The deep hum of the faster-than-light engines rose in the equipment junction. The throbbing character of the sound differed from that of Enterprise’s steady drone. Here, the pulse seemed like the beating of Tomed’s singular heart.
As Gravenor worked, Vaughn stepped up beside her and peered at the scanner display. She waited enough time for the ship to be beyond the reach of the limited sensors in the escape pods, then adjusted Tomed’s course and increased its velocity to warp nine. “We’re on our way,” she said to Vaughn. She accessed the ship’s internal sensors again, wanting to check on the location of the Romulans. She saw that the three of them in main engineering had left that location and now headed in this direction. It would not take long for them to reach—
The display went blank.
Gravenor coolly worked the controls of the scanner, even as she understood what had happened. She checked both the device itself and its connection to the ship’s circuitry, confirming her suspicion: her access to the sensors had been severed. “They found us,” she said to Vaughn. She activated the communicator wrapped around her wrist and raised it once more toward her mouth. “Aerel to Ventin,” she said. “They found us.”
“Get out of there,”Harriman ordered. “You know your jobs. Out.”
As with any special operation, alternative courses of action had been established wherever possible. Being discovered at this point, with Tomedalmost entirely abandoned by its crew and now streaking away toward Federation space, Gravenor’s duty would be to prevent the Romulans from taking control of the warp drive. If she and Vaughn and Harriman were to succeed in their mission, they could not allow the ship to be stopped, slowed, or diverted.
Gravenor reached forward, grabbed the bundles of fiber-optics, and ripped them free of their connections to the Romulan circuitry. After disengaging the lines from her scanner, she stuffed them into the bulkhead. Beside her, Vaughn had already reached down and retrieved the access plate, which he replaced as soon as she had moved away. When he turned to face her, she said, “Proceed as planned, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Commander,” he said. The muscles of his face had tensed visibly, and he looked serious and concerned. But young as he was, Vaughn didn’t give in to panic—and wouldn’t, Gravenor felt certain. If she had believed otherwise, she would not have selected him for this assignment.
“Go,” she said. Vaughn drew his disruptor, then turned and climbed into a conduit. Gravenor attached her scanner to its holder at her waist, then reached for her own weapon. As Vaughn’s legs and feet disappeared from view, she whirled and scrambled into a different conduit, headed for Tomed’s main engineering section.
As he watched Linavil stride to the weapons cache, Vokar stepped up to the nearest console—the navigation station—and opened a comm channel. “Vokar to engineering,” he said.
“This is Elvia,”replied the ship’s lead engineer, rushing through the words, her voice loud. She sounded harried, and perhaps also annoyed. “Admiral, we have only a few—”
“Cease your work, Lieutenant,” Vokar interrupted. “There are intruders aboard. Arm yourselves and proceed to the lower engineering deck, port side, maintenance connector—” He looked over at Akeev for the location.
“Connector forty-seven,” the science officer said. Vokar repeated the information to Elvia.
“Admiral,”she said, “we haven’t been able to slow the containment loss. My engineers and I were just about to head for the evacuation pods.”
“I’m aware of that,” Vokar said, fighting back anger at having his orders questioned. Linavil started back across the bridge, he saw, three disruptors in her hands. “The source of the containment problem has been located, and another crew is making repairs. I need you and your engineers to arm yourselves and find the intruders. You’re closest to them.”
Elvia did not respond immediately, and Vokar thought that she might not respond at all. Obviously fearing the collapse of the containment field and the unleashing of the quantum singularity, Elvia might simply flee the ship, choosing to suffer the consequences of her cowardice later. But then she said, “How many intruders are there?”
Again, Vokar looked to Akeev. “Probably not more than two or three,” the science officer speculated, just as Linavil walked up to him and handed him one of the disruptors.
“Three,” Vokar told Elvia. “And they are impervious to direct sensor scans.”
“Yes, sir,”she said. “We’re on our way.”
“Vokar out,” he said, jabbing at the control on the navigation console to close the channel. Linavil stopped beside him and held out a disruptor. He took the proffered weapon and affixed it to his uniform at his hip, and Linavil did the same with her own. “Subcommander,” he said, “cancel the program that would automatically take the ship out of the area.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She moved quickly to the helm.
“Sir,” Akeev said from the sciences station, “there’s another crew working on the containment field?” As with Elvia, he sounded distressed.
“The intruders,” Vokar explained. “The Federation saboteurs.”
“I don’t understand,” Akeev said. “I know what the sensors indicated, but even if the intruders are still aboard, how can you be sure that they can fix the problem?”
“They arestill aboard,” Linavil offered as she worked the helm controls, “because they want this ship.”
“Yes,” Vokar agreed. “They executed the damage to Tomed,and now they’ll repair it. They can’t very well have the ship if it’s destroyed.”
Akeev nodded slowly, but seemed unconvinced. “How do you know they don’t wantto destroy the ship?” he asked.
“Because they’re still aboard,” Vokar said, “and the Federation doesn’t launch suicide missions.” He thought of the Romulan commanders who over the decades had sacrificed their lives and those of their crews rather than allow their vessels and themselves to fall into the possession of an enemy. Vokar knew firsthand that Starfleet personnel did not always lack for courage or the ability to plan strategically, but willingly giving up their lives for the greater good was an action beyond their capabilities.
“I’ve canceled the helm program, sir,” Linavil announced. “Tomed’s not going anywhere.”
“So the intruders sabotaged the ship to force the crew to evacuate?” Akeev asked. “And their plan was to fix it and escape when the ship automatically left the area?”
“Yes,” Vokar said, “but they didn’t intend for there to be any Romulans left aboard to…” Vokar’s voice trailed off as something else occurred to him. “…to thwart them,” he finished flatly as he began to work through his realization: the plan of the Federation operatives demanded secrecy. Even if they successfully captured Tomed,it would do them no good if the Romulan Empire could demonstrate that the Federation had been behind the theft. The Klingons had threatened to side against the aggressor in a conflict between the Empire and the Federation, and the meticulously planned appropriation of the Romulan flagship from this side of the Neutral Zone would certainly qualify as aggression.
“We need to send out a message,” Vokar said to Linavil. “To Romulus, to another vessel, even to the crew in the evacuation pods. We must expose the Federation plot.” The intruders had obviously sabotaged communications so that the crew would not be able to broadcast a distress call, but probably also as a precaution should not all of the crew evacuate the ship.
“There’s long-range communications equipment in the shuttles,” Linavil noted.
Vokar nodded. “Go now,” he said. Linavil headed for the turbolift, but stopped when Akeev spoke up.
“Admiral,” he said, urgency in his tone. “Sensors have detected a comm signal…originating in…” The science officer tapped at his panel. “…lower engineering deck…” He looked up, the pale glow of the sciences display reflecting on his face. “…port maintenance connector forty-seven.”