Текст книги "Taking Wing "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Eight

U.S.S. TITAN

“We’re being hailed again, Captain,” said Cadet Zurin Dakal, who was currently backing Keru at tactical by manning communications.

It had been less than twenty minutes since Commander Donatra and her squadron had appeared to escort the convoy toward Romulus—and since then Donatra’s warbird had reactivated its cloak, vanishing from sight, though perhaps not from the general vicinity of the convoy.

Riker turned his chair in the direction of the youthful Cardassian trainee. “Who’s calling us this time, Cadet?”

“Romulus sir.” Dakal glanced down at his readouts, and the young Cardassian’s eyes suddenly became enormous. “The signal is coming directly from the Romulan Hall of State. It’s Praetor Tal’Aura.”

Riker felt his own eyes widen involuntarily as well. Then he noticed that both Deanna and Vale, seated in the chairs that flanked his own, had turned their expectant gazes upon him.

“Should I call Admiral Akaar back to the bridge?” Vale asked.

Riker shook his head, though he wouldn’t have been surprised if Akaar were discreetly monitoring the incoming message from stellar cartography. “He did say this was mymission.”

Vale nodded in agreement, then pivoted her chair in Dakal’s direction. “Are the Klingons able to pick up this transmission?”

“Almost certainly, sir,” Dakal said.

Riker chuckled. “That’s fine. There’s no point in antagonizing our Klingon escorts by hiding things from them. I’m sure being this far inside Romulan space is making them twitchy enough.” Turning back toward the viewscreen that almost entirely covered the forward segment of the circular bridge, Riker said, “Put the praetor on the screen, Cadet.”

A moment later, the image of a regal, stern-faced Romulan woman of early middle age appeared in the center of the screen. Her slim figure was perched on an ornate chair that was the approximate color of Romulan blood. A wall made of ancient-looking green stone was visible several meters behind her.

But Riker’s eyes were drawn more urgently to the steel-eyed Romulan male who stood attentively beside the praetor.

Tomalak.Riker tensed as he recognized the other man. He silently noted Tomalak’s aristocratic civilian suit, cut to accentuate the broadness of his shoulders, and the senatorial sigils that were attached to his dark tunic. Tomalak had always been trouble when he’d served as a commander, and more recently as an admiral, in the Romulan military. Riker felt certain that Tomalak’s presence here and now alongside his beleaguered empire’s praetor couldn’t bode well for the coming power-sharing talks.

“Praetor Tal’Aura,” Riker said, rising and making a respectful half-bow. “We are honored.”

“Welcome to the Romulan Star Empire, Captain Riker,”the praetor said. “Allow me to introduce Proconsul Tomalak, my trusted right hand.”

His eyes bright but cold, Tomalak smiled, a gesture that Riker found anything but reassuring. He hadn’t forgotten any of his previous encounters with Tomalak. Thirteen years ago, the Romulan officer had engaged in some rather brazen espionage on the remote Federation planet Galorndon Core. Then, only a few weeks later, the commander had used faked intelligence to convince a Romulan defector, Admiral Alidar Jarok, that a Romulan sneak attack on the Federation was imminent. Jarok, who had wanted only to preserve the lives of innocents on both sides—as well as his Empire’s honor—had taken his own life after learning of Tomalak’s cynical manipulations. Riker wasn’t sure he could ever find it in himself to forgive Tomalak for that. And he was absolutely certain he couldn’t trust him.

“The proconsul and I have met before, Praetor,” Riker said without elaboration.

“Indeed,”Tal’Aura said, leaning forward, her expression hard but earnest. “Let us hope that this familiarity will make our preliminary meeting go more smoothly.”

Not very damned likely,Riker thought, though he kept his expression carefully neutral.

He glanced down at Ensign Lavena’s flight-control displays before returning his gaze to the main viewer. “Our convoy is only about sixteen hours away from Romulus at our present speed, Praetor. Once we arrive, will the Reman leaders require our assistance in getting to the first meeting?”

Tal’Aura blinked several times before replying, as though confused. “Captain, perhaps we do not yet completely understand each other. Before we involve the Reman leadership in any power-sharing talks, I wish you to mediate a…prefatory conference between us and the other Romulanefvir-efveh who now contend for influence within the Empire.”

“Efvir-efveh,”Riker repeated soundlessly, taking only half a beat to recognize the Romulan term that translated, at least approximately, to “power groups” or “factions.”

Tal’Aura continued: “Any Reman presence at our first meeting would make this necessary preliminary meeting far more…tense than it needs to be. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Riker nodded slowly. Certainly. You don’t want to have to worry about your former slaves quietly drawing their knives under the negotiating table. Especially when you and the rest of the former slaveholders are still busy trying to outmaneuver each other.

Still, he had to admit that the praetor did have a legitimate point. The Reman faction’s absence from the first session might arguably ease some of the intra-Romulan tensions, though actually holding a meeting without the Remans posed some very real problems.

As would flatly refusing to go along with the praetor’s plan. A rock and a hard place,he thought grimly.

Riker slowly paced toward the starboard side of the bridge as he addressed both Tal’Aura and Tomalak. “Can I assume that you’ll take every precaution to keep this…preliminary meeting entirelysecret? If the Remans were to find out about it—”

“The Remans will learn only what we wish them to learn,”said Tomalak, interrupting in unctuous tones. “Their demands will be considered in due course, to be sure. At the start of the general negotiations betweenall the competingefvir-efveh .”

As his motions carried him back toward the center of the bridge, Riker noticed that both Deanna and Vale were still looking up at him. But now they were regarding him with unconcealed trepidation. Both were clearly asking him, without words, whether he understood the implications of what he was about to do.

He knew there was another important consideration as well: If the Klingons were indeed listening in, then they, too, already knew of the Romulans’ intention to exclude the Remans from the first meeting. The Klingons had come at the request of the Remans; might they not be inclined to spill Tal’Aura’s secret immediately?

But wouldn’t Tal’Aura and Tomalak have anticipated that, too?he thought. They must be gambling that the Klingons don’t want a Romulan-Reman war any more than they do.

Riker met the praetor’s hard gaze without wavering. “Who else is going to attend this…preliminary meeting?”

“The proconsul and I will receive Commanders Donatra and Suran, the most prominent leaders of our military. And Senator Pardek.”

“Receive” them,Riker thought, silently weighing the significance of this verb. Because she can’t justcommand them to attend. It must be killing Tal’Aura to have to appear so weak in front of old adversaries.

But he also knew that Romulans were nothing if not pragmatic. And a Romulan praetor who did not face reality forthrightly surely could not hang onto her power and position for very long.

“Pardek, for one, will be most disappointed if we cannot arrange the initial meeting we are proposing,”Tomalak said.

Pardek,Riker thought. He would probably be attacking the Federation right now if he had access to enough personnel and firepower.He was glad that Commander Donatra would also be present; if she were still as honorable as she had proved herself to be during the battle against Shinzon, then she would certainly do everything possible to prevent Pardek from waging war against anyone.

Riker knew that he had a decision to make, and that it had to be done quickly. He spared a quick glance at Deanna, whose dark, fathomless eyes offered no hint of a solution. Vale, still seated at his other side, was completely poker-faced. Nor was there time to adjourn to confer about what was to be done—not without risking giving insult to the praetor.

Am I about to grantde facto Federation recognition to a single Romulan faction?Riker thought, carefully keeping his rising anxiety from reaching his face. However legitimate Tal’Aura’s claim to power might be, there would be hell to pay with the other factions were they to perceive that the Federation was in any way predisposed in Tal’Aura’s favor. The Federation had to be perceived by all sides as an “honest broker,” or else the entire mission was doomed to failure.

Hell,he thought. Sometimes playing fair means asking annoying questions.Aloud, he said, “I can certainly understand why you might want to start the talks without having the Remans in the room. But I wonder why you’re also excluding some of the other important Romulan constituencies.”

Tal’Aura studied him quietly for an elastic moment before replying. “If you’re concerned about snubbing the Tal Shiar, Captain, you probably needn’t worry.”

“With respect, Praetor, the Tal Shiar always seem to learn things that would be better kept quiet. I believe it would be a serious mistake to count them out. I very much doubt that the Empire’s current…difficulties have slowed them down much.”

“You are probably correct, Captain,”Tal’Aura said.

Riker couldn’t restrain himself from frowning slightly. “Praetor Tal’Aura, you seem to be saying that you don’t expect our secret meeting to stay that way. Doesn’t that concern you?”

Tal’Aura chuckled, then settled back in her chair. “Not terribly, no. If there’s one thing the Tal Shiar excels at, it is the ancient art of keeping secrets. Provided, of course, that they are secrets the Tal Shiar wants kept. But I sense that the Romulan Star Empire’s much-feared shadow army isn’t really what concerns you, Captain.”

Riker nodded. Deciding that a little flattery couldn’t hurt, he said, “You are very perceptive, Praetor.”

She didn’t seem overly impressed. “Then please speak plainly, Captain.”

“Very well. Nearly three years ago, Ambassador Spock’s Unification movement—and the many Romulan citizens who have quietly supported it over the years—received the approval of one of your predecessors. Why weren’t any Unificationists invited to this initial meeting?”

Tal’Aura inclined her head toward Tomalak, who stepped forward. “Captain Riker, much has changed during the past three years, as I’m sure you’re aware. Praetor Neral was replaced by Praetor Hiren fairly quickly. And I can’t overemphasize the damage the subsequent…praetorship of Shinzon has wrought.”Tomalak’s expression looked especially sour as he fairly spat Shinzon’s name. “In light of the current troubles within our borders, our new praetor has wisely assigned a much lower priority to Romulan-Vulcan relations.”

“I see,” Riker said. He had to admit to himself, however grudgingly, that Tomalak’s rationale actually made a great deal of sense under the present circumstances.

“I hope we have answered your questions satisfactorily, Captain,”Tal’Aura said in a clipped tone that brooked no further delay. “Now will you agree to mediate the initial meeting, as we have described it?”

Riker felt as though his boots were poised at the crumbling verge of a bottomless abyss. And he knew that the time had come for him to take a deadly, yet necessary, step over the edge. He briefly thought of his late father, who’d been killed during the recent civil unrest on Delta Sigma IV. Though Kyle Riker had possessed more than a few less-than-admirable traits, indecision wasn’t among them.

Squaring his shoulders, Captain William Thomas Riker made up his mind.

“All right, Praetor Tal’Aura. Proconsul Tomalak. My senior staff and I will agree to conduct the prefatory meeting as you suggest—without the Remans and the Unificationists.”

“Excellent, Captain,”said Tal’Aura, dipping her head slightly. Something approximating a smile pulled at the sides of her narrow, patrician face.

“With onesmall proviso,” Riker continued, raising a hand.

She lifted an eyebrow in an almost Vulcan manner. “Say on, Captain. What is your proviso?”

“That the Federation’s participation in this early meeting is not to be taken as an official endorsement of any of the leaders present,” Riker said coolly. “Including you, Praetor Tal’Aura.”

Tal’Aura bristled visibly at this, but remained silent. After a lengthy pause, she said, “Very well. My staff will contact you again in sixteen of your hours.Jolan’tru , Captain Riker.”

“Jolan’tru,Praetor,” Riker echoed, though the praetor’s image had already vanished, to be replaced immediately by the infinite depths of star-bejeweled space.

“Well, we already knew the praetor wasn’t likely to agree to share power quickly or easily,” Vale said, rising from her seat.

Deanna nodded. “Taking that into account, I think that went fairly well. We’ll soon be dealing with three of the most powerful factions in the Romulan government. You went a long way toward ensuring that our first full Romulan-Reman meeting goes smoothly, Captain.”

“As long as we can keep this first meeting off the Reman newsnets,” Vale said.

“Of course,” Deanna said. “But at least Tal’Aura is cooperating with us. That’s a very positive sign.”

“She needs us,” Riker said.

Deanna nodded. “No question. She must have serious doubts that she can successfully handle all the chaos that could come her way from breakaway subject worlds, or from hostiles beyond the Empire’s borders, without our help.”

Vale favored Deanna with a smile, obviously agreeing with her analysis. “Did your Betazoid empathy tell you that?”

“There’s a whole lot of interstellar space between Tal’Aura and my Betazoid empathy,” Deanna reminded her, looking amused. “My diplomatic instincts will have to do until we get just a tiny bit closer to Romulus.”

Riker returned to his seat in silence, disconcerted by what felt like his complete inability to predict the outcome of the mission he faced. Accustomed to far more straightforward tactical situations, he felt decidedly uncomfortable being saddled with such a handicap.

Such is diplomacy,he thought, simultaneously gratified and regretful that his Starfleet career hadn’t been more preoccupied with that particular discipline. He could only hope that he hadn’t just helped create yet another dangerous power clique by inexpertly meddling in the chaos Shinzon had left in his murderous wake.

“We’re being hailed again,sir,” Dakal reported, sounding surprised.

Riker sighed. “Who is it this time?”

“It’s General Khegh. He’s coming through on a secure channel.”

Suppressing an even bigger sigh, Riker said, “Put him on the screen, Cadet.”

General Khegh’s visage greeted him a fraction of a second later. The Klingon flag officer grinned, again showing off his impressive array of jagged, discolored teeth. Unsurprisingly, his skin was still florid from excessive drink.

“Romulans will be Romulans, won’t they, eh, Captain?”

Riker nodded. “After we shake their hands, we’ll be sure to count our fingers.”

Khegh reacted with another belching belly-laugh. “And we shall—how do you humans say it?—we shall watch your backs, Captain.”

“Thank you, General.” Riker found Khegh’s drunken martial conviviality anything but reassuring.

“And you needn’t worry about our alerting the Remans to Tal’Aura’s machinations to exclude them from your first meeting. We will keep your confidence, so long as Tal’Aura agrees to receive the Reman leaders in subsequent talks.”

“You are a wise leader, General.” He’s a lot smarter than he looks,Riker thought. Of course, he’d almosthave to be.

“But make no mistake, Captain,”Khegh said, his lips suddenly curling into a snarl. “We will not passively endure further Romulan treachery. If those pointy-earedpetaQ attempt to waylay our convoy with their cloaked vessels, we will swiftly make all nine of their Hells very crowded places indeed.”

Lovely,Riker thought, wondering if it wasn’t likelier that the general would hit Titan,or perhaps one of the other ships in the convoy, were he actually forced to open fire. “Thank you, General. We appreciate your vigilance.”

“wa’ Dol nIvDaq matay’DI’ maQap, ’Aj,”Vale said to the Klingon, whose hawklike eyes widened in surprise. Riker found it hard to tell if he was pleased or offended.

After a pause, Khegh shouted, “Qapla’!” before vanishing from the screen.

Though Riker had picked a word or two out of Vale’s stream of rapid-fire Klingon, his own command of the language wasn’t quite up to parsing the idiom she had just used. Curious, he turned to face his exec. “Exactly what did you say to him, Commander?”

“ ‘We succeed together in a greater whole.’ It’s an old Klingon aphorism that seemed appropriate to the situation.”

“I had no idea you were so fluent in Klingon,” Riker said, impressed.

“I’m not. I nicked it from a phrase book I memorized during my Academy days for an extra-credit assignment. Affirmationsby General BoQtar.”

Riker chuckled. “Sounds like a pretty quick read.”

“Judging from Khegh’s ever-so-slightly chastened emotional reaction,” Deanna said, “it served as a polite reminder that we need him to restrain himself. Or ‘keep his powder dry,’as they used to say in Earth’s Wild West.”

In spite of his own dark thoughts, Riker found himself chuckling again. “Nice shooting, pardner,” he said to Vale. Anticipating a difficult series of negotiations between several exceedingly contentious and cantankerous parties, he felt a surge of gratitude at having two senior officers with such finely honed diplomatic instincts.

“We are now leaving the Neutral Zone, Captain,” Axel Bolaji reported from behind the conn. “Entering the periphery of Romulan space.”

Riker stared straight ahead into a firmament ruled by the dangerously splintered Romulans. Despite his confidence in both Deanna and Christine, he found himself wishing that Ambassador Spock could also be at his side when all the shouting finally began down on Romulus.

Chapter Nine

VIKR’L PRISON, KI BARATAN, ROMULUS

Throughout the past week, Tuvok had been completely unable to focus his attention, as his fever rose ever higher. As closely as he could tell, he had been imprisoned for fifty days, though in the dark, windowless dampness, it was difficult to reckon time accurately. He couldn’t even keep track of the cycles by counting mealtimes, since food arrived irregularly, with entire days sometimes elapsing between meals.

But neither the interrogators, the guards, nor the other prisoners had found out that he was notRukath, the lowly farmer from Leinarrh, in the Rarathik District. The minor surgical alterations he had undergone before making land-fall on Romulus had held up. Only the most detailed scan, to which he had apparently not yet been subjected, could have revealed that he was actually Vulcan rather than Romulan.

Between his Starfleet intelligence training, his Vulcan disciplines, and the tricks he had learned while on deep cover assignment with the Maquis, Tuvok was confident in his ability to maintain his assumed identity under repeated questioning and even torture. But fatigue, and perhaps even a recrudescence of the early-stage Tuvan syndrome he thought he’d beaten two years earlier, had taken their toll; he had made several mistakes about Romulan geography and history during his more recent interrogations, evidently arousing enough suspicion among the prison authorities to motivate them to keep him in custody, placing him in solitary confinement in a cold, dismal space all but indistinguishable from a stone casket. Languishing in the darkness, he cursed his faltering memory. He still didn’t know if the guards really thought he was a spy, or if they were merely having fun torturing a simpleminded hveinnwho had wandered too far from his crops.

Today– What dayis it?he wondered yet again—despair was creeping in at the edges of his consciousness, and no amount of meditation seemed to help, even when he could muster sufficient concentration to attempt to enter a state of aelaehih’bili’re,or mind-peace. With his wrist chrono destroyed, Starfleet had no sure way to locate him, and rescue seemed unlikely anyway, given that so much time had passed already since his capture. He thought repeatedly of his wife, his grown children, his grandchildren, but even picturing their faces was already growing difficult.

Defying all logic, he found he was actually beginning to look forward to brief glimpses of, or contacts with, his jailers, no matter how badly they mistreated him. Save for the screams and moans he heard coming from other stone cells in the catacomblike underground prison complex, his captors were now the only intelligent beings with whom he could interact.

Since the initial wildfire-like rise of his fever several days ago, he had begun to lose control of both body and mind. When he wasn’t shivering, he was laughing or crying, the normally suppressed emotions ripping at his being far more than had the physical discomfort of imprisonment. Mostly, he tried to sleep, escaping into a black pool of oblivion. Dreams came to him rarely, and he found their absence a great comfort. When they did come, they were vivid, disturbing, and illogical.

A dark, beetlelike insect scuttled across the moist stone-and-brick floor toward his foot, then up into the rags that shrouded his legs. He watched and waited, his need and desperation overcoming decades of studied discipline. As it came within striking distance, his hands thrust out like le-matyapouncing on a desert ferravat.His shackles clinked as he grabbed the beetle. He felt it attempt to gore his flesh between the pincerlike horns on its head, but he squeezed it until its carapace split. The insect died instantly.

In the dim light, he checked the belly of the beetle, but did not see the distinctive markings of the female. He had started to eat one of them weeks ago, and learned that the females carried a deadly poison in their belly sacs. Twisting this beetle’s head by the horns, he decapitated it, then tossed the head aside. He took a bite of the crunchy body, which immediately suffused his taste buds with a dry, acrid tang. He closed his eyes as he slowly chewed another bite, and felt darkness and despair wash over him again.

“Get that creature out of your mouth,” his mother, T’Meni, said sharply, glaring down at him.

He looked down at his hands, and saw his stubby fingers clutching a half-eatengeshu bug. “Why? Wari was eating it first.”

She bent over and slapped the insect from his hands, into the desert sand. “Wari is asehlat . You are a Vulcan boy. Vulcan boys do not eat insects.”

“That isn’t logical, Mother,” he said. “We feed Wari food that we no longer want. If he can eat what we do, why can’t we eat what he does?”

“Vulcan boys do not eat insects,” she said firmly, then turned to walk away.

Tuvok looked over at the half-eaten bug. It began to squirm, and turned what was left of its head toward him.

“Romulan boys eat insects,” it said, its voice thin and reedy. “Areyou a Romulan?”

“No,” Tuvok said, his voice suddenly deepening into that of an adult. He stood and backed away from the writhing insect, then turned. Standing before him was Captain Spock, who was flanked by Captain James Kirk and Captain Hikaru Sulu.

“I’m not certain I understand your objection, Ensign,” Spock said to him. “We are discussing an alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, not a unification between Romulans and Vulcans.”

Tuvok shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “The Klingon ideal is conquest and expansion,” he finally said, slowly and deliberately. “This worldview is antithetical to the very foundations of the Federation. Klingon culture is based on violence and brutality; Klingons exist to conquer, destroy, and subsume.”

“Quite a firecracker on your crew, Hikaru,” Kirk said with a smile, gesturing toward Tuvok, but looking at Sulu.

“They want nothing more than to destroy the very fabric of our ideals,” Tuvok said, continuing, though his thoughts seemed jumbled. “They want to blend their chaotic emotional society into ours, and you’re being duped into helping them, Captain Spock. Pardek is using you.”

“Who is Pardek? Are you feeling all right, Ensign?” Sulu asked. A mug of hot tea was in his hand and he threw it at Tuvok.

Instinctively, Tuvok put up his hands to protect his face. The tea splattered against them and clattered to the floor in front of him, suddenly transformed into a pile of randomly scatteredt’an rods.

“Clearly, you aren’t quite into this game ofkal’toh ,” a familiar voice said, and Tuvok looked through his splayed fingers. There, in Tuvok’s wrecked quarters aboard theU.S.S. Voyager , squatted Lon Suder, the starship’s psychosis-addled Betazoid crew member. Suder reached down with bloody hands to grab some of thet’an rods. “What are you afraid of, Tuvok? That your mind will collapse before your society does?”

“I can control my mind,” Tuvok said, backing away. “I have trained to achieveKolinahr .” He stepped back through the door outside his quarters, and stumbled into the searing desert of Vulcan’s Forge, pitiless Nevasa baking him from almost directly overhead.

“But you neverfinished your training,” intoned the Vulcan master who now stood before him. The robed adept then turned his back on Tuvok, who began to follow. Sand swirled around him, propelled by a swift, insistent wind.

“I cancomplete my training,” Tuvok cried out. He saw his wife, T’Pel, and his children and grandchildren. Other masters were escorting them away from him.

T’Pel turned and called to him. “You left yourKolinahr training incomplete. You left yourfamily incomplete. And you do not support the progress of our people.”

He saw that the masters were leading his family toward a phalanx of Romulan warbirds that had settled in the desert, looking as though they had always been there.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see Admiral Kathryn Janeway. She smiled at him sweetly. “Even if you didn’t complete your training, I thought you had learned your lesson, Tuvok.”

“Which lesson?” he asked her. His head felt as if it were splitting open, and sweat ran down his face.

“You engineered the melding of the Maquis with the Starfleet crew aboardVoyager ,” Janeway said. “Despite all logic, despite the conflicts between two groups that had every reason never to work together,you managed to bring them into accord. Just like Ambassador Spock is doing on Romulus.”

Tuvok wiped the sweat away with the tattered sleeve of a robe he hadn’t recalled ever having worn before. “I no longer oppose Spock’s Unification movement,” he said. “That is why I volunteered for the mission to Romulus.” Now, he knew where the robe had come from.

“Youdon’t oppose Unification?” Janeway asked, looking peevish. “Then why aren’t you helping Spock now?”

Tuvok was about to answer, when he felt his stomach buckle with immense pain. He cried out and fell, sprawling onto a hard surface. Janeway was gone. The blowing sand was gone. Only the random pattern of rough-hewn stones and bricks of his cell floor remained.

The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was the severed head of a beetle as it was crushed under the toe of a heavy boot. Then hot darkness came, mercifully enfolding him.

Mekrikuk heard the guards before they even entered the hallway. He knew that many of his Reman brethren had allowed imprisonment and deprivation to dull their senses, but he had worked hard to keep his sharp and honed. He was thankful for the prison’s lack of light. Remans, after all, were creatures of the darkness.

Exercising at Vikr’l Prison wasn’t an easy option. The prisoners were kept underfed and overaggravated, and any Reman who showed open contempt for the Romulan jailers was taken away and never heard from again. Rumors were that troublemakers were processed into food after their executions, effectively getting rid of any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the guards while demeaning the captive Remans even further by forcing them into cannibalism. Mekrikuk chose not to eat on the days after someone had been taken away, no matter how tempting he found the intense food-smells.

Mekrikuk was used to hardship. His earliest memories were of being beaten in the dilithium mines, when he was barely four years old. Several of his siblings had died in the mines, either from exhaustion or disease, although Bekrinok had been killed for daring to stand up to a Romulan taskmaster who was sexually assaulting his teenage mate.

Of the rest of his family, Mekrikuk was the only one to have survived the Dominion War. Like many Remans, he had served as cannon fodder, but somehow, he had survived and emerged victorious in engagement after engagement. Mekrikuk had even saved the life of Delnek, the favored son and aide-de-camp of Senator Varyet.

That act had secured Mekrikuk a favored place in the senator’s household. Varyet was a progressive politician who championed the rights of downtrodden provincial races; Mekrikuk was technically a slave in her household, but had been given unprecedented freedom, as long as he remembered “his place” while in public.

Not long ago that freedom had been cut short. A human named Shinzon, allied with the Remans, had assassinated the Romulan Senate, including both Varyet and Delnek. In the days that followed, the military forces rounded up every Reman they could find in and around Ki Baratan, as well as more than a few Romulan civilians, for “questioning.”

Given his closeness to such a well-known political figure, Mekrikuk had received greater scrutiny than most. He had survived brutal torture, but told his interrogators nothing of value, largely because he didn’t knowanything of value, other than the location of some of the late senator’s hidden valuables. By the time they were done with him, he would have sacrificed anything—or anyone—to get them to stop, or put him out of his agony.