Riker felt as though his boots were poised at the crumbling verge of a bottomless abyss. And he knew that the time had come for him to take a deadly, yet necessary, step over the edge. He briefly thought of his late father, who’d been killed during the recent civil unrest on Delta Sigma IV. Though Kyle Riker had possessed more than a few less-than-admirable traits, indecision wasn’t among them.
Squaring his shoulders, Captain William Thomas Riker made up his mind.
“All right, Praetor Tal’Aura. Proconsul Tomalak. My senior staff and I will agree to conduct the prefatory meeting as you suggest—without the Remans and the Unificationists.”
“Excellent, Captain,” said Tal’Aura, dipping her head slightly. Something approximating a smile pulled at the sides of her narrow, patrician face.
“With one small proviso,” Riker continued, raising a hand.
She lifted an eyebrow in an almost Vulcan manner. “Say on, Captain. What is your proviso?”
“That the Federation’s participation in this early meeting is not to be taken as an official endorsement of any of the leaders present,” Riker said coolly. “Including you, Praetor Tal’Aura.”
Tal’Aura bristled visibly at this, but remained silent. After a lengthy pause, she said, “Very well. My staff will contact you again in sixteen of your hours. Jolan’tru, Captain Riker.”
“Jolan’tru, Praetor,” Riker echoed, though the praetor’s image had already vanished, to be replaced immediately by the infinite depths of star-bejeweled space.
“Well, we already knew the praetor wasn’t likely to agree to share power quickly or easily,” Vale said, rising from her seat.
Deanna nodded. “Taking that into account, I think that went fairly well. We’ll soon be dealing with three of the most powerful factions in the Romulan government. You went a long way toward ensuring that our first full Romulan-Reman meeting goes smoothly, Captain.”
“As long as we can keep this first meeting off the Reman newsnets,” Vale said.
“Of course,” Deanna said. “But at least Tal’Aura is cooperating with us. That’s a very positive sign.”
“She needs us,” Riker said.
Deanna nodded. “No question. She must have serious doubts that she can successfully handle all the chaos that could come her way from breakaway subject worlds, or from hostiles beyond the Empire’s borders, without our help.”
Vale favored Deanna with a smile, obviously agreeing with her analysis. “Did your Betazoid empathy tell you that?”
“There’s a whole lot of interstellar space between Tal’Aura and my Betazoid empathy,” Deanna reminded her, looking amused. “My diplomatic instincts will have to do until we get just a tiny bit closer to Romulus.”
Riker returned to his seat in silence, disconcerted by what felt like his complete inability to predict the outcome of the mission he faced. Accustomed to far more straightforward tactical situations, he felt decidedly uncomfortable being saddled with such a handicap.
Such is diplomacy, he thought, simultaneously gratified and regretful that his Starfleet career hadn’t been more preoccupied with that particular discipline. He could only hope that he hadn’t just helped create yet another dangerous power clique by inexpertly meddling in the chaos Shinzon had left in his murderous wake.
“We’re being hailed again, sir,” Dakal reported, sounding surprised.
Riker sighed. “Who is it this time?”
“It’s General Khegh. He’s coming through on a secure channel.”
Suppressing an even bigger sigh, Riker said, “Put him on the screen, Cadet.”
General Khegh’s visage greeted him a fraction of a second later. The Klingon flag officer grinned, again showing off his impressive array of jagged, discolored teeth. Unsurprisingly, his skin was still florid from excessive drink.
“Romulans will be Romulans, won’t they, eh, Captain?”
Riker nodded. “After we shake their hands, we’ll be sure to count our fingers.”
Khegh reacted with another belching belly-laugh. “And we shall—how do you humans say it?—we shall watch your backs, Captain.”
“Thank you, General.” Riker found Khegh’s drunken martial conviviality anything but reassuring.
“And you needn’t worry about our alerting the Remans to Tal’Aura’s machinations to exclude them from your first meeting. We will keep your confidence, so long as Tal’Aura agrees to receive the Reman leaders in subsequent talks.”
“You are a wise leader, General.” He’s a lot smarter than he looks, Riker thought. Of course, he’d almost have to be.
“But make no mistake, Captain,” Khegh said, his lips suddenly curling into a snarl. “We will not passively endure further Romulan treachery. If those pointy-eared petaQ attempt to waylay our convoy with their cloaked vessels, we will swiftly make all nine of their Hells very crowded places indeed.”
Lovely, Riker thought, wondering if it wasn’t likelier that the general would hit Titan, or perhaps one of the other ships in the convoy, were he actually forced to open fire. “Thank you, General. We appreciate your vigilance.”
“wa’ Dol nIvDaq matay’DI’ maQap, ’Aj,” Vale said to the Klingon, whose hawklike eyes widened in surprise. Riker found it hard to tell if he was pleased or offended.
After a pause, Khegh shouted, “Qapla’!” before vanishing from the screen.
Though Riker had picked a word or two out of Vale’s stream of rapid-fire Klingon, his own command of the language wasn’t quite up to parsing the idiom she had just used. Curious, he turned to face his exec. “Exactly what did you say to him, Commander?”
“‘We succeed together in a greater whole.’ It’s an old Klingon aphorism that seemed appropriate to the situation.”
“I had no idea you were so fluent in Klingon,” Riker said, impressed.
“I’m not. I nicked it from a phrase book I memorized during my Academy days for an extra-credit assignment. Affirmations by General BoQtar.”
Riker chuckled. “Sounds like a pretty quick read.”
“Judging from Khegh’s ever-so-slightly chastened emotional reaction,” Deanna said, “it served as a polite reminder that we need him to restrain himself. Or ‘keep his powder dry,’ as they used to say in Earth’s Wild West.”
In spite of his own dark thoughts, Riker found himself chuckling again. “Nice shooting, pardner,” he said to Vale. Anticipating a difficult series of negotiations between several exceedingly contentious and cantankerous parties, he felt a surge of gratitude at having two senior officers with such finely honed diplomatic instincts.
“We are now leaving the Neutral Zone, Captain,” Axel Bolaji reported from behind the conn. “Entering the periphery of Romulan space.”
Riker stared straight ahead into a firmament ruled by the dangerously splintered Romulans. Despite his confidence in both Deanna and Christine, he found himself wishing that Ambassador Spock could also be at his side when all the shouting finally began down on Romulus.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
VIKR’L PRISON, KI BARATAN, ROMULUS
Throughout the past week, Tuvok had been completely unable to focus his attention, as his fever rose ever higher. As closely as he could tell, he had been imprisoned for fifty days, though in the dark, windowless dampness, it was difficult to reckon time accurately. He couldn’t even keep track of the cycles by counting mealtimes, since food arrived irregularly, with entire days sometimes elapsing between meals.
But neither the interrogators, the guards, nor the other prisoners had found out that he was not Rukath, the lowly farmer from Leinarrh, in the Rarathik District. The minor surgical alterations he had undergone before making landfall on Romulus had held up. Only the most detailed scan, to which he had apparently not yet been subjected, could have revealed that he was actually Vulcan rather than Romulan.
Between his Starfleet intelligence training, his Vulcan disciplines, and the tricks he had learned while on deep cover assignment with the Maquis, Tuvok w
as confident in his ability to maintain his assumed identity under repeated questioning and even torture. But fatigue, and perhaps even a recrudescence of the early-stage Tuvan syndrome he thought he’d beaten two years earlier, had taken their toll; he had made several mistakes about Rom-ulan geography and history during his more recent interrogations, evidently arousing enough suspicion among the prison authorities to motivate them to keep him in custody, placing him in solitary confinement in a cold, dismal space all but indistinguishable from a stone casket. Languishing in the darkness, he cursed his faltering memory. He still didn’t know if the guards really thought he was a spy, or if they were merely having fun torturing a simpleminded hveinn who had wandered too far from his crops.
Today—What day is it? he wondered yet again—despair was creeping in at the edges of his consciousness, and no amount of meditation seemed to help, even when he could muster sufficient concentration to attempt to enter a state of aelaehih’bili’re, or mind-peace. With his wrist chrono destroyed, Starfleet had no sure way to locate him, and rescue seemed unlikely anyway, given that so much time had passed already since his capture. He thought repeatedly of his wife, his grown children, his grandchildren, but even picturing their faces was already growing difficult.
Defying all logic, he found he was actually beginning to look forward to brief glimpses of, or contacts with, his jailers, no matter how badly they mistreated him. Save for the screams and moans he heard coming from other stone cells in the catacomblike underground prison complex, his captors were now the only intelligent beings with whom he could interact.
Since the initial wildfire-like rise of his fever several days ago, he had begun to lose control of both body and mind. When he wasn’t shivering, he was laughing or crying, the normally suppressed emotions ripping at his being far more than had the physical discomfort of imprisonment. Mostly, he tried to sleep, escaping into a black pool of oblivion. Dreams came to him rarely, and he found their absence a great comfort. When they did come, they were vivid, disturbing, and illogical.
A dark, beetlelike insect scuttled across the moist stone-and-brick floor toward his foot, then up into the rags that shrouded his legs. He watched and waited, his need and desperation overcoming decades of studied discipline. As it came within striking distance, his hands thrust out like le-matya pouncing on a desert ferravat. His shackles clinked as he grabbed the beetle. He felt it attempt to gore his flesh between the pincerlike horns on its head, but he squeezed it until its carapace split. The insect died instantly.
In the dim light, he checked the belly of the beetle, but did not see the distinctive markings of the female. He had started to eat one of them weeks ago, and learned that the females carried a deadly poison in their belly sacs. Twisting this beetle’s head by the horns, he decapitated it, then tossed the head aside. He took a bite of the crunchy body, which immediately suffused his taste buds with a dry, acrid tang. He closed his eyes as he slowly chewed another bite, and felt darkness and despair wash over him again.
“Get that creature out of your mouth,” his mother, T’Meni, said sharply, glaring down at him.
He looked down at his hands, and saw his stubby fingers clutching a half-eaten geshu bug. “Why? Wari was eating it first.”
She bent over and slapped the insect from his hands, into the desert sand. “Wari is a sehlat. You are a Vulcan boy. Vulcan boys do not eat insects.”
“That isn’t logical, Mother,” he said. “We feed Wari food that we no longer want. If he can eat what we do, why can’t we eat what he does?”
“Vulcan boys do not eat insects,” she said firmly, then turned to walk away.
Tuvok looked over at the half-eaten bug. It began to squirm, and turned what was left of its head toward him.
“Romulan boys eat insects,” it said, its voice thin and reedy. “Are you a Romulan?”
“No,” Tuvok said, his voice suddenly deepening into that of an adult. He stood and backed away from the writhing insect, then turned. Standing before him was Captain Spock, who was flanked by Captain James Kirk and Captain Hikaru Sulu.
“I’m not certain I understand your objection, Ensign,” Spock said to him. “We are discussing an alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, not a unification between Romulans and Vulcans.”
Tuvok shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “The Klingon ideal is conquest and expansion,” he finally said, slowly and deliberately. “This worldview is antithetical to the very foundations of the Federation. Klingon culture is based on violence and brutality; Klingons exist to conquer, destroy, and subsume.”
“Quite a firecracker on your crew, Hikaru,” Kirk said with a smile, gesturing toward Tuvok, but looking at Sulu.
“They want nothing more than to destroy the very fabric of our ideals,” Tuvok said, continuing, though his thoughts seemed jumbled. “They want to blend their chaotic emotional society into ours, and you’re being duped into helping them, Captain Spock. Pardek is using you.”
“Who is Pardek? Are you feeling all right, Ensign?” Sulu asked. A mug of hot tea was in his hand and he threw it at Tuvok.
Instinctively, Tuvok put up his hands to protect his face. The tea splattered against them and clattered to the floor in front of him, suddenly transformed into a pile of randomly scattered t’an rods.
“Clearly, you aren’t quite into this game of kal’toh,” a familiar voice said, and Tuvok looked through his splayed fingers. There, in Tuvok’s wrecked quarters aboard the U.S.S. Voyager, squatted Lon Suder, the star-ship’s psychosis-addled Betazoid crew member. Suder reached down with bloody hands to grab some of the t’an rods. “What are you afraid of, Tuvok? That your mind will collapse before your society does?”
“I can control my mind,” Tuvok said, backing away. “I have trained to achieve Kolinahr.” He stepped back through the door outside his quarters, and stumbled into the searing desert of Vulcan’s Forge, pitiless Nevasa baking him from almost directly overhead.
“But you never finished your training,” intoned the Vulcan master who now stood before him. The robed adept then turned his back on Tuvok, who began to follow. Sand swirled around him, propelled by a swift, insistent wind.
“I can complete my training,” Tuvok cried out. He saw his wife, T’Pel, and his children and grandchildren. Other masters were escorting them away from him.
T’Pel turned and called to him. “You left your Kolinahr training incomplete. You left your family incomplete. And you do not support the progress of our people.”
He saw that the masters were leading his family toward a phalanx of Romulan warbirds that had settled in the desert, looking as though they had always been there.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Admiral Kathryn Janeway. She smiled at him sweetly. “Even if you didn’t complete your training, I thought you had learned your lesson, Tuvok.”
“Which lesson?” he asked her. His head felt as if it were splitting open, and sweat ran down his face.
“You engineered the melding of the Maquis with the Starfleet crew aboard Voyager,” Janeway said. “Despite all logic, despite the conflicts between two groups that had every reason never to work together, you managed to bring them into accord. Just like Ambassador Spock is doing on Romulus.”
Tuvok wiped the sweat away with the tattered sleeve of a robe he hadn’t recalled ever having worn before. “I no longer oppose Spock’s Unification movement,” he said. “That is why I volunteered for the mission to Romulus.” Now, he knew where the robe had come from.
“You don’t oppose Unification?” Janeway asked, looking peevish. “Then why aren’t you helping Spock now?”
Tuvok was about to answer, when he felt his stomach buckle with immense pain. He cried out and fell, sprawling onto a hard surface. Janeway was gone. The blowing sand was gone. Only the random pattern of rough-hewn stones and bricks of his cell floor remained.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was the severed head of a beetle as it was crushed unde
r the toe of a heavy boot. Then hot darkness came, mercifully enfolding him.
Mekrikuk heard the guards before they even entered the hallway. He knew that many of his Reman brethren had allowed imprisonment and deprivation to dull their senses, but he had worked hard to keep his sharp and honed. He was thankful for the prison’s lack of light. Remans, after all, were creatures of the darkness.
Exercising at Vikr’l Prison wasn’t an easy option. The prisoners were kept underfed and overaggravated, and any Reman who showed open contempt for the Romulan jailers was taken away and never heard from again. Rumors were that troublemakers were processed into food after their executions, effectively getting rid of any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the guards while demeaning the captive Remans even further by forcing them into cannibalism. Mekrikuk chose not to eat on the days after someone had been taken away, no matter how tempting he found the intense food-smells.
Mekrikuk was used to hardship. His earliest memories were of being beaten in the dilithium mines, when he was barely four years old. Several of his siblings had died in the mines, either from exhaustion or disease, although Bekrinok had been killed for daring to stand up to a Rom-ulan taskmaster who was sexually assaulting his teenage mate.
Of the rest of his family, Mekrikuk was the only one to have survived the Dominion War. Like many Remans, he had served as cannon fodder, but somehow, he had survived and emerged victorious in engagement after engagement. Mekrikuk had even saved the life of Delnek, the favored son and aide-de-camp of Senator Varyet.
That act had secured Mekrikuk a favored place in the senator’s household. Varyet was a progressive politician who championed the rights of downtrodden provincial races; Mekrikuk was technically a slave in her household, but had been given unprecedented freedom, as long as he remembered “his place” while in public.
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