate, the Ejhoi Ormiin already know we are coming to meet with them. They are presently harboring an important Romulan warp scientist, a man named Ehrehin.”
“How important?”
Phuong’s mien quickly took on a more sober cast. “How important was Henry Archer? Or Zefram Cochrane?”
Trip felt a chill of apprehension slowly ascend the length of his spine. That important, he thought.
Phuong continued, his tone growing progressively grimmer: “This Doctor Ehrehin’s expertise could very well spell the difference between victory and defeat in the coming conflict, depending upon which side gains sole access to him. Imagine what will happen to Earth if the Romulans succeed in building whole fleets of warp seven-capable ships before we can. Ehrehin is the key to the whole thing.”
Trip sat in silence, processing what Phuong had told him, imagining one doomsday scenario after another and finding each of them uncomfortably believable. He could feel the forces of history and contingency already in motion all around him, like the faint buzzing of warp-field lines against his skin when he tended Enterprise’s engines. How many times before had catastrophes such as the coming one happened, or nearly happened, in human history? He recalled that just prior to Earth’s first space age, the finest rocket scientists of the day had been employed by Nazi Germany. Had the United States failed to recruit Wernher von Braun just after the Second World War, the Soviets might well have added his talents to those of Sergei Korolev, thus completely changing the outcome of the U.S.-Soviet space race and the Cold War that had spawned it.
Only this is even more serious, Trip thought. Because the safety of the Earth and all her allies is at stake.