The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [90]
Prev cursed. “What about the log-buoy launcher?” he wanted to know. After Agram shook his head, the captain turned back to Ragaav and said, “Launch the buoy manually. While we still have a little time left.”
Ragaav approached Prev very closely, and the captain could see the glint of mutiny in his small, dark eyes. Without breaking eye contact, he reached for Ragaav’s sidearm and seized it before the lieutenant could succumb to the temptation to draw it on him.
Prev couldn’t afford to let anybody stop him from doing what had to be done.
Backing toward the lift, he said, “Ragaav, you have the bridge.” Before exiting the bridge, he pulled out his own sidearm and tossed Ragaav’s weapon to a very surprised-looking Ensign Agram. “And make sure that buoy gets launched, Ensign.”
As he stepped over the motionless bodies of his engineering crew, Prev kept telling himself that everybody aboard the Miracht would have frozen to death because of the life-support system failure anyway. He wished they’d had the sense to see that, but they had instead opted to defend their engine room from what had to be done. To the death, as it turned out.
Despite the pain in his heart and the heaviness in his soul, Prev felt confident that Phinda, the ancient god after whom both Tellar’s second moon and the new Tellarite frigate class had been named, would see fit to forgive him for what he had done.
And what he was about to do.
The mobile communicator in his pocket squealed, and he pulled it out with his free hand.
“Prev here. Go ahead.”
“The log buoy is away, Captain,” Agram said. “And the Romulans are going to start boarding us at any moment.”
“Let them come,” Prev growled.
“That’s not all, Captain. Ragaav is on his way down to the engine room now. He’s bringing cutting tools and weapons.”
Prev felt a brief surge of disappointment to learn that Agram hadn’t used Ragaav’s weapon to stop him from attempting a mutiny. On the other hand, this way no Tellarite hands aboard the Miracht save his own needed to be spattered with innocent blood before events reached their inevitable conclusion.
“Good work, Agram,” the captain said. “Prev out.”
He tossed the little comm unit to the deck. And after pausing to offer the old deity Phinda a brief prayer, he knelt beside the reactor core’s open access hatch and pointed the barrel of his sidearm directly into the matter-antimatter annihilation chamber. With as much gentleness as his blunt fingers could muster, he began to squeeze the trigger.
During the half-heartbeat that preceded the searing flash of brilliance that followed, he awaited Phinda’s tender embrace.
Dateline: Near Kappa Fornacis (Deneva)
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE OCTOBER 16, 2155, NEWSTIME JOURNAL SPECIAL COMMENTARY FOLLOWS:
This is Gannet Brooks, with all the news that’s under the sun and beyond, reporting from the United Earth Space Probe Agency Medical Ship Christiaan Barnard.
There’s no easy way to report what I have to report tonight, so I’ll just say it: Deneva has fallen to the Romulan Star Empire, a development that eyewitnesses on the ground have confirmed. In addition, at least two Coalition vessels—Starfleet’s recently constructed Daedalus-class Starship Yeager and the Tellarite Defense Frigate Miracht—have failed to check in after attempting to render aid to the human settlers on Deneva.
One of the most disconcerting facts surrounding the fall of Deneva is that the planet was protected by a Vulcan-built sensor grid capable of providing at least a limited degree of warning in the event of any Romulan incursion. The core worlds of Coalition space, including Earth and the Alpha Centauri settlements, rely on similar Vulcan sensor grids as the lynchpins of their own systemwide defense programs. Could these planets have vulnerabilities similar to Deneva’s? And, more importantly, what can be done