Star Trek - TNG - 08 - The captain's Honor

by David

  She started to bend back to her work, then

  stopped; her trained ears had caught the sound

  of a transporter beam. Then she discerned the

  approaching figure more clearly, and stiffened in

  surprise; the man walking toward her, his

  cloak of dark purple swirling about him as he

  strode across the dusty field as though he

  walked the polished floor of the Roman

  imperial court, was Captain Lucius

  Aelius Sejanus.

  Reflexively Jenny stiffened to attention.

  With a little half-smile the captain said,

  "Be at ease, Ensign." He laid a hand

  on her shoulder. "Gaius told me how

  upset you were over this attack. I came down

  to make sure you were all right."

  "I'm fine, sir. Just a little ...

  frustrated."

  Sejanus eyed her questioningly.

  "Frustrated?"

  "Yes." Jenny's normally timid voice

  filled with anger. "Had the security teams

  been there earlier--indeed, had the Tenarans

  themselves accepted our offers to arm them--we could

  easily have prevented this."

  Sejanus nodded. "Go on."

  "The Tenarans are weak, Captain

  Sejanus," Jenny said angrily, all the

  frustration of the last few weeks eating at her.

  "They will not arm themselves, they cannot fight, they

  ..." Words failed her, and she finished the

  declaration with a weak gesture.

  "I share your concern, Ensign," Sejanus

  replied. "But perhaps they can be protected, so

  long as you and your personnel perform as

  valiantly as you did today."

  "Thank you, sir."

  He eyed her carefully a moment before speaking

  again. "And perhaps there are other measures we can

  take as well."

  "Sir?" Jenny asked, slightly confused.

  Sejanus' communicator chirped.

  "Excuse me a moment." He touched his

  insignia. "Sejanus here. Go ahead."

  "Captain, we have just received word from the

  Enterprise. Chairman Melkinat is

  dead."

  "Oh, no," Jenny said, the shovel

  slipping out of her hands.

  Sejanus' face turned grave. "Thank

  you, Lieutenant. Hold one moment." He

  turned back to Jenny. "I must go ... but I

  would like to continue our conversation. The next time you

  are aboard the Centurion ...?"

  Jenny almost blushed. She was planning to beam

  up there later this evening to see Gaius, after her

  work on the surface was completed. But there was no

  need to tell Captain Sejanus that. "I will

  be aboard tomorrow morning, sir."

  "Excellent," Sejanus said. "Come

  talk to me then." He bowed, then reached up

  to tap his communicator. "Sejanus

  to Centurion. One to beam up."

  It was a long time before Jenny could concentrate

  her thoughts enough to go back to work.

  Chapter Eleven

  Captain's Log, Stardate 41800.9

  I have just returned from a very disturbing session

  with the remaining officials of Tenara's Great

  Saavta.

  The death of Chairman Melkinat has

  shaken the whole government to its core. They are

  now calling for the removal of all

  Federation forces, and that call is being led

  by Gretna Melkinata--the late chairman's

  daughter. Up until a week ago, I would

  have counted on her support for a continued Federation

  presence here to help the Tenarans defend their

  world. I am at a loss to explain her actions

  --while Commander Riker, who knew her best of

  all, remains unconscious in sick bay,

  recovering from wounds received during the latest

  attack by the M'dok.

  There is one encouraging piece of news in

  all this, however. The M'dok we have captured

  bear out Commander Data's hypothesis of famine

  in the empire. We have dispatched this information

  to Starfleet, who are bringing increased

  diplomatic pressure to bear. In the

  meantime, the situation here remains explosive.

  I feel that Captain Sejanus and

  Centurion are merely waiting for the M'dok

  to reappear to start a full-scale war.

  Picard sighed and leaned back in his chair,

  shutting off the log recorder.

  "Quite a day, sir," Deanna Troi said.

  "Indeed, Counselor. And it's only

  morning." He put a finger to his lips and

  rubbed them thoughtfully. "I wish I could talk

  to Commander Riker about all this." He flipped a

  toggle on his chair, opening a channel to sick

  bay. "Dr. Crusher, how's our patient?"

  "He's lost a lot of blood,

  Captain." Beverly Crusher's voice came

  back. "But he's coming along nicely."

  "I need to talk to him."

  "And he needs to sleep. At least another

  twenty-four hours."

  The determination in her voice was clear.

  Picard gritted his teeth. "Very well,

  Doctor. Keep me informed."

  He turned his attention to the main

  viewscreen, dominated by Tenara and the

  Centurion.

  Much more than I need to talk to Commander

  Riker, I need to talk to the captain of that

  ship. To find out what he's thinking, what he

  plans to do next.

  And he might as well be a million

  miles away.

  The door to Sejanus' quarters slid

  open, and Ensign Jenny de Luz stepped

  inside. Sejanus was waiting for her, standing beside

  a desk. He was wearing a simple Starfleet

  uniform just like that worn by Jean-Luc Picard;

  it made his similarity to the Enterprise

  captain all the more striking, even uncanny.

  He smiled with pleasure and came forward

  to take her hand in greeting. "Ensign de

  Luz. Welcome to my ship. May I call

  you Jenny?"

  "Yes, Captain. Of course."

  Sejanus released her hand and walked over

  to the windows and stood looking at Tenara spinning

  lazily below them. "I've been monitoring your

  holodeck exercises." He turned back

  to her and smiled. "Your scores are most

  impressive."

  "It's thanks to Gaius, sir."

  "You're too modest, Jenny. He tells

  me everything--and he tells me you're one of the

  most promising young officers he's come across in

  years. Even including the Magna Romans.

  But then, there's a little bit of Rome in your

  background, isn't there?"

  Jenny smiled. "Actually, sir, only

  partly. Most of my ancestors were the native

  peoples conquered by the Romans."

  "The same may well be true of me,"

  Sejanus said with a laugh. "I've never been

  convinced that the Volcinians, or any of the other

  gentis who claim to trace their ancestry

  back to the original Roman patrician

  families, have kept their bl oodlines as pure

  through the centuries as we like to tell ourselves."

  He seated himself on the edge of the desk. "I was

  brought up believing that all of
that--ancestry,

  purity of blood--was more important than

  anything else. I believed every detail of it.

  But for years I've struggled to overcome that

  upbringing. First I tried to make myself see that

  I had to think in terms of my whole world, of

  all Magna Romans, and not just of Romans.

  Then I tried to expand my view still further,

  to embrace all the member peoples of the

  Federation."

  "Yes, sir." Jenny nodded. "That's just

  what I had to learn when I left Meramar.

  That's what Captain Picard says quite often."

  "Does he?" Sejanus cleared

  his throat. "Your captain is a great man.

  He's famous throughout Starfleet and the Federation,

  and justly so. A scholar, a soldier when

  necessary, a diplomat, a leader--yes, he

  deserves his fame. I can certainly understand why

  his crew admire him."

  "We do, sir."

  Sejanus nodded. "And I'm sure that

  Captain Picard's real concern is for the good

  of the peoples and worlds that make up the

  Federation."

  "I'm sure of that too, sir."

  Sejanus raised his eyes to meet hers.

  "But, Jenny, it's important not to be

  blinded by hero worship. Even Jean-Luc

  Picard is capable of making mistakes."

  "Of ... of course, sir. I'm sure

  he'd be the first to agree."

  Sejanus nodded. "I'm sure you're

  right," he said seriously. "That's partly a

  measure of the man's greatness--that he's willing

  to admit that he's as fallible as anyone else.

  Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that he's

  always able to see where he's going wrong, even if

  it's pointed out to him. He may wish for the best

  for the Federation, but he may not be taking the best

  approach to ensuring the Federation's health."

  Suddenly Jenny began to feel confused.

  "I don't know what you mean, Captain."

  Sejanus stood slowly. "Let me give

  you some background to the Battle of

  Britannia. No, I'm not changing the

  subject. You'll see; it's relevant. Do

  you know why the German tribes put aside their

  differences and undertook an expedition

  to Britannia to attack Londinium?"

  "Gaius told me they thought it was

  undefended, that the legions had been

  withdrawn."

  "Yes, but why did they think that?"

  Jenny shook her head. "I didn't

  ask."

  His voice turned crisp and

  authoritative. "Like the Romans of Earth,

  my ancestors tried unsuccessfully to conquer

  the Germans. We lost untold numbers of

  men in those forests, and we scarcely gained any

  ground.

  "But we noticed that the Germans were becoming

  more like us! They resisted us as

  conquerors, but between fights, they traded with the

  Roman settlements along their borders, they

  learned Latin, they learned to emulate our

  forms of government and military organization.

  If anything, we realized that this made them an

  even greater threat to us. But it also pointed the

  way to a different method of conquest.

  "So we started sending in teachers and traders

  instead of soldiers. The first few were

  slaughtered, of course, but eventually the

  Germans let them survive and stay. Bit

  by bit, our culture, our civilization, was

  bringing about the conquest that our armies had failed

  to achieve.

  "And then a revivalist movement started in

  Germania--cultural revival,

  nationalism, rejecting everything foreign, which is

  to say, Roman. Within two years they had

  dismantled everything we had built, killed or

  imprisoned all of our people, and terrified all

  the Romanized Germans into returning

  to primitive ways. Food, language,

  housing, the arts--everything became primitive

  again. And we were back where we had started

  centuries before.

  "Then we realized that we were even worse off

  than we had been. The new leaders of

  Germania were cooperating with each other, and they

  were more aware than before of our empire as a

  threat. Our spies discovered that they were trying

  to organize an invasion of the empire, with

  Rome itself as their goal.

  "Our first impulse was to organize as large

  an army as we could and send it north

  into Germania to crush them once and for all. But

  the Emperor Belisarius feared that his

  legions would simply be slaughtered in the

  forest, as had happened centuries earlier. He

  and his generals hit upon a brilliant

  strategy. They sent couriers through Germania,

  on one of the shorter routes toward

  Britannia, carrying secret messages to the

  legions in Britannia."

  "But that seems very foolish," Jenny

  protested. "They might have been captured."

  Sejanus grinned. "They were. And they were

  tortured and killed, and their messages were

  translated. The messages were orders that the

  legions withdraw to Italia to help repel the

  expected German invasion. The true

  orders, that the legions were to stay where they were,

  were sent to Britannia by sea, along with many

  reinforcements. The Germans fell for the ruse and

  sent the cream of their forces to attack what they

  thought was unguarded Britannia. They thought

  to eat away at the empire from the edges, but

  instead they fell into a perfect trap, as you

  saw on the holodeck. The aftermath was that

  Germania was denuded of its defensive

  forces, and Emperor Belisarius then sent his

  legions in and conquered all of Germania in a

  brilliant campaign taking only three

  months."

  "That was a very risky trick," Jenny

  pointed out.

  "Yes, but it worked, and that's what really

  counts, isn't it?"

  "Would those couriers think so, Captain? I

  mean, the ones who were sent across Germania with

  fake messages? You said they were caught and

  tortured and killed."

  "They were Romans, Jenny. They knew the

  risk, and they accepted it as part of their duty."

  He paused. "Perhaps you're beginning to see my

  point, why I told you this whole story about the

  background to the Battle of Britannia.

  What saved Britannia and the rest of the

  empire was the willing self-sacrifice of

  brave Romans. A direct approach--a

  brute-force invasion of Germania--would have

  failed. It might even have led to the downfall

  of the empire. There might be no Magna

  Roma today. And that's really my point. That's

  what I want you to think about."

  Jenny shook her head, confused. "I'm

  afraid I still don't understand what you're

  getting at."

  Sejanus now turned his back on her and

  began pacing across the ready room. "What

  I'm getting at, Jenny, is that what your


  captain is doing now--here, on Tenara--is a

  mistake." He turned to face her. "It's

  cost the lives of dozens of Tenarans, and it will

  cost the lives of many more people--from this ship and yours,

  I would say--before Picard will admit his

  mistake."

  "With all due respect, sir, that's something

  you should take up with him, not me."

  Sejanus laughed. He walked over

  to Jenny and put his hands on her

  shoulders. "I can understand Gaius' interest in

  you. He has chosen exceptionally well."

  His voice vibrated through her. Jenny

  stepped away, breaking the contact. "Thank you,

  sir."

  Sejanus turned toward the window and studied

  the stars outside. He waited a moment before

  speaking again. "I remember your words on the

  surface of Tenara, Jenny--how you felt the

  deaths there were unnecessary. Do you remember mine?"

  Jenny nodded. "You said there were other

  measures we could take to ensure the Tenarans'

  safety."

  "Exactly," Sejanus said. He turned

  back to her, his eyes alight with excitement.

  "The time has come to take those other

  measures, Jenny. To strike back at the

  enemies of the Federation, to do something bold, something

  daring, something that will do more to ensure the long-term

  safety of our worlds and peoples than any

  number of defensive outposts we could ever set

  up!" He gripped her shoulders again, and stared

  into her eyes. "Something that will require brave

  followers of the old Roman mold, followers

  unafraid to sacrifice their lives for what

  they believe is right.

  "Jenny," Sejanus drew her closer.

  "I think you are of that mold--I know Gaius

  Aldus does. We want you here, aboard the

  Centurion, to help in that undertaking."

  "I ..." Jenny chose her words

  carefully. "Captain, it may happen that

  I'll be requesting a transfer to the

  Centurion in the future anyway. I've

  been thinking that I ought to speak to you about it,

  to make sure you'd approve the request."

  "Approve!" Sejanus fairly shouted.

  "Jenny, I'd be delighted. I want

  officers who can think on their feet, react

  quickly--above all, officers unafraid to do

  what has to be done. People like you, Jenny."

  She drew a shaky breath. "Thank you,

  sir. Then I would be honored to serve under your

  command."

  "Excellent, Jenny." He clapped his

  hands. "Why don't you speak to your captain?

  And I'll make all the necessary arrangements