• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Tuvok did not look up from his console. "Dr. R'Mor, I suggest you return to engineering or your quarters. The bridge is no place for you at this time."

"Why not? What's going on? Where is Captain Janeway?" Now he saw how tense everyone on the bridge was, even Tuvok, hi his Vulcan way.

Tuvok looked up, his brown eyes meeting Telek's.

"Captain Janeway has been kidnapped."

IT WAS BITTERLY COLD IN THE TINY CELL, AND IT stank. This was something Jekri had never before experienced. Her dealings with her prisoners ended once they had been sentenced. If she needed them afterward, she sent for them. She had never even seen a Romulan holding cell.

With macabre humor she mused that she should probably enjoy the experience. Soon enough, they would probably take her and interrogate her, and she knew what that meant well enough.

They had confiscated all her philotostan chips. She had not had the chance to have one embedded in a false tooth, as the more fortunate Sharibor had. No, they had stripped her naked, poked and probed her,

removed all the chips she had secreted in her clothing and on her person, then flung these filthy rags at her and ushered her into this cell.

She sank down and huddled in a corner, drawing her knees up to her chest. For a brief instant, Jekri indulged in self-pity. She had been so high, so proud, once, and now she was dung on the boot of the Empress. She did not deserve this. She deserved respect. She had earned it with blood and loyalty, but they had ripped all dignity away from her. She supposed she could consider herself lucky they had not placed her with other prisoners. There were many who were here because of Jekri's orders, and they would not be gentle once they saw her.

The chairman of the Tal Shiar would have died in the service of the Empire. She would have killed herself rather than face such disgrace as Jekri was now enduring. But at that farce of a trial, Lhiau and his cronies had ripped away all remnants of that august office from one Jekri Kaleh. She was no longer chairman of the Tal Shiar. She was nothing, no one, a corpse that had the temerity to still be alive.

She lifted her head from her knees. No. She was not nothing.

The chairman was dead, and with that death came an end to any loyalty she had to the rulers of the Empire. They had betrayed her. She owed them nothing now, not the Empress, not the Praetor or Proconsul, certainly not Verrak, who had wounded her more deeply than she would have guessed. She was her own person now, and she would be damned if she walked docilely to her execution.

She had to escape. And once free, there was only one thing she could do that would make the Empress again regard her with the honor that was her due. In order to resurrect the chairman, Jekri had to become the Little Dagger again, the thief and killer and stalker in the shadows.

It was a bitter draft. It was irony of the highest sort.

And it was the only logical thing to do.

The End

Table of Contents

Start