Текст книги "The Red King "

Автор книги: Michael Martin

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Twenty

Ensign Crandall looked up from his engineering boards. If the warp core hadn’t suffused the entire engine room with a deep, blue glow, the junior engineer’s narrow, hairless face would surely have looked as white as a mugato.

“Dr. Ra-Havreii, the warp field is destabilizing!”

But Ra-Havreii didn’t need to look at Crandall’s readouts to understand that. The sudden, random syncopations and dissonances now thrumming up and down the length of the two-story-tall matter-antimatter dynamo that constituted Titan’s heart made the trouble obvious enough to him.

Ensigns Paolo and Koasa Rossini busied themselves rerouting a maze of EPS power taps in an effort to lower the warp core’s steadily rising temperature. Nearby, crouched under the alarm-festooned master situation monitor, Cadet Torvig Bu-kar-nguv worked at the matte-black matter reactant injector controls, using both of his telescoping bionic appendages as well as the grasping hand situated at the terminus of his long, prehensile tail. Other trainees and technicians moved to and fro, comparing what was on their padds to the displays that appeared on various consoles.

Klaxons blared. Titanshook. The computer spoke, its manner irritatingly calm. “Warning. Antimatter containment failure imminent. Warning.”

Sweat sluiced down Ra-Havreii’s back, soaking into his uniform, turning his long white hair lank, and flattening his drooping, gray mustachios against his brown cheeks. He ignored this as best he could while grappling with his steadily rising fear.

He tried not to think about how his predecessor Commander Ledrah had died, roasted to death in this very engine room.

He tried not to recall the explosion that had torn through the engineering section of the Luna,the starship that had served as the prototype for Titanand all the other vessels of her class.

He tried not to imagine the treetop canopy of Efros Delta’s forests accepting his dying essence into the eternal bliss of Endless Sky.

He tried not to visualize the soil of his homeworld tearing itself asunder beneath his feet, leaving him to tumble headlong into the much-feared volcanic fires of the Efrosian underworld.

The ship bucked and rocked again, harder this time. “Warning. Antimatter containment failure in thirty seconds. Warning.”

Moving to the duty console that Crandall was using, Ra-Havreii gently pushed the young human aside. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the sounds the warp core was making as it strained against the combined influences of interspace, subspace, de Sitter space, and perhaps even his own personal demons and unquiet old ghosts.

“Computer, manual override on antimatter intermix ratios,” he ordered. “Authorization Ra-Havreii Delta Efros Delta Zeta.”

He placed his left hand on the manual intermix vernier and closed his eyes. His hand and his ears became all that existed in the universe. He listened to the deep, increasingly discordant cry of the engine core with the same attentiveness he’d once devoted to learning the tribal lays of Efros Delta’s ancient forest priests. His hand moved gently on the vernier in response to what his ears told him from moment to moment.

This time, he was determined not to fail. Even if success meant ending up as Ledrah had.

Riker was summoned back from the darkness by the shrill peal of klaxons. His eyes opened to the sight of Titan’s bridge, which was bathed in the subdued red tones of emergency lighting.

Until he glanced down at the chronometer’s glowing readout on the left arm of his command chair, he had no clear sense of how long his interval of unconsciousness might have lasted. Counterintuitive though it seemed to him, only moments had passed since the universe had tumbled into oblivion all around him.

Seated behind the ops and flight control consoles set just forward of the captain’s chair, Dakal and Lavena were moving groggily, as though both were recovering from a light phaser stun. His eyes drawn to his right by movement, Riker saw that a shaken-looking Admiral Akaar was helping Eviku up from the deck beside the secondary science station. At the console beside Eviku’s, Jaza was already hard at work, a livid red cut on his forehead providing the only clue that he’d experienced anything the least little bit out of the ordinary. Crewman Kay’re crossed in front of him, shedding feathers as he moved unsteadily toward the port-side ops station from which he had been thrown during Titan’s passage into the rift.

Thoughts of the rift—along with the enigmatic hash of random static now being displayed on the main viewscreen—chased the last of the cobwebs from Riker’s mind.

“Cadet Dakal, kill those klaxons,” he said. “And show me what the hell is going on outside. Jaza, get me sensor readings on our present position, asap.” Until they had some hard data to go on, there was no way to tell whether Titanand the rest of the Oghen rescue convoy had made a successful transit back to near–Beta Quadrant space, or had instead taken a perhaps fatal interspatial detour.

The klaxons abruptly ceased and the bridge fell at once into a subdued silence, which made the faint sloshing of Lavena’s hydration suit conspicuously audible. Moments later the interference on the viewscreen began to clear, like the fog over San Francisco Bay reluctantly retreating from the wan summer sun.

There, dominating the screen, was the Red King in all its multicolored glory. All angry ambers and blood reds, its energetic tentacles seemed to reach directly toward Titaneven as its indistinct boundaries appeared to be expanding, slowly but inexorably, toward the screen’s periphery, gradually painting over the underlying starfield. Whatever this phenomenon had become, one thing seemed clear: it was no longer in a peaceful slumber.

“Looks like our Sleeper may have woken up on the wrong side of the bed,” Riker said quietly.

“But at least weseem to be on the correct side of it,Captain,” said Dakal, turning toward Riker. In the dim, ruddy lighting, the young Cardassian’s gray, almost scaly flesh looked like the patina of corrosion on one of the ancient copper statues in Golden Gate Park. “This is an aft view. We are now moving away from the phenomenon, at warp two point two.”

“Then we’ve come out the other side?” Riker wanted to know.

“Position confirmed, sir,” Jaza said, looking up from a semicircle of glowing displays. “Stellar positions are a match with those observable from our last recorded position in Romulan space prior to Titan’s initial passage through the spatial rift.”

“Very good. Ensign Lavena, maintain our current heading,” Riker said. Renewed hope surged within him, but he kept it firmly tamped down, at least until he knew what had become of the refugees, the convoy, and the people he had stationed aboard Vanguard.

“Aye, Captain,” said the Pacifican conn officer. She turned her chair toward Riker and fixed him with an alarmed expression. “However, the phenomenon is expanding toward us quickly. It’s propagating directly through subspace at high warp—and it will overtake our present position in approximately three minutes at our present speed.”

“Noted, Ensign.” Riker spun his chair toward Jaza. “How about it? What will happen to Titanwhen this thing gets close enough to give us a good-morning hug?” he asked, though he already felt certain that lingering here was far from his best option.

“Unpredictable, Captain,” Jaza said, shaking his head. “But it’s definitely not an experiment I’d advise anyone to try.”

So I have slightly less than two minutes to decide whether or not to cut and run,Riker thought, facing forward and once again staring into what might have been the very maw of Hell itself. “Maintain present speed for now, Mr. Lavena. Mr. Jaza, Convoy status?”

The Bajoran answered with another glum shake of the head. “There’s no sign of them yet, Captain. There’s been no response to our hails, even on the navigational hazard data channel we’ve been maintaining with them since our departure from the Oghen system.”

The faces of friends and colleagues flashed unbidden before his mind’s eye. Chris. Keru. Tuvok. Frane, his friends, and some two million of Frane’s people and their former slaves.

Riker silently upbraided himself. Now wasn’t the time for grief, personal or otherwise. Even if the worst had befallen both Vanguard and Donatra’s escort fleet, there were still nearly three hundred others aboard Titanwhose lives would depend on whatever he did, or failed to do, next.

He tapped his combadge. “Riker to engineering.”

“Ra-Havreii here, sir,”the designer-turned-chief-engineer said. He sounded utterly weary, but Riker couldn’t spare the time to ask him why.

“Commander, please tell me your engines can still give me warp six or better at a moment’s notice.”

“It was touch and go there for a while during the passage through the rift, Captain. But at the moment my warp drive is, as you humans sometimes say, willing, ready, and able.”

Riker heard a note of cheer enter Ra-Havreii’s voice, and it buoyed him. “That’s music to my ears, Commander. We may need to leave in a hurry, and verysoon. Riker out.”

He stared at the main viewscreen, gazing into the roiling, expanding depths of the inexorably approaching Red King.

“ ‘May’ need to leave, Captain?” Akaar said, his voice a low, almost subterranean rumble.

Riker shot a hard glare at the admiral. “As Mr. Dakal just said, we don’t know what will happen if and when the Red King reaches us. But we also don’t know whether or not we’ll have another chance to recover the convoy, or even to find out what the hell happened to them, if we leave now.” Turning toward Dakal, he said, “Auxiliary power to the sensor web, Cadet. Mr. Jaza, keep searching every cubic meter of that energy cloud’s interior.”

“Understood, Captain.”

“Two minutes until contact,” Lavena said, sounding at least as nervous as she had on that long-ago evening in the embassy swimming pool on Pacifica. Riker realized then that he had to be more than a little overwrought himself, to be recalling that particular incident now,of all times.

The turbolift hissed open, drawing Riker’s attention long enough to allow him to see a weary-looking Deanna Troi step out onto the bridge. She quickly crossed to the chair at Riker’s left.

“You should be resting, Commander,” Riker said quietly, noticing the dark circles under her eyes. “Dr. Ree’s orders.” Now that the fate of Vanguard and everyone aboard her lay in the lap of the gods, he felt acutely guilty about the sense of relief he’d experienced when Ree had persuaded her to return to Titan.

She smiled crookedly, crossing her arms across her chest. “I tried, Captain. I only came up to complain about all the noise. What did I miss?”

He tossed a curt frown her way and concentrated on the emotional-mental link they shared. Let’s hope you didn’t get here just in time for the end,Imzadi .

Don’t mind me, then, Will,she thought back to him. Get to work. And let’s try to stay positive, shall we?

She was right. Settling backward into his command chair, Riker stroked his beard, dismissed his doubts, and tried to project an aura of calm deliberation to everyone on the bridge.

“Anything yet, Mr. Jaza?”

“Negative, sir.” Jaza’s utterance was freighted with an uncharacteristic burden of despair. Riker considered all the times he had nearly lost Deanna forever, and wondered whether the science officer was having similar ruminations about Christine, who had remained on Vanguard. He was aware that the Bajoran had experienced a great deal of loss already, thanks to the decades-long Cardassian occupation of his homeworld. And he had noticed the way that Jaza sometimes studied Vale when he thought no one was looking.

“There’s a great deal of interference inside the phenomenon,” Jaza said. “Continuing scans, active and passive modes.”

Several more eternities passed. Finally, Lavena interrupted one of them. “Forty-five seconds until contact.”

Riker once again found himself gripping the arms of his command chair nearly hard enough to disrupt his circulation. In front of him, the boundaries of the Red King had reached those of the viewscreen. The background stars were no longer visible.

“Thirty seconds,” Lavena said quietly.

“Will?” Deanna said, patient yet clearly concerned.

“Captain?” Akaar said, his tone sharp. “I cannot permit you to commit Titanto an act of w’lash’nogot.”

Riker tore his gaze away from the Red King. Though he wasn’t certain he understood the reference the admiral had made, he gathered that Akaar thought he was contemplating suicide. Doesn’t he know me better than that by now?

In a tone as sharp as Akaar’s, he said, “We’re not going anywhere until we absolutely have to, Admiral.”

Riker glanced to starboard toward the main science station, where Jaza was frowning in apparent perplexity.

“What is it, Mr. Jaza?”

“The Sleeper is… changing,sir.”

Riker rose and approached the railing that separated the lower bridge from the circle of duty stations that surrounded it. “Changing how?”

“It’s thinning out, Captain. Disintegrating.And I think I’m finally picking up the subspace blast wave from the detonations of all those Romulan warp cores, though it’s already become highly attenuated.”

“I’m picking up a large-scale gravimetric flux along the phenomenon’s event horizon,” Eviku reported.

“Meaning?” Riker asked.

“Meaning the spatial rift itself is starting to collapse as the energy cloud continues to spread out and dissipate,” Jaza said. “The protouniverse itself appears to be retreating into de Sitter space.”

“It’s withdrawing back to wherever it came from,” Deanna said, tilting her head as though trying to listen to faint, faraway voices.

Fear clutched at Riker’s heart in earnest then, though it wasn’t for himself or even for his ship. The door out there is slamming shut on the Red King’s heels—and the convoy is still on the wrong side of it. There reallywon’t be another chance to locate them if we can’t do itnow .

“Fifteen seconds, sir,” Lavena said, sounding more than a little apprehensive.

Riker glanced at Akaar, who continued to glare down at him from the upper bridge. Before the admiral could say what was obviously on his mind, Riker touched his combadge as he crossed back to his command chair.

“Commander Ra-Havreii, stand by to warp out of here at my signal.” Riker took his seat, staring resolutely forward as the Red King entered what appeared to be its death throes. He reached to his left and squeezed Deanna’s hand.

Good-bye, Chris. Ranul. Tuvok. Damn!

“Ready, Captain,”the Efrosian engineer said.

“Ten seconds,” Lavena said.

“Captain!”

Jaza’s unexpected cry braced Riker, like an adrenaline injection delivered directly to the heart. Still seated, he faced his senior science officer. “Jaza?”

The Bajoran’s words came in rapid-fire succession. “Romulan warp signatures, just inside the cloud. Seventeen, no, eighteen of them, on roughly our heading—along with a large, rocky body.”

Riker noticed that a handful of bright stars had become visible through the expanding, still-attenuating cloud. Dozens of other small, starlike shapes moved quickly in front of those distant suns, as warp-powered vessels towed a single larger one, along with the two dozen or more of their fellows that had crippled themselves in order to pull the rift closed while passing through interspace. The orderly procession moved as one in a graceful arc, like a descending swarm of meteors.

Even as the Red King effect grew ever larger and more transparent, revealing the indifferent stars that lay behind it, a hard realization struck Riker: there was absolutely nothing further that either he or Titancould do to help the convoy escape the Red King’s final agonies.

Vanguard and her escorts would either survive now, or they wouldn’t.

“Mr. Ra-Havreii, Mr. Lavena: Ahead, warp six.”

IMPERIAL WARBIRD VALDORE,STARDATE 57047.6

It had been an extremely rough ride. Donatra thanked every god she could think of that the convoy had emerged from the waves of interspatial turbulence essentially intact.

“The Bloom is… gone,Commander,” Liravek said, though it clearly wasn’t necessary for him to say so aloud. But the centurion’s aquiline features revealed such a study in astonishment that Donatra was inclined to overlook his lapse.

From her command chair, Donatra gazed back at the starfield being displayed across the front of the Valdore’s bridge. Except for a few wispy, vestigial remnants of what had once been the blazing, energetic ferocity of the Great Bloom—the enormous celestial maw that had swallowed the fleet she had once been so foolish as to hide within its fringes—space had resumed its familiar empty aspect. It now appeared black and infinite, intermittently bejeweled with local stars, distant galaxies, and ordinary nebula and dust clouds—just as it had for the billions of years preceding the detonation of Shinzon’s thrice-cursed thalaron weapon.

Also discernible among those ancient stars were several dozen other small, steadily moving lights: her fleet, and the enormous life-bearing rock it continued to tow away from the now-vanished spatial rift.

Still another purposefully moving pinprick of light appeared, heading quickly toward the Valdore.Donatra intuited its identity immediately.

“Titanhas just dropped out of warp, Commander,” said Decurion Seketh, who was running the main operations console. “She’s on an intercept course, five-hundred k’vahrudistant, decelerating and closing. Captain Riker wishes to speak with you.”

No doubt,Donatra thought as she rose from her chair. Her body felt heavy with fatigue, and her old wounds stung and burned her. “I will take it in my ready room, Decurion.”

Once she was alone inside the small, private office adjacent to the bridge, she glanced down at the carpet. She noticed the tiny greenish-black spots spattered there. Suran’s blood stared up at her in silent accusation.

Crossing to the desk, she activated the computer that sat atop it and dropped into her seat.

Riker’s face appeared immediately. He was clearly furious.

“You blew up Captain Tchev’s ship while the convoy was passing through the rift.Why ?”

“Captain Riker. It’s so good to see you again, too. Is your channel secure?”

“Of course, Commander. Nobody can hear our conversation but the two of us. Now: Why did you destroy theDugh ?”

Donatra schooled her face carefully until she felt certain it was free of any display of either guilt or innocence, anger or amusement. A Vulcan would be proud,she thought wryly.

“A great deal can happen inside a phenomenon like the Great Bloom, Captain.”

“Are youdenying it, Commander? I trust I don’t need to remind you that I have a Betazoid on board.”

She sidestepped his question, and his anger, lest her own be roused. “We have been allies, Captain. But I am a Romulan, loyal to the Star Empire first and foremost. And the Klingons are our sworn enemies, the Dominion War alliance notwithstanding. You know this as well. So I ask you: Would you really believe anythingI might tell you about the Dugh?”

“I’d believe the truth, Donatra. Governor Khegh is going to demand nothing less of me.”

Donatra waved dismissively. “Governor Khegh won’t want to admit in polite company that he sent a cloaked vessel to follow our ships into the Bloom in the first place. Anytruth is therefore moretruth than that fat, inept, Klingon ryak’nadeserves.”

“So youare admitting it.”Riker looked disappointed, and Donatra found that this disturbed her even more than his outrage.

She retreated behind a shield of righteous anger. “I admit nothing, Captain. And as long as we are discussing truth, I must remind you of the promise you made to me.”

“Promise?”

“Your pledge not to reveal that I was forced to cripple the majority of the ships in my fleet as part of our joint effort to neutralize the Bloom.”

The human captain’s brow creased into a perplexed scowl. “What the hell does that have to do with theDugh ?”

“Everything, Captain—that is, if I’m truly guilty of the charges you’ve leveled at me. If Khegh becomes as convinced of my treachery as you evidently are, he could very well figure out why I supposedly did this thing.”

Riker paused, considering. “Because Tchev would have reported that about half your ships jettisoned their cores inside the rift. And Khegh and the Klingon High Council might have seen that as an exploitable vulnerability.”

“Precisely. And Khegh would therefore decide that I would have had ample reason not to allow the Dughto pass through the Bloom intact.”

“So you’re admitting you had a motive. You’re making my case for me.”

“Nonsense. Motive alone proves nothing.”

“You also had means and opportunity, Commander.”

In spite of herself, her anger began burning hotter than her wounds. “I’m not on trial, Riker, and you don’t stand in judgment over me. Take carenot to tread so heavily on our alliance. Don’t forget, I control the Romulan fleet. That ought to make me someone you consider quite dangerous to trifle with.”

Riker fumed in silence for a lengthy interval, clearly angered at having been so deftly outmaneuvered. Federation humans,she thought, her anger receding. The best of them are so earnest and honorable. As well as naïve and tractable.

“I won’t lie for you, Donatra,”he said.

“And I wouldn’t dream of asking that of you, William. All I ask is…your discretion regarding the current vulnerable condition of my fleet. At least until a few weeks of repairs are behind us. We have deadly enemies on our doorstep, and the Empire’s internal political stability remains in question, in spite of your noble efforts on our behalf. Surely you can appreciate the need to be…selective, at the very least, about what you decide to tell Khegh.”

“Khegh’s flagship is already on its way here, Donatra. His people will be scanning your ships. They’ll know that half your fleet has been crippled.”

Donatra allowed a tiny smile to escape onto her lips. Shaking her head, she said, “No, Captain. All they’ll see are the false warp singularity-core readings being projected along our fleetwide internal subspace comm network from those of my ships that remain warp-capable. Khegh will learn only what I wishhim to learn.”

“UnlessI decide differently, you mean.”

“Consider your best interests, Captain. Your diplomatic mission to Romulus would be undone if anything were to add significantly to the antagonism the Klingons and their Reman clients already have for my people.”

“True.”

“And you still have to ferry the Neyel asteroid colony to the Neutral Zone so that Starfleet can tow it into Federation space. Titancannot perform that task unaided. You need my cooperation and goodwill. Consider that.”

He glared at her, his blue eyes flashing like a pair of disruptor tubes. But she met his gaze without flinching.

“All right, Commander. You win this one. But you’d better understand something: Whatever ‘honor debts’ you might think I owe you, I hereby consider them all canceled.Titan out.”He vanished from the screen without saying another word.

But his sour, disappointed expression seemed to leave a peculiar afterimage on the monitor screen. Focused, perhaps, through the lens of her conscience.

U.S.S. TITAN,STARDATE 57047.7

Vale woke up and immediately experienced a moment of extreme disorientation.

She began to remember where she was just as Jaza rolled toward her on the bed. She sat up, covering herself with a sheet as she rested her elbows on a heap of pillows, crumpled sheets, and bits and pieces of both of their uniforms. He smiled at her, apparently unfazed by their mutual nakedness.

They had ended up in Jaza’s quarters, not hers, she recalled. It was the first place she had gone after reporting back to Captain Riker following her time aboard Vanguard.

“So. Hi there. Oh, boy,” she said, stopping just short of addressing him as “Commander.” She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so awkward. What the hell have I just done?

But she was also still intensely glad to see him, considering how close they both had come these past few days to never being able to see one another ever again.

“Are you all right, Christine?”

She laughed. “I’m good. Really good. Really.”

Very gently, almost prayerfully, he took her hands between his own. Somehow, the sheet she had draped over herself remained in place; she suddenly felt embarrassed by her obvious attack of shyness.

“You seem uncomfortable,” he said.

“Well, this does potentially change things between us, doesn’t it?”

“How?”

“Well, for one thing, you aren’t calling me ‘Commander’ anymore.”

He chuckled. “Would you like me to?”

She answered with a laugh of her own, and the tension began to drain from her body. “Not at the moment. Maybe we can agree to leave Starfleet protocol on the bridge.”

“Agreed. But seriously, do you have any regrets?” Jaza asked. “I don’t. But I can certainly understand if you do. We’re supposed to be officers, after all.”

Vale nodded as she considered his question. Then she decided that her regrets would have been far worse had she not been honest with him about her feelings after her return from Vanguard. Who knew when some future emergency might separate them again, perhaps forever?

“If it’s a problem—”

She placed a finger over his lips, interrupting him. “If it’s not a problem for our captain and our chief diplomatic officer, then I suppose it doesn’t have to be for us.” Then she kissed him.

After they withdrew from the kiss, they remained reclining on his bed, regarding each other in expectant silence.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said finally.

She grinned in response. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Of course.” Another one of his beatific smiles was slowly spreading across his face.

“All right. I was wondering what we’re going to do for the next hour until we’re both due on the bridge.”

“I could make a suggestion or two,” Jaza said. “Anything else?”

She grinned. “Yes. I was also thinking what a wonderful surprise it was to find that Bajoran men have ridges in places other than their noses.”

She rose back onto her elbows and let the sheet drop away from her. Then she put her hands on his shoulders, and pushed him onto his back.

Standing just out of the sight lines of the comm system’s visual pickup, Deanna Troi sensed her husband’s barely contained frustration. It felt like a tightly coiled spring that might let loose at any moment, lashing out at everything in its path.

To his credit—or perhaps to his detriment, Troi thought—not a trace of any such emotion was reaching Will Riker’s face as the dour, gray-haired Klingon dressed him down from the computer screen sitting atop the ready room’s Elaminite wood desk.

“I still don’t think you’ve told meeverything you know, Riker.”Khegh, general in the Klingon Defense Force and governor-administrator of both the Romulan continent of Ehrief’vil and the newly brokered Klingon-Reman Protectorate, snarled from the small desktop monitor screen.

Will leaned forward across his desk, placing his elbows on either side of the ancient leather-bound book that lay open there. “Governor, all I can tell you is that the Dughdid indeed make it to the other side of the rift, in the Small Magellanic Cloud. She was heavily damaged during the transit, though, and apparently didn’t survive the return trip. If you want more of the particulars, why don’t you ask Commander Donatra?”

“Bah!”Khegh waved a large, gauntleted hand in front of the screen, momentarily throwing the picture out of focus. The plenitude of medals that crowded the front of the governor’s ornate diplomatic vestments clattered noisily against one another. “With all the trouble I’ve had these past few days dodging Rehaek’s Tal Shiar assassins and trying to keep Praetor Tal’Aura from coming to blows with Colonel Xiomek and the rest of the Reman leadership, I have had a bellyful of ambitious Romulans. Let the diplomats deal with Donatra and her ilk from now on.”

Same old Khegh,Troi thought, shaking her head in silent amusement. Never mind that he’s the closest thing to a diplomat his government has in the entire Romulan Empire.

“Governor, I regret the Dugh’s destruction nearly as much as you do,” Will said, his manner suffused with a degree of empathy that would have done credit to an experienced ship’s counselor. “Captain Tchev and his crew were fine officers.”

According to Troi’s recollections of the past several days, Tchev and his people had been anything but helpful during the Red King affair. But she also knew that there was no percentage in pointing that fact out to Khegh.

The hefty old warrior leaned back in a chair that looked nearly as heavily padded as he was. “Nonsense, Riker. Tchev was an idiot. After all, he allowed those RomulanpetaQ to kill him and destroy his vessel without a battle. None of theDugh ’s crew deserve a place in either the Hall of Heroes orSto-Vo-Kor . Khegh out.”

As the governor’s snarling face was replaced by the familiar starscape-and-laurel-leaf symbol of the Federation, Troi sensed that her husband’s frustration had suddenly grown acute once again. Sothat’s what this is about. He not only regrets not being able to come clean about what Donatra did to theDugh , he also wishes he could embellish the truth a bit so that Tchev and his crew would at least get a shot at the Klingon afterlife.

She crossed to the chair where Will still sat, staring into the blank screen. Her hands reached out to the muscles of his neck and shoulders, which felt as hard as tempered duranium.

“Don’t beat yourself up about the Dughand Donatra, Will.”

He looked utterly desolate. “Donatra played me. I trusted her, even became her ally. And she played me.”

During the hours since the Vanguard convoy’s return from Neyel space, Will had told her enough about the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the Dughto convince her that he was being far too hard on himself.

“Donatra only did what she thought she had to do, Will. You have to remember that Romulans are still Romulans, our recent détente efforts notwithstanding. Sometimes our interests converge with theirs, and other times things go the other way.”