• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Belak smiled. “You will reassemble the attack fleet, and make best speed to Haakona. I will expect to see the target world before us in one siure. You have that long to come into compliance with your orders.”

And with that, he stalked off the command deck, leaving T’Met fuming and her command staff studiously avoiding eye contact with her.

Except for Uhlan Tomal at the communications console. “We’ve just received a priority communiqué from Romulus,” he said.

Wonderful, she thought. More good news, no doubt.

“Send it to my quarters, Tomal,” she said, and exited the command deck.

The dispatch she saw on the terminal in her small cabin was indeed a surprise, but not the kind for which she had girded herself. Owing to a highly improbable cascade of political circumstances back home, she was no longer consanguineous with an influential member of the Continuing Committee of the Romulan Senate.

However, she did share an ancestor with the newest praetor, a man with a new vision for the Romulan military. The most promising augury of that new vision was new orders to the Haakona-deployed forces, orders cut by Admiral Valdore himself.

T’Met activated the intercom unit on her desk. “Commander T’Met to helm.”

“Uhlan Makar here, Commander.”

“We’ve just received new orders, Uhlan. Plot a course for the Coalition front.”

The helmsman’s reply was tinged with relief. “Immediately, Commander.”

T’Met leaned back in her chair. Now, the fleet would be run in a rational fashion.

Still, she knew it was unwise to rejoice prematurely. The normally placid and standoffish Haakonans, after all, might not forget the ill-starred Romulan assault. They could decide to mount punitive attacks of their own, a development that could greatly complicate or even abort Valdore’s new effort. Even if everything went smoothly, a mass redeployment away from Haakona and toward Earth and her allies could take several turns of Remus to complete. During those interminable khaidoa, a great deal could happen, both inside and outside the Empire.

Over such a protracted span of time, the continued presence of Centurion Belak would become insufferable. But it came to her then that while she could do little to affect the future of Romulan-Haakonan relations, Centurion Belak’s destiny aboard the Terrh’Dhael now lay entirely within her power. D’deridex, Belak’s principal patron outside the Tal Shiar hierarchy, was dead.

Activating the intercom again, she said, “Centurion Belak, this is Commander T’Met. Please meet me in my quarters at your earliest convenience. I wish to discuss your desire to approach Haakona again.”

She rose from behind her small, tidy desk, drew her Honor Blade, and awaited the arrival of her guest.

The commander wondered which would be the first to drift across the billions of mat’drih that now separated the Terrh’Dhael from Haakona: Belak’s head, or the rest of his body.

SIXTY-THREE

Middle of the month of Z’at, YS 8765

Tuesday, March 16, 2156

Vulcan’s Forge, Vulcan

“YOU ARGUE PERSUASIVELY,“ Administrator T’Pau said, raising T’Pol’s hopes yet again in spite of herself.

Unsurprisingly, T’Pau dashed those hopes once more, just as she had done several times already during the six days since their desert colloquy had begun. “We remain, however, unpersuaded.”

Their dialogue had become an endurance contest as they descended from Mount Seleya to the desert canyon that marked its boundary. But it was a contest that the petite administrator seemed to be in no danger of losing. T’Pol was impressed by the smaller woman’s strength and stamina as she walked beside her along the Forge’s broiling sands, scarcely sweating despite the heaviness of her robes and Nevasa’s merciless brightness overhead. T’Pau showed little sign of the fatigue she must have felt, other than a slight puffiness around her dark eyes, which remained as sharp as ever.

Only twice before had T’Pol herself gone this long with neither food nor drink, on or off the Forge. The first time was the ten-day kahs-wan