She was Charvanek, Commander of the Romulan Star Empire—she who had once, so briefly, so disastrously, encountered a then-Starfleet Vulcan officer named Spock. She had trusted him—
Bah, no, you fell for him like a green girl—even gave him your secret name!
But of course, he had been more sensible than she. Of course he had been there just to steal that cursed cloaking device. Charvanek stopped short at the memory, hand reflexively reaching for the disruptor that wasn’t at her side, not here in the relative safety of her mansion.
At that thought, Charvanek cast a quick, automatic glance at the screens that monitored activity on her estate. Yes. All was still secure.
Her gaze fell on a blank patch of wall beside the screens, a rectangular outline lighter than the surrounding blue. A tapestry had hung there until fairly recently, an elegant work depicting Azeraik triumphing in death over his enemies. There were other blank patches throughout the mansion, though she had not sold, and would not sell, the ancestral weapons still enshrined in the main hall. Art objects, after all, were just that and could be sold. Honor could not.
Nor, Charvanek thought with sudden warmth, could Honor Blade. The old ship might be a little battered, worn with time and hard use—but it was hers, a good, strong, old-style Romulan warbird.
She was still a member of the Empire’s fleet; but Erebus would be choked with ice floes before the praetor offered her a ship again.
No matter. Honor Blade had survived and still would serve. As had and would she.
And if she had narrowly escaped execution back then, when she’d been commanding that Klingon-made monstrosity and had made that . . . error of judgment, only fools bemoaned the past. And if it had taken long, perilous years for her to bury disgrace and fight her way back to power, literally as well as figuratively, that was as it was, too. Thinking of grizzled old Takvi, who had been her engineer in the old days and whom she’d managed to save from charges of treason—the treason of staying loyal to her—Charvanek smiled thinly. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that she’d protected her people.
Some of her people. She never had learned what had become of her second-in-command, Tal. But then, in the Empire these days, people . . . disappeared.
Charvanek’s thin smile tightened even more. Of course, the real reason for her own survival and restoration of rank—as well as the reason she’d been allowed to keep Honor Blade—had been not all her cleverness, but her kin lines.
Fortunate indeed, even now, that I am of the emperor’s blood.
For what that was worth nowadays. Shiarkiek might still be emperor, but everyone knew that the weary old man was only Praetor Dralath’s puppet. After Tomed, “glory” had been a word reserved for the Praetor, while “honor” . . .
The word tasted sour on her lips.
Shiarkiek is the very heart of honor. He deserves better than this.
Romulus deserves better!
Charvanek resumed her pacing. Resent the past though she might, not being some rigidly controlled Vulcan, she no longer hated Spock, not after so many years. He’d done only what he must do, in all honor, for his sworn allies. Had the situations been reversed, she would have done the same.
At the thought, Charvanek gave a sharp, humorless little laugh. Ironic that there were no allies on Romulus or within its empire these days, none whom she might trust—
Yet I have this honorable not-quite enemy.
One used what tools one had. Charvanek, decided, stopped before her desk. A whispered code, one she changed daily, unlocked the terminal.
Another private code, equally short-lived, set a certain program running, searching. Absently brushing her hair back from her elegantly pointed ears, Charvanek hunted through Romulan outgoing transmissions as warily as ever a hunter stalked game, careful not to reveal a trace of her presence. . . .
Ah, yes. That one. They would not think to trace a most routine communication on tariffs; they would not even realize that another, coded, message was riding it.
Charvanek’s lips tightened once more in that thin, ironic smile. Once, she had given Spock her most secret name. She doubted that he, with his Vulcan memory, had forgotten it. And it would be by that name, that pledge known to their sundered peoples, that she would approach him now.
If he betrays me again, I am dead.
The thought hardly bothered her, not after all these years of hard-won survival. What was life, after all, without risk? And what was worth gaining without cost? Especially since in this case, the prize was the very honor of the Empire.
* * *
“Ambassador? Ambassador Spock?”
Spock, alone in his quarters on Oriki, straightened in his chair. No mistaking the cheerful chirp of Irene Sanford. “Yes, Ms. Sanford?”
“Sir, there’s a message from Commissioner Hanover. Shall I put it through now?”
That would be Federation Trade Commissioner Robert Hanover. “Indeed.”
Spock switched on the viewscreen, and watched Hanover’s round face form. “Well done, Ambassador Spock. Though I probably don’t have to tell you that. I’ll just add that no immediate business seems pending. So go ahead, Ambassador. Take some time off.”
Had it been the old Starfleet days and McCoy or Kirk (ah, Jim . . .) who’d said that, Spock would have deliberately retorted, “Take some time off what? And how can one remove an abstract concept at all?” Instead, he merely said, “Acknowledged. Spock out.”
Oriki’s savannas were intriguing, the simple sweep of grassy plain soothing to eye and mind, ideal for meditation. They were also, he thought, remembering chirping and chittering, quiet. The Orikis had already offered to arrange a brief excursion before he returned to Vulcan—
A sharp beeping from the console on the desk warned him of an incoming message. Curious, Spock accessed it.
And froze.
The message was encrypted—and what would open it was the number S179-276 SP, his old Starfleet number, still almost as familiar to him as his name. And . . . it was signed by a name he had reason to remember.
He had been watching her career from afar on and off ever since she had been returned to the Empire in an exchange, although it had, of course, not been easy to get accurate data. As always, it was agreeable to see that she still did hold rank—indeed, that she still lived! And he truly appreciated how tenaciously the woman had clung to power—yes, and without once losing her morality.
She, Spock thought, is a sad rarity on Romulus these days: totally honorable and totally sworn to the good of her people.
But she would hardly have risked her hard-won life and rank just to send greetings. Spock rapidly set about decoding her message.
“Fascinating,” he murmured after a bit.
A more accurate word might have been “astonishing.”
“I would not trouble you,” her message began—meaning, of course, I would not involve an outsider, “but there is no other choice. Honor on a certain world”—logically, she must mean Romulus—“has been betrayed. The great cannot be trusted, nor the pyramid support its peak.” That meant, Spock translated, corruption in the government—all the way up to the praetor.
Indeed. For she added, her wording carefully not quite condemning her, “Many are disgusted with Praetor Dralath,” namely herself, “and at the twisting of everything Romulans hold honorable. And something dangerous is brewing, although one knows not what. A certain bloodline is hardly, after all, in the praetor’s confidence.”
No. Someone of the emperor’s own line would hardly be a favorite with Praetor Dralath.
But her message held one more shock. It ended, “You must look to the security of the many.”
Ah yes, a doubly alarming code, indeed! “The security of the many” could only mean Romulus and the Federation—and that Federation security might be at risk. And that stressed “You” could mean only one thing:
She could not risk sending any more data. She wanted him to come to Romulus.
Spock
leaned forward, one eyebrow arched. She had sent the message with her private name, her secret name, Liviana. (Liviana, whispered to him once, years ago . . .) A name, he thought, that not even the praetor would know, a name to prove the sender was, indeed, who she claimed to be.
But to ask this of him. Spock sat back, considering, fingers steepled. Given: Commander Liviana Charvanek was honorable. But even the most honorable could be . . . coerced.
After a moment, Spock leaned forward again, fingers flying across the console’s keyboard, sending a careful query to Ruanek. The message would, as always, travel a devious route from world to world, system by system, in a random pattern that could not easily be traced.
Then, calmly, he went back to his work, finishing off the details that seemed to follow every assignment.
As humans would say: Good timing! He had clearly posted his message almost exactly when Ruanek had been about to send one of his own. Within only a few of Oriki’s swift hours, the Romulan’s coded message arrived. And it, too, warned that “something dangerous and underhanded is definitely being planned by the Leader.”
Meaning, of course, Praetor Dralath.
Unfortunately, Ruanek, a relatively lowly subcommander born into a House Minor and in service to a discredited senator’s heir, knew no more about the praetor’s plans than did Charvanek. Being Ruanek—that was to say, impetuous as ever—he hinted that he did know something about what happened to Pardek: “Those who sup with golden spoons need look to the envious.”
That rather flowery statement could only mean what Spock already suspected: Pardek had somehow managed to run afoul of the praetor.
But how? There is an enormous difference between being disgraced in some social affair and being arrested for high treason.
But Ruanek, not being without all common sense, had ended by adding that he could not risk revealing more in a message.
No, indeed.
Spock sat back again, mulling over the facts. To act would imply going behind the Federation’s figurative back—not, he thought in deliberate understatement, a desirable thing. But not to act . . .
Spock got to his feet.
“Ms. Sanford.”
She appeared almost instantly in the doorway. “Ambassador?”
“I will be going out onto the savanna. Alone, Ms. Sanford,” he added hastily, seeing her about to speak, “to meditate.”
Alone a short while later, dressed in a plain, hooded robe, he wandered the grasslands, lost in thought. When Spock tired of walking, he sat amid the vast sweep of the plains, surrounded by nothing but the sea of grass, with no other sound than the soft whisper of wind stirring the grass, calming his mind until he could slip into meditation.
Time passed, meaningless. . . .
All at once, Spock stirred. Suddenly, he became aware again of the discomforts of the body. A chill had begun to rise from the savanna, cooling with the dusk. He scrambled to his feet, went through a tranquil series of stretching exercises, then paused, looking about at twilight. The green plains were tinted a garish red by the setting sun.
Red as human blood?
Illogical. And human blood has nothing to do with this matter.
Ruanek’s message had confirmed his own hypothesis. Commander Charvanek stood to lose even more than Ruanek did. She would not have risked all she had regained by communicating with the one who had betrayed her unless she saw a genuine danger to her people—and to the Federation as well.
The Romulans had withdrawn after Tomed, true enough. But the Neutral Zone was an easy thing to cross, especially in a cloaked ship, as he had seen. And if the Romulan-Federation balance of power was precarious at best, Federation-Klingon affairs had deteriorated after Khitomer, while Romulan-Klingon affairs were, purely and simply, tinder needing only the proper spark to kindle an interplanetary Klingon blood feud.
The result might well be war on three fronts, with at least one culture devolving into savagery.
Spock let out his breath in a silent sigh. Pardek might well be imprisoned or, by now, dead. With no Federation diplomatic relations with Romulus after Tomed, and only the scantiest of data from Intelligence, he had no recourse. He must go to Romulus, quite outside the law—and alone.
He could even find some ironic satisfaction in knowing that he no longer needed to appeal to the Vulcan Science Academy.
THREE
ROMULUS, YEAR 2344
Spock stepped from the relative peace of the shuttle into the noisy, dingy chaos of the Imperial Customs Building of the Romulan Star Empire at Ki Baratan, a vast gray-walled rotunda badly in need of cleaning and something more invigorating than that dull, flickering greenish light. All around him were hordes of other new arrivals, busy, snarling Romulan travelers in no mood for courtesy, their sallow skin turned a ghastly green by the dim light, each intent on pushing his or her way through first. The rotunda echoed and re-echoed with a confused racket of hurried footsteps, hard-heeled boots clicking against hard floors, and luggage being dragged. And it stank with a mixture of starship fuel, tired Romulans, and too little attention paid to cleaning. Spock straightened, putting on an air of haughty indifference that he trusted should look sufficiently “noble Romulan,” and at least some of the crowd stood warily aside to let him pass.
He had not found it at all difficult to book passage from Oriki to Sharnak, a trading world closer to the Neutral Zone—particularly since Sharnak swarmed with merchants of many species who did not look at anything too closely except credit itself. From such a world, messages could be sent either throughout the Federation or across the Neutral Zone into the Empire, with no one the wiser save for the message’s recipient. And from Sharnak, Spock had sent a coded message to Charvanek, telling her in veiled words of his intention, then found yet another trading vessel, this one heading here, to Romulus.
Fascinating, he thought, catching a glimpse of himself in the distorted mirror of a badly scratched and dented metal column. Too elaborate a disguise would have been suspect, so he had settled for a slight thickening of his eyebrows, a slightly more pronounced edge to his brow ridges—yes, he did look quite onvincing, as a Romulan from a colony world, at least, particularly dressed as he was in the severely tailored brown tunic and trousers of a scholar-aristocrat. Romulan skin did tend to be more sallow than that of most Vulcans, indicative, no doubt, of their planet’s greater cloud cover, but every race save the fatally inbred contained enough diversity for slight variations of skin tone not to be an issue.
Cold-faced guards in ill-fitting gray and silver uniforms, disruptor rifles slung over their shoulders, gestured at Spock and the other new arrivals: Follow that line on the floor. A Romulan noble would never have taken such casual rudeness, so Spock turned and gave them a raised eyebrow and the slightest of sneers, making them draw back ever so slightly. Point made.
He followed the worn white line, aware of being watched by yet more bored, grim guards. Ah yes, and those were surely the electronic eyes of security monitors staring down from the ceiling and columns, half-hidden among all the imposing flock of Romulan birds-of-prey images, their blue and blood-green wings outstretched as though caught in the midst of striking down the Empire’s enemies, talons forever clenched about the twin homeworlds. Here and there along the walls of the rotunda hung posters portraying a presumably glamorized Praetor Dralath, looking young and stalwart, if grim as some protective father figure, welcoming “all honest and honorable visitors.” Garish red lettering on most flat surfaces repeated the same dour warnings against smuggling, spying, and other acts against the State. No one else amid all the bustle seemed to be paying the posters or warnings any heed, so Spock ignored them as well.
The white line he and the other new arrivals were following led eventually through a doorway into a smaller, just as crowded, and equally dingy gray hall, decorated with yet more images of that bird-of-prey. Nothing, Spock mused, to encourage a tourist or make a newcomer feel at home save for still another of the posters of Praetor Dralath.
> “Name?” a stern voice insisted.
Spock tightened his mouth slightly, hardened his expression a touch, and raised his chin. The brusque Romulan guard, his hand resting on the butt of his disruptor, who had just demanded that Spock identify himself looked him up and down, registered “aristocrat,” and added a clearly begrudged “sir.”
“Symakhos, First Academician of Bardat,” Spock snapped, as though offended at being stopped. He presented his carefully forged papers as if making a vast concession.
The guard scanned them quickly, frowning. Illogical to worry: The odds were 875,656.3 to 1 against the papers being recognized as forgeries. And if his charade should fail, Spock thought with the barest touch of humor, he would not have long to regret it.
But the guard quickly handed back the papers. In a tone that was almost deferential he said, “No need to go back to the main Customs Building, sir,” and pointed out a Customs desk in an office set apart from the chaos.
Rank, as the human adage states, hath its privileges.
At the Customs desk, Spock turned over his papers to the young, unsmiling, cold-eyed Romulan woman seated there.
“Name?” The woman sounded bored.
Ah yes, bureaucracy is one constant to be found across the universe. “Symakhos,” he repeated.
“Species?”
“Romulan,” Spock replied, raising an eyebrow as if to ask: Was that not obvious?
“Birth world?” Her tone became infinitesimally more polite.
“Tarus.”
“Occupation?‘”
Spock straightened as arrogantly as he had with the guard. “First Academician of Bardat.”
The Customs Officer raised an eyebrow. “Purpose of visit?”
“Research.”
“Address while on the homeworld?”
He gave it. Fascinating. The woman stiffened slightly, then almost bowed.
“I have no more questions, Noble Born,” she said. “If you will step this way?”
He faced a genetic scanner with just a touch less confidence. Lights cycled on a screen he could not quite see and there was the faintest hum of machinery. Then a metallic voice intoned, “Genetic match confirmed.”
STAR TREK®: VULCAN'S HEART Page 3
