Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [14]
What’s more, he had just the individual in mind. Glad that he was finally taking action of some sort, the captain looked up at the intercom grid hidden in the ceiling. Then he said four words that he would no doubt repeat many times before his stint on the Enterprise-E was over…
“Picard to Commander Worf.”
“Worf here,” came the response.
“I have a job for you….”
Praetor Tal’aura took a sip of the wine brought to her only the day before, shifted her lithe, long-legged form in her gilded, high-backed chair, and regarded the individual on the viewscreen in front of her.
His name was Braeg. Until recently he had been an admiral in the Imperial Defense Force. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and good-looking, with a strong jaw and piercing hazel eyes. And though he had made a career of winning space battles, which implied a certain degree of ruthlessness, every word he spoke in public seemed to reek of fairness and common sense.
A compelling combination, to be sure.
“You know me,” Braeg began in a deep, resonant voice, as he addressed a crowd in one of the capital’s busier public plazas, “and you know also that my loyalty to the Empire is beyond question. I have demonstrated that in a hundred battles in more than a dozen star systems, risking all I have for the enduring glory of Romulus.”
Perhaps not a hundred, Tal’aura thought, but close enough. And the admiral had certainly been unstinting when it came to valor.
“Yet now,” Braeg continued, moving across the dagger-like shadow of a nearby obelisk, “there looms a threat greater than any posed before. Greater than the Federation, greater than the Klingons-greater even than the once-mighty Dominion. Because this time, it is no foreign enemy clawing at our borders. This time, the Empire threatens itself.”
“He doesn’t waste any time,” said Tal’aura, “does he?”
“No, Praetor,” said her companion, a slender, unattractive nobleman named Eborion.
“On our farthest outworlds,” said Braeg, “places like Daasid and B’jerrek and Sefalon, natives dissatisfied with their treatment at the hands of Romulus have for some time huddled in secret, whispering of rebellion and secession. But in recent days, my friends, they have done more than whisper. They have taken their objections to the streets and challenged imperial authority.”
Tal’aura winced. In filling the power vacuum created by the demise of the Praetor Shinzon, she had been prepared for any number of challenges. The situation developing on the outworlds had not been among them.
“The praetor,” Braeg continued, “has amply demonstrated her inability to deal with the growing list of rebellions. Perhaps she hopes the problem will take care of itself, given enough time. But as you and I know, that will not happen. It will fester like a badly treated wound and grow worse.”
Eborion made a sound of disdain. “His rhetoric is crude, to say the least.”
“You think so?” asked Tal’aura. She didn’t. In fact, she thought it was most impressive.
So did the crowd, apparently, or what she could see of it on the screen. The Romulans nearest the admiral shook their fists and roared their approval of Braeg’s remarks. The display struck an unexpected chord of envy in the praetor.
She had come to power by using the political allies she had acquired as a senator, and by wooing families like Eborion’s. Or rather, not the families entire, but the individual in them who would most covet association with a praetor. It was they who had delivered the people of Romulus to her.
However, a part of her wished she had done it on her own. It would have been infinitely more satisfying that way.
“Shall we allow Tal’aura to lose the outworlds and diminish the Empire?” Braeg demanded of his audience. “Or shall we advise this praetor of the people’s displeasure?”
The crowd’s enthusiasm jumped a notch. Tal’aura took another sip of her wine and found she didn’t like it so much after all. She made a mental note to take her wine purveyor