Her words hung in the air. The room was quiet, though Troi’s empathic senses were numbed beneath a deluge of conflicting reactions.
“Please,” Will said gently, breaking the silence. He gestured toward the empty chairs that lay upended and scattered on the floor. Despite the empathic “noise” that still crowded the room, Troi found his sense of relief unmistakable. She noticed then that something else lay beneath that emotion as well.
Admiration. He was greatly impressed with her performance. She had to force herself not to smile, though she felt both relief and cool satisfaction.
Tal’Aura had remained seated. Her face impassive despite her distraught emotional state, she chose that moment to rise and address the room. “We shall adjourn for now.”
The praetor turned to face Troi. “You have pointed out some of our most critical weaknesses, Commander Troi, and for that I thank you. Those weaknesses will be addressed prior to the first full conference among all the factions.” Next, she faced Tomalak. “Come, Proconsul. You and I have much to discuss.” It was obvious to Troi that their discussion was likely to be quite loud and one-sided; Tal’Aura no doubt took a dim view of mortal combat in the Hall of State, and demanded better self-control from her subordinates.
After Tal’Aura and the chastened yet still-angry Tomalak exited the chamber, Durjik, Donatra, and Suran did likewise, escorted to separate exits by the small group of armed uhlans who had been discreetly guarding the room’s perimeter during the meeting.
Now the away team stood alone in the Senate Chamber, at least for the moment.
“Well,” Will said, heaving a sigh of relief. “I suppose that could have gone a lot worse.”
“Your diplomacy was inspired,” Akaar said to Troi, a small appreciative smile crossing his normally dour features. She could tell that he, too, was sincerely impressed. “If more than a little dangerous.”
“Betazoid empathy can help a negotiator avoid pushing too hard,” she said. Sometimes, anyway.Empathy or no, she still felt as though she’d just made a successful bluff while holding only threes and deuces, beating the odds because of blind chance as much as skill. “Maybe it was just a lucky gamble.”
“I’m not sure what you did was a gamble at all,” Keru said. “It’s almost as though you switched your empathic abilities into ‘offensive’ mode.”
She frowned slightly. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean,” Will said, grinning, “that you were giving off what a jazz musician would call a very strong ‘vibe.’ ”
“It’s not something I like to do very often,” she said quietly. She recalled the extremely unpleasant ordeal that she had shared with her mother five years earlier. They had been part of a large group of Betazoid telepaths that had used a highly dangerous invasive empathy technique against the Dominion forces that had invaded and occupied Betazed. Use of the technique had ultimately freed Betazed, at the cost of too many Betazoid lives. She shuddered at the memory.
“Perhaps,” the admiral said, “you should speak to the Lesser Teers of Capella’s Ten Tribes after this mission concludes. You might speed my homeworld’s admission to the Federation by a generation or more.”
Troi noticed then that Keru had taken his tricorder out and was once again slowly scanning the room, obviously taking advantage of the peculiar absence of armed guards. After turning once in a full circle, he scowled and breathed an inaudible curse.
“Find anything?” Will wanted to know.
The big Trill nodded. “Something very interesting, Captain. Evidently one of the excluded power factions didfind a way to attend this meeting after all.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning this place is crawling with tiny listening devices. Literally. I want to scan everybody closely before we beam back aboard Titan.”
Will gave Keru a crisp nod. “Do it.” Keru immediately got busy, beginning with Troi.
A moment later the security chief reached between the braided rows of her hair and grasped something there. He took a step back and revealed that he was holding something tiny between his thumb and forefinger. “Could you hold this thing so I can scan it?” he asked her. She nodded, and he dropped it into her open hands.
She found she had to grab the pinhead-size, hard-shelled object quickly between her own thumb and forefinger. The thing was made of metal, and its dozen or so legs were trying frantically to carry it away, no doubt back to its secretive masters. She handed the squirming “bug” to Will and silently mouthed the words “Tal Shiar.” Then she shuddered, unnerved by this new violation of her person. Their eyes and ears reallyare everywhere.
A few minutes later, after some careful scanning and grooming, the away team materialized back in Titan’s transporter room four, where the group underwent a second series of scans, which turned up negative.
“Interesting that we were left unguarded just long enough to find and disable those Tal Shiar ‘bugs,’ ” Will said after they had all been certified “bug-free.”
“Did Tal’Aura know they were there?” Keru wondered aloud as he tucked his tricorder away. He placed it beside the shielded sample vial in which he had stored the captured listening device in the hope that Titan’s science and engineering staff could use it to develop enhanced tactical countermeasures.
“Perhaps this little discovery makes the Tal Shiar a likelier culprit in Pardek’s murder than Tal’Aura or Tomalak,” Will said.
Troi nodded in agreement. “Or Donatra.”
“I certainly hope so,” Will said.
The group left the transporter room and entered the adjoining corridor, whereupon Akaar and Keru went one way—presumably intent on getting the captured Tal Shiar bug to Jaza and Ledrah—while Troi followed Will the other way into a turbolift she knew would take them straight to the bridge. Despite the reassuring arm he placed around her shoulders after the doors closed and the lift began to move, a wave of sadness swept over her. “Vibe” or no “vibe,” building trust among such hardened, suspicious, and cynical people as these Romulan leaders could very well prove to be the single biggest challenge of her Starfleet career.
She prayed silently that it was a challenge she could meet.
Chapter Sixteen
VIKR’L PRISON, KI BARATAN, ROMULUS
“M nean partrai hra’ yy’a hwi hvei h’rau na gaehl!”
Mekrikuk’s deep voice echoed down the corridor. Generally, the Romulan klhusignored the yelling and screaming from the Remans, but when someone yelled that there was another dead body back in the cells—as Mekrikuk had just done—they paid slightly more attention. Whether the corpses ended up in the food or in a mass grave somewhere outside the prison was a matter of constant debate. Mekrikuk had always suspected that the Romulan corpses were treated with slightly more dignity than the Reman dead were afforded, and he hoped this would be the case now.
The Romulan known by others as Rukath, but to Mekrikuk and his protected ones as Tuvok, lay motionless on the ground. Tesruk and Kachrek were guarding his body to prevent any postmortem molestation by the other prisoners, but Mekrikuk knew that it was not his protected ones that really kept the others at bay. His own menacing presence accomplished that.