But how is Denak’s request any less logical the one I made of him last year? she thought, slowly allowing loyalty and friendship to gain sufficient leverage for a narrow victory.
When I needed his help, and Ych’a’s, to rescue Trip, both of them were there for me.
“I will assist you in any way I can,” she said.
THIRTY-NINE
Day Ten, Month of K’ri’lior
Wednesday, February 11, 2156
The Hall of State, Dartha, Romulus
FIRST CONSUL T’LEIKHA WATCHED in silence as Praetor D’deridex rose slowly from the opulent chair atop the dais in the Hall of State’s cathedral-like audience chamber. Transcending the enfeeblement of his aged lungs, the Romulan Star Empire’s supreme leader spoke with surprising volume and vehemence.
“My boot,” the old man roared, “should already be upon their throats by now, Admiral!” A heartbeat later the praetor’s imperious bluster disintegrated into a violent coughing fit, prompting the pair of servants that flanked him to help ease him back into his seat.
Thank Erebus his ire is not directed at me this time, T’Leikha thought as she cast a discreet eye upon the uniformed military officer who stood beside her before the praetor’s dais. The years she had spent navigating the capricious world of Romulan senatorial politics had long ago taught T’Leikha when to keep her own counsel and when to speak plainly. Seeing the anger that seemed so evident behind Admiral Valdore’s blank expression and bowed head, she wondered if he understood that as well as she did. She certainly thought he should; after all, Valdore’s present position as the supreme commander of all the fleets of the Romulan Star Empire—the apex of a military career that would have ended in indefinite imprisonment had she not intervened recently to salvage it—had followed Valdore’s own tenure as a senator, which had ended prematurely because of his immoderate political positions regarding the bedrock necessity of perpetual Romulan territorial expansion.
Judging from the belittling tenor of the praetor’s disparagements of Valdore’s conduct of the war against the hevam Earthers and their allies, D’deridex—who had been a senior senator when Senator Valdore had delivered a particularly fateful speech questioning the need for unending conquest—remembered those times just as clearly as T’Leikha did.
“You could have attacked and occupied the core systems of this so-called Coalition of Planets khaidoa ago,” the praetor said, addressing Valdore as though T’Leikha weren’t even in the room. The old man’s dark eyes shone with rage commingled with the progressive ravages of the Tuvan syndrome he apparently still believed that his court physician had successfully concealed from the Senate. “Instead you bring me news of skirmishes near the Sei’chi Sei system, or word of occupations of entirely peripheral hevam outpost worlds like Isneih Kre, or D’caernu’mneani Lli, or Denevaei!”
To Valdore’s credit, he replied with apparent equanimity and deference. “Praetor, a multisystem operation on such a scale as this requires extremely careful logistical planning and preparation to achieve success.”
“Yes, yes, I understand that!” The praetor waved a hand dismissively, and the faint tremor in his bony forearm did not escape T’Leikha’s notice. “But instead of a glorious series of conquests in the very heart of hevam space, you have contented yourself so far with mere skirmishes. Explain yourself!”
“Respectfully, Praetor, there is a vast difference between taking a world and holding it,” Valdore said.
“I am well aware of that, Admiral,” D’deridex said. “Nevertheless, your operations seem to be requiring an inordinate amount of preparation time.”
The praetor seemed to master his frustration, at least somewhat. T’Leikha could sense that despite his decades-old political differences with Valdore, D’deridex felt a tremendous amount of respect—or was it envy?—for Valdore’s uniform and all that it represented; she knew that the old man was particularly sensitive about military credentials, being one of the few senators in Romulan history to ascend to the Praetorate without first having distinguished himself in battle.
“I can certainly understand how it might appear that way, Praetor,” Valdore said. “But the fleet and all of its matériel, including all the supporting ground bases and personnel, must be in position before the fleet can be fully ready to take and hold the core worlds of Coalition space, such as Thhaei, Sei’chi Sei, or the homeworlds of the hevam, the Andorsu, and the Tellarsu.”
Whatever misgivings Valdore might have had—or might even still harbor—regarding the Romulan Star Empire’s expansionist ethos, T’Leikha had no doubt that his careful, methodical approach to both strategy and tactics would succeed, ultimately visiting a crushing conquest upon each planet that the admiral had just mentioned: Vulcan, Alpha Centauri III, Earth, Andoria, and Tellar. The threat to Romulan territorial integrity those expansionist Coalition worlds represented would one day be neutralized.
But only if Valdore’s plans were permitted to proceed in due course, as the admiral was still trying to explain.
“Praetor, ever since the war effort began in earnest, we have been carefully preparing our beachheads at places like Isneih Kre and Bereng’hhaei Lli and Denevaei—building and protecting our supply lines while systematically probing the enemy’s defenses even as we have continued to move the tip of the spear closer to the enemy’s soft, exposed vitals.
“But the fleet cannot afford to attempt to launch our endgame before all the pieces are in their proper places, so to speak. Such a move would lead not to glory and conquest, but might very well instead herald ignominy and defeat. I do not wish to risk allowing that to happen during your tenure as praetor.”
Well played, Admiral, T’Leikha thought as she suppressed a smile. Valdore’s gambit brought to mind one of the oldest maxims of the Senate: “The honor of the praetor is the honor of the Empire.”
The praetor started to reply, but succumbed instead to another lengthy fit of coughing. Once he had recovered his breath and most of his voice, he leaned slightly forward on his chair and said, “Whatever time remains in my tenure as praetor may not grant me the luxury of patiently awaiting outcomes, Admiral. You must do better.”
Valdore stood in silence, regarding the hagridden man on the throne for a lengthy interval before responding. “I understand, Praetor.”
T’Leikha noted that he had carefully avoided promising to do the impossible.
“Do you, Admiral?” replied the praetor, the blaze behind his aged eyes intensifying. “Throughout this audience, you have spoken as though Romulus is not beset by deadly adversaries on all sides.”
Valdore’s calm façade cracked slightly, allowing T’Leikha a fleeting glimpse of the confusion that roiled beneath. “Praetor?”
“Our foes are not all neatly arrayed between the Romulan Star Empire and its coreward Avrrhinul Outmarches,” the old man said. “A deadly enemy still threatens us on our rimward side—Haakona. Therefore you will launch your meticulously planned full assault against the Coalition coreworlds now, Admiral. Immediately, whether you believe our forces are ready or not. You will begin with the Andorsu. Once that invasion and occupation is under way, you can begin paying proper attention to the Haakonan threat.”
Valdore blinked several times before responding. “Proper attention, Praetor?”
D’deridex sighed heavily, then adopted a demeanor of exaggerated patience usually reserved for small children. “Yes, Admiral. Proper attention. And by that I mean no less than a full-scale invasion and occupation, just as with the Andorsu, and the rest of their Coalition allies.”
T’Leikha had heard rumors that D’deridex had been discussing with his intimates the urgent need to take decisive and preemptive action against Haakona, although he had yet to bring the matter before the Senate. This mixed bag of rumor, conjecture, and puzzling praetorian behavior only lent credence to T’Leikha’s tentative conclusion that D’deridex’s Tuvan syndrome had been accelerating lately, compromising his rationality while heightening his concerns
about his mortality and his legacy.
Valdore, however, apparently had either never heard the Haakona rumors or had taken them less seriously than had T’Leikha. In fact, she had never seen Valdore look quite so dumbfounded as he did at this moment; he had seemed far less surprised more than a full fvheisen ago when she had had him dragged out of one of the Hall of State’s deepest dungeons to tell him not only that he was to be summarily freed, but also that he was to be put back in full command of the Romulan Star Empire’s fleets.
“I shall... revise our battle plans at once, Praetor.”
D’deridex nodded, then clapped his hands twice, his eyes aglow with the fires of madness. “Good. Off you go, then.”
Valdore wasn’t surprised when First Consul T’Leikha cornered him in the vestibule just across the broad, stone-lined corridor from the praetor’s audience chamber.
“Tell me what you think, honestly,” she said, once she had finished sweeping the small conference room for listening devices.
Although she had taken a seat, Valdore remained rigidly at attention. His nation’s supreme leader, after all, had just ordered him to commit the imperial military to an entirely new invasion and occupation, a war on a second front.
“The praetor is insane, First Consul,” he said simply.
T’Leikha nodded gravely. “I am inclined to agree. So I must ask you something, Admiral, in strictest confidence.”
He nodded.
“Do you intend to follow the orders of an insane praetor?” she said.
Valdore allowed an enigmatic smile to cross his lips. He knew he had to take the utmost care in answering such a loaded question. At length, he said, “The praetor is also... prone to forgetfulness. He has issued unorthodox orders before, and subsequently forgotten them.”
“Has he ever before ordered the military to do anything quite this unorthodox?” T’Leikha countered, her gaze like sharpened nhaih- stone spear points.
“No, First Consul,” he said quietly.
“What is the situation at Haakona, really?” the first consul wanted to know.
“It is a quiet backwater, as it has been for more than a generation.”
She nodded. “Ever since the fleet pulled out of the system.”
Valdore nodded. He had only been in the military for a short time, following his abortive Senate stint, when D’deridex’s father had, as part of his perceived mandate as praetor, begun the initial occupation of Haakona. That disastrous military misadventure had cost countless Romulan lives, and had finally ended after nineteen bloody years of ceaseless insurgent attacks upon the occupation forces.
Some of the dead had been his closest friends.
“Why do you suppose the praetor has suddenly placed such importance on Haakona?”
Valdore spread his hands helplessly. “When a man nears the end of his life, he begins considering his legacy with more intensity than ever before. And D’deridex’s legacy has always been bound up with that of his father.”
“Perhaps he fears that a Coalition race—probably the Andorsu— will outflank us at Haakona to gain control of the dilithium supply there,” T’Leikha said. “The Empire still indirectly imports significant amounts of dilithium from Haakona, and the destruction of Coridan has made dilithium a much dearer commodity in Coalition space than it once was.”
Valdore tried to avoid wincing at the mention of Coridan. Although the carnage there had been terrible, the immolation of Coridan Prime’s subterranean dilithium stocks had turned out to be far less complete than he had hoped it would be. He had asked himself more than once since the Coridan attack whether the results he had achieved on that world had been worth the level of indiscriminate death that he had dealt to the Coridans.
Dismissing his self-recriminations, Valdore shook his head and said, “I find that doubtful, First Consul. Outflanking us at Haakona would require a ruinous deployment of high-warp ships that are needed far more urgently elsewhere, for defense against our fleet. Besides, of all the members of the Coalition, the Thhaesu are best positioned to take Haakona’s dilithium, but they do not yet appear to have seen the logic in making any large-scale grabs for the mineral, Coridan Prime notwithstanding.”
Committing so much of the Empire’s vast yet not unlimited military resources to reoccupying Haakona struck Valdore as utterly wasteful on two levels, irrespective of the planet’s dilithium wealth. First, there was the far more urgent war in which the Romulan fleet was already embroiled, fighting back against an aggressively expansionist Coalition. Second, the presently—and with luck, only temporarily—stalled avaihh lli vastam warp-seven-stardrive project that Chief Technologist Nijil had inherited from the late Doctor Ehrehin still held the promise of rendering dilithium effectively obsolete. At any moment, Nijil might achieve another breakthrough that could make dilithium as outmoded and anachronistic as the giant in’hhui’lasendt, the millennia-extinct Apnex Sea leviathans whose glandular secretions had served the First Rihannsu as a cheap source of power. And third, even were Haakona’s dilithium suddenly denied to the Empire, more than enough of the mineral was available from multiple sources, such as provincial Atlai’fehill, the system the hevam called Achernar.
Acknowledging his opinion with a nod, T’Leikha said, “Well, regardless of the praetor’s reasoning and motivations, it would seem to me that D’deridex’s order for the conquest of Haakona might be the very worst medicine the Empire could take at this point in her history.”
Although he agreed wholeheartedly with her appraisal, Valdore was still as bound by honor and law to uphold the praetor’s will as he was to protect the welfare of his fleet, his officers, and the Empire at large. Opening up a second front at Haakona, particularly at a time when preparations for the Coalition war were to be substantially accelerated at this critical juncture, was very likely the single worst idea he had ever heard, second only to the notion of surrendering outright to Earth. Therefore, he maintained a guarded expression as he carefully crafted a response.
“What the praetor has ordered is contrary to my military instincts,” he said at length.
“Which is another way of saying that your praetor has given you an impossible order.”
For all his reservations about the wisdom of the praetor’s plan, Valdore did not like what he was hearing. “With respect, First Consul, I would remind you that you owe D’deridex every allegiance, as do I.”
“Only for so long as he remains praetor,” T’Leikha said, her dark eyes taking on a cunning, calculating cast, like that of a patient hunter. “His symptoms appear to be worsening rapidly. In fact, his declining health may remove him from the praetorate very soon.”
Although Valdore had on more than one occasion considered accelerating D’deridex’s departure from the praetorate—he had contemplated the practicalities and ramifications of assassinating T’Leikha as well—he wasn’t comfortable discussing such matters aloud, even in veiled fashion.
“As I have said, the praetor is prone to forget his most... untoward orders shortly after giving them,” Valdore said. “There is no reason to suppose his newest directives are any different in that respect.”
“No reason,” T’Leikha said. “Except for the continuing decline in the praetor’s health.”
Valdore allowed himself to display a slightly bewildered expression. “I do not understand, First Consul.”
“You say he is forgetful,” she said, her voice taking on the more sonorous, lyrical quality she usually reserved for Senate debates. “When a man’s mortality begins to beckon in earnest, it can focus his attention like nothing else. The cold exhalations of death on the back of his neck may well give the praetor a sense of purpose that stands to make him far less forgetful than you might expect. Therefore he may actually hold you to a disastrous course of action this time.”
“Perhaps,” Valdore said, still trying to resist being drawn into any verbal trap that might give the praetor cause to relieve him of duty. “But as you say, First Consul, D’deridex is unwell
and getting worse. A natural death may well remove him from the praetorate quite soon.”
T’Leikha rose and moved purposefully toward the door. Before exiting into the corridor, she said, “Perhaps. But are you willing to gamble that a natural death will intervene soon enough to save both your fleet and the Empire?”
Alone in the small conference chamber, Valdore considered one of the proverbs he had learned during his time in the Senate: “The honor of the praetor is the honor of the Empire.”
If that wise old saw was true with regard to honor, then it seemed to Valdore that it ought to be equally applicable to shame.
The admiral already carried the responsibility for one heinous and shameful act: the superfluous destruction of Coridan. He knew he would carry that shame with him for the rest of his days.
What was one more act of murder? Especially an arguably necessary one—even if that meant slaying a sitting praetor in order to preserve countless other lives that would otherwise be cast into the jaws of death in the pursuit of a useless and foolish cause.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Star Trek : Enterprise) Page 33
