Unification - Jeri Taylor [70]
No matter. Whatever her genesis, she was a creature without conscience, and her presence in this underground chamber gave a frightening new twist to this situation.
Sela stared at the Starfleet captain known as Picard and felt an undeniable thrill of triumph. She had heard this man’s name from the earliest time she could remember—and had grown up hating him. Her mother had talked of him constantly, as she did of all her fellow officers on the Enterprise, and Sela had gradually decided that each of those people was her blood enemy.
It was bad enough that her mother was human, and a common prisoner. That she failed to realize the honor that had been bestowed on her by General Meldet, who chose to mate with her—this was what Sela could not forgive. Her mother was not only foolish but unworthy.
Sela was the product of the union between the captured Starfleet officer and one of the highest-ranking generals in the Romulan guards. And during the brief part of her childhood while her mother still lived, she was subject to Tasha Yar’s endless stories of the vast starship on which she had served, and the wonderful people she had worked with. It was a strange story, and Sela didn’t fully understand it. Tasha kept saying that Captain Picard had sent her “from the future.” Sela didn’t know what that meant until she was older, and even then she couldn’t comprehend it. But what Tasha had said was that her ship, the Enterprise D, had somehow encountered its counterpart from the past—the Enterprise C.
It was some kind of space-time distortion, obviously, and who could truly explain those? However it happened, heI’ mother had been sent by Picard to join the Enterprise C—the ship from the past. And that ship was attacked by Romulan forces and destroyed, with all but a handful being killed immediately.
Tasha was one of those survivors. After standard interrogation, she had caught the eye of Meldet, who desired her. And, in order to spare her life and the lives of her fellow prisoners, Tasha Yar consented to become Meldet’s consort. Sela had been born a year later.
And, for over four years, heard the stories of the Enterprise crew.
Sela had probably loved her mother at one point; she couldn’t remember it, but surely love had been there once. However, her adoration of her father was immediate and constant. He was powerful and exciting—tall, with a deep voice that Sela loved. Her father was feared and respected by everyone.
How could her mother not adore this man?
But she didn’t. She tolerated him, but she did not love him. And, one night when Sela was four, her mother had come to her in the middle of the night and, warning her to be very quiet, bundled her up and carried her out of their compound.
Only when they were outside did Sela realize that she was being stolen away, away from her beloved father, away from her home, away from everything she held dear. And so she cried out for the guards.
Her father had offered this woman her life. He had given her a home, protection, a daughter. And how did Tasha Yar repay him? With betrayal.
Sela stood with her father and watched as Tasha was executed. Everything in her that was human died with her mother that day. All that was left was a Romulan, who burned with the desire to destroy the crew of the Enterprise, those to whom Tasha had been loyal. Those who had caused her to betray Sela’s father.
And now, standing in this damp cave, looking at the astonished faces before her, Sela realized that she had the glorious Picard in her power. She would see if he measured up to all her mother’s overblown praise. She doubted it. Before she was through, he would be revealed for the petty, inadequate human that he was. And Sela’s lifelong dream would be realized.
As Picard stood in the harsh white glare of the kekogen lamps, staring into Sela’s cold, gleaming eyes, Picard realized that his and Spock’s instincts about Neral had been correct. The proconsul had