“Don’t trouble yourself,” said the major, emerging from behind the ridgeline. She made her way down into the arroyo, and Vaughn noted the damage to her armored suit. Kaj’s motion was careful, and he knew at once that she’d been injured. But still she carried herself defiantly. “I have nothing to fear from you.”
The general laughed again. “If we had gods, I would praise them, for it can only be some divine providence that has made my luck so rich this day. Two collaborators and a traitor. A full bounty indeed!” He took aim. “My only question now is: Which of you should I kill first?”
Kaj walked to Vaughn and, for a brief moment, clasped his arm as she passed him by. He felt something pressed into his grip and looked down: it was a Klingon tricorder, the data transmission system in full active mode. He spared Valeris a quizzical look as Kaj walked on, approaching the general at a steady, careful pace.
“General Igdar,” Kaj said formally, “you will stand down and surrender to my custody. I charge you with conduct unbecoming an officer of the Klingon Defense Force, failure to carry out your obligations, and willful disregard of your duties.” He let out a braying snarl of derision, but she went on, fearless in the face of the weapons trained on her. “If you had been able to see past your own egotism and opportunist nature, the Thorn threat would have been neutralized immediately. Instead, you chose to disregard viable evidence because it came from Federation sources, because of personal bias . . . because it did not suit your plans to aggrandize yourself.” She was furious now. “Your idiocy almost cost the lives of every being on the homeworld.” Kaj gestured toward Vaughn and Valeris. “In the end, it was left to our allies to prevent an atrocity.”
Igdar glowered at her. “Are you finished?”
“No,” said Kaj, and pointed at him. “You are a relic. A remnant from the old ways when the Klingon Empire was nothing but and war and death. That path leads only to ruin. If we do not change, we will die.” The major took a breath. “By my authority as an agent of Imperial Intelligence, I place you under arrest.”
“Kill her!” Igdar snapped.
Vaughn held up the device in his hand, realization coming to him in a rush. “You don’t want to do that. In fact, you should probably have been a lot more careful about what you said just now.” He showed the general the tricorder. “See, if I’m reading this right, the major here set up a quick-and-dirty relay, from the comm frequency of these suits to the ship we left adrift out by the edge of the Praxis Belt. All the time you’ve been talking, it’s been boosting the signal out and down to Qo’noS.”
“I imagine Chancellor Azetbur will be displeased with some of the general’s more incendiary statements,” said Valeris.
Igdar swore violently and swept up his gun arm, but Kaj reacted faster, her less-bulky suit giving her the edge she needed to strike him in the knee. The general fell howling to the dust in a messy heap.
Kaj turned to face the rest of the warriors. “He said that you know what is best for the Empire. No doubt you also know that Imperial Intelligence has a long, long reach. Those who defy it . . . defy what is best for the Empire.”
The soldiers shared a silent look—and then, as one, they lowered their weapons.
Six Days Later
I.K.S. No’Tahr
En Route to the Neutral Zone
Klingon Empire
A fist rang twice against the russet-colored hatch, and Valeris looked up from the sparse Klingon pallet where she rested. It took a moment before she realized that the person standing outside was waiting for her permission to enter the room. “Come in,” she called. It was still something of a novelty for her to have quarters that were not governed by locked doors and security grids. The habits of years of living in cells were hard to break.
The hatch slid open and Vaughn crossed the threshold, hesitating in the doorway. “Lieutenant,” she said with a nod. Valeris had not seen much of the Starfleet officer since they left Qo’noS, leaving Kaj behind along with Igdar and the commanding officer of the No’Tahr to appear before an emergency session of the Klingon High Council.
Both Vaughn and Valeris had given closed-session depositions to faceless interrogators from Imperial Intelligence, but they had seen only the edges of what was going on in the Klingon hierarchy. It was clear that Chancellor Azetbur was moving swiftly to bring the “Thorn incident” to a close as quietly as possible, and Igdar’s unprincipled exploitation of his role in the Da’Kel investigation was to be dealt with silently and severely. The fact that the general’s personal flagship had been stripped from him and was now ferrying them back to Federation space was doubtless some form of object lesson for Igdar’s men.
Vaughn returned Valeris’s nod, frowning. The young human’s aspect had changed a great deal in the brief time since she had first met him on Jaros II, and in a way that she found difficult to articulate. He seemed to have both lost and gained something, but she could not say what. Experience, she reflected, could be a cruel teacher.
The death of Commander Miller had shocked Vaughn and forced him into circumstances that might otherwise have never occurred, but what those events had done to the man was not immediately apparent. Valeris briefly considered the pivotal moments from her own past that had altered the course of her life, and wondered how Vaughn’s future might unfold for him.
“I’ve just come from the bridge,” he began. “There was a transmission from Captain Sulu. The Excelsior will be waiting to pick us up when we cross the border. We should be there in a couple of hours.” Vaughn paused. “I thought you’d want to know, so you could . . .”
“Prepare?” she answered. Valeris got up, gathering the jacket she had left on the table at the end of her bunk. “As a matter of fact, there is something I wish to do before we leave this ship, but it is not connected to my own circumstances.”
Vaughn sighed. “I made a full report to Starfleet Intelligence Command and to Admiral Sinclair-Alexander. The details of your participation in this mission are all in there. Just the facts. I didn’t make any . . . value judgments.”
“Do you believe they will hold to the terms of our agreement?”
Vaughn took his time answering. “You kept up your end of the bargain. One way or another.”
“That is not what I asked you.”
He met her gaze. “It’s not up to me.”
“And if it were?” This time Vaughn didn’t reply at all. Valeris pulled on the jacket and faced him. “I want an honest answer from you,” she said. “You owe me that, if nothing else.”
He walked into the room and sat on the edge of the table. “The truth is, I’m not sure how to deal with you. Part of me wants to put you back in the cells and throw away the key. You’re sharp and you’re tricky, and I’m not sure anyone can ever really know what goes on inside your head.”
“That is not so.” She answered without thinking, the words muted.
“Then there’s a part of me that knows what you did out there.” He sighed. “The risks that you took. The Klingon homeworld is still spinning because you risked your life to sabotage the Thorn’s isolytic bomb. A planet full of people you professed to hate, and yet you saved their lives. Then there’s what happened with Rein.”
“Yes.” Valeris looked away. Not a day had passed without some echo of the Kriosian’s memories impinging on her thoughts. Meditation helped, but she sensed it would be some while before the specter of what she had been forced to do was fully excised. Rein’s thoughts had burned into hers like acid, and it would take time to heal the wounds.
“I know it was hard for you to force the mind-meld on him, especially after what happened to you with Spock on the Enterprise. A weaker person . . . someone more damaged by that could never have done what you did.”
She tensed. “I have never considered myself to be ‘damaged.’ “
“I read Tancreda’s files too,” he told her. “She had a lot to say about you.”
“I do not doubt it.” Inwardly, Valeris felt the rise of irritation a
s she listened to her own tone of voice. She was in danger of exhibiting an actual emotional response.
“I lost my mother when I was young. My dad and I . . . It was hard for us.” Vaughn seemed to lose himself in a moment of memory. “Sometimes I think part of me died with her. Family makes us what we are.” He looked up at her. “Tancreda talked about your family, your parents. Your father.”
“I fail to see the relevance.” But she did.
“Spock, Kirk, and Cartwright . . . Is that what you were doing, Valeris? Looking for a father figure to replace the one who let you down? But they all let you down, one way or another, didn’t they? And you ended up cut adrift.”
When she answered, her words were icy. “Is that the doctor’s evaluation of me, or yours?”
“I don’t judge people on who someone else thinks they are, or what theory some shrink uses to categorize them,” said Vaughn. “I judge people on what they do.”
She sensed the unspoken words. “And so?”
When he looked at her again, Vaughn’s eyes were flinty. “What I believe is this: No matter what you’ve done to redeem yourself, it will never erase what you did seven years ago. You murdered two people in cold blood. You disavowed your sworn oath as a Starfleet officer. You aided and abetted men who wanted to bring us to war.” He shook his head. “I can’t excuse that.”
“I see.” Valeris felt a distant twist of emotion: on some level she had wanted him to absolve her. The Vulcan’s expression stiffened, denying the impulse, wondering when it had taken root. “I appreciate your candor.” She walked toward the door. “Now, if you will excuse me—”
“Valeris,” he called after her. “You earned your freedom. When Commodore Hallstrom asks me, that’s what I’ll tell him. But what you’ve done . . . your crimes against Starfleet and the Federation . . . those are things you’re going to have to live with for the rest of your life. And for a Vulcan, that’s a long time.”
The hatch opened and she paused. “I agree.” Valeris did not turn back to face him as she spoke. “Perhaps, Lieutenant, you will live long enough to one day forgive me.”
The tyrant guard woke Rein from his fitful sleep with a savage carillon of noise, dragging a shock-prod back and forth across the force wall that shuttered off his tiny cell from the corridor beyond. The snarl and spit of crackling energy made him jerk backward, pressing himself into the far corner. The Kriosian wondered if he would be interrogated again; his thoughts were still fogged with the chemicals they had used on him before.
Did I talk? Was I able to resist? He wanted to believe he had, but Rein was cursed with knowledge of himself. He was not as strong as he wished others to believe, and the tyrants . . . They were always stronger, always more numerous. He had become ruthless in his fight with them, and still he had lost.
Through the energy barrier, he saw the guard stalk away and in the Klingon’s place there was a slimmer, elfin figure. He saw the face, the upswept eyebrows and the arrow-tip ears, and Rein spat in disgust. “You. The thrice-cursed traitor come to see the condemned man.” Rein got up and crossed to the edge of the cell. It was her, without doubt. Even through his injured, swollen eye, he could see Valeris’s calm, placid aspect. The only difference was a newly healed scar that marred her otherwise elegant features.
He hated that face: ever since she had touched him, invaded his thoughts, he could see the ghost of her lurking every time he closed his eyes, the echo of her voice ringing in the distance. “What do you want now?” he spat. “Tell me, do Vulcans gloat as well as they lie?”
“The Klingon Empire is in the midst of a crisis.” Her tone was conversational, as if he were a colleague and this were a discussion over a cup of tea. “There are recriminations passing back and forth among the members of the High Council. The leaders of the largest noble families and the military have demanded action against the Thorn and their support network.”
The words made him feel sick inside. Rein pictured the cities of Krios Prime in flames and tyrant soldiers walking the streets, killing his people in retribution for what he had done. He had thought that death would claim him long before this time. The tyrant witch Kaj had chained him in the belly of the Daughter and left him there to die as the ship was bombarded and then abandoned. Rein waited to perish from starvation or suffocation, from decompression or radiation—but instead the Klingons came to gather him up, kicking and screaming. They dragged him into a hell that seemed endless, and now there was this new torture.
Valeris went on. “Chancellor Azetbur called for moderation, however. She personally argued that more extreme measures would only stimulate future resistance against the Empire.”
“Krios will always resist,” Rein managed. “The people know what we have done . . .” His felt his voice rise. “They’ll know! The Thorn were martyrs from the very start, and we will be so now!”
But the Vulcan shook her head. “No. It has been decided that the Da’Kel attacks will be blamed on the renegade House of Q’unat, as you intended. Your subterfuge will be used against you. No word of Kriosian involvement will be released. All information surrounding your attack on the Klingon homeworld has been suppressed. It will never be made public.”
“You lie!” he roared, his fist glancing off the barrier. He howled in pain and denial.
“No,” she said with a cursory flick of the head. She dismissed his contradiction with such indifference that he knew Valeris had to be speaking the truth. “Everything you have done will go unremembered. Only a handful of people will know the truth.”
He stepped back, nursing the burnt skin on his knuckles. “Why are you telling me this?” Rein glared at the tyrant guard. “You! Kill me now, then! That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
“No,” Valeris repeated. “You have been tried and convicted in absentia by the High Council. Of all the Thorn, only you now remain alive. Those left on the asteroid base were killed when the facility was destroyed.”
“We have other bases!” he cried. “Other supporters! It doesn’t matter what truth they try to hide, the Klingon occupation of Krios is wrong, it has always been an invasion! We are the victims, not them! They are the aggressors! The Thorn strike back the only way they can . . .” He choked, cutting off the words. Rein glared at Valeris. “If they execute me, more will rise to take my place!”
“You will not be executed.”
“What?” The statement robbed him of all impetus. “What did you say?”
“My actions were instrumental in stopping your attack on Qo’noS. As such, the Klingons considered that a debt was owed to me. They offered to put aside my crimes against them. I declined that proposal.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I asked for something else instead. Your life.”
Rein sank slowly to the deck, shaking his head. She was in his thoughts as much as she was there beyond the force wall, dragging on him like an anchor. The reality of Rein’s circumstances settled in on him. At last, after so long, after so much, he had embraced the need to give his life for his cause once more. There, on the Daughter as he waited for the end to come, he had made himself ready for it. It was the only way to gain any peace.
It was all he wanted, and the Vulcan was denying him that ending. “No . . . You cannot do this . . .”
“They were reluctant to agree, but honor demanded they do as I asked.”
He began to shake, a torrent of tears welling up inside him. “I hate you,” he hissed. “I hate you for this.”
“You shared my thoughts,” said Valeris. “So you know I have a sympathy for the plight of the people of Krios. Lieutenant Vaughn will report back to Ambassador Spock of the Federation Diplomatic Corps. He will put forward the case to press the Empire to release their grip on the Krios System.”
He barely heard her words, instead wringing his hands and quaking where he sat. The faces of the dead whirled through his thoughts, mocking him and taunting his failure.
“Perhaps, in time, a solution can be
found that will not involve bloodshed.” Valeris looked away, her gaze turning inward. “A road without deceit and death.”
The Vulcan turned to leave, and Rein surged back to his feet, shouting at her back. “Wait! Wait!”
Valeris halted and looked back.
“Why did you do this, traitor? Have you not betrayed enough? Now you turn against me once more, and this time you rob me of a righteous death? Why did you make the tyrants spare me?”
She met his gaze. “You will be taken to the penal facility on the planet Rura Penthe, and you will spend the rest of your natural life in confinement there.” Valeris reached up and absently traced a fingertip over the new scar on her face. “You ask me why I prevented your execution? It is because of your responsibility. Because both of us need to live with what we have done.”
The woman walked away into the gloom.
EPILOGUE
Four Months Later
Devoras Prime
Maelek Sector
Romulan Star Empire
The perpetual twilight of the Devoran sky made it difficult to remain unseen. Three suns ensured that even the depths of night still retained a good level of ambient illumination. To go hidden here meant that an extra effort was required—and for a man whose career was built around remaining undiscovered, it was a chore.
But a necessary one, he reflected. And if he could not hide, then neither could his enemies and his rivals. A balanced field of play was such a rarity in the business of espionage. Perhaps I should savor it, he thought.
He pulled his hood tighter over his head, the dark brown cloth and red trim presenting a modest aspect to the colonists passing him on the avenue. Had any of them stopped to look, they would have seen just another Romulan, an older male of typically hawkish stock. Perhaps a merchant or a shipmaster down from the starport: his clothes suggested someone of moderate but not ostentatious wealth. An ordinary and ultimately unremarkable person.
All of which was a carefully engineered lie, of course. His face was not the one he had been born with; circumstances had forced that change upon him, and although he would never speak of it openly, each day that he looked in the mirror and saw the cosmetic alterations, he nursed the same ember of annoyance that had ignited in him seven years earlier.
Star Trek® Cast no Shadow Page 36
