• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Shunting aside a very real and mounting sense of fear, Kuvak raised a hand and said, “You may have misapprehended the situation, Commander.”

“Are you sending arms to the Romulans?” she asked. Though the question dismayed him, it also provided some reassurance; it made it clear that her knowledge was incomplete at best.

“I cannot give you any details about such matters, Commander.”

“Cannot?” Her eyes blazed with restrained fury. “Or will not?” When he did not answer, she added, “Are you aware that I am adept at the Syrrannite technique of the mind-meld?”

Kuvak had no idea whether or not this was true. However, he had no desire to put her assertion to the test. “Extracting information from me with a forced meld would be extremely unwise, Commander. Administrator T’Pau would not be pleased by such a violation, and I believe you still require her goodwill.”

To Kuvak’s relief, his words seemed to bring T’Pol to a halt. But her determination did not appear to have diminished at all. When she spoke, her tone told him in no uncertain terms that she would remain dangerous to him, no matter how hard he tried to stall.

“Administrator T’Pau will not be pleased by your continued evasions, once she learns of them. And she will learn of them. Where is she, Kuvak?”

Keenly aware that she had backed him into a corner, he made a decision. “I still cannot tell you anything. I am not authorized to offer you any explanations for whatever you think you have discovered.

“However, I can show you something...”

FORTY-TWO

Wednesday, March 10, 2156

Challenger NX-03

The outskirts of the Procyon system (Andoria)

DUNSEL STILL BEAMED WITH PRIDE even after he’d finished conducting the tour.

“You’ve got a very impressive ship, Roy,” Captain Ketai Shosetsu said, nodding appreciatively to his fellow captain from across the table in Dunsel’s private mess, where a yeoman had just finished laying out a pair of steak dinners and beer glasses.

“Starfleet’s latest and greatest, crewed by its best and brightest,” Dunsel said around a mouthful of food. “She’s got all the newest classified retrofits, straight from the Cochrane Institute and the Proxima Shipyard. I just wish we had a hundred more like her—especially with the coyote getting into the henhouse as often as it does.”

Shosetsu raised his glass. “To Lieutenant Malcolm Reed of Enterprise,” he toasted. “If we had a few more like him analyzing Romulan tactics out on the front lines, then this war might be over by Christmas.”

After taking a long swallow from his glass, Shosetsu noticed not only that Dunsel had gone quiet, but also that he was pointedly avoiding contact with his own glass.

“What’s wrong, Roy?”

“I’m not sure Reed did Earth any favors,” Dunsel said, looking troubled.

“Well, he was the first one to work out the new Romulan carrier-and-fighter tactic.”

Dunsel shook his head. “I hope that’s not literally true, Ketai. That he was first, I mean.”

Shosetsu scowled slightly, pausing in his eating and drinking even as Dunsel resumed. “What are you saying, Roy?”

Dunsel paused to eat another chunk of steak, then finally bowed to necessity and washed it down with some of his beer. “Just that the Romulans didn’t really start using this new tactic in earnest until after Reed pointed it out.”

“Even if that were true, it would only underscore the importance of getting our countermeasures into place all across Coalition space as quickly as possible,” Shosetsu said, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking. Dunsel had taken a dim view of Jonathan Archer ever since the Kobayashi Maru incident, and he had never been shy about expressing his thoughts on the matter in public. Now, apparently, some of his ill feeling toward Archer had spilled onto the captain’s senior staff.

But to Dunsel’s credit, he was nodding as though conceding Shosetsu’s point.

“Countermeasures,” Dunsel said. “Even the ones that turn out to be