And then a tremendous cacophony roared up behind her, the sound of the collision. Her head snapped back painfully and she fell to her hands and knees. She struggled to right herself, but the runabout pitched and tossed from the violent encounter. She tried again, steadying herself, trying to rise so that she could see what had happened.
Kira peered through the side viewports. The runabout faltered on the edge of the second wormhole. Deeper still, though, the forward section of the warbird, which must have been severed from the rest of the vessel when Rubicon struck it, hurtled down into the red vortex.
Kira looked to either side for Defiant. Somehow, the ship had been thrown clear, and she saw it moving away toward the Alpha Quadrant terminus—toward safety. A smile bloomed on Kira’s face, even as she felt suddenly cold. Air rushed past her, toward the front of the cockpit. The collision had caused a hull breach. She turned around to see how badly the runabout had been damaged—and instead saw Elias Vaughn.
Except that Vaughn no longer looked like the decrepit man she had seen earlier that day in the hospice. Kira gazed instead at the man he had been, strong of body and strong of mind, still recognizable, but no longer infirm. He did not have a young face, but one with character and experience. She understood that his gray hair and the lines in his flesh had been well and honestly earned.
“How did you get here, Elias?” she asked, her voice barely audible over the sound of the atmosphere rushing out.
The newly invigorated Vaughn said nothing, but in reply, he stood up, reached forward, and hauled Kira up into his arms. For a moment, she thought he meant to leave the ship and carry her through space to safety, but that seemed a mad idyll. Instead, he bent his legs, spun his body, and threw her into the air.
Kira saw nothing but the overhead as she flew across the cockpit of the runabout. She waited for the hard impact of her body against the deck, but then she landed on something solid, but not nearly as hard. The impact pushed the air from her lungs. Even as she struggled to breathe, though, she sought to rise.
But then white light surrounded her. Her eyes narrowed against the glare, but the light grew brighter. In the end, Kira closed her eyes and accepted whatever her fate would be.
On the Vir-Akzelen asteroid, Nelzik Tek Lom-A saw the readings on her console and didn’t understand them. In no context did they make any sense. She realized that the equipment must be experiencing an overload, and she hoped that it extended only to her monitor.
She called over to Vendez Tek Lom-A to ask his opinion. As he moved toward her station, Nelzik glanced up at the transparent superior floor of the lab. She saw the sky catch fire.
The wormhole burst into existence, not just a fiery red, but actually burning like the surface of a sun. Nelzik lived just long enough to register the forward section of a Romulan warbird career out of the wormhole and crash through the ceiling of the lab. And then fire took her too.
Picard judged that they had waited long enough.
“There’s no response from the Defiant,” said Choudhury.
“And still none from Vedek Kira aboard the Rubicon, I take it,” the captain said from where he stood with Worf in the center of the Enterprise bridge. They had sent a message to Captain Sisko aboard Defiant, warning him about Kira and the stolen runabout, but they’d received no reply. They’d also tried to raise the vedek, without result.
“Lieutenant Faur, ahead one-quarter impulse,” Picard said. “Take us into the wormhole.”
“Aye, sir,” Faur said.
Before the lieutenant could even operate the conn, though, the Bajoran wormhole thrust itself into normal space. Picard looked over at the main viewer at the unexpected burst of light. The wormhole did not open in its customary circular fashion, but erupted, as though carving a hole straight through the fabric of space-time. It still radiated blue, but the light seemed to burn and roil, as though somehow on fire.
Picard stared at the viewscreen, transfixed by what he saw. As he looked on, a shape emerged from within . . . not stable, but tumbling. Another, smaller shape followed.
“The Defiant,” he said quietly. “And the Rubicon.”
A third shape appeared, though it did not look at all like a ship. It appeared more organic, like a living being.
“Analysis,” Picard said. “What’s happening out there?”
Before anybody could respond, the wormhole blazed even brighter. Then it fell in on itself, like a tunnel collapsing.
And then it was gone.
On Bajor, in the hospice at the Vanadwan Monastery, Elias Vaughn opened his eyes, closed them again, and then died.
Summa Summarum
Praetor Gell Kamemor walked down a wide corridor of Stronghold Telvan’rey, Uhlans Preget and T’Lesk following dutifully behind her. The footfalls of the trio multiplied against the stone floor and walls, the timber ceiling too high up to effectively suppress the clatter. The sound, thin and hollow and reverberant, somehow reminded Kamemor of historical times. She had no trouble envisioning the era before modern power generation, when only fire lighted the night, when simple flames would have thrown her shadows and those of her guards wavering across the ancient walls.
The stronghold, one of the oldest extant structures in Ki Baratan, stood on the outskirts of the city. Set atop a rise overlooking the Apnex Sea, the great edifice had once housed generations of Romulan royalty. With both its interior and exterior fully restored, and its updated infrastructure artfully hidden, the praetor could easily imagine that she had slipped the restraints of the complicated present and escaped into the undemanding past.
Kamemor knew that she romanticized history. She also understood that her enthusiasm for the bygone era stemmed at least in part from a desire to live in simpler times. As a public servant, and especially as praetor, she yearned to free herself of the intricacies frequently attendant with the performance of her duties. But she also recognized the lie in thinking that the lack of technological sophistication in earlier periods corresponded to a lack of political complexity.
Up ahead, at the end of the corridor, a large opening looked out on the sparkling sprawl of the nighttime city. The window lacked glass, but Kamemor knew that a force field protected the stronghold against the elements. As she neared the semicircular opening, Ki Baratan stood out in the night like a clutch of gems strewn upon a jeweler’s cloth.
The praetor arrived at the last doorway in the corridor, set into the left-hand wall. The door itself, a collection of dark wood planks fastened together by steel bands, stood perpetually open, its function reduced to mere adornment. As with the window, a force field sealed the opening, but a row of metal bars also marched from one jamb to the other.
Kamemor had ordered the prisoner incarcerated in that specific cell because it possessed an unparalleled view of Ki Baratan. Such a choice might reasonably be deemed unkind, perhaps even cruel, but the praetor held no such malicious intentions. She did seek to make plain, though, the reason that her government would not tolerate the prisoner’s crimes: the good of the Romulan people.
And really, not just the good of the Romulan people, Kamemor thought, pushing her populist stance beyond the borders of the Empire. The good of all people in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants.
As the two uhlans fell back and took up positions across the corridor from the praetor, Kamemor stepped up to the cell. The force field buzzed at her approach. She peered inside, at a room that, as best she could tell, appeared little different than it had when the stronghold had first been constructed centuries earlier.
The praetor knew that redundant force fields surrounded the cell, that its walls had been fortified by impregnable materials, and that transport inhibitors protected against beaming into or out of it. Further, subspace jamming devices prevented unauthorized communication, and Romulan Security kept both individual cells and the entire stronghold under continuous surveillance, the sensor perimeter reaching well beyond Telvan’rey’s curtain walls and battlements. As far as Kamemor knew, since the repurposing of the strongho
ld in the modern era, no prisoner had ever escaped its confines—other than via the traditional Romulan method.
“Good evening,” the praetor said.
Sela raised her head from where she lay on her back atop the stone slab that served as her bed. Clad in a distinctive yellow jumpsuit—Not very different from the color of her hair, Kamemor thought—she regarded the praetor for only a moment. Then she lowered her head back onto the slab.
Kamemor peered around and saw that the cell possessed few features: a simple stone sink, a half-wall that clearly sheltered a lavatory, and a barred window that looked out on Ki Baratan. Not for the first time, the praetor reflected on the differences in the ways that the Empire and the Federation housed and treated their prisoners. She wanted more information, not just about the UFP’s holding cells and its processes of detention, but the reasons behind them. She resolved to seek out an expert in such matters; perhaps Nan Bacco herself would be gracious enough to provide a resource. Certainly the two heads of state had parted on better terms than any praetor and president had enjoyed in quite some time.
“It might interest you to know that your position as chairwoman of the Tal Shiar has been filled,” Kamemor said, more to draw Sela out than to pass on the information. The new Tal Shiar leader had served in the elite intelligence agency for only a relatively short time—less than two decades—having first arrived there well into her middle age. Until the proconsul had brought her to the attention of Kamemor, she had met the praetor on only a couple of occasions, as part of a contingent delivering security briefings. But Ventel had attended university with the woman, and they had later served together for a long period as researchers and historians with the Imperial Library and Chamber of Records. The two had remained friends for years, and though quite a few of the others considered for the position had been more highly qualified, none possessed precisely the combination of characteristics the praetor sought: a keen mind, a dedication to duty, a belief in the rule of law and in the moral limits to the power of the government in general and the Tal Shiar in particular, and complete trustworthiness. “The new chairwoman is Tesitera Levat.”
Sela immediately swung her legs from her bed and stood up. She paced over to the doorway, then bent down and reached to the floor, out of sight along the inner wall of the cell. The unexpected movement obviously caught the attention of the uhlans, whose footfalls resounded in the corridor behind Kamemor. She turned to see that they had drawn their disruptor pistols. The praetor waved them back, but they held their ground until Sela stood back up and displayed what she had retrieved from the floor: a bronze chalice. She slowly upended the goblet, spilling its viscous, silvery contents onto the bare cell floor beside her. The liquid spattered on the stones, several drops splashing against the force field with a sizzle.
The praetor turned and nodded to the guards, who holstered their weapons and returned to their positions across the corridor. When she looked back into the cell, she saw that Sela held the empty chalice upside-down by its circular base. The ex-chairwoman stared at her with what looked like untempered hatred.
“It was not my choice to place the goblet in your cell,” Kamemor said. “In the case of your crimes, though, the law is quite specific.”
“Of course it wasn’t your choice,” Sela said. “That would have been far too Romulan an action for you to take.”
“And clearly far too Romulan for you as well,” Kamemor said, gesturing to the puddle to the side of Sela’s feet.
“Nothing is ‘too Romulan’ for me,” Sela said. “My mother was human—” She spewed the word like an epithet. “—and yet I’m still more Romulan than you’ll ever be.”
“I think you and I have very different ideas of what it means to be Romulan,” Kamemor said.
“Nothing’s ever been clearer to me than that,” Sela agreed.
The praetor had not chosen to visit the chairwoman to debate her, or to lecture her, or even to attempt to better understand why she had taken the rogue actions she had. Kamemor had come as a matter of her own conscience. She believed that she should accord Sela the right to know the potential fate that awaited her, so that she could then choose whether or not to face it. Still, long before she had been elevated to the praetorship, Kamemor had served as a professor, and so she still believed in teachable moments, even so far into Sela’s life.
“I’m a Romulan because I was born a Romulan,” Kamemor said. “But I was also born ignorant of the universe. Should I have remained that way? No, of course not. I learned as a child, taught at home by my parents and in school by my teachers. I believed what I was told, as most children do; it is an evolutionary trait, for children need adults for their very survival. But there is a difference between merely surviving and truly living, and if you learn only what you’re taught in childhood, if there is no questioning of authority, no curiosity about the unknown, no pursuit of additional knowledge, then there is no growth, either for an individual or for a species.”
“So you grew up,” Sela said. “That’s your idea of being Romulan?”
Kamemor hadn’t intended to say exactly that, but she agreed with the sentiment. “More or less,” she said. “Because I’m Romulan by birth, but also by culture. My brain has a certain capacity, my body has particular physical abilities, my emotions well-defined ways of reacting to situations, but our society also metes out expectations for the individuals it comprises. To be Romulan, then, I need to nurture the characteristics inside me, attempt to bring them to their fullest flower, but also to work outside myself, toward the greater good. I think you can say the same thing for half-Romulan, half-human hybrids.”
“And for full humans, and Klingons, and Vulcans, and all the rest?” Sela said. “It’s the same for all the galaxy in your mind, isn’t it?”
Kamemor nodded. “And for Cardassians and Gorn and Ferengi and Tzenkethi,” she added. “We are all more alike than unalike.”
“That’s the fatal flaw in your argument,” Sela said. “It is also why the Imperial Senate and the Romulan people will eventually bring you down: you don’t believe in the natural superiority of Romulans.”
Kamemor shrugged. “I certainly don’t believe in the superiority of certain Romulans.”
Sela snorted derisively. “I agree,” she said. She turned and walked the few steps to the other side of her cell. The goblet still dangled from her fingertips, a thick, silver drop occasionally giving in to gravity and falling from the rim to the floor. A drop, Kamemor knew, would be all Sela or any Romulan would need.
When Sela turned back, she said, “It is astonishing to me that you preach about the good of the Empire, while you continually undermine the security of Romulus, and castigate me for taking steps to protect it.”
“It is difficult to accept that you actually believe that,” Kamemor said.
“What?!” Sela erupted, moving back over to the doorway. “All I’ve done is fight to overcome the Federation’s military advantage, and I’ve had to do that because the alleged leader of our people refuses to do so herself.”
“Yes, I keep hearing about the quantum slipstream drive,” Kamemor said, “and how it provides the Federation with a clear tactical advantage over the entire Typhon Pact. And yet, slipstream hasn’t seemed to make much difference to the Romulan Empire—other than when you’ve taken pains to steal it. Starfleet has employed their new drive on some of their ships for some time now, and yet not once in all that time has a Federation force attempted to penetrate the Neutral Zone.”
“Just because Starfleet hasn’t attacked yet doesn’t mean it won’t,” Sela said.
“I think it does mean that,” Kamemor told her. “In fact, isn’t past behavior the best indicator of future behavior? Even when you and Tomalak have given the Federation valid reasons to declare war, they haven’t. That’s because, for the most part, their people aren’t like you; they may be different from Romulans, but they don’t hate us for that difference.”
“I disagree,” Sela said. “The infer
ior always resent their betters.”
Kamemor shook her head. “So we’re back to that, are we? Romulan exceptionalism,” she said. “That’s such an outdated notion, and irrelevant, and I think wrong in so many ways. But let’s assume for a moment that it’s none of those things. Let’s declare that Romulans are superior to humans . . . and to Andorians and to Vulcans and to all the rest. That leads me to a simple question: so what?”
Sela looked at her as though Kamemor had spoken in gibberish. Another silver drop fell from the rim of the chalice to the floor.
“If we are somehow ‘better’ than the people of the Federation,” Kamemor continued, “does that mean that we necessarily must vanquish them, or subjugate them, or annihilate them? I say no. Wouldn’t a truly advanced people help lift up the less fortunate, the less capable, the inferior?”
“I see our rightful place in the universe,” Sela said. “Why can’t you?”
“‘Our’ rightful place?” Kamemor asked. “Or your rightful place. Because it seems that your actions have in no demonstrable way benefited Romulus. Like Tomalak, you assert patriotic motivations, but in his case, it’s a rationalization for self-aggrandizement. For you, I suspect it’s a reaction to your self-loathing. I don’t understand why you would choose to hate yourself just because your mother was different from your father—”
“Don’t you dare talk about my father,” Sela growled, taking a step perilously close to the force field. She looked down, apparently trying to calm herself. When she peered back up, she spoke normally once more. “What you say about Tomalak may be partially true—he may not be a patriot in the fullest sense—but he at least works toward goals that would benefit Romulus.”
“So he claims,” Kamemor said. “But no one will hear any of those claims for the rest of his life.”
Sela smiled, an expression that seemed to convey pity rather than humor. “You really are a poor excuse for a Romulan,” she said. “If you choose not to execute Tomalak, rest assured that his words will make it out into the public. And if you do put him to death, he will surely avail himself of the Right of Statement. Either way, he will be certain that the Romulan people understand how you have cowered from the Federation.”
Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn (Star Trek, the Next Generation) Page 41
