Taking Wing - Michael A. Martin [75]
Donatra continued staring into the ever-shifting recesses of the great tear in the spatial fabric known as the Great Bloom. She couldn’t bring herself to disagree with Suran’s assessment of the thing’s significance. But she preferred to see another dimension to it as well: it was also a testament to the sacrifices that both Romulan and Federation nationals even now stood ready to make for the ever-elusive cause of peace.
Perhaps it is also a monument to redemption. Donatra wondered if she would ever expiate the guilt she still felt for having once supported the man who had slain every member of the Romulan Senate except for the one who now called herself the Empire’s praetor.
It is indeed a hopeful sign that we have found a constructive use for this remnant of Shinzon’s folly, Donatra thought, watching in silence as orderly patterns of dots carefully arranged themselves at strategic positions between the glowing loops of thalaron-tortured space-time. She sincerely hoped that taking advantage of the phenomenon’s newfound utility would give additional meaning to the lives of all the soldiers and senators whom Shinzon’s horrible weapon had slain.
Each of the more than two dozen tiny shapes on the viewer’s tactical display represented a D’deridex-class or Mogai-class warbird, every one of them equipped with armaments, shields, and engines comparable to those of their flagship, the battle-scarred Valdore. Those potent armaments included not only scores of disruptor banks and hundreds of photon torpedoes, but also large complements of small but lethal attack fliers.
Every one of these vessels had already been officially written off as seized or destroyed during the brief Reman uprisings that had flared up immediately after Shinzon’s assassination of the Senate. If the commanders and crews of these vessels took care to maintain their distance from the spatially-riven event horizon that lay close to the center of the Great Bloom’s expanse, those ships would find a safe and discreet port here, remaining undetectable from any appreciable distance. The space-time distortions caused by the Great Bloom’s intense gravitational lensing effects would see to that. Now our “ghost fleet” but awaits either my or Suran’s command to pounce upon whoever prevails in the struggle for civilian power, be it Tal’Aura, Pardek, political moderates, or even those vile, cave-dwelling uaefv’digae from Remus.
The aft turbolift door hissed open. Out of the corner of her eye, Donatra saw Commander Suran enter at a breathless near-run. “We need to speak, Commander. Privately.”
Donatra suppressed a harried sigh. She wondered how many more times she would have to soothe Suran’s misgivings about hiding so many ships within the Bloom’s energetic shadow. He had objected from the beginning that the Bloom, as good a hiding place as it was, lay too far away from Romulus to allow for a sufficiently fast deployment should the need to do so arise unexpectedly. But he had never presented a better alternative. Although Suran was ostensibly on her side in the Empire’s ongoing power struggles, there were times when she wished she could simply pull rank on him rather than having to explain and persuade. But even if I could just order him about, what assurance do I have that he would do as I command?
Then she saw the look of real concern in his eyes, which blazed with a sincerity she hadn’t seen since Tal’Aura had engineered Admiral Braeg’s death. Though she respected Suran’s tactical prowess, she didn’t credit him with enough artifice to counterfeit such passion. Whatever was on Suran’s mind now, it was clearly nothing trivial.
“Of course,” Donatra said, keeping her voice even as she gestured toward the bridge’s starboard side.
“It’s about former Senator Pardek,” Suran said as soon as the plain gray duranium door had slid shut behind them, ensuring their privacy. “He’s just been found dead.”
She dropped heavily into the chair behind