“You have my permission,” she replied.
“Thank you,” said the commander. “Long live the Empire.”
The praetor had no doubt that the Empire would survive. Her reign was another matter entirely.
15
KITO HADN’T BEEN ABOVEGROUND IN DAYS. BUT then, he had been standing vigil with Hanafaejas and the others, waiting for Doctor Greyhorse to give them what they needed.
Now, amazing as it seemed, he carried it in a pack slung over his shoulder—two hundred tiny vaccination kits donated by the owner of a medical supply house, and two hundred even tinier tubules of vaccine to go with them.
Kito could have lugged more, but he didn’t want to arouse Sela’s suspicions. Better to give the vaccine out little by little than to see the process grind to a halt.
The plan was to reach everyone in the city by nightfall, and Kevratas’s other cities over the next few days. In a week’s time, people would stop dying. And in another week, even the worst affected would be back on their feet.
After they had endured so much, it seemed too good to be true. But Greyhorse was the one who had assured them of the timetable, and he appeared to know what he was doing.
As Kito understood it, the doctor had used his own genetic material in creating the vaccine. In a way, that meant every Kevrata on the planet would have a piece of Greyhorse inside him.
A lasting tribute, the rebel thought, to one who has done so much for us.
Then he stopped by the first house on his appointed route, a place not far from the alley where he had hidden from the Romulan hovercraft. Pounding on the door, he waited for the occupant to answer. A moment later, he heard a response from within.
“Please go away. We are afflicted in this house.”
They didn’t want to expose him to the virus if he hadn’t been afflicted already. But just the day before, Kito had seen bumps on his hands. He had nothing to lose.
And the people within had everything to gain.
“It is all right,” he told them. “I have something that can help you with your affliction.”
A moment later, the door opened. The female standing beside it was suffering from an advanced stage of the disease, the bumps having spread to her face. Her eyes were dull with hopelessness.
“Nothing can help me,” she said.
“Never spurn generosity,” said Kito, quoting an old Kevratan saying. “If you let me in, I can tell you more.”
The female hesitated, loath to open herself to disappointment on top of everything else. But in the end, she stepped aside and let him in.
It was time.
Donatra stood on the bridge of her ship, just in front of her command seat, and studied her forward viewscreen. It showed her a sweep of black space with Tomalak’s force of some sixty warbirds emblazoned on it.
They were ready for her. And without a doubt, Tomalak was an accomplished tactician. However, Donatra felt good about her chances, and she had never been wrong in that regard before. She and her fleet would prevail, bringing Romulus out of its latest dark age into an enduring light.
“Give me a link to Commander Suran,” she told her communications officer.
A moment later: “Link established, Commander.”
“Suran here,” said Donatra’s mentor. “Is this what I think it is?”
“By now, Braeg has made his speech in Victory Square. But it will ring hollow if we do not follow with a statement of our own.”
“Poetic,” Suran observed dryly.
“Get your fleet ready,” Donatra said affectionately, “and we will write the next verse together.”
Her colleague chuckled. “Suran out.”
Next, she had her com officer contact her group leaders. They logged on one after the other—first Macaiah, then Lurian, then Tavakoros.
“The moment has arrived,” she told them. “Together we will shape the future of the Empire. Though these are Romulans we fight, show them no mercy, for they will show you none. And when the battle is over, Braeg will raise statues to you in Victory Square.”
Her group leaders applauded the notion. They had been waiting for this moment without complaint—unlike some of their centurions. However, each was more eager than the next to put an end to the praetor’s regime.
“Donatra out,” she said, and had her officer sever the link.
Tomalak’s force, ignorant of their plans, hadn’t moved on the viewscreen. But they would move soon enough.
“Shields up,” Donatra told her tactical officer. “Power weapons.”
“Yes, Commander,” came the response.
She turned to her helm officer. “Take us in. Half-impulse speed.”
“As you wish, Commander.”
As Donatra’s warbird leaped ahead, she sat down in her chair and leaned forward. Soon enough, my love. Soon enough….
Braeg wasn’t surprised when he saw twin rivers of Tal’aura’s black-garbed Capital Guardsmen come pouring into Victory Square. After all, he had finally committed treason, rallying the populace to overthrow the government.
He might have chosen that moment to flee and go into hiding. But he was a soldier, and he hadn’t forged his reputation by running from his enemies.
Still, he didn’t command anyone to help him. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. He just watched and waited.
And at precisely the right moment, Braeg’s own centurions made their move.
They had positioned themselves on the edges of the crowd, looking like anyone else who had come to hear the admiral speak. And like anyone else, they had moved aside when the guardsmen came streaming into the square.
But unlike the other citizens in the square, they had disruptors concealed beneath their garb. And now that Tal’aura’s men had rushed past them, they drew those disruptors and began to fire.
Confused, the guardsmen whirled and attempted to fire back. However, they were being attacked from too many directions. And their own forces were bunched together, making them ridiculously easy targets.
Of course, the greater part of the crowd—made up of true innocents—was unavoidably caught in the middle of the square. However, they were forgotten by Tal’aura’s police and therefore left mercifully unscathed.
As Braeg looked on, he saw his men chip away at the guardsmen, cutting down one cornered rodent after another. Which is what happens, he noted, when the Capital Guard tries to match wits with the man who beat the Wetraza at Crannac Oghila.
And, producing a disruptor of his own, he added his fire to that of his partisans.
Tomalak eyed his viewscreen, where a tightly bunched squadron of enemy warbirds was plunging headlong toward the center of his formation, their disruptors painting fiery streaks on the void. Obviously, they intended to break through and attack the Defense Force from behind.
Not today, he thought, tapping a stud on his armrest to open a link to the group leader in charge of his center.
“Pontikanos,” he said, “pull your ships back.”
“But there is a squadron—”
“I am not blind,” said Tomalak, cutting Pontikanos short. “I see it too. Now do as I say.”
Then Tomalak contacted two other group leaders and gave them instructions as well. That should do the trick, he thought, as he waited to see the results.
Pontikanos’s ships retreated in accordance with his order, allowing the enemy to proceed through the position they had abdicated. For a moment, it seemed that Donatra’s warbirds would pierce Tomalak’s shield.
But when Donatra’s vessels came shooting through, they found themselves confronted by defenders that had formerly fortified the extremities of Tomalak’s formation. Outnumbered and unable to retreat, the intruders were trapped.
Tomalak was about to congratulate himself on the effectiveness of his reaction. Then two of Donatra’s other squadrons darted through the positions his maneuver had abandoned—and went after his ships from behind, disruptors blazing.
Doing exactly what Tomalak ha
d tried to prevent. And to address the problem, he had to release his stranglehold on the first squadron. He felt a rush of blood to his face.
It was a trap all along. Obviously, Donatra had taken the time to study his tactics. I will have to be a bit more creative if I am to keep my reputation intact.
A volley rocked his warbird, whipping him about in his seat. Tomalak calmly righted himself, tapped at his armrest again, and barked, “Skirmish clusters!”
After all, he had already been outflanked. His best chance was to collapse his formation into groups.
Of course, Donatra would be doing the same, and her commanders were by and large more skilled than his. But Tomalak enjoyed an advantage in that he didn’t care how long the battle lasted; all he cared about was keeping the opposition away from Romulus.
Donatra, on the other hand, couldn’t afford to waste any time. She had to carry the day and do it quickly, or Braeg’s revolt would die on the vine.
“Avoid unnecessary risks,” he advised over his com link. “Let the traitors fall prey to them.”
As if I have to tell them that. The last thing they want to do is miss the praetor’s next feast.
As Tomalak surveyed the battle, he saw that his commanders were following his orders. They were pursuing evasive maneuvers, forcing Donatra’s ships to come after them—and thereby expose themselves to fire from unexpected quarters.
That’s better, he thought.
Suddenly, an enemy warbird filled his viewscreen, her weapons batteries spitting emerald fury. A would-be hero, hoping to cut off the serpent’s head.
But Tomalak wasn’t inclined to cooperate. “Hard to port!” he snapped, and felt the shift in inertia as his helm officer complied.
The barrage bludgeoned his warbird and significantly weakened his shields, but it wasn’t the killing blow his adversary had hoped it would be. And now it was Tomalak’s turn.
“Helm,” he snarled, “bring us about! Tactical, let me know when you’ve got a lock!”
On his screen, the enemy was wheeling as well. But Tomalak boasted the best helm officer in the Empire, just as he boasted the best weapons officer and the best engineer—so his ship came out of her turn a heartbeat sooner than the other one.
“Lock, Commander!”
Tomalak leaned forward in his chair. “Fire!”
His disruptor beams stabbed their target like a pair of long, green fangs. The enemy tried to twist out of the way, but Tomalak stayed with her, a hunter refusing to be denied his prey.
Finally, her shields gone, her hull battered and blackened, the vessel went up in an immense ball of flame.
Tomalak watched the few remaining pieces of debris fly outward in an ever-expanding circle. Then the spectacle was behind him and his helm officer was awaiting new orders.
He leaned back in his chair and—because he was who he was—ignored the instructions he had given his subordinates just a few moments earlier.
Smiling to himself, he said, “Find me another one.”
Picard emerged from the catacombs at a different site from the one where he had descended into them.
Like the first spot, this was a jumbled, half-collapsed stone entryway lying unconcealed on the outskirts of the city. However, it was much closer to the place where the captain had arranged to rendezvous with Beverly.
A place where the planet’s magnetic fields were all but absent. A place from which—with the help of the miniature pattern enhancers they had brought—Picard and his comrades could beam back to the Annabel Lee and return to Federation space.
With not four of them on board, but five.
Picard couldn’t wait to see Beverly. It had been one thing to learn that she had survived her ordeal; witnessing the proof of it would be quite another.
Hanafaejas and a couple of his rebels had preceded Picard and his team onto the street, just in case there were any centurions around. As luck would have it, there weren’t.
But there was a blizzard of white snow swirling about them. It cut down drastically on visibility and dampened sound. All the captain could hear was the whisper of flake on flake.
Joseph looked around as he followed Picard out of the tunnel, as alert as when he was the captain’s chief of security. Then came Greyhorse, an imposing figure in his black thermal suit, with Decalon immediately behind him.
The Romulan had been quiet since he admitted he was wrong about his friend Phajan, gathering with the others in the corridors at mealtimes but contributing little to their conversations. Of course, he had almost hamstrung their mission, and that couldn’t have been an easy thing to live with.
The only person with whom Decalon seemed comfortable was Greyhorse. But then, he had spent a good deal of time in the doctor’s company.
Not being a scientist, the Romulan couldn’t have made Greyhorse’s work go any faster. However, his presence in the doctor’s makeshift lab might have been a positive factor, giving Greyhorse unspoken encouragement or keeping his energies from flagging. It was difficult to say.
“Activate your holoprojectors,” Picard said.
A moment later, he was in the company of three Barolians again. The rebels, who had seen the disguises before, appeared to take them in stride.
“This way,” said Hanafaejas, indicating the way.
Picard fell in beside him, embarking across a landscape of long, generous drifts. The snow lashed his face, causing him to pull his hood forward a bit.
“Nice weather we’re having,” he told Hanafaejas.
The Kevrata glanced at him. “It will soon get worse.”
Though Picard wouldn’t have believed it possible, Hanafaejas was right. As the minutes passed, the storm seemed to intensify. He could barely see among its twists and tatters. Were it not for the rebel beside him, he would have been terribly and hopelessly lost.
“Yes,” the captain said, his words all but snatched by the wind, “nice weather indeed.” Lowering his head, he pressed forward, comforting himself with an assurance that they would be on the Annabel Lee within the hour…
He, his team, and the woman whose death he hadn’t been able to accept.
16
THE PLACE WHERE PICARD WAS SUPPOSED TO MEET Beverly was a broad slope cut by deep, snow-choked gullies—in the midst of which sat a sprawling, opulent-looking Kevratan domicile that had at some point fallen into disrepair.
Despite the size of the place, the captain and his companions were almost on top of it before they saw it loom out of the storm. That was how dense the snow was.
Beverly wasn’t in evidence yet. Hardly a surprise, Picard thought, as he shifted his grip on his phaser. He had insisted on arriving a few minutes early, reluctant to let her wait for him any longer than she had to.
After all, he had his team and a half dozen armed Kevrata with him. She was bringing only her host, wishing to minimize the possibility of a security breach.
Picard glanced at Pug, then at Greyhorse. They looked back at him from within their hoods, eager to simply secure Beverly and be done with it.
Suddenly, an image came to him out of the featureless white of the storm….
Beverly standing on the deck of the medical Starship Pasteur, her red-golden hair drawn back loosely into a knot, a captain’s insignia emblazoned on the scarlet breast of her uniform. Frowning out of concern for him, her features softened by age, but as beautiful as when she first set foot on his Enterprise.
Perhaps more so.
That Beverly was part of a future that would probably never exist, a future Picard had encountered years earlier while jumping helplessly through time. In it, he had married Beverly and then divorced her, but they still loved each other as much as ever.
Why think of that now? he asked himself.
“Captain,” someone said, in the deep, stentorian timbre of a Barolian. “Look!”
Picard turned and saw that it was Joseph who had spoken. Following his friend’s gesture, he discerned a figure through the veils of falling snow.
Beverly? he thought.
But it wasn’t just a single Kevrata who accompanied her. It was a line of them. And the more Picard studied them, the more it seemed to him they weren’t Kevrata at all….
“Centurions,” said Hanafaejas, who could see better in the storm than a human could. “Ten of them, maybe more.”
Picard looked around and saw silhouettes behind them as well. In fact, they were closing in from every direction.
“We’re surrounded,” Joseph observed.
“Lay down your arms!” a feminine voice called out. “Otherwise, you will be destroyed!”
A moment later, Picard saw the one who had issued the ultimatum. Even if she hadn’t distinguished herself from the other Romulans, he could have picked out her face across the span of a thousand snow-blown fields.
After all, he had loved it the way a father loves a daughter, and mourned it to the same degree when death claimed it. And when, years later, he saw it twisted with hatred and resentment in the trappings of a Romulan commander, part of him had recoiled in shock and disbelief—but another part had been grateful for the chance to bask again in Tasha’s light.
“Sela,” said Decalon.
She wants us alive, the captain thought. But then, they were more valuable that way—both to the Empire and to Sela herself.
Picard had no intention of surrendering. But before he could give the order to fire, the rebels beat him to it.
Their disruptor beams sliced through the falling snow, jackknifing a few centurions. But the others returned the favor without mercy, catching the captain and his comrades in a deadly, pale green crossfire.
Picard and his team fired as well, though it was difficult to see well enough to hit anyone. Fortunately the rebels didn’t have that problem, striking almost every target they aimed for.
Sela still had the numerically superior force. However, if she waited long enough, that would no longer be the case. Anticipating her next move, Picard said, “Watch for a charge.”
Right on cue, a wave of centurions came hurtling toward them. The captain fired into their midst, as did his comrades. But enough of the enemy got through to make it a hand-to-hand fight, in which the Romulans couldn’t help but have the edge.
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