Death in Winter

by Michael Jan Freidman

  The Stargazer had been caught in a previously unknown space phenomenon, one that struck at all her essential systems. Before the captain or any of his officers realized what was happening, the ship was deaf, dumb, blind, and utterly defenseless. And to make matters worse, the phenomenon was creating an overload in the starboard warp-field generator.

  Picard had his chief engineer shut down the warp drive, to keep the situation from spiraling out of control. But there was still a lot of energy cycling through the starboard nacelle—enough to blow it up and perhaps take the rest of the ship with it.

  Unfortunately, the Stargazer couldn’t separate into a saucer section and a battle section like later starship designs. The captain had only one choice: to sever the nacelle.

  However, the ship wasn’t capable of firing on herself, even if her phaser banks had been operational at the time. And there was no way Picard could approach the problem area through the power transfer tunnels, which were full of energy that had leaked from the warp-field generators.

  A team would have to go outside the ship and do the job with phaser rifles. Jack Crusher was the first to volunteer, and Joseph was chosen to go with him. It made sense. Both men had experience performing hull repairs and had proven they could negotiate the ship’s exterior.

  That last part was important. After all, the transporters weren’t working, so Picard couldn’t provide them with a lifeline. They would have to make the trip to the nacelle and back on their own.

  Crusher and Joseph looked cool and determined as they climbed out an airlock and started their journey. With the sensors down, the captain couldn’t watch them. He could only keep track of their progress via their helmet communicators.

  It took a long time to cut through the nacelle assembly, but that was understandable, considering the thickness of the ship’s skin. Then they sliced into the transfer tunnel, and the energies collected there shut down their communicators—forcing Picard and his remaining officers to guess how the expedition was faring.

  And the guesses grew more dire as time elapsed. Too much time, they decided after a while. Over the objections of Ben Zoma, Picard’s first officer, the captain donned a containment suit and went after his men. Minutes later, he discovered Joseph drifting alongside the hull, unconscious.

  Picard could have gone after Crusher and tried to bring both men in. However, he chose to bring Joseph in first—and because of that decision, both he and Pug survived.

  Because he had barely negotiated the curve of the Stargazer’s hull, putting her nacelle out of sight, when the ship bucked savagely beneath his feet.

  There was no air in space to carry the noise, but something had exploded. At first, Picard thought it might have been the warp-field generator, but that would have been massive enough to destroy the entire ship. Later he would find out it was just a pocket of accumulated energy.

  When it went off, it completed the job Crusher and Joseph had started, jerking the nacelle free. But Picard couldn’t see that from where he was crouching on the hull. For the moment, all he knew in his heart was this: that his friend Jack Crusher had perished.

  The captain brought Joseph back inside the ship, then went back out to find Jack. And he found him, all right. But as he had feared, his friend was dead.

  When Joseph came to, he said he had blacked out in the face of all that energy. At the time, no one guessed that it was just a story, and that Joseph had lost his nerve. He had run, abandoning Jack, leaving him alone to carry out their assignment.

  That was why, in the end, Joseph had survived and Jack had not—because the security officer had escaped the blast when the energy pocket finally exploded, severing the nacelle.

  On the Stargazer, no one suspected that Joseph had panicked. No one knew that Jack’s death might have been avoided—that he might have survived if his colleague had remained alongside him a little longer.

  Joseph kept his guilt over Jack’s death locked inside him for years, allowing it to eat at him like a Regulan bloodworm. He might have kept it there the rest of his life except for a visit to Picard’s Enterprise-D.

  Joseph and others who had served on the Stargazer were reunited there for the coronation of one of their colleagues—a D’aavit named Morgen, who had become a captain by then. And for the first time since Jack’s death, Joseph was placed in the company of Jack’s widow, Beverly.

  At the urging of Guinan, Picard’s El-Aurian bartender, Joseph told Beverly the truth about her husband’s death. But far from hating him for it, Beverly forgave him.

  “That was a long time ago,” the captain pointed out.

  “Still,” Joseph insisted. With what seemed like an effort, he smiled. “On top of that, Doctor Crusher’s been good to me. I’d like to pay her back a little.”

  Picard looked at him. “Good to you…?”

  Joseph shrugged. “You remember that problem I had for a while—with alcohol?”

  “Yes, of course,” said the captain, wondering what that had to do with Beverly. “But my understanding is that you managed to overcome it. Unless…”

  Joseph waved away the notion. “No, I haven’t fallen off the wagon. But I’d still be a drinker if I hadn’t had help from Doctor Crusher. She’s the one who contacted me after I left the Enterprise and convinced me that I needed treatment.”

  Picard didn’t know a thing about it. He said so.

  “That’s not all,” said Joseph. “She spoke to some people she knew and got me into a rehab center. She even spent a shore leave there once, playing a miserable game of sharash’di and listening to my old Stargazer stories.”

  “Really,” said the captain, feeling vaguely discomfited.

  He had believed he knew Beverly better than any man alive. But as it turned out, there was more to his friend the doctor than met the eye—even his.

  “So I’ve got even more reason to want to get her out of there,” Joseph explained.

  No more than I, Picard reflected. However, that is not the reason we were dispatched.

  “Our priority,” he said by way of a reminder, “is the Kevrata. Starfleet did not send us on a rescue mission.”

  Joseph chuckled in a decidedly conspiratorial way. “And Queen Isabella didn’t send Columbus to discover the Americas. But he managed to pull it off anyway.”

  For the sake of his duty to the Kevrata, the captain frowned. “Columbus found the Americas by mistake.”

  “That’s his story,” said Joseph.

  Commander Donatra didn’t know whether to curse Tomalak’s arrogance or just laugh.

  “Not even the Second Fleet?” she asked.

  “Not even that,” confirmed Suran, who was sitting across the wardroom table from her. His gray-haired presence had always been reassuring to Donatra, especially in the days when she first served beneath him. “No Defense Force ship has made a move toward Romulus in days. It seems Tomalak is determined to defend Tal’aura with the forces already gathered about him.”

  “That is good news,” said Donatra. “In a numerically even fight, we will certainly prevail.”

  Suran shrugged beneath the weight of his severe, linked-metal tunic. “Perhaps.”

  Donatra regarded her comrade—no longer her superior these last few years, but her peer—with undisguised wonder. “Our command personnel are a hundred times more vital than Tomalak’s. We have firebrands in our center seats, hungry to take back the Empire by any means necessary. Tomalak has elder statesmen, more adept at charming the wives of the Hundred over expensive wine chalices than giving orders in the heat of battle.”

  “True,” said Suran, who wasn’t above playing the role of an elder statesman himself when circumstances called for it. “But I know Tomalak. He is not a risk-taker. If he appears content with the sea-stones dealt him, there is a reason for it.”

  Donatra considered the insight. “Is it possible that he would like to bring the First and Second Fleets home—but can’t? Because something else demands their attention?”

  “Anyth
ing is possible,” said Suran, “but I do not know what that something might be. There is unrest among the rim worlds, no question—but not enough to occupy both the First Fleet and the Second. And at the moment, neither the Federation nor the Klingons seem inclined to threaten our borders.”

  It was true. If anything, the Federation appeared eager to build on the alliance they had cobbled together.

  “Perhaps some other threat, then,” Donatra suggested. “Something of which we are as yet unaware.”

  Suran’s expression told her he didn’t believe that. He was just too considerate to say so.

  Donatra decided to change the subject. “In the meantime, I have been in contact with Braeg. He assures me that the people are responding to his rhetoric, both in the capital and the countryside. Every day, he shakes the foundations of Tal’aura’s authority a little more.”

  Suran smiled. “You sound like a centurion who beamed aboard my warbird twelve years ago, saying she couldn’t wait to destroy the enemies of the Empire.”

  “Was I that eager?” Donatra asked.

  “Every bit,” her comrade said. “And do you remember the counsel I gave you at the time?”

  All too well. “You told me to slow down—there would be no shortage of enemies for me to destroy.”

  “Nor is there a shortage now,” said Suran, “even if they originate within the Empire rather than without. That is why my advice today is the same as then: Temper your eagerness. In time, I believe, Braeg will prevail. If I thought otherwise, I would not be here. But it will not happen overnight, no matter how promising the admiral’s reports may be.”

  “Shinzon’s coup took a few seconds,” Donatra pointed out. “Just long enough to turn the Senate to dust.”

  “Yes,” said Suran, “and look what became of it. Shinzon’s reign lasted hardly any longer than his victim’s cries of terror. We would do better to move slowly and make certain of our support before we reach for Tal’aura’s throat.”

  Donatra smiled, grateful for her comrade’s advice. “You are too wise for your own good, Suran.”

  “On occasion,” he said, “that is true. But fortunately, I am wise enough for yours.”

  Abruptly, a third voice filled the room—one that came to them over the warbird’s communications system. “I sorely regret the interruption, Commander, but Commander Suran’s first officer wishes to speak with him.”

  Donatra glanced at Suran. He nodded.

  “By all means,” said Donatra, “put him through.”

  A moment later they heard from Vorander, Suran’s second-in-command. Apparently, there was a discipline issue aboard the T’sarok that required Suran’s attention.

  “It’s an epidemic,” said Donatra.

  “So it would appear,” Suran responded.

  It was perhaps the tenth incident that had cropped up in the last few days, and it seemed unlikely it would be the last. But then, Romulan centurions weren’t accustomed to playing the waiting game. They craved action.

  And their commanders are no different, Donatra mused.

  Suran rose and said, “I should take care of this. We will speak again later.”

  But not in person, Donatra reflected. And that made it less satisfying, somehow. “Long live the Empire.”

  “The Empire,” Suran echoed, and left Donatra sitting there alone in her wardroom.

  With her colleague gone, she could hear the rhythmic throbbing of the Valdore’s engines through the bulkheads. It was a good sound, as reassuring as Suran’s presence in its way, and even more so considering how recently the engines had been rendered silent.

  Donatra remembered every detail perfectly—the flash and hull-piercing impact of Shinzon’s torpedoes, the way she had been thrown across the deck, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. She remembered too how helpless she had felt after she realized the extent of the damage.

  No propulsion, no weapons, not even a forward shield. All she could do was contact her ally, Captain Picard, and let him know he had to fight on alone.

  But Donatra’s engineering team was among the canniest in the Empire. It hadn’t taken long for them to get the engines running again and return the Valdore to fighting form.

  So she can take part in the struggle against Tal’aura, the commander thought. So she could shake the pretender free of the throne she had claimed so quickly, and to which she clung now with such consummate stubbornness.

  Of course, Braeg was doing all the fighting for now. Once again he had whipped a crowd into frenzy, inflaming it with his criticisms of Tal’aura’s misguided regime. And once again, the praetor had demonstrated her weakness by declining to send her centurions to arrest him.

  Donatra sympathized with the crowd in the capital. She appreciated how difficult it was to ignore Braeg, how difficult it was to turn one’s back on him.

  The first time she encountered Braeg had been years earlier, in the D’nossos System, when she was still serving as Suran’s first officer. As head of a special task force, the admiral impressed Donatra with his courage and his cunning.

  Not to mention his dark good looks.

  Braeg had occasion, as it turned out, to notice her virtues as well. During the battle in which they finally routed the Tellati, Donatra came across a warbird whose command staff had perished. Beaming aboard with a couple of her subordinates, she returned the vessel to the fray and launched a critical assault on the enemy’s flank.

  Suran boasted about her brilliance in the affair as if she were his own daughter. But that wasn’t the highest praise she received for her effort—because shortly thereafter, Braeg offered her command of one of his ships.

  Any officer in the fleet would have given a limb to command a warbird under Admiral Braeg. Donatra, to the surprise of even Suran, turned the offer down.

  At the time, she was too devoted to Suran to accept a berth anywhere but on the T’sarok. There were those who told her that her loyalty had destroyed a potentially splendid career, and she wondered if they weren’t right.

  But Braeg wasn’t insulted. Far from it. Never having met anyone self-possessed enough to disdain his largesse, he wanted to know more about Donatra. He delved into her military files and whatever else he could find, studying her as he might study an adversary on the field of battle.

  Finally, having learned all he could from secondary sources, the admiral made arrangements to confront Donatra in person. That was the only way, he explained later, that he felt he could truly plumb her depths.

  Their “chance” encounter at an imperial training facility in the Reggiana system, where Donatra had been invited to lecture, began as a polite give-and-take on matters of military philosophy. However, it evolved into a heated discussion, and soon became even more heated—though it could no longer be called a mere discussion.

  Until then, Donatra would not have believed that an encounter between two accomplished military combatants could result in a victory for both parties. But that night, it was exactly what happened.

  And from then on, Braeg became her lover.

  It wasn’t public knowledge that they were so entwined. It couldn’t be, or both their careers would suffer. Braeg made Donatra pledge to keep their secret even from Suran, a vow she made reluctantly but had yet to violate.

  It was difficult enough for Donatra and Braeg to meet while Donatra was a first officer. When she became a full commander and received the Valdore, it became even more so. But in her worst moments of longing and frustration, she pacified herself with the promise that someday she and Braeg would be together.

  It was only a matter of time.

  And now, strangely, that time was nearly at hand. Days ago, Braeg resigned his position in the Imperial Defense Force—something he had never imagined himself doing—and dedicated himself to Praetor Tal’aura’s downfall.

  Braeg had never had a taste for politics before. He had been content to leave that serpent’s nest to the noble Hundred who claimed it as their birthright.

  However,
he had grown disgusted watching Tal’aura degrade the Empire with her ineptitude, squandering what he had fought so hard and so long to attain. The praetor’s only true talent, it seemed, was in the area of self-preservation.

  So Braeg had decided to offer himself to the people as an alternative. Not forever, of course. Just until someone better suited to the job could take over, leaving the admiral free again to do what he did best.

  In Braeg’s eyes, he was still fighting for the glory of the mighty Romulan Empire. He was just doing it in a new theater of operations.

  And Donatra hadn’t hesitated to become Braeg’s fiercest ally—not because she was his lover, but because she believed in his cause as much as he did. In no time at all, the praetor had allowed the rim world crisis to spiral out of control; she had to be replaced before she could do any more damage.

  How could I ever have aligned myself with someone like Tal’aura? Donatra wondered with a flush of embarrassment. Someone so selfish, so insane for power?

  Then again, Donatra had sided with Shinzon, and he was even worse. Clearly, her judgment had been lacking in the area of political alliances. But not this time, she thought. Braeg was an honorable man, a leader who would restore prosperity to the Empire.

  All he has to do is prevail over Tal’aura, Donatra reflected. It was a difficult task, to be sure, but hardly an impossible one. And once he accomplished it, they would be together, finally and for always.

  It is just a matter of time.…

  Worf shook his massive head and rumbled, “I do not like it.”

  Geordi considered the Enterprise-E’s newly refurbished mess hall, with its free-form seating arrangements and its long, narrow observation ports. Somehow, the place had looked better in the blueprint stages.

  “It’ll take some getting used to,” the engineer conceded. “But after a while, we’ll probably forget it was ever—”

  Worf turned to him, his dark eyes narrowing beneath his brooding ledge of a brow. “I am not talking about the interior decoration. I am speaking of Doctor Crusher.”