The mission had been a complete success.
Leva and the others had given the Praetor and the rest of the Continuing Committee a shortened, ad-hoc version of their earlier presentation and within two hours Neral had pledged an unconditional entry into the war, joining the Federation and the Klingons in an alliance against the Dominion.
The Federation President had even left word, personally thanking the delegation for their hard work to make this treaty possible even if there was general consensus amongst them that it hadn’t really been their efforts which had led the Romulans into the war.
That fact hadn’t stopped the Romulans to quickly organize festivities with the delegation as honored guests.
They had all been brought into a lavishly decorated ballroom filled with senators and military and government representatives to listen to Neral’s speech who promised a quick end of Dominion tyranny now that the Romulan Empire had entered the war.
After the conclusion of the speech the attendees mingled and sipped on the worst champagne imitation Leva had ever tasted. It made him nostalgic for the Romulan Ale he had developed a taste for but the people who had arranged the event had apparently felt that an Earth-inspired beverage was the way to honor the occasion, no matter that not a single human was in attendance or the fact that they clearly hadn’t the slightest idea of how to properly replicate it.
“Mister Dar, a moment of your time.”
Xeris was approaching Dar but instead of holding a champagne flute, the engineer was carrying a padd. Dar nodded and the two men stepped into a quiet corner of the room for some privacy. Leva, concerned that Xeris had picked this moment to formally charge Dar with treason, joined them.
“What is this about, Commander?” Dar asked.
“I’ve had a chance to look over the fleet information you provided the Romulans the other day.”
Leva took a step closer. “This is hardly the time or the place to –“
But Dar interrupted him. “Let’s have it, Commander.”
“Among the vessels you have listed as responsible for patrolling the Neutral Zone are the Horatio, the Ahwahnee and the Voyager.”
“Wait a minute,” said Leva. “I thought Voyager was considered lost with all hands.”
Xeris nodded. “She is. And both the Horatio and the Ahwahnee were destroyed,” he said and glanced over the padd. “The same goes for most if not all the vessels provided in your presentation. The Arcos, the Melbourne, the Odyssey, the Enterprise-C which by the way was destroyed by Romulans, -“
Dar smirked. “I thought that was a nice touch. A twist of irony if you will.”
“You do realize of course that if the Praetor learns of this deception it could seriously endanger our new alliance,” Xeris said in a surprisingly harsh tone which left little doubt to his feelings on this matter.
“I don’t think it will. If anything it will strengthen it.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Leva.
“Isn’t it obvious,” said Dar. “There is nothing Romulans appreciate more than cunningness. I made a calculated decision. I was not going to reveal actual, classified information which could harm our war effort. But if my display of trust would have swayed them to join us, they eventually would have had access to our intelligence anyway. If we had been unsuccessful, the consequences of my deception would have mattered little.”
“But why the charade?” Leva asked, clearly stung by the fact that his old mentor had led him to believe that he had committed treason. “Why not tell us what you were up to?”
“There is still a lot you have to learn about diplomacy,” he told the younger Romulan. “A bluff only works if everybody believes that you aren’t bluffing. I’m sorry to have kept you in the dark but for it to work it was necessary.”
Xeris was not convinced. “That was an gratuitously risky gamble on your part and I cannot condone it,” he said sternly. “You flat out lied to the Romulans. If there are any repercussions arising from your deception, the responsibility will be yours alone,” he said and then walked away.
It left Dar to look after the other Romulan with some irritation. After a moment he turned to look at Leva who differently to Xeris looked at least a little relieved that he would not have to charge his friend with treason. “Let me ask you something, So’. How well do you know Commander Xeris?”
The question caught him by surprise. “Not particularly well. He tends to keep to himself. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” he said and tried to locate the engineer again but found that he had lost him in the crowd. “One might get the impression that he was personally offended that I dared to lie to the Romulan delegation. In can’t quite place it but something seems off with him. Has been ever since we got there.”
Leva frowned. “You know what? I’ve had it with this place.”
Dar shot him a quizzical look.
“Does every single Romulan have to be somebody other than they pretend? Is this world just filled with lies and deception? To tell you the truth there are days when I curse any part of me that is Romulan. And I can’t wait to put as much distance as I can to this damned place,” he said and turned on his heels to leave Dar by himself.
The older man tried to reach out for him, to find something he could say which could alleviate the sense of betrayal Leva was clearly feeling. The notion that Dar didn’t entirely trust Xeris had clearly lit the fuse on the ever-increasing sense of dread Leva had been experiencing.
Dar understood Leva perhaps better than the half-Romulan understood himself. He knew he was hurt. It had begun when he had drafted him to his mission to Romulus, a place he had never thought he would willingly set foot on. Dar’s perceived betrayal of course hadn’t helped and neither had the admission that it had all been a carefully planned deception to which he had been kept entirely ignorant. And then there was something else, something immensely personal which had broken his heart.
Dar had seen it first-hand in his eyes a few hours earlier when he and Donatra had been accused of treason against the empire.
Leva wasn’t a frail man, never had been but the events of the last few days were beginning to exert an emotional toll on the half-Romulan. And there was nothing Dar could do to help his student and friend.
He was in the middle of packing together his few belongings when the door chime announced a visitor.
After Leva ignored the first couple of rings he heard the doors behind him opening anyway. “The fact that I didn’t ask you to come in should have been a cue,” he said with his back turned to the doors.
The person took one step into the room and Leva immediately knew who it was before even catching one glimpse. He stood up straight. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here again,” he said and then turned to face Donatra.
“I was looking for you at the festivities but you had already left when I arrived.”
“I guess I’m not in a festive mood.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment
“I know it won’t mean much to you now but you have to believe me when I say that I’m sorry for what happened.”
“Yes, I am certain you are. After all you didn’t get what you where after, did you? The treaty is done. The Federation and the empire are allies. Whatever plans you and your buddies in the Tal Shiar hatched didn’t pan out. I supposed you can be comforted by the thought that it wasn’t due to a lack of trying on your part.”
She took another step. “You are right to be angry with me,” she said. “But at least be angry for the right reasons.”
He ignored her and reached for a bottle of Romulan Ale to stuff into his carryall. Normally the export of the beverage was strictly regulated but Cretak had gifted a bottle to each member of the delegation and even though the powerful liquor would forever remind him of painful memories, he hadn’t been able to refuse it.
“You are right,” she continued when Leva kept his back towards her. “I did lie to you but not because I was trying to undermine your efforts here. Whatever you think of me, you have to believe that I was never an opponent of this alliance.”
“It’s a bit pathetic for you to keep up the charade after the gig is up, don’t you think? And I’m sick of the lies. All of them. I’m sick of you and I’m sick of Romulus. I think you should leave,” he said without affording her another glance.
“You want the truth, then?” she said, her voice taking on a steely edge now.
Leva stopped what he was doing and then very slowly turned to face her. “I didn’t know you were capable of telling the truth,” he said and exchanged an icy look with the woman he thought he had fallen in love with. He broke eye contact again shortly thereafter. “I don’t see how it matters now, anyway,” he added and turned back to his bag.
She closed on him quickly and took hold of his arm, forcing him to keep facing her. “It matters,” she said.
For a short moment he felt those feeling he had developed return to the surface, triggered by the familiarity of her touch and scent. He quickly suppressed them, focusing on the betrayal instead. He tried to free himself but she was surprisingly strong.
“Yes, you are right,” she said. “I wasn’t entirely honest with you. At least not at first. But I’m not Tal Shiar and I’m not your enemy.”
“I saw the look you exchanged with Koval.”
“That’s because he recruited me for a mission. A mission I didn’t want to be any part of,” she said, a guilty look crossing her features. “But Chairman Koval is not a man you can just say no to without consequences.”
Leva finally wrestled his arm back and put some distance between them. “So you do admit that you were working for him to sabotage the talks.”
“No,” she said vehemently. “But I was told to get close to you. Koval knew that the chances for an alliance were miniscule at the time. But he saw you as a potential asset to the Empire. My mission, So’Dan, was to try and get you to defect.”
Leva shot her a skeptical look.
“I’m a military officer. Whatever you may think about Romulans, we’re not all natural liars and spies. I’ve never been trained for this kind of assignment and I never wanted to. I tried to explain this to Koval in the beginning but he was insistent that based on his intelligence profile for you, I was the perfect match. But I got sloppy and Vreenak found out about our … indiscretions,” she said and took a step towards him. “I got sloppy because I realized that I couldn’t go through with it. I … I genuinely started to care for you and I couldn’t bare the fact that you had decided to stay because of me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the idea. No, the truth is, I loved the idea but I knew it was for all the wrong reasons.”
For a long while neither one of them spoke. She kept her eyes on him, her face mirroring genuine pain and regret but Leva simply refused to look at her.
After what seemed like an eternity, Donatra spoke again. “For what it’s worth, I really think that if the circumstances had been different, we could have gone a long way together. I understand that you’ll probably hate me for the rest of your life but I want you to know that I never faked my feelings for you”, she said, waited for him to respond but when she realized that he had no intentions to she turned and headed for the doors again.
“Donatra,” he said just before she reached them.
When she looked back she saw him holding the bottle of ale with two glasses in the other hand.
“For old time’s sake?”
Leva and the others had given the Praetor and the rest of the Continuing Committee a shortened, ad-hoc version of their earlier presentation and within two hours Neral had pledged an unconditional entry into the war, joining the Federation and the Klingons in an alliance against the Dominion.
The Federation President had even left word, personally thanking the delegation for their hard work to make this treaty possible even if there was general consensus amongst them that it hadn’t really been their efforts which had led the Romulans into the war.
That fact hadn’t stopped the Romulans to quickly organize festivities with the delegation as honored guests.
They had all been brought into a lavishly decorated ballroom filled with senators and military and government representatives to listen to Neral’s speech who promised a quick end of Dominion tyranny now that the Romulan Empire had entered the war.
After the conclusion of the speech the attendees mingled and sipped on the worst champagne imitation Leva had ever tasted. It made him nostalgic for the Romulan Ale he had developed a taste for but the people who had arranged the event had apparently felt that an Earth-inspired beverage was the way to honor the occasion, no matter that not a single human was in attendance or the fact that they clearly hadn’t the slightest idea of how to properly replicate it.
“Mister Dar, a moment of your time.”
Xeris was approaching Dar but instead of holding a champagne flute, the engineer was carrying a padd. Dar nodded and the two men stepped into a quiet corner of the room for some privacy. Leva, concerned that Xeris had picked this moment to formally charge Dar with treason, joined them.
“What is this about, Commander?” Dar asked.
“I’ve had a chance to look over the fleet information you provided the Romulans the other day.”
Leva took a step closer. “This is hardly the time or the place to –“
But Dar interrupted him. “Let’s have it, Commander.”
“Among the vessels you have listed as responsible for patrolling the Neutral Zone are the Horatio, the Ahwahnee and the Voyager.”
“Wait a minute,” said Leva. “I thought Voyager was considered lost with all hands.”
Xeris nodded. “She is. And both the Horatio and the Ahwahnee were destroyed,” he said and glanced over the padd. “The same goes for most if not all the vessels provided in your presentation. The Arcos, the Melbourne, the Odyssey, the Enterprise-C which by the way was destroyed by Romulans, -“
Dar smirked. “I thought that was a nice touch. A twist of irony if you will.”
“You do realize of course that if the Praetor learns of this deception it could seriously endanger our new alliance,” Xeris said in a surprisingly harsh tone which left little doubt to his feelings on this matter.
“I don’t think it will. If anything it will strengthen it.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Leva.
“Isn’t it obvious,” said Dar. “There is nothing Romulans appreciate more than cunningness. I made a calculated decision. I was not going to reveal actual, classified information which could harm our war effort. But if my display of trust would have swayed them to join us, they eventually would have had access to our intelligence anyway. If we had been unsuccessful, the consequences of my deception would have mattered little.”
“But why the charade?” Leva asked, clearly stung by the fact that his old mentor had led him to believe that he had committed treason. “Why not tell us what you were up to?”
“There is still a lot you have to learn about diplomacy,” he told the younger Romulan. “A bluff only works if everybody believes that you aren’t bluffing. I’m sorry to have kept you in the dark but for it to work it was necessary.”
Xeris was not convinced. “That was an gratuitously risky gamble on your part and I cannot condone it,” he said sternly. “You flat out lied to the Romulans. If there are any repercussions arising from your deception, the responsibility will be yours alone,” he said and then walked away.
It left Dar to look after the other Romulan with some irritation. After a moment he turned to look at Leva who differently to Xeris looked at least a little relieved that he would not have to charge his friend with treason. “Let me ask you something, So’. How well do you know Commander Xeris?”
The question caught him by surprise. “Not particularly well. He tends to keep to himself. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” he said and tried to locate the engineer again but found that he had lost him in the crowd. “One might get the impression that he was personally offended that I dared to lie to the Romulan delegation. In can’t quite place it but something seems off with him. Has been ever since we got there.”
Leva frowned. “You know what? I’ve had it with this place.”
Dar shot him a quizzical look.
“Does every single Romulan have to be somebody other than they pretend? Is this world just filled with lies and deception? To tell you the truth there are days when I curse any part of me that is Romulan. And I can’t wait to put as much distance as I can to this damned place,” he said and turned on his heels to leave Dar by himself.
The older man tried to reach out for him, to find something he could say which could alleviate the sense of betrayal Leva was clearly feeling. The notion that Dar didn’t entirely trust Xeris had clearly lit the fuse on the ever-increasing sense of dread Leva had been experiencing.
Dar understood Leva perhaps better than the half-Romulan understood himself. He knew he was hurt. It had begun when he had drafted him to his mission to Romulus, a place he had never thought he would willingly set foot on. Dar’s perceived betrayal of course hadn’t helped and neither had the admission that it had all been a carefully planned deception to which he had been kept entirely ignorant. And then there was something else, something immensely personal which had broken his heart.
Dar had seen it first-hand in his eyes a few hours earlier when he and Donatra had been accused of treason against the empire.
Leva wasn’t a frail man, never had been but the events of the last few days were beginning to exert an emotional toll on the half-Romulan. And there was nothing Dar could do to help his student and friend.
* * *
He was in the middle of packing together his few belongings when the door chime announced a visitor.
After Leva ignored the first couple of rings he heard the doors behind him opening anyway. “The fact that I didn’t ask you to come in should have been a cue,” he said with his back turned to the doors.
The person took one step into the room and Leva immediately knew who it was before even catching one glimpse. He stood up straight. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here again,” he said and then turned to face Donatra.
“I was looking for you at the festivities but you had already left when I arrived.”
“I guess I’m not in a festive mood.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment
“I know it won’t mean much to you now but you have to believe me when I say that I’m sorry for what happened.”
“Yes, I am certain you are. After all you didn’t get what you where after, did you? The treaty is done. The Federation and the empire are allies. Whatever plans you and your buddies in the Tal Shiar hatched didn’t pan out. I supposed you can be comforted by the thought that it wasn’t due to a lack of trying on your part.”
She took another step. “You are right to be angry with me,” she said. “But at least be angry for the right reasons.”
He ignored her and reached for a bottle of Romulan Ale to stuff into his carryall. Normally the export of the beverage was strictly regulated but Cretak had gifted a bottle to each member of the delegation and even though the powerful liquor would forever remind him of painful memories, he hadn’t been able to refuse it.
“You are right,” she continued when Leva kept his back towards her. “I did lie to you but not because I was trying to undermine your efforts here. Whatever you think of me, you have to believe that I was never an opponent of this alliance.”
“It’s a bit pathetic for you to keep up the charade after the gig is up, don’t you think? And I’m sick of the lies. All of them. I’m sick of you and I’m sick of Romulus. I think you should leave,” he said without affording her another glance.
“You want the truth, then?” she said, her voice taking on a steely edge now.
Leva stopped what he was doing and then very slowly turned to face her. “I didn’t know you were capable of telling the truth,” he said and exchanged an icy look with the woman he thought he had fallen in love with. He broke eye contact again shortly thereafter. “I don’t see how it matters now, anyway,” he added and turned back to his bag.
She closed on him quickly and took hold of his arm, forcing him to keep facing her. “It matters,” she said.
For a short moment he felt those feeling he had developed return to the surface, triggered by the familiarity of her touch and scent. He quickly suppressed them, focusing on the betrayal instead. He tried to free himself but she was surprisingly strong.
“Yes, you are right,” she said. “I wasn’t entirely honest with you. At least not at first. But I’m not Tal Shiar and I’m not your enemy.”
“I saw the look you exchanged with Koval.”
“That’s because he recruited me for a mission. A mission I didn’t want to be any part of,” she said, a guilty look crossing her features. “But Chairman Koval is not a man you can just say no to without consequences.”
Leva finally wrestled his arm back and put some distance between them. “So you do admit that you were working for him to sabotage the talks.”
“No,” she said vehemently. “But I was told to get close to you. Koval knew that the chances for an alliance were miniscule at the time. But he saw you as a potential asset to the Empire. My mission, So’Dan, was to try and get you to defect.”
Leva shot her a skeptical look.
“I’m a military officer. Whatever you may think about Romulans, we’re not all natural liars and spies. I’ve never been trained for this kind of assignment and I never wanted to. I tried to explain this to Koval in the beginning but he was insistent that based on his intelligence profile for you, I was the perfect match. But I got sloppy and Vreenak found out about our … indiscretions,” she said and took a step towards him. “I got sloppy because I realized that I couldn’t go through with it. I … I genuinely started to care for you and I couldn’t bare the fact that you had decided to stay because of me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the idea. No, the truth is, I loved the idea but I knew it was for all the wrong reasons.”
For a long while neither one of them spoke. She kept her eyes on him, her face mirroring genuine pain and regret but Leva simply refused to look at her.
After what seemed like an eternity, Donatra spoke again. “For what it’s worth, I really think that if the circumstances had been different, we could have gone a long way together. I understand that you’ll probably hate me for the rest of your life but I want you to know that I never faked my feelings for you”, she said, waited for him to respond but when she realized that he had no intentions to she turned and headed for the doors again.
“Donatra,” he said just before she reached them.
When she looked back she saw him holding the bottle of ale with two glasses in the other hand.
“For old time’s sake?”
_____________________________
Stay tuned for ‘Logic/Heart’ featuring Sintina Aurelia from Dnoth’s Star Trek: Independence.
Stay tuned for ‘Logic/Heart’ featuring Sintina Aurelia from Dnoth’s Star Trek: Independence.
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