Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [0]
This story is set in the year 2360, sixty-seven years after the presumed death of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations, and four years before the launch of the EnterpriseD in “Encounter at Farpoint.”
Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.
- John Le Carré: A Perfect Spy
Prologue
No border, however hostile the forces on either side of it, is ever impermeable. Even after almost fifty years of silence, the Romulan Neutral Zone was no exception.
Cretak grimaced as she and her attendant passed the sentries on either side of the no-man’s-land between the designated Romulan and Federation sections of the space station. It wasn’t the presence of the guards that disturbed her. She had the proper credentials, and they scarcely noticed her. It was the filth.
The station lay nominally within what humans called the Neutral Zone and Romulans the Outmarches-the two sides unable to agree on even that much-at one of several points where inhabited planets with allegiance to neither side had made it necessary for the mapmakers to do a bit of gerrymandering. Succinctly, the Zone ran rather narrow here, and more species than not pretended it did not exist, traveling within the Zone with impunity, as long as they didn’t venture into either Federation or Romulan space. The station itself was run by a consensus of those species loyal to neither side, and functioned primarily for those myriad other species, allowing Federation and Romulan presences as long as neither “started something.” Thus the need for sentries between the two areas designated specifically for them.
Apparently no one in the consensus, Cretak thought crossly, is acquainted with the merits of a mop and broom!
The walls were smudged, the floors sticky beneath her boots. Exposed bits of circuitry blinked feebly where fixtures had apparently been ripped out and never replaced. There were whole sectors where lighting was dim or nonexistent, and atmospheric control sporadic, creating pockets where it was hard to breathe. Stray clumps of something rolled sluggishly along the curve of the corridors, propelled by the ambient breeze whenever an airlock opened and closed, and in the darkest corners other somethings moved more rapidly, hissing and squeaking when disturbed. It was said they would eat anything that didn’t move.
The areas immediately surrounding the guard posts were properly maintained, and Romulan personnel kept the corridors leading to their designated berths in pristine condition (Cretak could only assume the Federation did likewise), but the rest of the place, even the few bedraggled shops selling trinkets and replicated food in the main hub, clearly showed the disdain the unallied species felt for both sides.
It was a crossroads, a waystation, the kind of place where as many species as were known to travel across two quadrants-and even some who weren’t-could be seen intermingling in the crowded, dirty corridors. At the moment, an air of watchfulness pervaded the place as well. Three Romulan ships were currently in port, effecting a transfer of diplomats on their way to a conference on a remote colony world. The rest of those on the station would be grateful when they shoved off. It was said that, while Klingons were given to brawling and breaking the furniture, Romulans were humorless, and that was worse.
Ordinarily a Romulan senator would have remained on the ship and sent one of her attendants on whatever errands might need doing in such a place, but Cretak had been overheard complaining about cabin fever and, since no one told a senator what not to do, she was free to explore the common areas of the station, attendant in tow, as long as she returned before the evening’s first round of meetings and receptions began.
Someday, Cretak mused, I shall have to learn to be more circumspect. But if this adventure is not successful, will there be a someday?
Once far enough around the curve of the station’s outer rim to