A civilization, he reminded himself, whose crash program to develop a warp‑seven‑capable stardrive still posed a direct and mounting threat, not only to the world of his birth, but also to its allies. Putting a definitive stop to that program was the reason he had come to this alien place. It was also the reason he had allowed all but a handful of the people in his life to believe the official reports of his death in the line of duty. His parents, his brother Bert, and Owen, the child that Bert and Miguel had adopted a few years backall of them believed what Starfleet had told them about his death in an apparent pirate raid.
He ached to finish his mission, to return home and see them all againto put his life and the lives of his loved ones back together. Thank God that at least TPol knows the truth,he thought, briefly wondering if he could ever mend that particular relationship. Ever since the death of their daughter Elizabeth a few months back, he tended to doubt that he and TPol would ever recapture whatever spark had once passed between them, even though their relationship had been headed that way very shortly before his “death.
The narrow street upon which Trip stood seemed to become even more constricted as the evening settled in, covering the sky like a bejeweled raven‑colored canopy and bringing with it a chill, foggy breeze tinged with Apnex Sea brine and the faint but acrid scent of what might have been shore‑dwelling mogaior neirhh,or perhaps some other kind of local predatory bird. Illuminated only dimly by the greenish glow of the lanterns that topped the districts widely spaced, age‑pitted stone lampposts, his surroundings quickly began to suggest menace rather than beauty. Cinching his brown travel robe tightly against the rapidly falling temperature, he turned and began retracing the route hed taken from his apartment, hoping the terrain wouldnt appear too different in the baleful semidarkness.
The pavement beneath one of his feet suddenly became soft and yielding, and he nearly fell backward before regaining his balance. A stench, wholly alien yet also somehow distinctly familiar, assaulted his nostrils not half a heartbeat later.
“Ugh, he muttered as he leaned against a wall, squinting to get a good look at the semisolid foulness into which he had just stepped. Damn it. Theres one thing thats the same on any planet thats got cities on it, pointed ears and green blood notwithstanding.Doing his best to ignore the stink, Trip stepped over to the nearby brick‑lined gutter, against which he scraped the bottom of his shoe until its sole once again looked reasonably clean. Then, after breathing a pungent Rihannsu curse upon those who failed to curb their pet setleths, he resumed walking, quietly rounding a corner.
Trip suddenly found himself standing between a pair of youthful male Romulans, neither of whom appeared to be any older than perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Both teens distinguished themselves immediately from everyone else he had encountered so far this evening, and not merely because of their age.
They were smiling.
Maliciously.
The solitary streetlamp across the street shed just enough pale light to make the blade in the shorter teens hand gleam menacingly.
Trip offered them a sideways grin of his own. “ Jolantru,boys, he said in his best conversational Rihannsu, relying on the translator mounted inside his artificially pointed ear to smooth out whatever difficulties his persistent Alabama‑Florida accent might pose. “Maybe Id better warn you up front: I left my wallet back at the hotel.
The kid holding the knife took a fateful step forward, evidently not about to take Trip at his word.
Trip sighed. This was shaping up to be a complicated evening.
“Youre twenty minutes late checking in, Commander,said a frowning Captain Stillwell, imaged on the little security‑scrambled subspace transceiver that Trip had just retrieved from its strategic hiding place beneath one of his bedroom floorboards. Stillwell paused, blinking at his own screen as he studied the image there. “What the hell happened to you, anyway?
Trip grinned, ignoring the slight twinge of pain that lingered in his jaw. “Its all right, sir. Just ran into a little bit of trouble while I was walking home tonight, thats all.
“Looks like you were injured,Stillwell said, leaning forward slightly as he squinted at Trip from across the light‑years. Despite the extreme distance, the visual channel looked exceptionally crisp today, probably because of the adjustments Trip had just made to the official subspace array on the roof of Ehrehins lab, which lay only a few klicks away. On several occasions over the past month, Trip had succeeded in quietly piggybacking his own narrow‑beam, amplitude‑modulated subspace signals onto those of the labs multiband transceiver; this enabled him to send messages that blended in undetectably with both the never‑ending torrent of incoming and outgoing lab data and the natural background static of subspaceso far, at least.
“Lets just say you oughtta see the other guy. Although in actuality he had faced two attackers, Trip didnt want to sound as though he were bragging. Fortunately, the toughs who had tried to jump him had only been aggressive teenagers; since they hadnt had the benefit of Starfleet training, theyd been fairly easy to persuade to move on in search of easier prey. On the other hand, even young Romulans had a pretty significant advantage over humans in terms of sheer physical strength.
Stillwell appeared to be scrutinizing Trips bruised face in minute detail. “Youd better tend to those scrapes and bruises carefully, Commander. We cant afford to let these people see you shedding red blood, now can we?
Im so very touched by your concern,Trip thought, though he knew his new superior in the spy bureau was making an excellent point. Nevertheless, Stillwell made Harris, the enigmatic spymaster who had originally recruited him into the bureau, seem almost cuddly in comparison.
Its his job to develop Earths version of the warp‑seven drive before the Romulans manage to pull off the same trick,Trip reminded himself. Having spent four years laboring to keep Enterprises frequently beleaguered warp‑five engine running with its matter/antimatter needle always necessarily oscillating somewhere between offand kaboom, Trip had some natural sympathy for Stillwell. It wasnt hard to imagine what the crushing weight of so much high‑stakes responsibility might do to any mans sense of humor.
“Ive still got a good supply of sulfatriptan salted away, Captain, Trip said, nodding. Thanks to the drugs property of harmlessly binding its sulfur compounds to the human hemoglobin molecule, no cursory glance at Trips blood, mucus membranes, or internal organs would give him away as a red‑blooded Terraneven after the new red cells produced by his bone marrow had overwhelmed the initial green‑blood treatment hed received on Adigeon Prime. Regardless, he knew he had to remain vigilant about not making anybody curious enough about him to subject him to deep‑tissue scans or DNA tests of any sort, or else the jig would truly be up.
“I just took a booster dose, Trip continued. “By tomorrow my blood and innards will look as green as the Chicago River on Saint Pattys Day. I just hope I can avoid spilling any more of it any time soon,he added silently, with no small amount of gallows humor.
“Good,Stillwell said with a sober nod, apparently as unmoved as ever by Trips witticisms. “Now lets discuss your progress monitoring and regulating the activities of your target.
Trip suppressed a wince. Target. He hated that word. “Im still keeping very close tabs on Ehrehin, he said.
“I can see that, Commander. So close, in fact, that you and Doctor Ehrehin iRamnau trAvrak now seem to be on a first‑name basis.