Chapter 5
2364
She checked the screen, she checked the padd. It was definitely not the same, so she cursed her bad luck. If she still believed in the Prophets, she could have prayed for their intercession now, but she had learned long ago not to expect help from them. She was on her own, she had always been. So she inhaled and exhaled slowly to try to calm down and focus as she started to compare both given codes. Maybe the outpost system had been very customized or maybe, and more probably, the version she had was already deprecated and she was dealing with an updated self-repair system now. Still, both versions could not be that different. She would have to study them carefully and find the correct point to inject the spyware.
The process was taking a long time. She realized that. However, thankfully for her, the rest of the team seemed to be in the same predicament, since none of them had contacted back to ask for further instructions or directly question her what she was doing. She noticed it was a bit odd, but she was too engrossed in her own work to worry about that. After checking one last time the modified program, she launched it and waited. She was not sure at all if it would work as it was supposed to. She was not even sure if it would work at all. But after waiting for five minutes and not rising any general alert, or at least not one that she could be aware of, she concluded her mission was over and headed back to the shuttle.
Ro had just reached the corridor when she heard a voice.
"I'm in. Everything is clear."
The words were spoken in Romulan, but she registered them immediately. She had company, and she did not stop to consider if the reason was her recent tampering or something else. She moved to the nearest door and rushed in. She could hear the other door's whoosh as it opened at the same time her own was closed.
In the following silence, she heard her heart rate quickening and was very conscious of her every breath, that sounded as loud as a scream in her head. She feared the Romulan man could listen to every step she carefully took, even when she tried hard to muffle any sound. After all, she could hear the Romulan approaching, his boots' heels hitting the floor, each step closer to her.
He had stopped at the first door and had stepped inside. Ro moved further into the store room, that was the one she was in, and pressed herself against the wall, behind one of the shelves. Inwardly, she gripped her phaser. She could not see the door from her position, she counted on being equally invisible from the door frame.
A door opened again. Then she heard the steps. Then another door opened. It was the crew quarters'. He was searching the small facility the same way she had. He took a few steps inside the room, then turned around and headed towards her.
"No one here", he commented casually as he was approaching, probably to someone over the comm. "And..."
The door was opening then. Ro pressed herself against the wall even harder, willing herself to disappear. She stopped breathing.
The Romulan was now at the thershold, but she could not see him. He then took two steps further into the room.
"... no one here", he went on as he swirled around, hardly having taken a glance at the store room.
Ro was stunned as he simply left the room without really checking it, almost upset at him for being so lenient, then she realized she should be happy. Thanks to that, she had not being spotted. She heard him approaching the operations center and finally, sighed in relief, lowering her gun.
Soon the man was inside the operations center. Ro took her tricorder again and pointed it towards where the room was, scanning for life forms. Unsurprisingly, the Romulan was identified by the device. That was all it took for the man to locate her, but, apparently, he was satisfied with just taking a look. Ro wondered why as she holstered the tricorder once more, but since she didn't have any answer to give, she decided for the moment to shrug it away. After all, for once in her life, she was being lucky.
Or at least not entirely unlucky, because the Romulans were there. And she was still trapped in their facility. And if they hadn't been alerted of her work, they would be soon.
She contemplated for a moment the possibility of rushing toward the transporter room now that the Romulan was probably focused on the other stations. She dismissed the idea an instant later as a very foolish move. She was invisible to the scanners because the outpost had been designed to be so. The moment she beamed to the planet's surface again, she would be spotted immediately. After all, there were more Romulans out there and certainly, they would be watching.
She had to wonder exactly where they were. Had they come in a ship or were they hidden in that other larger facility where all their weapons were concealed? And if they had sent someone to see if their manning post was safe, no doubt they were very aware of the presence of the Wellington orbiting the planet and her away team at the surface, suspiciously scanning every inch of it.
Unwittingly, her free hand went for the comm badge, to call Fougeroux, Sakamoto and her other crewmates, to ensure they were ok. Then she stopped and berated herself. They may be ok, or they may not, but she could not risk calling them and exposing herself, in case they were in Romulan hands. She sighed again, but this time in frustration.
Obviously, her mission had gone awfully wrong, there was nothing else she could do to ensure its success. All she could do was to try to protect her crewmates. She could not hear the Romulan man, so therefore, he could not hear her either, but she whispered her words anyway as she touched her combadge.
"Ro to Wellington."
There was no answer, so she repeated, "Ro to Wellington."
She wondered what she was about to tell the captain other than there were Romulans down there. She realized there was nothing else to tell. Obviously, she could not mention to him the outpost or say a word about her real mission on Garon II. She was in big trouble, but did not care at that moment. She only cared about what was happening then, and her away team was probably in worse trouble than her.
Again, this time raising her voice, she tried to contact her ship, "Ro to Wellington, please respond."
And the very dark thought that the vessel was not responding, because there was no ship out there that could answer her, penetrated her mind and stroke her hard.
She clenched her jaw, closed her eyes, tried to get rid of the grim idea. The Wellington was fine. Their communication was being jammed, that was all. She had to get away from the facility, back to the suttlecraft, back to safety to report... She really did not know what she was supposed to report. She only knew that she had to.
Again, she contemplated the option of leaving right then, just to discard the thought an instant later. She tried to calm down, to think clearly. She had to wait. She had to remain unnoticed until at least that Romulan went away. Until that moment, she was trapped in the store room. She stared at the shelves for almost a minute, without registering anything she saw, just trying to calm down, just trying to figure out what to do next, once he was gone. She realized he could stay for hours. She realized he could stay for days. She realized there may be more Romulans to come, and that those new Romulans could be more thorough; or simply they could enter the room looking for anything stored there and see her, and then, everything would be over. She lowered her gaze and rested it on her phaser. If it came to that, she would not hesitate to fire, she would not even hesitate to kill.
But for the moment she was alone with the Romulan who was supposed to check the outpost but did not do so. And after standing still for another few minutes, her gun up, utter silence enfolding her, she finally sat at the floor, rested her back on the wall and lowered the phaser. She was going to be staying there for a very long time, and when he left the operations center, or if any other person beamed to the facility, she would hear them and be ready.
So she was once more staring at the shelves, this time seated, her hands resting on her legs, her gun held idly, hardly touched by her fingers. She started to inventory what was in the room. She memorized everything there, all the details of those items she could not identify. Maybe, if she somehow managed to survive this endeavor, the information could be useful to Starfleet. And if it didn't, well, at least it served to keep her mind busy.
