Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [55]
Peremptorily, Picard asked, “Are you coming, Decalon?”
The Romulan regarded him again and shook his head. “This is madness. Phajan will return and wonder what became of us.”
“Which, I believe,” Greyhorse said as he put the dusty curio back on its table, “is the captain’s intention.”
Decalon looked disgusted. However, as Picard had pointed out, he wasn’t the one in charge of their mission.
“Let’s go,” said Pug.
Reluctantly-because Phajan really had been their most promising lead-Picard pulled his thermal suit back on, hood and all. Then he opened the door to Phajan’s house and led the way outside, where a stinging, lashing sleet had begun.
The captain bent into it. He didn’t need to glance over his shoulder to know the others were following him-including Decalon, however grudgingly.
Picard had likely seen his last of Phajan, so he would never have his assessment of the Romulan validated. Once, in the earliest days of his captaincy, that would have bothered him. It didn’t bother him any longer.
He wasn’t in this for the satisfaction. He was in it to see his mission accomplished and Beverly brought home again.
With those two very important objectives in mind, he left Phajan’s house behind.
Sela and her troops had put down at the last square large enough to accommodate their hovercraft, and continued the rest of the way to Phajan’s house on foot.
After all, in the seemingly perpetual storm that plagued Kevratas, the hovercraft couldn’t run as silently as it was supposed to, and the commander didn’t want her prey to suspect that something was wrong. If even one member of the Federation party heard the craft’s deep, metallic moan, he and his comrades would be seeking a new hiding place.
Sela wasn’t looking forward to a house-to-house search of the city. Not when night would be falling soon and the already low temperature would be dropping even further.
As the house loomed out of the rush of ice and snow, Sela signaled for half of her troops to surround the place-in case her prey tried to escape through a window or the rear exit. With a dozen centurions slicing through the weather to carry out her order, the commander glanced at her informant.
“Four of them, correct?”
“Yes,” Phajan confirmed, his voice muffled by the part of his garb that covered his mouth.
And not just any four, Sela mused.
One of them, beneath his holo-disguise, was a Romulan traitor. And two others were former Starfleet officers.
But the prize, in this case, was Jean-Luc Picard, Sela’s longtime nemesis, the human she loathed above all others. She had any number of scores to settle with the captain, and she knew oh so many ways to settle them.
When the commander first heard from Phajan about his guests, she speculated that Picard had crossed the Neutral Zone specifically to rescue Beverly Crusher-a typical human gesture. Surely, that would have been enough to explain his appearance on Kevratas.
Then Phajan told her that one of Picard’s companions was a doctor-leading Sela to the conclusion that the captain wasn’t just there to retrieve his chief medical officer. Like Crusher, he meant to provide the natives with a cure for their plague.
One they would never receive-though without question, a vaccine would have made Sela’s job a good deal easier. The fear and misery caused by the disease had rendered the most desperate of the Kevrata even more so. With little or nothing to lose, they had become bolder, more vocal in stirring up the masses.
Were there a way for Sela to take credit for a cure, she might have allowed Crusher to pursue one. Certainly, it would have placed the Romulans in a different light, presenting them as benefactors rather than occupiers and oppressors. Under those circumstances, the rebellion would have swiftly lost its appeal.
But the rebels knew of Crusher’s appearance on their world. And they knew also that the Romulans had proven quite ineffectual in fighting the plague-both this time