No Surrender - Jeff Mariotte [20]
“Nor is it as good as you’d like to think. You still wear the uniform. You’ve brainwashed yourself, David. You don’t want to think that your life has been wasted in service of the wrong ideals.”
Gold turned away from the viewscreen so Bradford couldn’t see him trying not to laugh. When he had regained his composure, he turned back.
“The ideals I serve are the same ones you used to believe in, Gus. Decency, fairness, honor, duty. You remember our arguments, Gus? You were always the one defending the Federation against my challenges, my assaults. Turns out the Federation is able to defend itself. It’s not the intransigent monolith I believed it to be after all. Maybe it’s time you took another look.”
“No thanks, David.” The look on Bradford’s face, the smug half-smile that said that the argument was over—at least as far as he was concerned—was so familiar to Gold that he might as well have seen it just yesterday. The expression wiped away the years, and Gold felt a sudden wave of sorrow, as if he were looking at his old friend in his Academy days, full of pride and optimism and the sense that all the doors in the universe were open to him, and he had only to choose which one to pass through first.
“Come on, Gus. Be a mensch for once. Release your hostages and work this out the right way.”
Bradford’s answer was slow in coming, as if he had to think it over, even though, in fact, it could have been foreordained. “Sorry, David,” he said at last. “No surrender.”
Gold pounded a fist on his desk. “Dammit, man, they’re going to kill you! They don’t negotiate with terrorists, and they’re going to wipe out the base—including Deborah and Ben!”
“Their deaths will be on Aulyffke’s head, not mine.”
“What the hell difference does it make whose head it’s on? They’ll still be dead—just because they had the fool notion that visiting you was a good idea. Does Deborah deserve to die because she just wanted you to meet your grandson? Does Ben deserve to have his entire life taken away from him because you need to prove a point?”
Bradford said nothing. Just the fact that he had managed to shut Gus up emboldened Gold.
“I’m not asking you to surrender a damn thing, Gus. I just want don’t want to see a Federation dignitary and two people whom you supposedly love die, just so you can win one more argument.”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me that I don’t love my daughter, David. Don’t you dare!”
“Then prove it. Don’t murder them needlessly.”
“You don’t understand, I have to show—”
Gold leaned forward. “Oh, I understand just fine, Gus. I know how your mind works. You go out in a blaze of glory, take innocents with you, and that’ll prove you right. But it won’t help your cause a single bit. You want the Federation out of Kursican. That’s fine—but if you let Uree die with you, the Federation will be all over Kursican like matzoh balls in chicken soup. If you let them go, though, Uree can report back just what happened here today.”
“So can you.”
“Think about what I’d say if you let them die, Gus.”
The pause that followed seemed to last for hours.
Then, suddenly, Bradford cut off the connection.
“Dammit!” Gold tapped his combadge. “Ina, reestablish communications!”
“They’re not responding, sir.”
“Feliciano, any luck?”
“No, sir, but—hold on.” After a pause, he went on. “Somebody beaming onto the da Vinci from the station, sir. Three figures—bioreadings are one Deltan and two humans.”
Gold breathed a sigh of relief.
“Commander Gomez,” Hawkins’s voice came over her combadge. He sounded nervous. “Some of the prisoners are getting out of the line. They’re forming—well, I guess you’d call it a mob. And they’re eyeing my phaser.”
“Now do you believe me, Commander?” Corsi asked.
“I didn’t disbelieve you,” Sonya replied. “But we have our orders. Stand your ground, Mr. Hawkins.”
A thousand prisoners. Sixteen Starfleet personnel. One didn’t have to be an engineer to know the math was unfavorable.
Her combadge chirped again, followed by Captain Gold’s voice. “I’m pulling your team out, Commander,” he said. “Stand by for transport.