“Not the Romulan term. Just mine.” There was a chair directly opposite Harriman, and Rokan sat in it. He looked very much at home. “Besides, I do not think of you as a prisoner. I think of you as a resource.”
“A resource that you keep locked up in a chair,” said Harriman sarcastically.
“What can I say? I value my resources.” He leaned forward and smiled. “Do you know why you are here?”
“I know why you’re here.”
There was feistiness in him. Rokan approved. Lately the only ones whom he had had the opportunity to examine had been other Romulans, suspected of treachery or in some other way acting in opposition to the interests of the government. And when they saw him, they tended to crack almost immediately, since they were familiar with his reputation. The human, however, did not know him. That meant that he could maintain his bravado for a time longer and provide a bit more of a challenge to Rokan.
“Do you? And why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”
He expected that the human would not reply. That would be a nonsensical tactic, of course. Rokan knew perfectly well what he and the Talon were doing out there. The human could not possibly have any information that he, Rokan, did not have. But the pathetic human would undoubtedly view whatever meager information he did possess as some sort of strength, or bargaining point. He would not simply spout off, but instead try to play a game of dueling knowledge.
So Rokan was rather surprised when Harriman said immediately, “You’re on your way to a Romulan incursion.”
“Are we?” His eyebrows lifted, all innocence.
“Yes. Your people have made a series of strikes against several outer rim colonies,” Harriman told him. “And your intelligence forces have told you that Starfleet is sending a number of ships as part of a counteroffensive.”
Rokan’s surprise dissipated. He even felt a twinge of admiration for the captain. The ploy was obvious: he was trying to get Rokan to confirm or deny, by even the most minute of changes in expression, his suppositions. The attacks on the outer rim colonies were something that, naturally enough, Starfleet was aware of. But his guesses about Romulan intelligence reports were simply that: guesses. Still, Rokan liked his spunk.
“Have they told us that?” Rokan inquired.
Harriman nodded. “And your people are desperate to know our plans, ship movements, and the like.”
“But that hasn’t explained why this vessel was going, under cover of cloak,” pointed out Rokan.
With a shrug, as if sharing common knowledge, Harriman said, “Your kind always moves under cloak since you are, at heart, cowards, and wish to go about your business unobserved.”
If the words were intended to get a rise out of Rokan, they did not succeed. He didn’t respond to the obvious bait.
“Obviously,” continued Harriman, “you’re an interrogator of some sort. You’re probably being transported to the outer rim to pump prisoners there for information. I’m merely a side trip.”
“Oh, don’t think so little of yourself, Captain,” Rokan said in a faintly scolding voice. “With your capture, you have suddenly become the focus of this outing. You are, after all, a starship captain….”
“And as a starship captain, you well know, I’ve been trained to resist all forms of interrogations and probes. You’ll find nothing out from me.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Rokan said softly. He rose from the chair and began to circle Harriman. “For one thing, you are a most unusual starship captain. John Harriman, CO of the starship Enterprise. A vessel name with a long and illustrious history … until you came along, that is. This is actually somewhat opportune for me. You can explain a name I’ve heard in reference to your vessel: The Flying Dutchman. Why would it be called that, I wonder.”
Harriman’s lips thinned. He made no reply.
“My, you’ve grown silent so quickly, Captain. Does it have something to do with your vessel’s alternative name … the Death Ship? After all, the great James T. Kirk survived all manners of threats, including several at our hands. The man seemed unkillable … until he was on a ship five minutes with you.”
“I’ve made my peace with that,” Harriman told him flatly. “I did enough soul-searching, enough mental flogging, on that score already. You can’t get to me that way.”
“I’m not trying to ‘get to you,’ Captain. We’re simply chatting, that is all. Chatting about your predecessor … although you certainly did put the ‘decease’ in ‘predecessor,’ didn’t you?” Rokan laughed softly at that. “And then there’s your command itself. It helped that your father is a powerful admiral. John Harriman, Senior … ‘Blackjack’ Harriman, they call him. Quite the legend, isn’t he?”
“I don’t have to defend my command, or my position in Starfleet, to you,” Harriman said. He didn’t seem the least bit rattled. Good. Rokan didn’t want it to be too easy.
“No, you don’t. You most certainly do not. Still … you do have a lot to live up to, don’t you?” He sighed, shook his head. “The legendary Captain Kirk. The legendary Blackjack Harriman. The compulsion to be legendary must be rather overwhelming. Tell me, Captain … is that why you took command of the landing party that brought you here?”
“We received a distress signal,” said Harriman. “A vessel was in trouble. A type of freighter that I had served aboard in my youth. I was the best qualified to lead the landing party.”
It was exactly the response that Rokan was hoping for. Harriman was already feeling a knee-jerk compulsion to defend himself and his decisions to Rokan. That could only benefit Rokan in the long term.
“Indeed. And how were you to know that it was a dummy ship, eh? That the trap would snap shut and you would be captured. Aren’t you curious as to the fate of the rest of your landing party?”
“I’m assuming that either they got away or you killed them.”
“You seem rather sanguine about it.”
Harriman said nothing.
Rokan was having trouble getting a fix on Harriman. He spoke when there was no reason to do so, and he closed his mouth equally arbitrarily. “Perhaps you do not wish to let on that you are concerned. You feel that any such worries may be used against you.”
“Harriman, John. Rank, Captain. Serial number 38314-27JO9.”
“Ah.” Rokan was amused at that. “Suddenly you fall back upon your name, rank, and serial number.”
“Look, I’m not going to tell you anything,” Harriman said, “so if that’s your plan, you might as well drop it right now.”
“Perhaps I don’t desire to learn anything. Perhaps we intend to use you for a hostage exchange.”
“Starfleet does not bargain with terrorists.”
“I tend to think you’re wrong about that. We’ll find out. In the meantime…” and he smiled and sat down once more. “Let’s talk.”
“We’ve been talking.”
“Yes, but I thought we’d best narrow the field of conversation a bit. That we should speak specifically of troop movements and such. You see, Captain, you were correct: my associates and I are indeed most interested in whatever Starfleet might have in mind in regards to the outer rim worlds.”
“That,” Harriman replied, full of confidence as if he were pleased that the conversation had taken the turn that it had, “is none of your concern.”
“Nor are the rim worlds your concern,” replied Rokan. “We know that the worlds were colonized specifically to serve as spy bases against the Romulan Empire.”
“Nonsense. They’re just colony worlds, that’s all.”
“Colony worlds that just so happen to sit on the border of the Neutral Zone. Captain,” and Rokan shook his head sadly, as if scolding a child, “we are not stupid. We know how the Federation operates. We know of your spy missions. Or do you think we’ve forgotten how the great Captain Kirk himself was responsible for stealing the secrets of our cloaking device years ago? He came in the night, absconded with the technology, and his first officer kidnapped one of our office
rs.”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Harriman. “That incident…”
“That incident was precisely as I described it,” retorted Rokan. “If you believe otherwise, you are a fool. But I suspect you know the truth, and are merely a liar.”
“And you would be the one honest Romulan in the Romulan Empire?” Harriman asked sarcastically.
Rokan smiled. “I? I never lie. I have far too much style for that.”
“Style.” Harriman snorted. “Is that what torturers are noted for?”
“A torturer?” Rokan looked stricken. “You wrong me, Captain, deeply. I am not a torturer. I simply ask questions. My little questions are designed to encourage you to answer.”
“And if they don’t do the job,” replied Harriman, “then you haul in assorted torture devices, or pump me full of drugs, or do whatever it takes to get me to ‘cooperate.’”
Rokan began to circle once more. “Is that what you want, Captain? Torture devices? Drugs? Perhaps the fact is that you want to cooperate. You know that you do not have the strength of character to resist even the most mild of challenges. Oh, but if you are subjected to drugs or ‘devices,’ then you can toss aside any concern over personal responsibility. You can tell yourself that there was nothing you can do. And won’t that be simpler, less of a problem? Wouldn’t you like that?”
“You don’t know anything that I would and would not like,” shot back Harriman. Then, as if realizing that he sounded a bit more plaintive than he should have, he drew himself up and said, “Harriman, John. Rank, Captain. Serial number 38324-27J09.”
“Very impressive,” said Rokan, unimpressed. “Do you have problems with personal responsibility, Captain?”
“I have problems with being tied to a chair. If you’d care to do something about that, that would be fine.”
“Very well. Let us discuss the seemingly infinite human capacity for self-delusion. In your case, that would refer to your claims that you have ‘made peace’ with the loss of Captain Kirk. Or your concerns that you were given command purely because of your powerful father. And then there was the disgraceful incident where you killed one of your own crew women—one Demora Sulu—even though she was naked and unarmed. That was certainly one of the high points of your stellar career.”
“You seem to know a great deal about my stellar career,” Harriman said. “That being the case, you’d know that Demora Sulu was actually unharmed. That what I killed was a berserk clone of her. One should not always take things at face value, Rokan. They are not always what they appear to be.”
“Oh, I have always believed that. Just as I do not take your protests of your self-satisfaction to be anything other than that: mere protests. When I look at you, Captain, do you know what I see?”
“No. Nor do I care.”
Rokan advanced on him, brought his face right up close. “What I see,” continued Rokan, “is a weak … pathetic … posturing … uncertain little fool who is completely out of his depth. Who knows that he has no business in command of a starship. Who is desperately trying to prove himself to his crew, his father, himself, and continues to fail over and over again. A man who, from the moment he allowed his vessel to be taken out of dry dock before it was fully prepared to go, has been on a constant treadmill of futility. Running and running after something approaching self-esteem, and never coming close to catching up.”
“Harriman, John. Rank, captain. Serial num—”
“—ber 38324—27J09,” Rokan completed for him. “You live your life in fear, Captain. Terrified that you’re going to be found out. That the depth of your uncertainty, your confusion, your inadequacy is going to be brought to the forefront. Frightened that you are going to wind up letting yourself and Starfleet down at a point where the stakes are so high, they will never recover. Tell me, Captain: did your main qualification for taking charge of the landing party consist of the fact that you don’t particularly care whether you live or die? What harm is there in taking the point, after all, if your own safety is irrelevant to you?”
Harriman’s voice was low and husky. “You think you know me. You know nothing about me. I know you, though.”
“Do you.” Rokan was amused. “And what do you know? Of me?”
“You’re not young, for starters,” Harriman said. “Maybe that’s why you hate me so much. Because I remind you of young upstarts coming in behind you.”
“I don’t hate you. I do not care about you one way or the other.”
But Harriman didn’t seem to care what Rokan had just said. “Look at you. Hair gray, reflexes not what they once were. You don’t see that many old Romulans around. The reason for that is obvious: young men like me, pushing you aside, determined to show everyone that they can do the job better than you can. And who knows, maybe they can.”
“I am the praetor’s finest examiner,” Rokan said with a hint of pride. “He has every confidence in me to break even the strongest, most stubborn of minds … which yours, I should point out, most definitely is not.”
“That’s what he tells you, and that’s what you may think. But there are always others who think they can do better. Others who feel that you’re antiquated, your methods slow and dull. Young men who display a singular lack of the ‘style’ you consider so important. They don’t care about style. They don’t care about posturing. They care simply about getting the job done. Where you do the job with a rapier, they’ll simply come in with an ax and hack away until they get what they want. And they do the job quickly, efficiently, and brutally, but it’s done nevertheless. And it angers you because you see that as crude and unappealing, but you’re also afraid of them because you know that they are the wave of the future.”
“What you describe will never be the way of the Romulan examiner,” Rokan snapped. “That is simply nonsense.”
“You’re old, Rokan. Old and weak, and we both know it.” There was a look of insufferable smugness on Harriman’s face. “And the others know it, too. You practice an unforgiving art, Rokan, in an unforgiving society. And that rapier you wield isn’t going to mean much when you get the ax squarely in your back, now, is it.”
Rokan smiled thinly, displaying his gleaming teeth. “Is that the best you can do, Captain? Do you truly think that you can undercut my confidence, lay me low, with such pathetic thrusts? Distressing, Captain, most distressing. I had hoped for better from Starfleet than that.”
“That’s the difference between us, I suppose,” Harriman replied. “I had no particular hope for a Romulan examiner. An insufferable pig who fancies himself an artist of analyzing his ‘victim.’ That’s what I expected, and that’s what I got. That’s the most laughable thing of all. Even the young ones who follow you … they’re going to be no different. Not really.”
“You’re wrong,” Rokan said, and then wished he hadn’t spoken. He said nothing further immediately, realizing that speaking out of turn was unwise. The fact that he had nearly done so was a bit surprising to him. It was not the sort of slip he generally made. Getting old and foolish came to his mind, and then he immediately pushed it away. That was not a path down which he wanted to walk.
“Am I? Am I wrong?”
Rokan forced a smile, and hoped it didn’t look as forced as it actually was. “You’re endeavoring to play my own game, Captain. You should not make such efforts, for I am afraid that you’re not especially good at it,”
“You’re afraid. I’ll give you that much.”
The taunt had no effect on him. This time, his mental defenses more solidly in place, he was able to brush aside the jape and see it as no more than exactly what it was: a juvenile attempt at throwing him off his game.
But Harriman hadn’t stopped talking. “Every time you take on a new assignment, it increases the stakes for you. Because sooner or later, you’re going to fail. And when you do fail, then those who are waiting behind you are going to exploit that failure for all it’s worth. So when you start on each new victim, there’s a stink of fear hanging o
n you. I can smell it from here.”
“Can you?” Suddenly Harriman seemed far less amusing than he had before. “And are you quite certain it’s not your own fear you’re smelling? The stench of your bravado as it rots within you?”
Harriman smiled widely then, and there was not the slightest fear on his face as he said, “Harriman, John. Rank, captain. Serial number 38324-27J09.”
Rokan did not like the way this conversation was going. Harriman was wrong, dead wrong, as far as Rokan was concerned. He did not worry about the young fools who would have killed to enjoy his rank and privileges. They were of no consequence. And yes, he was getting older, but age had done nothing to diminish his skills. Despite all of Harriman’s pathetic insinuations to the contrary, Rokan was in control.
It was about time that he took that control in a more indisputable fashion.
Which was precisely what he did.
The conversation they had had up until that point amounted to little more than a preliminary bout compared to what followed.
Despite the fact that he had not had all that much time to study it, Rokan’s knowledge of Harriman’s record bordered on encyclopedic. He used that knowledge, combined with his observations and suppositions about Harriman’s psyche, to begin the session in earnest.
He poked, he prodded, he sliced and diced. As minutes rolled into hour and hours piled upon themselves, Rokan proceeded to ask Harriman about everything … except what he truly wanted to know about. He inquired about Harriman’s childhood, about his education, his relationships with his parents, the most treasured keepsake from his childhood, the first time he had taken a test in Starfleet Academy, the first time he had loved a woman, the first friend he had ever lost. On and on, a detailed and unyielding investigation of one life. Not a single question had anything to do with troop movements or the schedules under which Starfleet vessels might be operating.
Sometimes Harriman replied. Sometimes he said nothing. Most times he fell back upon name, rank, and serial number. Perversely, those were the responses that Rokan treasured the most. When Harriman was silent, it meant that he was thinking about what was said. Rokan didn’t want Harriman thinking; he wanted him compliant, obedient. When Harriman tried to reply in some way, it meant that he was rallying and trying to put up some sort of defense. It was only when Harriman fell back on the rote answer—name, rank, serial number—that Rokan knew that Harriman simply had no idea what to do. At those times Harriman didn’t think, couldn’t think, and sought refuge in the mundane and predictable.
Star Trek: Enterprise Logs Page 22