The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [95]
Trip nodded. “They warned me that you might not be… quite yourself.”
“If that’s true, then you can no doubt chalk that up to my having been kidnapped from what was supposed to be a secure military safe house, then interrogated night and day ever since. They’ve even been using psionic probes on me.” Ehrehin pulled back the sparse white hair that hung across his forehead, displaying a series of overlapping, vicious-looking circular scars that were scabbed over with dark green blood.
“The Ejhoi Ormiin want to take the secret of the avaihh lli vastam for themselves,” Trip said, suppressing a horrified shudder at the repeated, brutal violations that the old man had revealed. How much more punishment could the fragile scientist take before his sanity- or perhaps even his life- was in real jeopardy? It came as something of a surprise to feel such compassion for a Romulan- until he realized that the impulse probably spoke rather well of his own humanity, even if no one in the Romulan Star Empire ever came to appreciate it.
Finger-combing his hair back over his scars, Ehrehin scowled deeply and disgustedly. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“We thought that the Ejhoi Ormiin were primarily interested in keeping the new stardrive out of the hands of the Romulan military,” Phuong said, his brow furrowed almost as deeply as Ehrehin’s was. “In order to halt the Praetor’s plans for conquest and expansion.”
“That’s only about half right. They certainly don’t want the military to possess the advantage of the new drive, because that would interfere with their own plans for conquest. Once the technology is in Ch’uihv’s hands, he plans to use it to oust the Praetor and have the Ejhoi Ormiin stage a coup that will place them firmly in control of the imperial government.”
“I thought you weren’t all that comfortable with the Praetor’s ambitions yourself, Doctor,” Phuong said.
“That’s never been a secret,” said the old man. “If the military hadn’t needed my expertise so badly, I would almost certainly have been imprisoned or executed for having spoken my mind on the matter. But at least the Praetor always had the virtue of a certain… predictability. There’s no way to know for certain exactly what the Ejhoi Ormiin radicals would do with my technology.”
Trip looked over to Phuong while Ehrehin was speaking. The Section 31 operative seemed almost to deflate before his eyes as he no doubt was coming to the awful realization that the intelligence the bureau had gathered concerning the Ejhoi Ormiin was at best badly incomplete, or at worst flat-out wrong.
It was easy for Trip to imagine what Phuong must be thinking, since the shock of the same realization was settling over him as well. I guess this is the kind of intelligence failure that’s toughest to avoid, Trip thought. Especially when you’ve got to run all your information through the filter of secondhand facts and bribable third-party information brokers like the Adigeons.
“Help me, Cunaehr,” the old man said, almost begging. “Help me get out of here, and back to the protection of Admiral Valdore’s fleet.”
Trip exchanged another wordless glance with Phuong, who gestured with his head toward the door. He needs to talk with me, but he can’t do it in here, Trip thought, understanding that the room had to be crawling with listening devices.
“I promise you that we’ll do whatever we can to help you, Doctor,” Trip told the old man. “But first, I’d like to know exactly what you’ve revealed to Ch’uihv so far.”
With tears pooling in his eyes, Ehrehin nodded, then began speaking in a low, halting voice….
“I did warn you that Doctor Ehrehin might not be entirely rational,” Ch’uihv said, his expression dour as he and a pair of his grim uniformed guards escorted Trip and Phuong back to the quarters they had been issued for the duration of their stay at the Ejhoi Ormiin facility. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he blamed us for the harsh treatment