As Picard stood in the harsh white glare of the kekogen lamps, staring into Sela"s cold, gleaming eyes, Picard realized that his and Spock"s instincts about Neral had been correct. The proconsul had been leading them on, baiting them and drawing them in so that he could, ultimately, apprehend them. The vaunted peace talks were never intended to take place; reunification was nothing more than an idealist"s dream.
Picard looked at Spock. The amba.s.sador"s face looked gray and worn, as though he bore the full brunt of this calamity. Exhaustion showed in every line of his craggy face; defeat seemed to be crushing him.
;"How could they know of this location?" Pardek was beseeching Spock. "Someone betrayed us."
"Yes." Spock"s voice was flat. "You did."
Picard"s look snapped toward Spock. The amba.s.sador was boring into Pardek, and the senator was trembling. "Spock," he said, aghast, "we"ve been friends for eighty years."
But, unmoved and stolid, Spock gazed back at him. "It is the only logical conclusion. You invited me to Romulus. You arranged the meeting with the proconsul. And you knew that Picard and Data had returned to the surface with new information."
Pardek shook his head, trying to maintain the innocent front, but Sela"s throaty laugh obviated the effort. "The great Spock," she said, not without admiration. "Very well. Senator Pardek, your service to the Romulan people is noted and appreciated."
Pardek seemed to deflate a little. He looked right into Spock"s eyes.
These men have been j?iends for eighty years, thought Picard. Has Pardek been using Spock all that time, lying in wait, hoping for the opportunity to take advantage of that J)"iendship? Was that all it ever was?
Spock and Pardek were holding a look. It must have connoted nearly a century"s relationship. It culmi-nated when Pardek said ruefully, "Jolan tru, Spock." There was no sense of discomfort, or of acknowledgment of the long friendship. Pardek had simply severed the bonds. Nothing more.
"Do not be distressed," Sela said to Spock. The amba.s.sador was not looking at her, Picard observed, and she spoke to his ear. "Your dream of reunification is not dead. It will only take a slightly different formrathe Romulan conquest of Vulcan."
She nodded to the guards, and they prodded the trio up the ramp.
D"Tan would never be able to say what it was that cautioned him to take refuge in the ground-level storage unit he had discovered years ago. It was nothing tangible, just a sense of unusual antic.i.p.ation in the hot, heavy air; a kind of compression as though distant explosions were felt, rather than heard.
Others had premonitions, too, he was sure. There was a restiveness on the street, little eddies of scurry-ing activity that sprang up and dissipated in random patterns. A Circa.s.sian cat that belonged to a shop-keeper prowled her window restlessly, arching her back and spitting.
D"Tan"s hiding place had a grate that opened on to the street and provided a view. When he was a very small boy he had discovered that he could wriggle into this s.p.a.ce between the storage unit and the facade of the building and lie undetected for hours, watching the panorama of the streets unfold before him. Now that he was older, it was becoming a tighter fit; and he had realized sadly that in another year or two he would have to give up his childhood retreat.
He had had an aimless day, first wandering the neighborhood for several hours, looking for Mr. Spock, hoping to show him the language blocks. After Spock left to go to the caves, D"Tan spent some time with his friend Janicka, helping her clean her family"s store. They had given him a meal and a piece of fruit to take with him.
It was that indefinable heaviness in the air that finally sent him crawling into the hiding place. He was uneasy; his stomach felt sick and he wondered if the fruit he had eaten was spoiled.
Sitting cross-legged in his hiding place calmed him down; it always did. He loved watching the pa.s.sersby on the street, the little dramas that played out before him. There was a heady feeling of omnipotence that he could see without being seen, though D"Tan knew that if his parents discovered this little activity, they would probably not approve.
D"Tan saw Janicka walk from her parents" shop toward the food court. Janicka loved sweets, and her parents kept her on a strict limit. D"Tan knew they must be occupied now, and Janicka was sneaking away to get some forbidden treat. He watched as she spoke to the food keeper, who returned a moment later with sesketh, a sugary confection twisted on a spice stick. D"Tan almost laughed out loud, because he knew of all the treats Janicka"s parents least liked her to have, sesketh was at the top of the list.
Now she"d have to finish it before she returned to the shop; she sat on an embankment as she nibbled daintily at the sweet. D"Tan observed that Janicka was one of the few people he knew who could eat and still look delicate. He"d never had such a thought before, and as his mind considered her gentle face and her large, dark eyes, he found himself thinking of Janicka in an entirely new manner.
It was while he was absorbed in this unaccustomed exploration of Janicka"s attributes that he heard the first scream.
It was a woman, and she was not within his sight. But he saw others on the street react to the scream and look off, to his right, down the thoroughfare that led out of Krocton segment.
Within seconds there was more noise-unfamiliar, disturbing-a clamor of shouting and more screams.
D"Tan"s stomach twisted with fear. Whatever was happening, he knew it was worse than anything he had ever experienced. Now the people on the street before him "were running, becoming crazed, colliding with each other in desperate haste. Some ran to his left, simply trying to get away from whatever was approaching; others ran the opposite way to look for loved ones or to take sanctuary.
The clamor of noise to his right was increasing in volume, and soon he could hear a pounding of footsteps-hundreds of them, many the harsh stamp-ing of military boots as they marched inexorably down the street.
Then he caught the unmistakable sound of disruptor fire. He shrank back in his hiding place in fear. Disruptors were one of the most terrible weapons ever invented; were they being used on innocent citizens?
The next thing he saw was a flood of terrified people, running, stumbling, some glancing back over their shoulders as they ran, all wild-eyed, all fleeing some awful and as yet unseen monstrosity. One woman stumbled and fell; the crowd marched over her, ignoring her pleas for help and then her frantic screams as she was trampled. Finally she was still; D"Tan could see only her outstretched arm, fingers twitching faintly. Then came the guards.
Neral"s security guards were the most feared unit of the military. They were chosen first on the basis of size and strength; once tapped for service, they under-went special adaptations of their brain chemistry that reduced any sense of conscience or empathy. Then their plan centers were regulated so that their bodies were impervious to the torment of physical injury.
The result was a brutal creature without compa.s.sion, who would follow orders relentlessly, would not be slowed by injury, and would fight tenaciously until the body itself simply gave out.
These were the beings that marched through Krocton segment now.
Faces impa.s.sive, dressed in iron gray uniforms, they moved like a relentless swarm of insects over a field, destroying it utterly. Disruptor fire lacerated build-ings and caused them to tremble violently; some collapsed in on themselves. Gla.s.s shattered and exploded, often showering the frightened citizens with lethal shards.
Some guards amused themselves by nipping at the fleeing civilians with disruptors; a full setting would vaporize anyone, so obviously they had purposely set their weapons at a low level. Those who were unlucky enough to get grazed by the ugly blast dropped in their tracks, screaming in agony as their internal organs began to explode. All this D"Tan watched with horror, not wanting to see but unable to look away. It was a living nightmare of cruelty and mayhem, unfolding in bitter, b.l.o.o.d.y detail directly in front of him.
A gap in the guards" ranks opened briefly, and he saw Janicka, standing opposite him on the embankment, staring, frozen, at the havoc before her. "Run, Janicka!" he shouted, oblivious for the moment to his own safety. But his cry had no chance of being heard by either the guards or by Janicka; the devastation of the streets overwhelmed any other sound, and D"Tan"s cry blended with the piteous wails of too many others.
And so he watched, riveted, as a guard noticed Janicka and ran toward her. The little girl stared up at him, unable to move. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder, and then Janicka came to life. She shrieked, and kicked at the guard with all her might. Annoyed, he simply grabbed her by her ankles and swung her around in a circle until her face collided with the corner of a building.
He dropped her then and she crumpled, leaden, onto the street. Even from his hiding place, D"Tan could see that Janicka"s fair, delicate face was now a template of cracked and broken segments through which blood was streaming. She did not move or even twitch. She would never again eat a treat or walk with him to the caves or clean the windows in her parents" store. Janicka, his good friend, was gone.
D"Tan sank back against the wall of the storage unit. The guards had already pa.s.sed by, continuing their carnage as they marched through the segment. Here, before D"Tan, was a wasteland of the dead and wounded. Already the noise was subsiding, and all he could hear were the groans of those who still breathed.
He knew that Mr. Spock was in terrible danger. This ma.s.sacre was meant to wipe out the movement, and if the guards knew that Krocton segment contained its nucleus and its most dedicated adherents, there was every chance they knew about the caves, too.
D"Tan waited a few moments until the noise of the marauding guards had grown faint, and then he crawled out of his sanctuary. Trying not to look at the devastation around him, he started running toward the caves.
Chapter Nineteen.
THE ENTERPRISE CAME gracefully out of warp speed and entered orbit around Gaiorndon Core. It was a bleak, forbidding planet, electromagnetically shrouded and obscured by fierce storms and wildly erratic arcs of jagged electricity.
Riker turned from the viewscreen to Geordi, at one of the aft science stations. "Any signs of life, Mr. La Forge?" he asked.
Geordi shook his head as he scanned the instruments. "Negative, Commander."
"The Romulans could have a cloaked base on the surface," suggested Troi.
"Or anywhere else along the Neutral Zone," added Riker. He had an unsettling feeling of disappointment. He had felt they were close to uncovering the mysterious origins of the stolen Vulcan ship, and now they found themselves in orbit over an uninhabited planet. Had they come all this way for nothing?
"Sir," Worf"s voice interrupted, "a coded subs.p.a.ce signal from Romulus. It"s the captain."
Riker moved to Worf"s tactical console, read the message to himself. Troi must have seen the concern on his face, because she moved toward him.
"What?" she asked.
Riker read the message aloud. "Maintain position at Galorndon Core. Diplomatic initiative appears to be succeeding. Will advise soon."
Riker found this message instantly suspicious. The captain had only been able to communicate with them from the Klingon ship, and then by piggyback transmission. This coded message directly from Romulus was troubling. He cast a glance toward Worh he could tell that the Klingon officer shared his concern.
"The message did employ the proper code sequence, Commander," Worf said. "Yeah," said Riker. "I"m sure it did." But he still didn"t trust it.
D"Tan was prepared for anything as he approached the caves. He kept cover as he neared them, running in a crouch through a thicket of dense wagi brush that paralleled the road. He stopped opposite the cave opening and watched for a while; he was apprehensive about entering and being caught in the narrow, tubelike chamber that led into the main cavern.
After a few moments, he decided not to risk the larger entrance but to take the time to come in from the rear, through a circuitous, winding corridor, which only he and a few others knew about, and which only children could navigate successfully because the openings in many cases were small.
In a few minutes he had reached the rocky ledges that traversed the hills rising above the subterranean caves. He lowered himself into a hole concealed by th.o.r.n.y bushes, then scurried down the shaft, and dropped into a small chamber. Three circular openings were grouped on a far wall; D"Tan took the middle one and wriggled through a long, narrow pa.s.sageway. That was the hardest part, and once he had emerged he was only minutes away from the main chamber.
As he neared it, he walked carefully, listening for any sounds of disturbance; he heard nothing. Gingerly, he made his way down the corridor toward the cavern, one step at a time, listening between each step... then he stepped around the corner and into the cavern.
Someone attacked him with a rock.
Instinctively he threw up his arms and the blow glanced off his forehead, but still with enough force to drop him to his knees. The wound spouted blood and D"Tan scrambled backward, holding up his hands to defend himself.
It was Shalote, a friend in the movement. Her eyes were wild and she held another rock in her hand, ready to attack again. She stared at him. "D"Tan?" she asked incredulously, and lowered her hand.
"Shalote, there"s been a ma.s.sacre in Krocton segment. The guards killed everybody .... It was awful..." Now that he saw a friend, the terrible events came pouring out. He longed to be comforted, held, and soothed until some of the dreadful images left his mind.
But Shalote was staring at him, nodding, herself as traumatized as he. "It was the same here," she whispered. "The guards came and took everyone. I had been carrying water to the main cavern and I heard the commotion and hid."
"Mr. Spock... Captain Picard?" "They were captured. I saw them being led out." D"Tan sank to the ground. He wanted very much not to cry in front of Shalote, who was older and whom he admired, but he was in despair. He had no idea if his parents had survived the slaughter in Krocton segment, if his friends were alive or dead. Janicka was gone... how many more of his beloved companions had perished that day?
But the worst thing of all was the death of the dream. What he had hoped and longed for all his life, what he thought he would see happening in his lifetime-that vision was shattered. His people would continue to live the bleak and violent lives of Romulans, shut off from the rest of the quadrant, never coming to know their gentle Vulcan cousins.
D"Tan realized he had already started crying, sitting on the floor of the cave, tears flooding in an endless current. Shalote was crying, too, and eventually they held each other and sobbed for a long time, drawing what comfort they could from each other"s presence.
An almost tangible sense of well-being suffused Commander Sela on this warm Romulan afternoon. Everything was going as it should. Spock, Picard, and the android Data had been taken at the caves, and that alone would have been enough to make her feel satisfied.
But she had also learned that the extermination process in Krocton segment had been successful. The area had been decimated, with hundreds dead and scores wounded. Never again would Krocton segment be a pocket of sedition. Now, as she worked at her padd, she prepared to lay the final chip in the plan on which she had spent the past five years. It was all within her grasp. The most difficult elements were already in place; what remained was relatively easy. And then the heady rewards of conquest would be hers.
She heard the door open and knew that Spock, Picard, and Data were being led in. She purposely didn"t look up; it amused her to keep writing, all but ignoring them. Idly she said, "Come in, gentlemen. Take a seat, please."
As she concentrated on the padd, she was aware that the guards ushered the prisoners to chairs opposite her desk; they sat. Now she looked up at the guards and nodded to excuse them.
Sela smiled as she scrutinized the three men who sat before her. Spock and Picard were solemn-faced, refusing to reveal whatever emotions they might be feeling. The android, of course, had no emotions, and was sitting placidly, watching her. She went back to her writing as she said, "Excuse me. I"m just finishing up a speech. For you, Mr. Spock."
Presently, she put the padd down and leaned back in her chair. "I rather enjoy writing. I don"t get to do it often in this job."
"Perhaps you would be happier in another job," offered Data, and she had to suppress a smile. She was intrigued by this unusual creature, and could even understand the fondness her mother had expressed for him. Sela herself had encountered him in different circ.u.mstances, and blamed him-and Picard-for her failure to sway the Klingon civil war in favor of her cohorts, Lursa and WEtor. It was delightful to have both these Starfleet men in her custody; there would be time for proper, and prolonged, retribution.
Picking up the padd, she circled the desk and handed the implement to Spock. "Please feel free to change any words that you wish. I"ve tried to make it sound Vulcan... a lot of unnecessarily long words."
No one smiled. Spock began to read the padd. "In a few hours," she continued, "you will deliver this statement alongside our senate proconsul, Neral. It will announce to the Vulcan people that a peace envoy is on its way from Romulus. We will transmit it on all Federation subs.p.a.ce frequencies."
Picard spoke first. "A "peace" envoy in a stolen Vulcan ship..." he breathed, and Sela could tell he had fit in a piece of the puzzle. She was only too happy to provide the rest. It was a wonderfully clever scheme, and she was proud of it.
"Actually, three Vulcan ships, Captain. The Enterprise is aware only of the one we stole from Qualor Two." She smiled at his look of surprise. "Yes, we"ve been following their investigation. It has forced us to make some minor changes, including a message that was sent in your name, ordering them to stay where they are."
Picard"s astute eyes swept her face. "The moment those Vulcan ships appear in the Neutral Zone, the Enterprise will move to intercept." Sela almost laughed. She lovedthis-it was worth the five arduous years of planning. She had them at every turn.
"In that event," she purred, "the Enterprise will be given more important matters to attend to." She waited so she could enjoy the puzzled frustration on Pieard"s face. He was learning that Sela had thought of every eventuality and had provided for it. He would never underestimate her again. She circled now toward the windows of her office, and gazed out across the lofty spires of the city of Dartha. She knew that far below, the people lived in dark squalor, but here, above the streets, her view was of a maze of soaring towers, stately and pristine.
"In the meantime," she continued, turning back to the trio, "Amba.s.sador Spock will be telling his people to welcome the peace envoy, and when they do, our forces will seize control of the Vulcan government before anyone realizes what has happened."
"Can you possibly believe that the Federation will not immediately intervene?" The question from Pi-card was more a flat declaration.
"Of course it will," responded Sela, relishing these moments, savoring the feeling of thwarting the great Jean-Luc Picard. "And we"re fully prepared for that. But we"ll be there. Entrenched. And it will be very difficult to get us out once we are. A new Vulcan government will be forlned that will embrace their Romulan cousins." She paused, and then said, with a trace of irony, "Reunification will become a fact of life."
Spock had finished his perusal of the doc.u.ment she had written, and as he handed it back to her, he said dryly, "I will not read this or any other statement."
"If you do not, you will die. All of you will die."
"It is logical to conclude that you will kill us in any event. Therefore, I choose not to cooperate."
Sela was annoyed. "I hate Vulcans," she snapped. "I hate the logic. I hate the arrogance."
But of course she had considered this eventuality and provided for it as well. She walked toward a computer console. "Computer," she said, "holographic program Spock One." And then she turned to see how her three prisoners would react, and her feeling of well-being returned.
Picard turned as he heard the characteristic hiss that signaled the appearance of a holographic figure. He knew what Sela had done and was sure the others had antic.i.p.ated it, too.
Standing in the room was a perfect representation of Spock. He was immobile now, frozen in a moment of serene meditation, his eyes focused on nothing. "By taking advantage of holographic sampling these last few days," explained Sela, "we have created a pro-grammable Spock." She searched the faces of the men, seeming to want a reaction. Picard carefully kept his face expressionless; he had no desire to stroke this shrewd woman"s ego.
"Run program," she said, and the holo-Spock came to life.
"This is Amba.s.sador Spock of Vulcan," it announced, its voice a perfect representation. "By now, Federation sensors are tracking three Vulcan ships crossing the Neutral Zone. These ships carry the future of the Vulcan and Romulan people. Our long conflict is finally over..."