Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [38]
Picard had just slipped into a new tunic in the other room-he had discarded his blood-splattered outer garments in sickbay-when he heard a crash. He emerged to find that Batanides had thrown a glass vase across the room and into a wall. Now, as he grabbed her, she moved into his open arms, sobbing.
He found himself simultaneously uneasy and comfortable as he held her. Her hair was falling down in strands from the back of the intricate braided bun she wore, tickling his hands. He felt the years melt away, recalling their friendship at the Academy, the romance that could have been but had never blossomed. And he now felt like her protector; she may have outranked him, but for the moment, she was a friend in pain, and he was doing what he could to shield her, to comfort her.
Batanides stopped crying, and sniffed. He felt her hand unclench near his clavicle and wipe at her eyes. And then, she backed away from him, turning slightly as she wiped her cheek.
“Marta, I’m so sorry.”
She straightened slightly, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply through her nose. And then she finally spoke, the tremors still evident in her voice, but the commanding presence of mind returning to her once again. “Yes, thank you, Jean-Luc. I know you did everything you could to help him.”
“It wasn’t nearly enough,” Picard said, resignedly.
“No, I don’t blame you. From what you’ve said, nothing could have prevented what happened… except perhaps a little restraint on the rebels’ part.”
“We don’t know for certain who initiated the fighting. In fact, the first one I saw killed by disruptor fire was a rebel soldier.”
Batanides looked him steadily in the eye, once more the cool senior Starfleet officer. “Regardless, from what you’ve already told me, the rebels were definitely firing on your away team, the government delegation, and the Romulans as well. This Army of Light seems willing to resort to any level of violence to thwart Ruardh’s diplomatic efforts, and to bring the legitimate government down.”
“Marta, there is more to this situation than the Federation has been told. Falhain’s people have made grievous charges against the government. I saw evidence implicating Ruardh in military strikes against civilian dissidents-and even ‘ethnic cleansing.’ I’m no longer so firmly convinced that we’re supporting the right side in this matter.”
She frowned. “Are you saying that we should throw our support behind Falhain’s followers instead? Allow Chiaros IV to fall into the hands of the Romulans?”
“No. What I’m saying is that-“
“Wait.” The admiral held up her hand, her face expressing surprise. “Why didn’t we look at this before? Could the Romulans have been behind this attack, even at the risk of their own diplomats? They’re already our prime suspects in the Slayton affair, whether or not we can prove it.”
Picard nodded, weighing her words. “It could be that the Romulans’ plans for the Geminus Gulf are related to the Slayton’s destruction.”
“Maybe the rebels didn’t touch off the chaos in Hagraté after all, Johnny. Maybe the real culprits were a few well-placed Romulan agents provocateurs.”
“Unfortunately, Commander Data’s analysis doesn’t quite bear that out. None of the energy signatures he detected were Romulan in origin. But some of them actually appear to belong to Starfleet weapons.”
“So the finger of blame points back toward the rebels after all,” she said, looking satisfied.
“No, not necessarily,” Picard said. “You said that Starfleet Intelligence had been given reports that the rebels were using stolen weapons, but that could have been deliberate disinformation intended to muddy the local politics even further. You could have been strung along, given false information…. It certainly seems possible, given that the alleged atrocities of Ruardh’s regime have been kept secret until now.”
For a long moment, Picard’s eyes locked with Batanides’s. Behind her intense stare, he knew that her mind was racing, trying to overcome her grief using cold, hard logic. But the situation on Chiaros IV