Death in Winter

by Michael Jan Freidman

  Of course, he still had to facilitate Crusher’s escape. But with the majority of Sela’s troops patrolling the city, there would be only a few centurions left to stop him.

  He just needed to move quickly, before his commander had a chance to damage the human with her interrogation techniques. Tal’aura would be a good deal more appreciative if the prisoner still had her wits about her when she arrived on Romulus.

  So appreciative, perhaps, that Manathas could make this his last bit of espionage. He was getting older, after all, and age was the enemy of covert agents. He had seen his rivals push themselves too far and eventually falter—with fatal results.

  When he quit this life, he wanted to do it with the knowledge that his needs had been provided for. He wanted to know he had accomplished something he could not have accomplished as a child’s tutor, which was what his father advised him to become.

  He hadn’t joined the Tal Shiar—the Romulan secret police—like so many individuals with his skills. But then, he had never felt comfortable in a bureaucracy.

  Just as well. The Tal Shiar, in its arrogance, had run into a trap laid by the Founders during the Dominion War. As a result, virtually the entire organization had been wiped out.

  And so the wheel turns, Manathas thought. And, turning, raises those who are low.

  It was a line from Warrior’s Dawn, the best-known work of Dezrai, an ancient Romulan poet. Manathas might have changed his appearance and his employer more than other people changed their underclothes, but his taste in poetry had remained unwaveringly the same.

  As Picard joined Pug, Greyhorse, and Decalon on the Annabel Lee’s transporter platform, he looked them over one last time.

  It was one thing for them to fool someone who could only see them on a viewscreen and quite another to carry off the deception in person. However, as far as Picard could tell, he was among a group of bonafide Barolian traders.

  Of course, a halfway thorough sensor sweep would have penetrated their disguises and exposed them as impostors. But according to Starfleet intelligence, their destination—a place that had never experienced a single threat from outside the Empire—possessed no sensor equipment.

  “Ready?” asked Pug.

  Picard nodded. “Energize.”

  The former security chief pushed back the sleeve of his thick, black thermal suit to reveal the control band secured to his wrist. Punching in the requisite sequence, he remote-activated the nearby transporter mechanism.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a suddenness to which the captain had grown accustomed over the years, he found himself in an expansive, domed chamber made of large, black stones, illuminated by silver globes hanging from the ceiling.

  He and his comrades were standing on one of more than a dozen pattern enhancer-equipped transporter platforms scattered across an ice blue marble floor. But then, according to Decalon, a large percentage of Kevratas’s ship-to-surface traffic was funneled through this particular checkpoint.

  Clearly, the facility had been there for some time, long before the Romulans occupied the planet. Picard didn’t know what role it had played in Kevratan society, but it was certainly large and important-looking. An indoor marketplace? he ventured. Or perhaps a hall for state social gatherings?

  Now there were at least fifty armed Romulan centurions positioned about the place in silver-mailed tunics, most of them lining the walls. One of them approached Picard and his party, his disruptor rifle held across his body.

  “Come with me,” said the centurion, his tone as impatient as it was imperious.

  “Of course,” said Picard.

  Stepping down from the platform, he fell into line behind the Romulan, knowing that his companions would be doing the same. Picard followed the fellow to one of several black, functional-looking kiosks at the far end of the chamber, beyond which he could see the exit—a wide, well-guarded doorway marked in both the Romulan and Kevratan tongues.

  Thanks to Admiral Edrich’s briefing packet, Picard could read a bit of both—though not as much as Decalon, who had lived for more than a year among the Kevrata. The others would be relying on Barolian translation devices to help them communicate.

  When the captain reached the kiosk, the Romulan official there held out his hand. “Your documentation,” he said brusquely and without inflection.

  Picard turned over a display device with the requisite information. It was all fabricated, of course, made up of whatever lies the Romulans seemed most likely to swallow.

  The official studied it. He had the look of an individual who had long ago grown bored with his job.

  “What is your business here?” he asked, though the display device would have answered that question for him.

  “We are traders,” Picard replied dutifully, “dealing in impulse engine parts.”

  Pug’s ship had containers full of them, just in case. But then, they didn’t know how seriously the Romulans might be taking their security these days.

  The official scrutinized Picard for a moment, as if he could detect a clandestine agent simply by looking at him. Then, proving he wasn’t nearly as perceptive as he might have believed, he waved the captain on.

  One by one, the others passed muster as well, and joined Picard at the exit. So far, so good, he thought.

  One of the guards there gave them a once-over and then touched a metal plate built into the wall. A moment later the door slid aside, revealing a luridly lit passage beyond.

  There were guards there as well, their features cast into sharp relief by the blood-red heat lamps lining the walls. As the captain and his comrades moved forward into the passage, they could feel a distinct chill in the air, lamps or no lamps.

  But then, they were in a necessary buffer zone between the temperature-controlled environment of the checkpoint and the arctic cold of the outside. It was bound to be a little cooler there.

  Wordlessly, Picard and his comrades made their way past the guards to the door at the far end of the passage. As they got closer they saw it was actually two doors, each an intricately carved slab of rich dark wood.

  Obviously, thought Picard, relics of the original structure.

  The carvings displayed scene after scene of open-handed benevolence—Kevrata gracing each other with food, drink, gems, furs, and other gifts. The Romulans, of course, were absent from these depictions. But if they had been included, it wouldn’t have been for their generosity.

  The captain was surprised that the imperial authorities had left the doors intact, considering how thermally inefficient they had to be. The natives must have taken a great deal of pride in them, or the Romulans would simply have torn them out and discarded them.

  “Bundle up,” said Pug, “it’ll be chilly out there,” and pulled forward the formfitting hood of his thermal suit.

  Picard did the same. Then he positioned a pair of attached goggles over his eyes. Without them it would be too easy to go snow-blind. Finally, he pulled a flap of thermal material across the lower portion of his face to protect it from frostbite and fastened it on the other side.

  It would have been nice if the guards in the passage could have opened the wooden doors as they had the others. However, whatever impulse had persuaded the Romulans to preserve the carved hunks of wood as artifacts had also persuaded them to leave them unmechanized. To get outside, the captain and his party would have to use a little elbow grease.

  Girding himself for the cold, Picard leaned against one of the doors and shoved, while Pug did the same thing. The pieces of wood were heavier than they looked, but after a moment they swung open, giving the three humans their first glimpse of Kevratan civilization outside the checkpoint.

  The briefing material sent by Admiral Edrich had been exhaustive, including any number of Kevratan images captured by Federation-friendly traders. And yet, they paled in comparison with the sight that met the captain’s eyes.

  He had expected to see a bleak terrain of crude stone edifices all but buried in the wild, gray
drifts of winter, with only the occasional pale gleam of sunlight for relief. Indeed, the buildings that sprawled before Picard were covered with snow, and soft flakes were even then falling from the sky.

  But it wasn’t as dreary as he had anticipated, because in the midst of it all was a moving sea of coats representing every bright, warm color in the rainbow. The captain couldn’t help smiling in appreciation.

  He had seen other societies, both on Earth and on worlds beyond, where people worked hard to ensure the beauty of their garb. But in those societies, clothing was an indicator of status.

  Not so in the case of the Kevrata.

  They didn’t believe in the sort of class distinctions that hinged on what a person possessed. Quite the contrary. In Kevratan society, social standing was based entirely on what someone was capable of giving away.

  Picard was reminded of a custom embraced by some of North America’s ancient tribal cultures. Known as the potlatch feast, it was an occasion on which some of the more affluent members of the tribe went so far as to bankrupt themselves in order to demonstrate the extent of their openhandedness.

  It is better to give than to receive. The potlatch peoples certainly lived by that code. And so, apparently, did the inhabitants of Kevratas.

  Or rather, they had lived that way once. Then, nearly fifty standard years ago, the Romulan Empire underwent yet another in an ongoing series of expansions, and claimed Kevratas in the name of whoever was praetor at the time.

  The rights of the Kevrata were restricted in accordance with the needs of the Empire. Public communications were all but eliminated. Curfews were established. And personal fortunes were seized—purportedly because the Kevrata no longer required them as wards of the Empire, but in truth because the Romulans wished to add to their coffers.

  The Empire assumed control over the planet’s three major industries—trading, mining, and the manufacture of curiously beautiful native artifacts. All but the tiniest fraction of profits went straight back to Romulus.

  For the Kevrata, the loss of personal freedom was a cut to the bone. But the loss of wealth cut them even deeper. They had measured their worth as individuals by how much they could give to others. Suddenly, they had nothing to give…and therefore, no worth.

  A sad state of affairs indeed. And yet, the Kevrata were enduring Romulan rule a lot better than other subject peoples.

  Anyone who wears such coats has to harbor hope, Picard thought. It must be in their nature. And if his mission were successful, the Kevrata would get what they were hoping for.

  He turned to Decalon. “Which way?”

  The defector looked around for a moment, making an effort to get his bearings. After all, it had been a long time since he lived on this world, and the snow made it difficult to discern one building from another.

  Finally, he pointed and said, “This way.”

  Picard again took stock of his companions. It was tempting to see Joseph and Greyhorse as he had seen them on the Stargazer—as subordinates who would reflexively carry out his commands.

  However, decades had passed since they served under him. They were no longer the men they had been. And Decalon was an even bigger question mark.

  But this was the team assigned to the captain, and this was the team he had accepted. “Let us proceed,” he said.

  And they set out through the storm for the dwelling of a Romulan named Phajan.

  7

  HUNKERING DOWN AGAINST THE COLD, PICARD AND his comrades waited in the lee of a well-appointed stone building just off one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

  The snow had stopped for the moment, but the sky looked bruised and battered above them, and it promised another blast of weather before too long. The captain frowned behind his flap of thermal protection. Yet another reason it would be good if someone answered the door.

  Finally, they heard a voice say, over the whistling of the wind, “What is your business here?”

  Decalon moved closer to the grid beside the door, which appeared to be part of an audio-only intercom system. “I have come to see an old friend,” he said. “His name is Phajan.”

  The voice that said the words was Decalon’s. Obviously, he had disabled the mechanism that made him sound like a Barolian.

  “You sound familiar…” said the individual on the other end of the intercom conversation.

  “I should,” said Decalon. “Or have you forgotten the night we spent drinking ale at the foot of the firefalls?”

  A pause. And then: “Decalon…?”

  “The same,” said the Romulan. “Though as you will see, I do not look like myself these days.”

  A few seconds later, the door was flung wide, and a Romulan came out as far as the threshold. He was tall and thin, with hair graying at the temples and eyes that seemed to have witnessed a great deal of sadness. When he saw what Decalon looked like, his mouth fell open, letting out a wisp of frozen breath.

  “I told you I do not look like myself,” said Decalon.

  His friend swore softly. Then his eyes moved in the direction of Picard, Pug, and Greyhorse, and he asked, “Who are they?”

  “I will vouch for them,” said Decalon.

  Phajan hesitated—but only for a moment. “Come in,” he said, “before we all freeze to death.”

  Picard didn’t have to be told twice. As soon as he and his comrades were inside, Phajan closed the heavy wooden door behind them. Then he turned to Decalon.

  “What are you doing back in the Empire?” he demanded.

  Decalon smiled, contorting his features. “I am on a mission for the Federation.” Touching the controls on his portable holosystem, he dropped his Barolian guise.

  Phajan shook his head ruefully, but ended up smiling a little too. Then he embraced his friend.

  “Idiot,” he said. “It was so much trouble to get you out of here. And now you’ve come back.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Decalon, “I cannot tell you what we are doing on Kevratas.”

  “I do not wish to know,” Phajan assured him. “As always, the fewer who know such things, the better.”

  “Your family,” said Decalon, “they are well?”

  A shadow fell across Phajan’s face. “My mother died last year. But my sisters and their families still live on the homeworld.”

  “Are they content?”

  Phajan nodded. “Reasonably so.”

  For a moment, there was silence between the two Romulans. Then Decalon said, “It has been a long time.”

  “Too long,” said his friend.

  Phajan was one of the disaffected Romulans who, more than a decade earlier, had helped spirit defectors like Decalon out of the Empire. Decalon had spoken at length of Phajan’s dedication and courage during the Annabel Lee’s flight across the Neutral Zone.

  Picard had no reason to doubt the accuracy of Decalon’s memory. Nonetheless, there was a great deal riding on the success of his mission, so he had consulted the Starfleet database downloaded to Pug’s ship back in Earth orbit.

  It corroborated Decalon’s claim: Phajan had indeed been a big part of the Romulans’ underground railroad, helping some fifty-five defectors escape to the Federation.

  Why Phajan himself had chosen to remain in the Empire had been left unsaid. Of course, he was hardly the only Romulan who had enabled others to reach freedom without pursuing the possibility on his own.

  “Do I know your companions as well?” asked Phajan.

  He regarded Picard and the others, who were still disguised as Barolians. “Oresis, perhaps? Or Achitonos?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Decalon. “Both Oresis and Achitonos are back in the Romulan colony we established in the Federation.” He gestured to the captain. “This is Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise.”

  “Ah,” said Phajan, his eyes lighting up, “I have heard of Captain Picard. In fact, if I am not mistaken, he and I have worked together—though he probably never knew it.”

  “If you were one of
my contacts in the Empire,” said the captain, “I did not know it. For your protection, we were never apprised of any of your names.”

  “A wise policy,” said Phajan, “which no doubt enabled many of our number to survive long after our operation outlived its usefulness and dissipated.”

  Indeed, the once-torrential flow of Romulans who had wished to escape the Empire diminished sharply after the first year of the underground railroad, and soon after stopped altogether. No one in the Federation could ever understand why.

  Nor could Romulans like Decalon shed any light on the matter. It was as if their rejection of the Empire and her ideals were no more than a fad, which had its time in the sun and passed.

  “And these,” Decalon continued, indicating the doctor and their pilot, “are Carter Greyhorse and Peter Joseph, both former officers in Starfleet.”

  Phajan took them in at a glance. “You are welcome in my house. As welcome as my friend Decalon.”

  “It is kind of you to say so,” Picard told him.

  Phajan dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “It is the least I can do for those who gave Decalon and others a life beyond the Empire.”

  “I did not contribute to that effort,” said Greyhorse, a strange burr in his voice.

  The remark came out of nowhere. Had it been articulated by a man without a record of criminality and psychological instability, the captain might have overlooked it. As it was, it put him on his guard.

  Joseph, looking a little concerned, put his hand on the doctor’s shoulder and said, “It’s all right, Doc. I didn’t get that opportunity either.”

  “However,” Greyhorse went on, as if his colleague hadn’t said a thing, “I wish I had contributed. There is nothing more important than freedom.”

  Picard looked for Phajan’s reaction. But all the Romulan did was say, “I agree.”

  He had failed, it seemed, to notice anything off-center about the doctor’s comments. However, there was no way to know what else Greyhorse might choose to say, or at what critical juncture he might choose to say it.