The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [88]
Trip powered down the console in front of him and rose from his copilot’s chair. “Let’s hope your best turns out to be good enough.” Instinctively, Trip moved aft toward the weapons locker Phuong had showed him shortly after he’d first come aboard and opened it.
“We won’t be needing those,” Phuong said.
Trip turned toward the other man and scowled. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, Commander, I mean it. We’re talking about the Ejhoi Ormiin here. They may be trustworthy, but they’re also extremely careful and more than a little justifiably paranoid. The best we can hope for is that they’ll politely relieve us of any weapons we’re carrying while we’re here. The worst is that you’ll panic them and get us both shot.”
Trip had to concede that Phuong had a point. He clearly had a lot to learn about the world of espionage, and suspected that Phuong’s diplomatic background had served him well. After another moment’s hesitation, he closed the locker.
Without any further conversation, the two men each ran a quick systems check on the special travel garments they’d picked up on Adigeon Prime. Once they were satisfied that everything was as it should be, they exited the Branson through the port hatch and descended to the dark, glassy-looking surface, which turned out not to be anywhere near as slick and slippery as it had appeared from the air. Trip supposed this surface must have been laid down countless millennia ago, and had since been subject to various weathering processes that had roughened it up over the eons. They began crossing the ancient lava field, which Trip thought smelled vaguely like gunpowder, and moved steadily toward the Quonset hut; Trip tried to take the lava’s apparent great age as a hopeful sign that they probably wouldn’t have to contend with a volcanic eruption during their stay here, which he sincerely hoped would be brief. I like a tropical island paradise as much as the next guy, he thought. But I can do without the constant worry about Romulan patrols popping up. Or whether or not we can really trust these Ejhoi Ormiin characters.
When they were still perhaps fifty or so paces away from the hut, a door slid open in the structure’s side, and a trio of dour-looking, paramilitary-clad figures stepped out into the white afternoon sun.
Romulans, Trip guessed, judging by their distinctly Vulcanoid appearance. They were all males, and he could see at once that at least two of them were armed with heavy pistols of some sort. Whether these weapons turned out to fire directed energy beams or ballistic metal pellets, he had no choice other than to assume that they were lethal. Following Phuong’s lead, Trip stopped in his tracks and raised his arms high over his head, keeping his hands open to demonstrate that he posed no threat.
As one of the trio of Romulans- the one that wasn’t carrying any visible weaponry- stepped ahead of the other two, Trip thought, Let’s hope we get our money’s worth out of these Adigeon translation devices.
“Jolan’tru, Ch’uihv of Saith,” Phuong said. “I am Terha of Talvath, from the Devoras cell.” Thanks to their implanted translators, both Phuong and Trip could converse fluently in the language they now knew was called Rihannsu.
When Trip got a close look at the face of the man whom Phuong had addressed as Ch’uihv, he experienced a sharp, undeniable sensation of deja vu. All at once he was convinced that he had seen this man before, although the precise context of that previous encounter eluded him.
After taking a lengthy beat to look both Phuong and Trip up and down, Ch’uihv finally turned to Phuong and said, “Your reputation precedes you, Terha. Jolan’tru.” He made a polite half-bow in Phuong’s direction, and Phuong casually copied the gesture as though it was something he had done all his life.
Realizing not only that their translators were working as promised, but also that their surgical alterations had at least passed visual muster, Trip forced himself not to heave an audible sigh of relief. But he almost took an involuntary step backward when Ch’uihv abruptly