That wasn’t what the captain meant. He wasn’t in denial of the facts. He was in command of them. “Beverly Crusher is alive. I am certain of it.”
Edrich straightened in his chair. Clearly, it wasn’t the response he had expected.
“And,” Picard continued, “I will do whatever it takes to extract her from the trouble she appears to have encountered.”
The older man hesitated for a moment before responding. “I had a mission in mind for you, all right. However, it doesn’t involve a rescue operation.”
The captain eyed him. “What then?”
“Doctor Crusher’s mission was exceptionally important, and we’re still determined to pursue it. Obviously, she was our first choice with regard to stopping the epidemic, our best chance at success—but there is another option.”
And he told Picard who it was.
In one way, it was the logical conclusion, no question. In another, it was anything but that.
“We want you,” said Edrich, “to get this doctor to Kevratas and put him a position to find a cure. Then we want you to see to the distribution of it.” He scowled. “In retrospect, we should probably have gotten you involved from the get-go. No one knows the Romulans better than you do.”
It was true. Picard had been the first to make contact with the Romulans when they came out of their fifty-three-year period of isolation. He was the one who had gone to Romulus to look for Ambassador Spock. And more recently, he was the one who had dealt with Shinzon.
“Also,” Edrich continued, “no one knew—” He stopped himself. “—knows Doctor Crusher better than you do. Having worked alongside her all these years, you’re in the best position to steer clear of whatever went wrong for her.”
The admiral’s features softened. “And after you’ve helped the Kevrata, if you want to push your luck and stay to look for her, you’ll be in the best position to do that as well.”
Picard didn’t like the idea of allowing Beverly to languish in what might be desperate circumstances while he pursued another objective. He wanted desperately to extricate her from whatever snare had taken her.
But she would have been the first to remind him that the welfare of the Kevrata came first—before hers, before his, before that of any single individual, no matter how important or beloved. That was where his duty lay.
“Unfortunately,” said Picard, “the Enterprise is in no condition to take me to the Empire. I will need an alternative means of transportation.”
“You’ll have one,” said Edrich. “I’ve made arrangements in that regard with an old friend of yours—Pug Joseph.”
Joseph had served on the Stargazer, the captain’s first ship. The fellow had left the fleet years earlier to pursue a career in commercial shipping, but for a mission like this it couldn’t have been difficult to lure him back into service.
“In addition,” said the admiral, “you’ll be accompanied by a Romulan named Decalon—one of the first defectors the Romulan underground spirited out of the Empire. He lived on Kevratas for a while. He’ll know his way around.”
Beverly would have benefited from such support, Picard reflected. Obviously, Starfleet Command was being careful not to make the same mistake twice.
“I’m sending you the details now,” said Edrich. “Good luck, Jean-Luc…on all counts.”
The captain nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
Then Edrich’s visage vanished from the screen, leaving Picard alone with his thoughts. They were gray and ponderous, and they threatened to drag him down. But he wouldn’t allow it.
Beverly is alive, he told himself. I know she is. And in time, I will find her.
Tomalak, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the praetor’s Imperial Defense Force, watched his servant splash a bit of Romulan ale into his spiced fish casserole.
The dish’s aroma had been most tantalizing to begin with. Mingled with that of the ale, it was irresistible.
“My compliments,” he said.
“The commander is too kind,” said his servant as he replaced the flagon of ale on the commander-in-chief’s table. Then he inclined his head and backed out of the room.
No, thought Tomalak, stabbing a juicy chunk of fish meat on the end of his metal dining implement. Not too kind. Many things, but never that.
He tasted the morsel. It was every bit as intriguing as its scent promised, every bit as succulent. As was the next morsel, and the one after that.
A victory, he thought. And there was nothing Tomalak liked more than victory.
Savoring each bite, Tomalak took his time consuming the loaf of spiced fish. Finally, with a pang of regret, he swallowed the last piece of soft, white flesh and used a finely finished cloth napkin to wipe his mouth.
Then he set the napkin down, swiveled in his chair, and considered the oval monitor screen that was now in front of him. It was a shame that he had to follow such a delectable meal with such an unappealing sight, but he had little choice in the matter. With a sigh, Tomalak activated the screen.
It showed him a vast array of warbirds, a bit more than sixty at last count. They had gathered just outside the edge of Romulus’s star system like airborne scavengers, waiting for some earthbound beast to make its kill.
Among them were the vessels commanded by Donatra and Suran, a fiery young female and a crafty veteran respectively. Originally the leaders of the Imperial Third and Fifth fleets, they had ever so briefly taken the reins of the entire Defense Force by tying their destinies to that of Shinzon.
At the time, Tal’aura had been their ally, their co-conspirator. But it was only their common allegiance to Shinzon that held the three of them together, not any real affinity for one another. When Shinzon fell, leaving the praetor’s chair empty, Tal’aura swept in to seize power on her own.
Of course, she could have thrown Donatra and Suran a bone, leaving them in charge of the military. However, they had already betrayed one praetor all too gladly. What would stop them, Tal’aura had asked herself, from betraying her as well?
Hence, the appointment of Tomalak as head of the Imperial Defense Force. But Tal’aura had underestimated the influence of Donatra and Suran on the Romulans who had served with them. Almost without exception, every ship’s commander in the Third and Fifth Fleets remained loyal to his or her superior and—casting aside a millennia-old tradition of fealty—refused to recognize the legitimacy of the praetor.
It was this wave of sentiment that had created the rogue force on Tomalak’s screen. Nor was it inconsequential, by any means. Sixty warbirds were sixty warbirds.
But Tomalak had nearly a hundred ships under his command, and only a third of them were dispersed throughout the Empire. That left him with a fleet at least equal to the rogues’.
He laughed softly to himself. All he had ever needed in the past was a fighting chance. For someone as skilled as Tomalak, equal odds were a rare and heady luxury.
One that would, in due course, prove the undoing of Donatra and old Suran.
And so it goes, Tomalak mused, around and around like a child’s spinning toy. The great became the least and the least became the great, over and over again, so quickly sometimes that it made him dizzy to contemplate it.
Only Tomalak always kept his place in the firmament, because he knew better than to reach for something as high as a throne. Instead, he identified the favorite of the moment—Tal’aura today, someone else tomorrow—and inured himself to them.
Naturally, he had political preferences. One of them was that the Empire stay as far away from the Federation as possible—a policy from which Tal’aura seemed increasingly ready to diverge. But that didn’t mean Tomalak would stint one iota in his support of the praetor or her regime.
Until another one came along.
That was what it meant to be a rock in a tempest. That was the price one paid to remain a survivor.
He would never have done anything so rash as to stand in defiance of authority, like the swarm of warbirds on his monitor scr
een. And he would certainly never have laid his sword at the feet of anyone as politically inexperienced as Braeg.
Without question, the fellow had been a great military commander in his day, a hero of the Empire. But leading a fleet into battle wasn’t nearly as difficult as marshalling the loyalty of a senate, or manipulating a congress of merchants, or holding sway over the backstabbing, bickering Hundred.
Unfortunately for Braeg, he would never have the opportunity to learn that lesson firsthand. Depressing a button with his forefinger, Tomalak called up a different image—that of his own powerful, well-prepared fleet.
The one that would defend Romulus when the rebels came. The one that would, in the end, prevail.
If Donatra and the others wanted a fight, he would give them one—and remind Tal’aura that, of all those who served her, no one was more valuable than Tomalak.
Carter Greyhorse’s life had become much fuller since the head of his penal settlement retired and was replaced by a new, more liberal administrator.
The woman’s name was Esperanza. She had been in charge for only a couple of days when she granted Greyhorse access to a series of monographs published by Starfleet Medical.
Her predecessor, a fellow named Dupont, had repeatedly refused Greyhorse that privilege. It wasn’t that there was anything in the monographs he could have used to hurt anyone—not even himself. But Dupont had denied them to Greyhorse all the same.
It had seemed unnecessarily cruel. Greyhorse had, after all, been a doctor. Despite everything that had happened, his mind still moved in that direction.
But he was a prisoner these days, at the mercy of others in every way. There was little he could have done about the administrator’s stubbornness except continue to make his requests, and hope that Dupont changed his mind.
He hadn’t, of course. But he had removed himself from the equation, which was even better.
Now Greyhorse could read a monograph whenever he wanted. In fact, he was poring over one of them at that very moment, following the research of a Doctor Bashir who had done groundbreaking work in the field of biomimetics.
Intriguing, he thought—as the door to his quarters slid open, revealing his guard. In actuality, McGovern—a hatchet-faced man with a shock of red hair—was but one of the guards who worked at the penal settlement. However, Greyhorse had come to think of McGovern as his own.
“Yes?” said the doctor.
“It seems,” said McGovern, “that you have a visitor.”
A visitor? the doctor thought. “There must be some mistake. I’m not expecting anyone.”
“Nonetheless,” said the guard, “he’s on his way. Figure five minutes.” And he withdrew, allowing the door to close behind him.
Greyhorse turned back to his computer screen, where the biomimetics monograph was waiting patiently for him. He saved it, clearing the screen. Then he got up and smoothed the front of his standard-issue, pale blue coveralls.
It still seemed like an error to him. There was only one person who visited him these days, and it wasn’t like her to surprise him this way.
Still, he supposed anything was possible. As someone who had served as the chief surgeon on a starship, he was in a position to know that as well as anyone.
Greyhorse had been incarcerated for more than a decade, and he had never complained about the passage of time. But now, as he waited for his visitor, time seemed to drag. He began counting his heartbeats, wondering how many it would take.
Finally, his door slid open again. McGovern stuck his head in, just to double-check that everything was all right, which it clearly was. Then he withdrew and someone else entered the room.
A short, small-boned man with straw-colored hair and watery blue eyes, wearing the gray-and-black uniform of a Starfleet captain. The doctor noted the maroon stripe of command on his sleeve.
“Doctor Greyhorse,” the man said warmly, “my name is Jefferson. I work for Starfleet Command.”
He extended his hand for Greyhorse to shake. The doctor looked at it as if it were some rare variety of alien fauna.
After all, it was a long time since he had shaken hands with anyone. In all the years he had spent in the Federation’s penal settlement in New Zealand, his counselors and physicians had never once initiated physical contact. Neither had his fellow prisoners, whom he had seen only on the rarest of occasions.
As a result, it was a little daunting for Greyhorse to contemplate the touch of flesh now. However, he didn’t want to give his visitor any indication that he was still unstable, so he clasped the proffered hand.
It felt cool and dry. And ridiculously small. The doctor had forgotten how big and strong he was in comparison with other humans, almost as if he were a member of another species. He did his best not to squeeze too hard.
Finally, Jefferson took his hand back. Greyhorse found that he was sorry about that.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” said the captain, “so I’ll get right to the point. We need your help.”
The doctor blinked. “To do what?”
Jefferson laid it all out for him. When he got to the part about Doctor Crusher and what had happened to her, Greyhorse must have made a face, because his visitor paused.
“I hope this news doesn’t come as too much of a shock,” he said, a note of concern in his voice.
It did. In fact, it cut Greyhorse to his core. But he was determined not to show it.
“Please,” he said, “go on.”
As he absorbed the rest of what Jefferson had to say, he began to understand why he, of all people, had been asked to help. Outside of Doctor Crusher, he was the Federation’s only real authority on the disease in question.
“What would you like me to do?” he asked.
“We are sending a team to Kevratas,” said the captain, “to pick up where Doctor Crusher left off—to find a cure for the virus and distribute it among the Kevrata. I’ve come to ask you to be part of that team.”
Greyhorse could barely contain his excitement. The idea of leaving the penal settlement, leaving Earth entirely…it was so exhilarating as to be overwhelming.
Calm yourself, he thought sharply. “I will be happy,” he said in a carefully measured way, “to help in any way I can.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Jefferson.
But he had reservations, and Greyhorse knew what they were. He would have been an imbecile otherwise.
“Unfortunately,” said his visitor, “there is the matter of what happened on the Enterprise several years ago…your attempts to murder Captain Picard and others.”
“Which were unsuccessful,” Greyhorse noted.
“Of course they were, and we’re all happy about that. But the attempts were made nonetheless.”
Greyhorse didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.
Jefferson smiled. “Some people would claim it’s the height of foolishness to put someone like yourself in the thick of a complex interplanetary situation.”
The doctor nodded. “I can understand that.”
“But Admiral Edrich doesn’t hold with that point of view. He’s studied your record as an officer and a physician, and reviewed your progress here, and he thinks Command can depend on you to help the Kevrata. The question is…what do you think?”
Greyhorse licked his lips, doing his best not to seem either too eager or too hesitant. “I want,” he said simply, for he felt simplicity would serve him best, “to be useful again.”
The captain nodded, obviously pleased with the doctor’s answer. “I was hoping you would say that.”
Of course there was much that Greyhorse did not say, a great deal of information that he kept to himself. But then he didn’t wish to deprive himself of this most remarkable and unexpected opportunity—and if he spoke everything that was on his mind, he would surely do just that.
He had been convicted of crimes, it was true. However, stupidity wasn’t one of them.
“I think you’ll be pleased w
hen I tell you with whom you’ll be working,” said Jefferson.
When Greyhorse heard, he was quite pleased. But he wondered how Captain Picard and the others would feel about him….
3
PICARD HAD HOPED IT WOULD BE HIS OLD SECURITY officer who greeted him as he materialized in the cramped, dimly lit transporter room of the Barolian trader. He wasn’t disappointed.
“Captain,” said Pug Joseph, a smile stretching across his stubbly face. “Welcome to the Annabel Lee.”
He was perhaps a bit stockier than the last time Picard had seen him, a bit less toned. However, there was no mistaking his sandy, close-cropped hair and small, flat nose—the latter being responsible for the designation “Pug,” which had affixed itself to Joseph well before the captain met him.
“I am not your captain any longer,” Picard reminded him.
“Old habits die hard,” said Joseph. “Come on. You look like you can stand something to eat.”
In point of fact, Picard hadn’t eaten anything for several hours, but he wasn’t hungry. He was too intent on what lay ahead of him to think about food.
Still, he didn’t want to insult his old comrade. “I could do with a cup of tea.”
Joseph chuckled. “And some habits die harder than others.”
Gesturing, he led the way out of the room into the corridor beyond. It was narrower than those on the Enterprise, but not so narrow that two old comrades couldn’t walk side by side.
The captain glanced at Joseph. “What did you tell your crew?”
“That I had some private business to attend to. They knew better than to ask what it was.”
“Discreet of them.”
Joseph nodded. “Discretion is a virtue when you’re hauling cargo.”
“I suppose so.” Picard put a hand on his companion’s shoulder. “It is good of you to do this, Pug.”
“Hey,” said the freighter captain, “it’s the least I can do.” His features straightened, became solemn-looking. “I mean, after what happened with Jack.”
It took Picard a moment to remember what Joseph meant. But then, it was a memory the captain had done his best to put aside—for many reasons.
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