“Even if the charges have to be trumped up a little.”
“Even then. And you couldn’t have arrived at a more propitious time. Your death will make the Kevrata see they can’t take Romulus lightly—not even after the reorganization precipitated by the demise of the Reman praetor.”
Now it was the doctor’s turn to smile. “Is that what you call it? A reorganization?”
Sela shrugged. “Call it what you like. It has happened before and it will happen again. The old is burned away in favor of the new. Things change.”
“Some do,” Beverly allowed. “And others remain the same. The intrigues, the infighting—”
“Are part of what makes us strong,” said Sela, apparently unperturbed. “Like two muscles pulling in opposite directions—the exercise improves both of them.”
“If you’re so strong, why don’t you let me help the Kevrata? Surely they can’t—”
Sela interrupted her, her gaze suddenly hard and unyielding. “We both know what they can do, Doctor. They can start a chain reaction that will destabilize the entire outer rim and jeopardize our hold on it—which is why it’s so important for me to keep you from carrying out your mission.”
Beverly’s teeth ground together. Politics. “How many Kevrata, do you think, will die because Romulus is worried about losing its subject worlds? Fifty thousand? A hundred?”
“If I were you,” said Sela, “I would be more concerned about my own future.” Her eyes took on a softer, more reasonable cast. “As you can imagine, most Romulans in my position would simply have killed you and left you to rot in the snow. I opted to bring you here instead, to treat the injury you sustained—and to give you a chance to avoid death.”
Beverly looked at her askance. “How?”
The Romulan leaned forward until her face was almost touching the barrier. “If you were to tell me which vessel brought you to Kevratas, it would improve your situation considerably.”
Beverly met Sela’s gaze. “In other words, you want me to betray the people who risked their lives to get me here.”
“The people who broke Romulan law, and imperiled the security of the Empire? Yes, those people.”
The doctor controlled the anger she felt rising inside her. “Go to hell.”
Sela straightened, as if she had been slapped across the face. Then she found it within herself to chuckle. “Romulans,” she said, “have no hell.”
Then she left Beverly standing in her cell and went back the way she had come, heels clacking on the stones. It seemed to take a long time for the echoes to fade—and even then, the doctor seemed to hear them reverberating in her mind.
Geordi swiveled away from his computer monitor and considered what he had just learned. Then he touched his combadge and said, “La Forge to Commander Worf.”
“Worf here.”
“Can I see you for a second? I’m in my quarters.”
“On my way. Worf out.”
Geordi closed his eyes and massaged them. His optical prosthetics had reduced the concept of vision to a computer-driven series of mechanized procedures, but there were still muscles involved, and his got as tired as anyone else’s.
Moments later, he heard the chime that told him Worf had arrived. “Come on in,” he said.
The doors slid aside, revealing the Klingon’s imposing presence. “What is it?” Worf asked, an unmistakable note of eagerness in his voice.
“I’ve got something,” said Geordi. But he waited for the doors to whisper closed before he went on. “I don’t know where the captain went yet, but his mode of transportation was a Barolian trader called the Annabel Lee.”
Worf shook his head. “It does not sound familiar.”
“To me either,” Geordi told him. “So I looked it up. It’s registered in the name of Peter Joseph.”
The Klingon’s eyes lit up. “Pug Joseph!”
“That’s right,” said Geordi.
Pug Joseph had been Picard’s security chief when he commanded the Stargazer. Geordi had met the guy only once, a few years after the launch of the Enterprise- D, when Joseph was working through some personal problems.
“What does Pug Joseph have to do with Beverly’s disappearance?” Worf asked.
Geordi shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.”
Worf’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing…?”
“Maybe the captain needed Pug’s ship. It’s a trader. That means it can go places a starship can’t.”
“True,” the Klingon allowed.
“I received another piece of information,” said Geordi, “but I’m not sure how trustworthy it is. You remember Carter Greyhorse?”
Worf nodded. “The doctor on the Stargazer.”
“If my source is correct, Greyhorse was released recently from a penal facility in New Zealand—into the custody of Captain Picard.”
“Interesting,” said Worf. “But why would—?” He stopped himself. “Greyhorse worked with Doctor Crusher at Starfleet Medical.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” said Geordi. “So if it’s true that Greyhorse was released, the captain may have a bit more on his plate than we thought.”
“He may have to address the medical crisis Doctor Crusher was sent to address.” Worf stroked his beard. “If we can determine what sort of crisis it was—”
“We may be able to figure out where the captain went.”
“There would be a record at Starfleet Medical of everything Doctor Crusher and Greyhorse worked on together. I do not suppose you have any friends there?”
“Not anymore,” Geordi said ruefully.
Worf dismissed the remark. “There is another way to approach this. If Joseph and Greyhorse are involved, they may have confided in one of their Stargazer comrades.”
“Makes sense,” said Geordi. “But even if they know, will they tell us? Their first loyalty is to Captain Picard, and it’ll be clear that he didn’t want us to know what was going on.”
Worf considered the matter for a moment. “Actually,” he concluded, “there is one Stargazer officer who might be inclined to see it our way.”
“Who’s that?” asked Geordi.
It was only after Worf provided an answer that he understood what his friend meant.
Eborion regarded the gray-haired individual standing before him, sandwiched between two of his personal guards. The fellow’s name was Poyaran, and he had been a servant in Eborion’s family for as long as Eborion could remember.
Eborion’s uncles, and perhaps even his father, would have taken the length of Poyaran’s service into account as they considered his punishment for attempted theft. But Eborion was not nearly so inclined toward clemency.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he asked, his voice a bit too shrill for his liking as it echoed through the airy, columned chamber.
Poyaran averted his eyes. “I ask for your understanding, master. I did not intend to steal the chalice, only to admire it in the sunlight. It belonged to my family when I was small, and I had not seen it in many years.”
It was true that the chalice had once been the property of Poyaran’s father, a merchant trader who had enjoyed ties with several of the Hundred. And it was certainly possible that he had shown it to Poyaran in the days when his every finger bore a ring of jewel-encrusted gold.
But Poyaran’s father had gotten greedy and tried to increase his fortune at the expense of his clients. A bad idea, Eborion reflected. His underhanded practices exposed, Poyaran’s father was executed in a public plaza, and the executors of his estate were directed by a tribunal to make reparations to the houses he had wronged.
Unfortunately, Poyaran’s father wasn’t wealthy enough to pay off his debts in their entirety. The tribunal was compelled to pursue its only other option—breaking up Poyaran’s family and distributing its members to the injured houses as bond servants.
Which was how Poyaran came to work for Eborion’s father. And for a long time, his service had been quite satisfactory. Howeve
r, Eborion would not tolerate stealing. If he were lenient with Poyaran, it would only encourage other servants to try their luck.
“Is that all?” Eborion asked. In the Empire, even servants enjoyed the right of statement.
Poyaran looked up, his face pale and his eyes sunken in their sockets. “It is the truth, master.”
Eborion was relieved. He had expected a long, drawn-out defense, which would ultimately have been of no avail anyway, and there were more pressing matters that required his attention.
“I do not believe you,” said Eborion. “You are hereby sentenced to a year at the penal facility on Assaf Golav. When you return, it will be with a renewed appreciation of how fortunate you are to serve in this house.”
Poyaran’s mouth twisted, as if he were about to utter a curse. After all, Assaf Golav was not a pleasant world, and its overseers were reputed to be among the cruelest in the Empire. But in the end, Poyaran restrained himself.
“My master is kind,” he said, choking on the last word as if it were something tangible.
At a gesture from Eborion, the guards took Poyaran away. The aristocrat watched them until they had left the chamber. Then he rose from his seat, meaning to take care of one of those more pressing matters.
And he would have, had his aunt not chosen that moment to make her presence known.
“Cly’rana,” said Eborion, inclining his head as she approached him. “I am sorry you had to witness that.”
“I have witnessed worse,” she told him. “But I wonder…was Assaf Golav the best choice in this case?”
Eborion stiffened. He did not like to be criticized. Again, he had to remind himself that the day when others questioned him would soon be coming to an end.
“And,” Cly’rana continued, “was it appropriate for you to pass judgment on a servant when one of your elders is present in the house? In other words, me?”
“It was my chalice,” he said.
“So it was,” his aunt allowed. “And I am certain it meant the Empire to you. I have seen,” she said, with naked sarcasm, “how attached you are to it. But it is costly to send servants to Assaf Golav, nephew, no matter how much we are offended by what they may have done.”
Eborion shrugged. “I see it as a lesson to the other servants.”
Cly’rana smiled. “And we must not miss out on an opportunity to teach our servants.”
He let the comment go unanswered. What was Cly’rana doing there anyway? Wasn’t she supposed to be in the midst of a holiday on the Apnex Sea?
“If you will pardon me,” he said, “I have research to do. I do not wish to disappoint Claboros.”
“Who would?” asked Cly’rana.
Another provocative remark. She used them to draw people into conversational traps, wherein they would make revelations they did not really wish to make.
But Eborion was clever enough to avoid taking the bait. All he said was “Indeed.”
Then, before Cly’rana could get in another comment, he got up and left the chamber. Heels clacking on the ancient marble underfoot, he made his way down a corridor to the palace’s back door.
There a suborbital craft was waiting to convey him to a weapons research laboratory in the mountains—one of many owned by his family. Without a word to the pilot, he got in, settled back, and watched the palace withdraw into the distance.
Eborion had not lied to his aunt. He was indeed pursuing the research that his uncle had required of him. But he was also pursuing a rather bold and daring plan.
Tal’aura, obviously uncomfortable about pinning all her hopes on the much-vaunted Commander Sela, had hedged her bet with the services of a spy. Sela didn’t know this, of course—she was too far from the praetor’s palace these days to know much of anything.
But Eborion knew. He had more informants at court than he could count on the fingers of both hands, and he paid them all well. There were no secrets from him, nothing that went on in Tal’aura’s palace of which he did not eventually learn.
Certainly, there was a risk in knowing Tal’aura’s secrets. A considerable one. However, Eborion hadn’t stopped there. Once he knew that there was a clandestine agent, he made it his business to find out which one it was. A costly endeavor, that—but then, spies were in the business of being difficult to identify.
Fortunately, Tal’aura had used go-betweens in hiring her spy, and at least one of them was not above selling the information. It was in this manner that Eborion learned who the fellow was, and the role he was playing on Kevratas.
And then, in a master stroke of which Eborion was immensely proud, he hired the spy to serve him as well.
He wondered now how much progress the fellow was making. People in the espionage profession tended to move slowly and carefully, reluctant to take too many chances. After all, exposure wouldn’t just portend the failure of their mission—it would mean death.
Eborion knew how they felt. It was an immense chance he was taking, operating behind the praetor’s back this way. If she were to discover his machinations, his life would certainly be forfeit—no doubt, in a most public and humiliating manner.
However, Eborion was an ambitious individual. He believed he was meant for the highest places in the Empire, if only he could find it in himself to scale them.
That was why he had been so careful in deciding which senators to support with his wealth. That was why he had remained their patron even during the time of Shinzon, playing a hunch that the clone wouldn’t remain in power very long.
And that was why he was so determined now to discredit Sela, his chief rival at Tal’aura’s court. Because as long as Sela appeared useful, Eborion would never become the praetor’s sole, unchallenged source of counsel.
The aristocrat couldn’t confront Sela on his own. She was too forceful, too crafty, too well connected. However, his spy on Kevratas was in a position to undermine Sela’s effectiveness, to find the hairline weaknesses in her regime and expand them into gaping crevices. And he would, if he was even half as good as he was reputed to be.
He would drag Sela down into the mire of her failure, centimeter by helpless centimeter. And in the process, he would help Eborion raise himself up.
“Shall I take the mountain route or the coastal route?” asked his pilot.
The coastal route was the less direct of the two, but Eborion was developing more of a taste for the indirect with every passing day. “The coastal route,” he replied, and sat back in his seat to enjoy the view.
Of the seventeen worlds in the mammoth Arbitra Tsichita system, the one called Kevratas was by far the closest to its tired red beacon of a star and therefore the only one even remotely capable of supporting life.
However, Kevratas’s surface was so cold it challenged that life on a daily basis. Even in its equatorial belt, the region that had given birth to the planet’s only sentient species, temperatures only occasionally crept over the freezing mark.
At certain times of year—this being one of them—it was even worse. A nearly unbroken mantle of clouds stretched from pole to pole, making sunlight as rare as hail on Vulcan’s Forge.
“Hope you all like a good winter storm,” said Pug as they came within orbital range of the planet. He leaned back in his captain’s chair. “Looks like a humdinger brewing right where we’ll be beaming down.”
From his seat at the helm station, Picard considered the cloud-swaddled sphere on the modest, rectangular viewscreen before him. “I trust the weather will not exacerbate the difficulty of our transport?”
He had already heard about the planet’s myriad magnetic fields, which made transporting anywhere a tricky operation. That was why he and his comrades would carry concealed, miniaturized pattern enhancers for the return trip, which promised to be a hasty business indeed, and would almost definitely not be carried out in cooperation with the authorities.
“It shouldn’t be an additional impediment,” said Decalon, who was sitting at the bridge’s operations station, “unless our trans
porter system is hopelessly antiquated.”
“Which,” Pug said with just a hint of resentment, “it’s not. I made a point of overhauling it just a couple of years ago.”
Greyhorse, who was standing behind Picard, refrained from contributing to the exchange. But then, transporter mechanics were hardly his specialty. And in any case, he had been a man of few words since he came aboard the Annabel Lee—no doubt the effect of having lived in confinement for so long.
“They’re hailing us,” said Pug. He punched a response into the black control panel at the end of his armrest. “And we’re answering, like any trader with nothing to hide.”
A moment later, the image of Kevratas was replaced on the viewscreen with that of a hawk-faced Romulan officer. He regarded Picard and the others on the cargo vessel’s bridge with unconcealed suspicion.
Fortunately, all four of them were disguised. They had loose gray skin, startling blue eyes set deep into their skulls, and noses that spread almost from ear to corkscrewed ear. If not for the significant differences in their statures—Pug being stocky and of medium height, Decalon being somewhat taller and narrower, and Greyhorse towering over all of them—Picard would have had a dickens of a time telling them apart.
Then again, he wasn’t a Barolian, despite the appearance his subdermal holoprojector enabled him to assume, so he wasn’t sensitive to any of the details that distinguished one member of that species from another.
“What is your business here?” the Romulan demanded.
“Trade,” said Pug. Thanks to the implant in his throat, his voice boomed as deeply as any true Barolian’s.
The Romulan eyed him for a heartbeat. Then he said, “You have permission to enter orbit. Be advised that you must submit a request before you may beam yourselves or your cargo to the surface. If the request is acceptable, you will be assigned a checkpoint.”
“I understand,” said Pug.
Without any warning, the Romulan cut the communications link. Pug turned to Picard and said, “That didn’t go too badly.”
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