Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire

by David R. George III

  Home.

  The echoes from Sisko’s recent dreams, from his past, reverberated in his thoughts and in his heart. The concept, the emotion, had been taken from him—or he’d abandoned it himself. Either way, the realization of his circumstances, phrased just so, struck him hard, and he said it aloud.

  “I have no home.”

  36

  The data tablet sailed through the air, spinning like a propeller. It struck the blank wall with a satisfying thud, then fell to the floor with a clatter. Unfortunately, it did not appear to break.

  Of course not, Donatra thought. The damned things are indestructible.

  Donatra sat on the lone sleeping surface in her cell, her back against the wall, her knees pulled in tight to her chest. When the guard asked her—with no apparent malice—if she wanted to watch Tal’Aura’s address, she had declined. Later, though, when her evening meal had arrived, a data tablet had been left with it. Donatra had dismissed it, but at the appointed time for the speech, she had found herself unable to resist her curiosity, morbid though it might have been.

  Watching Tal’Aura deliver her oration in the Senate Chamber, wearing the robes of office, speaking to the Romulan people and about them, had been even more difficult for Donatra than she’d imagined it would be. But when that self-serving harpy had condescended to mention Donatra’s own service record, when she had pretended to honor that record, Donatra felt that she could have choked the life out of her right there in the Senate Chamber, in front of enough witnesses to guarantee that she would then be summarily executed.

  That would be one way to do what’s right, wouldn’t it? Donatra thought. First Tal’Aura’s death, and then mine. In that way, Donatra wouldn’t have to go to her grave, or live any longer, with what had become the daily agony of her regret.

  Once, uncounted seasons ago, Donatra had made a choice—one terrible choice—from which she had essentially never recovered. She had thrown in with Shinzon, seduced by his strength, his intellect, his confidence. He had said the right things to her, at the right times and in the right ways, and she had lost herself.

  Or maybe I lost myself before that, she thought, and Shinzon had provided the light that seemed as though it would let me find my way back.

  “What difference does it make now?” she asked the empty cell. Tal’Aura had taken away the very last thing of value that Donatra had, the very last thing she had done to atone for her sins with Shinzon.

  But not just with Shinzon, she reminded herself. Tal’Aura herself had been a part of their cabal, had actually deployed the awful weapon that had razed Praetor Hiren and the Senate like ocean waves tearing down a castle in the sand. And then once Shinzon had also perished, Tal’Aura, unrepentant and power-mad, had taken the Empire for her own.

  How can I ever forgive myself for that? Donatra asked herself. It was not the first time she had posed the question.

  Dropping her legs to the floor, she reached to rub at her side. The dull aches there, all along the right side of her torso and down her leg, had never quite subsided. The result of shallow plasma burns, the scars there remained because of her unwillingness to have them treated. She had suffered them on the day that Tal’Aura had executed Braeg—a man Donatra had first admired, and then loved. She left the scars to remind her of what she had lost, and of who had taken it from her.

  And now Tal’Aura’s taken away the Imperial State. In some ways, founding a new Romulan nation had been the finest achievement of Donatra’s life. She had done it neither for glory nor for sacrifice—though she had hoped the act would, in some way, allow her a measure of expiation. More than any other reason, though, Donatra had simply wanted to save Romulan people from the catastrophe that Tal’Aura’s praetorship surely would become. Donatra had not been able to rescue the whole of the Empire, but she had liberated the populations of as many worlds as she could. In the back of her mind, she had always imagined the day that Tal’Aura would be forced from office, or perhaps even die, and on the next day, how Donatra would lay down the standard of the Imperial Romulan State and restore the Empire to its totality.

  But now that possibility, and the accomplishment that would have permitted it, stood in ruins.

  I was a fool to offer Tal’Aura a summit, she thought. Still, there had been few other avenues open to her, and none of them appealing. Her support had been seriously undermined by the unity protests. As well, she understood the reality that even if Tal’Aura’s fleet couldn’t bring the Imperial State to its knees, those of the Typhon Pact could. Donatra had reached out to the United Federation of Planets and to the Klingon Empire, but while they had recognized the sovereignty of the new nation, they had not become full-fledged allies. She had stood alone, growing weaker, and she’d had little choice but to approach Tal’Aura in an attempt to salvage . . . something . . . anything.

  Her intention had not been to try to convince Tal’Aura that she should allow Donatra to be praetor, or that the two of them should devise some form of power-sharing arrangement. Rather, Donatra had been prepared to argue that both leaders should step down, and that they should permit the Senate to select a new praetor. Tal’Aura could even have gone back to the Senate herself, perhaps with the goal of one day earning the praetorship.

  And if all of that had failed, if Donatra had been unable to free the Empire of Tal’Aura’s grasp, then Donatra would have found Tal’Aura’s throat after all. It would have been suicide, but that wouldn’t have mattered. Under the circumstances, Donatra would have done it gladly.

  But the summit had never come. Donatra had been aware, thanks to the Starfleet captain, of the spurious speculation about her possible involvement in an assassination attempt and an actual murder, but because there had been no truth to that speculation, she had not let it concern her. No charges had been filed against her, nor had she even heard the rumor of such charges being filed, something she would have expected, given that the crimes had allegedly taken place hundreds of days earlier. When she had arrived on Romulus, there had been no indication of trouble, but before midday, she had been arrested and indicted, and it had all taken her by surprise.

  Foolish, she rebuked herself. But she could not undo what she had done; otherwise there would have been no coup d’état by Shinzon, nor any of the lamentable consequences that had followed.

  So what now?

  She had been incarcerated for thirty days, and she believed that would continue for another thirty days, and thirty more after that, with no relief and no trial, until the day finally arrived when Tal’Aura decided that Donatra had lived long enough. She considered escape, but even if she could find a way to make that happen, then what? What would she do? What could she do? Where could she even go? It would not be as though she could readily hide anywhere within the Empire, and she had no intention of living out her days in the Klingon Empire or the Federation or the Ferengi Alliance or anywhere else.

  Donatra was a Romulan. She had always been a Romulan, and she would always be a Romulan. At this point, there was nothing else she could be.

  The charges are false, she told herself. She had never sent anybody to kill Spock, had not then had the assassin killed. If she could somehow overcome the false accusations, overcome the counterfeit prosecution that Tal’Aura would surely see mounted, maybe she could secure her freedom. Or maybe she could find proof that the evidence against her had been falsified . . . or even that Tal’Aura had herself perpetrated the crimes of which Donatra had been accused . . .

  Donatra stood from the sleeping surface and walked over to the other side of the cell, where she bent and picked up the data tablet. She carried it with her back to the bunk, sat down again, and thumbed on the device. Then she restarted Tal’Aura’s speech from the beginning.

  Even before Tal’Aura reached the end of her second sentence, Donatra threw the tablet back across the room. It skittered to a stop on the bare floor, undamaged by her frustration, her anger, her disappointment, her sorrow.

  The only thing damage
d was Donatra herself.

  37

  Spock stood at the central counter in the lobby of the D’deridex Arc security office, waiting for the arrival of Protector Vikral. A sentry waited with him. It had taken a month, but Spock had at last received authorization from the Office of Internal Security to see Donatra. As far as he knew, other than legal counsel, he would be the first person to visit her since her arrest. He wondered if Donatra knew that Tal’Aura had officially dissolved the Imperial Romulan State last night, and if she did, then what her spirits would be like.

  He stood peering at the wall of monitors behind the counter. He felt impressed by the scope of Internal Security’s efforts to watch and protect the residents of Ki Baratan, and dismayed by the Romulan proclivity for surveillance. It would not have surprised him to see his own image on one of the screens, observed while observing.

  As Spock waited, he considered again information that he had learned during the course of petitioning Internal Security for the privilege of seeing Donatra. A month earlier, just after Donatra had first proposed a summit with Tal’Aura, an airpod accident had claimed the lives of the chairman of the Tal Shiar and his adjutant. That much, Spock had known from comnet accounts at the time. What he and his comrades had been unable to ascertain since then was the identity of Chairman Rehaek’s replacement—at least until he had discovered during one of his many appointments at the Office of Internal Security that Sela had taken over the post. Spock hadn’t even known that Sela—

  “Mister Spock?”

  He turned from the counter to see Vikral. “Protector,” he said, “thank you for your time.”

  “Not at all,” Vikral said. He held up a data tablet for Spock to see. “I have the order from Internal Security permitting your visit.” He turned to the sentry. “Rivol, you have processed Mister Spock?”

  For processed, Spock read searched. The sentry had already checked him for anything he might employ in an attempt to free Donatra, or anything else he might pass to her during their visit. For that reason, Spock once again had brought with him only the clothes he wore.

  “I have,” Rivol said. “Mister Spock has been cleared.”

  “Very good,” Vikral said. “If you will accompany me then, Mister Spock.” Vikral motioned to two sentries, who fell in behind them.

  Spock followed the protector down a side corridor, until their group reached a security checkpoint crewed by a quartet of guards, a pair on each side of an active force field. As he passed through with the protector and other sentries, Spock noted the physical door off to the side, which no doubt would slam into place should the checkpoint completely lose power.

  Farther into the facility, Spock followed the protector through a second security barrier. The layout of cells along the corridor echoed what he had seen during his own incarceration nearly ten months ago, after he had attempted to turn the Reman over to the authorities. He saw indicator lights active at only one cell, and he wondered if other prisoners had been removed to another section, or even to another security station entirely.

  When the group arrived at the closed cell, Vikral reached up to a panel set into the wall, placing his hand flat against a security scanner. An indicator light blinked on, and then a red beam played across the protector’s face, clearly confirming his identity via retina scan. A second light came on, and Vikral worked a control. An energetic hum signaled the operation of a force field.

  Even before the door had completely retracted into the wall, Spock saw the ribbon of green that extended almost all the way to the force field. He followed it with his gaze back to its source, to where Donatra lay sprawled in the middle of the floor, in a spread of blood, her back to the entry. At once, Vikral reached up to the panel and said, “Security alert, priority one. This is Protector Vikral. Send a medical team to maximum security, cell one.”

  “Lower the force field,” Spock said. Vikral hesitated for a moment, glancing at the pair of sentries behind Spock, then operated the panel once more. The hum faded, indicating the deactivation of the field.

  Spock raced into the cell, sidestepping the pooled blood and moving past Donatra so that he could see her from the front. He smelled the metallic odor of copper. As he squatted down, he saw the ragged gashes that had been ripped into the flesh of her wrists and across her neck. Blood had flowed freely, but did so no longer. He reached a hand up to the side of her neck. He detected no pulse.

  From a distance, the beat of rapid footsteps approached the cell. Spock glanced up to the entry for a moment, to the protector and the two sentries peering over at him. “She’s dead,” he told them. Then he looked around. Lying on the floor a meter or so away, he saw a small object he could not immediately identify. But then he recognized it: half of a data tablet, the device rent in two. Green blood covered its jagged edge.

  Spock gazed down at Donatra’s face, at her glassy, unseeing eyes. A great sadness washed over him. And then he wondered for the first of many times about the last thing Donatra’s eyes had ever seen.

  38

  The Ravingian Mountain Range climbed high into the clouds, its snowcapped peaks vanishing into the mist, the dividing line between land and air impossible to discern. Reaching downward, the steep land bathed itself in solitude, the surface barren between the dusting of snow above and the trees below. From the timberline, a heavily forested slope descended to the foothills and beyond, down into a verdant valley.

  Sisko leaned against the railing of the small, private balcony, taking in the magnificent view. The dichotomy of the landscape struck him, with the lush, living countryside downslope, and the cold, dead wastes upslope. He didn’t care to draw any metaphors for his own life out of the vista, but they seemed obvious enough.

  The range also reminded him of the Janitza Mountains on Bajor. But then so many things these days pulled his mind back to the world that, at least for a time, had been his home. And thoughts of Bajor always brought thoughts of the house he had planned in Kendra Province, outside Adarak, which Kasidy had completed during his time in the Celestial Temple.

  Did that even happen? Sisko asked himself. The Prophets had not spoken to him in so long, they had been gone from his life for so long, that it often felt to him as if every experience he’d ever had with them had been a dream. Some days, he almost managed to convince himself of that. In those moments, with the reality of the Bajoran Prophets a myth, with their existence a collective delusion of hope and fear, faith and need, he told himself that their promise to him, their threat, had been not even a lie, but something illusory. And if that declaration—that if he spent his life with Kasidy, he would know nothing but sorrow—had come to him as a chimera, then he could dispose of the idea that his marriage had anything to do with all of the misery and death that had come to surround his life.

  Ridding himself of that concept would change everything. He would be able to resign his Starfleet commission and go back to Bajor, and if she would have him, back to Kasidy as well. Sisko would be able to visit Jake and Korena, and to watch Rebecca grow up. Dismissing one idea would be the only thing required for him to go home—for him to have a home.

  Except that Sisko couldn’t quite do that. He couldn’t quite make himself believe that he had imagined all of his communications with the Prophets, and all of the time he had spent with them. Denying the truth would not cause it to cease to exist.

  Sisko pushed back from the railing and paced around the balcony. Relieved at the Romulan border for a week by U.S.S. Fortitude, Robinson had arrived at Starbase 39-Sierra that morning. The crew had been due a rest-and-recreation break for some time, and circumstances had finally allowed it.

  Sisko had initially thought to remain aboard ship for the week, but when Admiral Herthum had asked for a briefing on Robinson’s months on patrol, the captain had little choice but to transport down to the surface. Before he did, though, he decided that after the meeting he would remain planetside and take some time away. He glanced at the small travel bag at the end of the balcony, whi
ch he’d brought with him from the ship. Once the admiral’s aide came out and told him that Herthum was ready to see him, and once that meeting had concluded, Sisko intended to find a place where he could actually relax. He needed to blank his mind for a few days, perhaps give himself some time so that he could then come at things from a different perspective.

  It occurred to Sisko that the new year had arrived on Earth almost two weeks ago, that 2381 had finally and mercifully come to a close. He didn’t know what 2382 would bring, but already there had been rumblings. Fifteen days had passed since Praetor Tal’Aura had officially disbanded the Imperial Romulan State, which had apparently led directly to Empress Donatra’s suicide. Freed from the restraints of a divided empire and a reduced military, Tal’Aura had offered some pointed statements about the Federation and the Klingons—statements ignored by President Bacco, and challenged by Chancellor Martok. Although the bellicose Klingons actually seemed disinclined to commence a shooting war—probably because of the considerable firepower of the Typhon Pact nations—there had been indications that Romulus and its new allies might be plotting different forms of combat: diplomatic, economic, intelligence-related.

  In a very real way, that was all right with Sisko. He wanted the best for the people of the Federation, of course, but he felt confident that without a hot war, the UFP would survive just fine. He knew he could live with that.