Unification - Jeri Taylor [34]
“Don’t you two look sweet?” he chortled at the two of them. Picard accepted the jibe without responding, as usual, and the android never changed expression. K’Vada couldn’t resist pushing it a little further. He strolled toward Data and circled him, eyeing him up and down. “Be careful, android,” he murmured. “Some Romulan beauty might take a liking to you… lick that paint right off your ears…” He was pleased to see that the now brown eyes blinked a bit at that.
Enjoying the discomfiture he felt he was creating, K’Vada moved to Picard, gave him a scrutinizing glance. “You know what the Romulans would do to you if they found you out?” “I have a pretty good idea,” replied Picard. K’Vada wondered if he did. If he himself had not seen the results of a Romulan interrogation, he would not have believed it.
Picard eyed him coldly and announced, “We are ready to be transported to the surface, Captain.” The brusque tone of his voice grated on K’Vada. He thought the Starfleet officer needed to be reminded of his place on this ship. “Just so we understand each other,” he said in a voice he hoped was just dark enough to be menacing, “my orders don’t include rescue missions.”
For the first time, he saw something harden in Picard’s eyes; it affected him more than a raised hand might from another man. K’Vada looked right into those flinty eyes, and after a moment convinced himself that he’d frightened Picard enough. He gestured casually to his tactical officer. “yIghuHlup!” he ordered. Then he turned back to Picard and Data. “Good luck, Captain,” he said without rancor, and gestured once more. The two false Romulans dematerialized in front of him.
You’ll need it and then some, he thought. Then he turned and sat in his command chair, and decided to devote the next hour to erotic thoughts of K’kam.
Chapter Ten
THE PLANET OF Romulus had throbbed below them like a live bacillus.
A planet could not throb, of course, but that’s what it had seemed like to Picard as they had looked at it from the bridge of the Kruge. It was a gray, bleak sphere, from which occasional and spectacular erup-tions of red fire blistered their way toward the upper atmosphere—the famed Firefalls of Gath Gal’thong. This massive area of constant volcanic activity was one aspect of Romulan geology that had become known outside their binary star system. On the unstable continent of Dektenb, tectonic plates ground and shifted against each other, and the molten interior of the planet sought the weak points of the crust. Flare-ups were frequent and immense, as plumes of flame shot miles into the sky; fires and lava flows glowed red and orange in serpentine patterns.
From space, the effect was that Romulus appeared to throb with malevolent, palpitating life. Romulus was the third planet of a binary star system comprised of Romulus and Romii. All the planets maintained a highly elliptical orbit; for that reason, geologic development was erratic. Dektenb was unpredictable and volatile; in the other hemi-sphere, the continent of Masfarik was barren and rocky except in a few oases where cities and towns struggled for survival. The population of the planet was jammed into these cities, which tended to grow upward rather than outward, and population density reached intolerable levels.
But if the planet, from space, throbbed with malig-nant, pulsing life, there was no sense of that muscular vitality on the streets of the capital city of Dartha. Now that he and Data had transported to the surface, and into the teeming neighborhood known as Krocton segment, Picard was overwhelmed with a sense of deadness. Massive structures of steel and glass climbed toward the skies, creating narrow tunnels below where sunlight seemed not to penetrate. An eternal dusk prevailed, relieved sporadically by artificial lights that had been installed at periodic intervals and whose pale green light seemed ineffectual against the relentless gloom.
At street level there was no evidence of steel or glass. Dartha was an ancient city, and had grown