The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [217]
“How did the hevam manage to penetrate so deeply into our territory?” he said, processing his shock by thinking aloud.
“It was not the Earthers, Admiral,” the centurion said. “The attackers came from the Empire’s other flank—from Haakona.”
Valdore returned to his desk and settled heavily into his chair.
“Llhusra,” he cursed. At least some of the ships and matériel he had just redeployed away from the Haakonan front would have to be turned around and redirected toward Artaleirh and the surrounding sectors. This wouldn’t be easy, since the fleet had reliable intelligence indicating that a combined hevam-Andorsu-Tellarsu fleet was massing even now near K’Feria, with the obvious intention of restoring that system to Coalition control. Romulus’s resources in that sector needed to be enhanced, not diluted.
Though necessary, this exercise in rearranging the playing pieces on the galactic latrunculo board would surely create a costly distraction from Valdore’s less urgent objectives in the hevam war. True, he could ill afford such disruptions, especially after the humiliating setback the fleet had suffered at D’caernu’mneani Lli, the planet the expansionist Terran hevam called Berengaria VII. But, faced with the Haakonan lightning that D’deridex had brought down upon the Empire, he knew he couldn’t avoid them.
It came to Valdore only now that he was as culpable for this development as the late D’deridex had been. He had spent too much time wrestling with his conscience prior to deciding to help replace a mad warmonger of a praetor with a saner, more manageable successor. He had hesitated, and no amount of tactical cleverness on his part could ever expunge that transgression.
For his hesitation had allowed Praetor D’deridex’s legacy of madness to continue bedeviling the Empire from beyond the grave.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Late in the month of re’T’Khutai, YS 8765
Saturday, May 22, 2156
Northern ShiKahr, Vulcan
THE WARM DAWN BREEZE CARRIED with it the faint tang of g’teth blooms and fast-growing gespar seedlings. T’Pol stood in the garden in the ruddy glow of newly-risen Nevasa, watching the approaching hovercar as it completed its slow, almost silent descent. She approached the vehicle after it settled gently onto the stone patio. The driver, a young male Vulcan with a deep olive complexion, wasted no time extricating himself from the idling craft’s cockpit blister; he offered to take the small travel bag that was slung over T’Pol’s left shoulder, but she politely declined.
Like most Vulcans, T’Pol had never been interested in the accumulation of things. In fact, she might have been even less inclined than most, having lived the necessarily itinerant life of a V’Shar field operative for so many years, followed by a stint in the Vulcan Defense Force and, most recently, Starfleet. As a consequence of her nomadic career path, she traveled light, never burdening others with the management of her sparse inventory of personal effects.
“A moment, please,” she said to the driver, who replied with a polite nod before returning to the cockpit to wait on her readiness. Crossing the garden, she approached Trip, who stood in the stone archway that connected the garden courtyard to her mother’s house—her house, she reminded herself yet again.
Something was obviously wrong, a fact she felt without having to see the deep frown that creased Trip’s ordinarily smooth Vulcan brow. He had been using the cover identity of Sodok the trader for some time now, but she didn’t think he made a convincing Vulcan. Once they left Vulcan and returned to Enterprise—they had both made plans to return prior to the starship’s next large, planned military engagement against the Romulans—it would be entirely irrelevant.
Trip had managed