“Safe return, lady. May the fates be kinder than they have been.” His scarred face twisted in what she realized was a smile. “I know it seems impossible just now. But you’ll turn out just fine.”
She could imagine him twenty, thirty years ago, assuring his ship’s “eaglets,” some of them younger than she had been on her trainee cruise, that they’d do well, they’d survive, they’d turn out just fine if they worked hard and trusted him.
Had they? Would she? “Your name,” she cried suddenly, “what is your name? Give me some term of honor by which to remem-ber you.”
“I am Hasmonak,” said the former centurion. “Life to the Emperor.”
He saluted her, stiff-backed and proud, the remnant of the warrior he’d been. Her vision suddenly blurring, Saavik activated the tiny ship’s hatch, and thrust herself into its security. Seat and schematics were blessedly familiar, and clearance came promptly.
Moments later, Saavik was in space.
Leaving Spock in the snare that was the Romulan Empire.
Leaving Spock, and in him all that was her life.
FIFTEEN
KI BARATAN, ROMULUS, DAYS 6 AND 7, SECOND WEEK OF TASMEEN, 2344
It was very late when Spock made his way back to Charvanek’s estate. The last of Romulus’ moons had set, and the air was still and cool enough to make him shiver. How could the first settlers have endured so sharp a change in climate? Or had they just been so thankful after the long journey to find twin worlds with breathable atmosphere and tolerable gravity that all else had not mattered?
At least the chill was cooling his blood, calming his thoughts—
Thoughts of Saavik, so beautiful, so wondrously beautiful—
So lost to him.
As, Spock reminded himself fiercely, he would be lost if he did not concentrate on the here-and-now. At least it was a touch simpler to concentrate now, without her presence so tantalizingly close. . . .
No. He would not think of her. Of them. Of anything but completing what he had come to Romulus to do!
Charvanek had given him the proper codes by which to gain entry through the outer gates. Within, the gardens were a mass of black, though Spock did not doubt that they were also a mass of sensors. Just because Charvanek didn’t wish a blaze of thief-deterring light didn’t mean she would take risks. Let him make one wrong step, and there would be a blaring of alarms—at least.
But Spock stole silently along without mishap. He had, he realized, become rather adept at slipping through shadows, and thought with the faintest touch of irony that Jim Kirk would have been amused.
So now, here was the mansion. Spock keyed in the proper code, then slipped inside, wincing at the creaking of door and floor. Charvanek—
—was awake, sitting there wrapped in a silky blue robe, watching him. For a moment, the Fires flared up within him, unbidden and unwelcome—then faded again at the sight of the disruptor pistol in her hand.
“I could hear you,” she said, voice and face utterly without expression. The quick, ridiculous thought flashed through his mind, So much for a career as a thief. “I assume,” Charvanek added, “that your goal is political, not personal.”
But then she paused, considering, and her gaze softened ever so slightly. “Akhh,” she said softly. “Is that the way of it?”
Putting the pistol aside, Charvanek got smoothly to her feet. “Your blood burns,” she murmured. “We are not so long sundered from the Mother World that I do not know it. You . . . may not survive to see your home.”
Spock barely shrugged.
Charvanek frowned at his acceptance. “And if you go mad?”
“Then I must not let myself go mad.”
“Ah, Spock . . .” She drew closer, the folds of her silken robe whispering softly together. “We are allies. And, I hope, friends.” It was said with infinite gentleness. With pity, Spock thought. She wore some subtle, barely sweet scent, she was warm and alive and asking, “May a friend . . .”
Spock held up a hand, stopping her before she could say something from which there would be no drawing back. “Long ago, another friend touched me in just that wise.” His voice was harsh with strain. “Saavik. I have just sent her off. She, too, does not expect to survive.” How could she, kept apart from her bondmate and knowing she had only a scant chance of reaching Vulcan? “I cannot dishonor her sacrifice by surviving it.”
“Ahh . . .” It was the softest of pitying sighs.
Spock looked at her, not daring to move, remembering how he had once desired her, knowing how he still desired her and would, he thought, even without the urging of the Fires. “Regret,” he said, almost gently, and meant it for them both, “is useless.”
“And you,” Charvanek agreed almost brusquely, “are wiser than I.” She reached out and briefly caught his arm in a warrior’s strong, passionless greeting. “Wait.”
She disappeared into another room, from which she reappeared in a remarkably short time, dressed now in full uniform. “Report, Spock. What have you learned?”
It was the Romulan commander who spoke, the crisp tones allowing for nothing as weak as passion. Thank you, Spock thought. Thank you for the return to sanity.
Swiftly, leaving out all but the essential data, he told her, “The praetor has already dispatched his fleet to attack the civilian Klingon colony at Narendra III.”
“There?” Charvanek erupted. “There are almost no warriors in that outpost, nothing but women, children, helpless elders—Dralath cannot possibly be unaware of that. Even for him, such an attack would be obscene!”
“Nevertheless, that is his plan. And he further plans to use Narendra III, once he has secured it . . .” He hesitated, wondering if he should tell her what, as a loyal Romulan, she would surely not regret—no. She was his ally. And honorable. “As,” Spock continued, “a staging point for an assault on the Federation’s Melville Colony. From there, he can strike deeper into the heart of the Federation itself.”
He stopped, watching her. Charvanek’s smile was sharp and thin, utterly without humor. “What, did you think I would rejoice?” she asked. “Yes, the Federation is no friend of Romulus—but only a fool welcomes a sudden return to chaos! And does Dralath believe that chaos would stop dead at the edge of the Empire, most courteously leaving us all untouched? Or that once he breaches your Neutral Zone, the Federation will not return the favor?”
“It would appear so.”
“Damn him. He dishonors us all.” It was said with cold rage. Biting off each word, Charvanek continued, “I will, no doubt, be called to some form of briefing, all lies and wasted time, tomorrow—no, curse it,” she added, glancing out the window, “not tomorrow, today.”
“We have two point five hours before dawn,” Spock began. “Time enough—”
“For me to get to my ship!” Charvanek sprang to her feet, pacing fiercely. “The fleet has a sizable head start, but they will be running cloaked . . . draining speed. If Honor Blade goes uncloaked . . . engines at full . . .”
“There are seven warbirds,” Spock reminded her.
“ ‘The greater the odds, the greater the honor,’ ” she flung over her shoulder as she all but attacked a computer console, keying in figures with Vulcan speed. “Yes! It can be done—Honor Blade will head off the fleet. Turn it if we can. If not . . .”
We fight. The unspoken words seemed to echo.
Another few keystrokes, and Charvanek turned to Spock, eyes fierce. “I have just put my crew on alert. I will—”
“You will first, I trust, get me to the Imperial Palace. While you intercept the fleet, I must meet with the emperor.”
“Ha, yes!”
She sprang to her feet, belting on her disruptor pistol. “Emperor Shiarkiek is far from the feeble-wit our praetor thinks him. If Fortune—or blind luck—is with us, my kinsman will countermand Dralath’s orders, or send the recall order after me. Let it be so!”
They sped to the Imperial Palace in a small, silent, two-passenger vehicle.
Ahead, a great building loomed out of the night: the palace, without a doubt, featureless in the dim light.
Charvanek pulled over into shadow and stopped the engine. “We dare drive no closer, or risk detection.”
Spock came sharply alert. “We are being followed.”
They waited tensely.
“Subcommander Ruanek!” Charvanek exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Commander Charvanek!” Ruanek erupted. “I was on my way to you. Saavik is missing!”
“No,” Spock began, but Ruanek continued, unheeding:
“I’ve been hunting her in every possible place, thinking who’d be interested in her and her gene splicing, the praetor, the emperor, but she’s gone! Kharik must have stolen her away and—”
“Heed me. Saavik has not been ‘stolen away’ like some prize. She has escaped on her own, under no one’s will but her own.”
“But she—you—I don’t know what you’re doing here, but—” He threw up a hand in surrender. “I’m already absent from duty without my patron’s permission, and Kharik is probably already reporting that fact. But what can I do to help?”
“Follow us,” Charvanek snapped. “Guard our backs. We’ve made more than sufficient noise as it is. I’m amazed that a whole patrol hasn’t already come to—oh, hells!” Spock, Charvanek, and Ruanek ducked into cover behind a fold of the wall—
Just in time.
“Guards,” Ruanek whispered. “Praetor’s guards.”
They were an arrogant lot in their stark, glittering, metallic uniforms, secure in their employer’s power. Their leader, a brash-faced youngish centurion, held up a hand to stop his men.
“If I am seen, they’ll hold me for questioning,” Charvanek whispered. “I’ll arrange a diversion before I beam up to my ship. They will be so busy investigating that your escape will go unnoted.” She nodded to Spock, her eyes warmly eloquent, then saluted Ruanek with a quick, “Life to the Empire!” and ran back toward the groundcar. Spock could feel Ruanek tense as the patrol’s centurion surveyed the ground. Let the officer pull out a scanner, and they’d either have to make a run for it or try their chances against the praetor’s forces.
Then, with a curt gesture, the centurion motioned his squad onward. Spock closed his eyes in what he had to admit was relief. The place at his side where Charvanek had stood felt unguarded.
Now he had only Ruanek to aid him. Would that be enough?
Such speculation was illogical. Quickly revising his plans, Spock turned to Ruanek as, years ago, he would have turned to one of his own crew.
“I remember,” he began, “that you like to gamble.”
“Sometimes,” Ruanek said warily. “What . . . did you have in mind?”
Just then, he reminded Spock of one of the subcommander’s beloved horses—one that might, wild-eyed with alarm, bolt at any moment.
“What the commander ordered,” Spock told him calmly. “A meeting with your Underground. And,” he added with deliberate drama, “with your candidate—for praetor.”
The next moment, the ground rocked as Charvanek’s ground car exploded—her promised diversion.
They ran.
SIXTEEN
UNDER KI BARATAN, DAY 7, SECOND WEEK OF TASMEEN, 2344
“This way,” Ruanek urged.
Spock glanced about in growing . . . was it illogical for him to feel uneasiness? Surely not. Granted, Ruanek had so far proven himself quite trustworthy—but if Spock himself could wear a false face, so could the subcommander. And Romulans thought nothing of lying.
Nonsense. Illogical, indeed. Ruanek would never play him false.
And yet . . . they had escaped the palace grounds, which swarmed now with security, investigating the “incident” Charvanek had staged. They had long since left the better part of Ki Baratan, and now made their way through a narrow, convoluted maze of streets, some of them little wider than alleys. No, some of them actually were alleys, lined with blank stone walls—the chipped and weathered backs of buildings—and smelling objectionably of what Spock thought was a disconcertingly poor Romulan sanitation system.
Not that the streets themselves were much more agreeable. The buildings were crowded together, one right after another, plain red or gray stone façades with few attempts at differentiation or ornamentation save for the predictable posters—mostly weatherworn or deliberately defaced—of Praetor Dralath. Judging from the condition of those posters, Spock thought, Dralath’s guards rarely bothered patrolling here.
No greenery here, either, not the slightest hint of a garden. Nothing but stone walls and stone pavements, and the faint scent of boiled vegetables, the diet of poverty, that seemed the same in every poor section of every world.
The hour was still too early for many people to be about: a few dull-eyed workers off to the spaceport docks, or one of the ubiquitous old ladies with brooms who each seemed determined to sweep her patch of pavement into submission.
Bah, you let yourself grow fanciful.
Better that, he retorted to himself, than alarmed.
For this would, indeed, be such a perfect place for a trap. So many false turns, so many strange alleys—was Ruanek trying to lose him? Spock had no illusions as to what would happen to a Vulcan alone here.
But, he thought, feeling the blood fire stirring, if it comes to that, I will not be the only one to die.
“This way,” Ruanek said suddenly.
Spock moved to block his way. “Is this a trick, Ruanek? Are you planning to betray me?”
The Romulan’s surprise seemed genuine. “No! I would never be so dishonorable! I owe you my life!”
He stepped around Spock and went through the ritual—the cliché, Spock thought—of rapping a particular pattern on a barred door.
The door opened. Ruanek exchanged quick words with an unseen someone inside, then turned to Spock. “Follow me. And—you can trust me.”
“I must,” Spock murmured dryly.
He followed Ruanek down a long, narrow stairway smelling of rock and damp earth and lit only sporadically by daylight filtering in through cracks in the rock overhead, and was very much aware of being watched with every step. But no one interfered, no one even spoke as they reached the bottom, a floor of natural rock. Ruanek led him on through a new maze, this one a network of tunnels that might, Spock thought, have mostly been ancient lava tubes deliberately linked over the years. Possibly the original settlers, still figuratively looking over their shoulders, had felt the need for such a hiding place.
Others were using it as such now. A wary, very mixed group of Romulans was gathering in a large cavern reachable by no fewer than four tunnels and two stairways—one of only four steps leading down from a narrow, sloping tunnel, the other a true stair leading down from an unseen upper level.
Like the communal lair of Vulcan keerik, or a Terran rabbit warren. No danger of being trapped in any one spot.
No chance of easy defense, either, of course.
A mixed group of Romulans, indeed, judging from their clothing and the way they carried themselves: the robes of a scholar, the uniform of a centurion . . . nobles, techs, and intellectuals, young and old, men and women. Not all that many for a true revolution, but that they should come together at all said something very powerful about the genuine discontent at least in Ki Baratan.
As the capital goes, so goes the culture, or so the Federation has often learned.
Out of the crowd, a blunt voice called to him, “Who are you?”
Before Spock could answer, Ruanek cut in, “This is the Academician Symakhos of Bardat.”
“Like the Pit he is!” the voice shot back. A stocky man in scholar’s robes pushed his way to the front. “I’m from Bardat—and damned if I ever saw any Symakhos there!”
“True,” Spock said, raising his voice just firmly enough to be heard clearly over the murmurs, skilled as he was in the vocal tricks of the ambassador’s trade. “I am, indeed, not Symakhos. That fiction was necessary f
or a time. For I am not,” he continued levelly, “a Romulan. I am, in fact, a Vulcan.”
If the murmurs had been fierce before, they were almost a true uproar now. Spock held up a commanding arm and said, not quite shouting, into the chaos, “Now, is this logical?”
That startled most of them into momentary silence, and Spock continued, a father scolding noisy children (And thank you, Father, for the memory), “Where are we? Well? Where?”
The quicker ones got his point instantly. “Under the city,” they muttered. “Under Ki Baratan.”
“Precisely. If you continue to make such a noise, we shall have the city down about our ears.”
“But you,” a woman in a centurion’s uniform protested, “you tricked us. How do we know you aren’t also a traitor to your own people?”
Ruanek hotly cut in, “I know this man. I . . . cannot name him,” he added with a wary glance at Spock, “but he is honest! My life and honor, and the honor of my family, answer for him.”
“Exactly,” someone snapped.
It was Narviat, descending the longer stairway with calculated drama. “Tell me, Symakhos-who-is-not, does she know of this matter? Or have you tricked her as well?”
He meant Charvanek, of course. Spock, who suspected that Narviat would soon, if indeed he had not already, puzzle out his true identity, said flatly, “I have done, and will continue to do, nothing to harm her life or honor. And as for anything else, you may recall a matter of some years back, along the Neutral Zone. Then, it was this young man alone who upheld Romulan honor when others sought to exploit a criminal madman in destroying a world. His honor speaks for itself.”
A flicker of comprehension crossed the handsome, well-schooled face: Narviat had clearly heard—and not approved—of Romulus’ role in the Obsidian affair.
“As,” he murmured, “does your own honor.”
Ah, he does realize who I am. No danger there. Being the politician he is, Narviat will say nothing that might in any way implicate himself.
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