Crossover - Michael Jan Friedman [59]
“These are people I’m all too familiar with,” McCoy returned. “And they’ve got my friend, for God sake. I’ll be drawn and quartered before I let someone like your captain—”
Worf cut him off before he could finish. “Admiral McCoy,” he said, “I have obtained a communications link with Constanthus.”
The admiral turned to the main viewscreen. It was showtime.
“Who are we dealing with here, Lieutenant?”
“You will be speaking with Governor Tharrus,” Worf told him.
It gave McCoy a strange feeling to be conversing with a Klingon this way, on the bridge of a Federation starship. But times had changed, hadn’t they? And he was proud to say he’d helped change them.
“Governor Tharrus it is, then,” the admiral remarked. “Let ‘er rip, Lieutenant.”
A moment later, the governor’s image filled the viewscreen. As far as McCoy could tell, Tharrus was a typical Romulan administrator—dignified, wary, and not half as smart as he thought he was.
“Greetings,” said the admiral, sitting up as straight as he could in the captain’s seat. “My name’s McCoy. Leonard James McCoy.”
The governor inclined his head ever so slightly. “Tharrus, governor of Constanthus. And the reason for your communication?”
The admiral grunted. Ol’ Tharrus believed in getting right to the point, didn’t he? Not unlike a certain Vulcan of his acquaintance.
“The reason I called,” McCoy explained in his most deliberate back-country drawl, “is to see if we can’t work something out with regard to those raggedy unificationists you’re sitting on.”
The governor’s eyes narrowed at the admiral’s use of the unfamiliar idiom. “Is it not customary to carry on negotiations with the homeworld?”
“We tried that,” McCoy admitted. He was reluctant to get caught in a lie so early in the game. “Some proconsul said he’d take some time and think about it. You know what that means, don’t you?”
Tharrus was too cautious to go into detail on an unsecured channel. After all, McCoy reflected, the governor still didn’t know where this conversation was headed.
“I have some idea,” Tharrus answered.
The admiral told him anyway, for the sake of clarity. “What it means,” he remarked, “is it could take years to resolve this mess.” He smiled his most disarming smile. “I’m no spring chicken, Governor. I don’t have that much time to see an end to this.”
Tharrus looked at him. “Are you suggesting an alternative to negotiation with the homeworld?”
Now they were getting somewhere, thought McCoy. He shrugged.
“You’re the one who captured the rebels,” he said. “It makes sense to me you’d be the one to decide their fates.”
The admiral leaned forward in a conspiratorial kind of way. It was the way his father used to lean forward in Ed Baxter’s barber shop, back in Georgia, when he wanted to get the attention of the other gentlemen waiting for their haircuts. And invariably, he did.
“Governor,” McCoy began, “what I’m saying is I’d like to deal directly with you. I’d like to present you with
let’s call it an opportunity.”
“An opportunity,” Tharrus echoed flatly, without inflection.
“Just what I said. A chance for you to improve your position in the empire—without making martyrs out of the rebels.” He paused. “You do want to improve your position, don’t you?”
“Go on,” said the governor.
“I’ll do that,” the admiral agreed. “Because, to tell you the truth, it would make me look good if I could get those unificationist folks out safely. It’d give me … oh, I don’t know. Some kind of legacy, something for people to remember me by.”
McCoy had never spouted such a load of hogwash in his life. But he knew his Romulans.
Tharrus might not be showing it, but he was drooling over the possibilities for material advancement—possibilities he probably hadn’t thought of until the admiral pointed them out. As far as McCoy was concerned, he had the governor right where he wanted him.
“Here’s what I’m proposing,” the admiral continued. “Essentially it’s the same thing we offered the proconsul—except he’s got nothing to gain by it.”
He described