Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [132]
Without another word, Zweller turned and followed Riker. Hawk watched him go, without a trace of regret.
Hawk looked over at Ranul, who smiled and playfully ruffled his hair as they continued down the corridor toward holodeck three. Swashbuckling combat against Bluebeard and his pirates-which he and Keru had postponed for several days now-awaited them. It would be a tame diversion compared to the events of the past week. They might even get to enjoy some time together on a sandy beach after defeating the enemy’s galleon full of brigands.
We have all the time in the world together now, Hawk thought as the holodeck door beckoned.
Chapter Twenty
Romulus, Stardate 50454.1
Senator Pardek looked out from the cliffside veranda, his dark, deep-set eyes surveying the sun-dappled surface of the Apnex Sea, which lapped gently at the jagged rocks far, far below. A small flock of mogai wheeled lazily overhead in a muted gray sky. Beneath them, blood-green waters stretched placidly to the horizon, and lapped at a shoreline teeming with multicolored succulents. Pardek thought, as he often did when he came here, that this must surely be the most beautiful vista on all of Romulus, the jewel in the Romulan Star Empire’s crown.
It was also possibly the safest place he could be. There were no air-or watercraft anywhere to be seen, thanks to the warning messages broadcast by his automated security system. But Pardek also counted on the protection of his own flesh-and-blood security staff, an experienced cadre of loyal Romulan soldiers who were as accomplished in the art of repulsing unwanted visitors as they were at keeping out of sight when not needed. The villa was the one place to which he could retreat from the often vexing intrigues of the Senate and the incessant infighting of the Continuing Committee. Here, he could almost convince himself that the vast length and breadth of the Empire contained nothing that might serve to trouble him, from his principal home in the Krocton Segment to the most remote Neutral Zone outpost; that young upstarts in the Senate weren’t constantly gunning for his position; that the Vulcan radical Spock wasn’t still at large somewhere in the Empire, spreading the subversive doctrine of Romulan-Vulcan unification to ever-increasing numbers of willfully gullible souls.
And that headaches such as the Tal Shiar’s fiasco in the Geminus Gulf were merely bad dreams from which he would awaken.
Pardek had already decided that he would remain at the villa until tomorrow morning. Then, the Continuing Committee would begin its probe into the fitness of Chairman Koval to continue leading the Tal Shiar. Only then, once Pardek was forced to return to the Senate chambers to take gavel in hand before the board of inquiry, would he pause to worry about the possible consequences of Koval’s inquest.
At least, that was the plan.
Returning to the central courtyard, Pardek tried to banish all thought of Koval and the Tal Shiar by concentrating on his garden. Here were the finicky Terran roses he so valued for their sweet scent, there the fast-growing crystalline life-forms, which the Tzenkethi called nirikeh; their crystals twinkled, silver and emerald and violet in the subdued sunlight, seeming to grow before his eyes. He continued walking, passing under the fronds of the rippleberry tree the Dominion Vorta Weyoun had given him last month as part of a nonaggression-pact overture. That offer was going to require some serious thought and debate, Pardek told himself; he trusted the Vorta even less than he did the Tal Shiar.
Beyond the rippleberry tree lay the patch of ground he reserved his prized Edosian orchids. The pink-edged, yellow flowers, which now stood on knee-high stalks, required specially prepared soils and a great deal of attention. This particular variety had come into his possession many years ago, introduced to him by an unusually well-mannered and talkative Cardassian groundskeeper he had met at the Cardassian Embassy, a few weeks prior to Proconsul Merrok’s tragic demise.