Chapter Fourteen
She stepped forward, the hood completely gone now. As she did, the lights came up in the antechamber, illuminating her features. She looked much as she had almost a century before on the Enterprise; a few wrinkles touched her face and her hair was beginning to grey a little, but her eyes still held a flame that was youthful and passionate. In fact, the only striking difference was a deep scar that travelled from the point of her left eyebrow down to her jawline. She smiled at Spock, then Picard, then at me.
"Ambassador," began Picard, who was obviously confused by the whole ordeal, "who is this woman?" But Spock did not answer him. He stood stock still, his eyes locked on Valeris in a horror that he was finally beginning to be able to conceal.
"She's a traitor," I said to Picard. "She was one of the conspirators in the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon."
"Gorkon?" Picard said, calculating. "That was…the time of the peace accords at Camp Khitomer…over ninety years ago." Slowly he was piecing it together. "Yes," he continued, "I remember now. You were one of the top conspirators, and after the peace accords were signed, you were banished to Rura Penthe."
"Indeed, Captain. I am flattered that you seem to know so much. Yes, that's correct. After we were caught, we were sent to that frozen wasteland in place of James Kirk and Leonard McCoy, ironically because killing us would have been harmful to the peace process between the Federation and the Klingons, and the possible future of an alliance with the Romulans."
"Ambassador Nanclus," Picard and I chimed in unison.
"Precisely," she said. I looked around the room, and noticed that there were at least fifteen guards around the perimeter, all of them Reman. "However," she continued, "unlike the Captain and his Doctor, escape was not made so easy for us." She began to pace, looking pensively at the floor as she spoke. "The Romulan Ambassador died first. He had been working his way into the good graces of the guards, playing the manipulation game very well. But he was caught in a dark tunnel one night by some of the more disgruntled workers. They thought that he was an informant for them – which he was, but only for his own purposes – so they killed him.
"Admiral Cartwright killed himself almost a month later. He could not bear the thought of being imprisoned for the rest of his life. When he combined that with the guilt he felt over his alleged disloyalty to the Federation, he turned his dilithium cutter on himself, and ended it all. I myself was there for fifty-six years, four months and twelve days before I made my escape."
"How did you do that?" I asked incredulously. "No one ever escapes from Rura Penthe." Valeris laughed.
"You mean no one used to escape from Rura Penthe. There is nothing left to escape. I had been planning it for a very long time. I had watched and waited for a hole in the security of the place for fifty-six years, after all. It was only logical that one should eventually present itself.
"I managed to get a message to a ship, requesting emergency assistance. When I had confirmation from the ship that I would be rescued, I set about preparing for my escape from the beaming shield. The entire plan was nearly perfect, but I was caught at the last moment." She reached up and gently touched the scar on her face. "I had to fight my way out of it, but eventually I was outside the beaming shield. The ship that took me on had no idea that I was a fugitive; they were freighters, moving as quickly and silently through Klingon space as they could.
"I escaped into Romulan space, where I disappeared for a little while. In fact, the only venture back into Klingon space that I made was to return to Rura Penthe and blast it out of existence." There was a long silence.
"Why, Valeris?" said Spock at last. His voice was subdued and nearly inaudible; it echoed thinly off the chamber walls.
"I did it to free them," she said. "To free them from their captors and, more importantly, to free them from themselves."
"You're a monster," Picard breathed, glaring at her.
"Perhaps, Captain. Then again, perhaps not. After all, one cannot argue that I did free them from their captivity. Regardless, I escaped, and now I am here." She walked up to Spock, tracing a finger across his chest. Spock stared coldly at her.
"You know," she said to him, "we did have something very special, Spock. Something…deeper…than just a professional relationship."
"I was not aware of anything beyond that, unless you mean that we might have had a friendship of a sort," Spock said. Valeris clucked her tongue.
"Come now, Spock. Vulcans do not make 'friends'. It is not logical. But come on, can you tell me that you did not have feelings for me that stretched beyond those of just a teacher."
"Under the present circumstances, Valeris, I would imagine that it matters very little what I 'felt', as you put it."
"Oh, but it matters to me. In fact, it has been one of the most dominant thoughts in my mind over the last ninety years. You know, there were nights on Rura Penthe when I wept bitterly because of you," she said, her voice trembling a little.
"It was not I who chose to betray the Federation, Valeris."
"No, but it was you who knew my thoughts. Can you forget that in that moment, when our minds became one, that you knew of my desire for you? The longing to meld not only our minds, but our entire beings. Can you tell me that you do not remember the love I felt?"
Spock was quiet for a long moment, staring down at the floor. When he did look up, there seemed to be a mist over his eyes. Picard and I watched in silent awe as a single tear slipped from his eye, trailed down the weathered skin of his cheek, and dropped silently to the floor.
"I…remember," he said.
"Yes! That is it, Spock. Let your emotion flow. You loved me, and too long have you denied yourself the ability to express that."
For a moment, I thought Spock was going to break down and begin sobbing. But he managed to regain his composure, the stoic look returning to his face. When he spoke, his voice was still soft, but it had an edge of resolution in it.
"Those days are far past, Valeris. You have made your decisions, and I have made mine. The two can never meet."
"I know," she said with a mixture of sadness and resolution. "I suppose I had to try."
"That is understandable," said Spock, his voice now purely logical again.
"And yes, I have made decisions, which is why you are here today." She resumed pacing, looking away from us. "Guards, Mister Spock does not require his restraints anymore. Remove them." The guards looked hesitatingly at her, but were nevertheless quick to obey. They removed the heavy chains from his hands and feet.
"The galaxy is a small place," she said, "and it is only getting smaller. The Federation has made its bed with the Klingons, and soon it will do so with the Romulans. This is, of course, to say nothing of the countless other cultures that have been drawn in under the protective blanket of this menace."
"Do you forget, Valeris, that you were once an officer of this Federation you despise?" Picard said angrily. I knew it was a mistake, but before I could even shoot him a glance, she spun on her heel and grabbed Picard by the throat, lifting him bodily off the ground.
"Terran, I was working my fingers to the bone on a freezing shell of a planet many years before you were born because of the decisions I made while I was an officer of your Federation! I would advise that you forget your ability to speak without being spoken to." She dropped Picard and the menacing tone with which she spoke to him in the same instant, becoming at once the pacing intellectual again.
"As I was saying, the galaxy is becoming a smaller and smaller place. Ninety years ago, we thought that if we could start a war between the Federation and the Klingons, this problem would resolve itself. Now, things are different. There is no hope for the Federation now; it must be dissolved. When I came to this realization, I knew that I had to find a way to bring it about. That was when I discovered the Remans.
"As you are probably aware, the Remans have been an outcast society for generations. My late friend Shinzon used to say they are a race bred for war, needing only a leader to unify them. I let him think for a long time that he was to be that leader, and sadly it went to his head. His untimely demise was a sad necessity, for which I have you to thank, Captain Picard." She nodded at him.
"The Bek'Tal are those Remans whose loyalty belongs to me. Although we have been labeled as a small terrorist organization by most, in reality we are now the backbone of the Romulan Empire, though they do not yet know it. And through the Bek'Tal, I have discovered the way to bring the Federation to its knees once and for all. I have negotiated a deal with the Borg." All was silent, except for the sound of her footfalls as she paced.
"Pardon my curiosity," I said, "but the Borg aren't in the habit of negotiating with anyone. What makes you so special?" Valeris smiled at me.
"I have something they want."
"What could you possibly have that they don't already have?" Picard asked. She shrugged her shoulders.
"The secret to perfection."
"The Omega particle," I breathed, horrified.
"Exactly," she said, and suddenly it made perfect sense.
"You found a way to stabilize it," Picard said. "How?" She did not answer right away, but paced on for a few seconds.
"You know, I'm very fond of old Earth expressions. For example, have you ever heard it said that you must 'fight fire with fire'?" No one replied. "What is Omega?" she asked. "In any form but its most pure configuration, it is the essence of destruction. And it can only be tempered with a similar destructive force.
"Actually, that is a rather fanciful way of putting it," she continued. "The Borg have sought to stabilize the Omega molecule since the dawning of their existence, and they have always failed. I knew that the only way I could ever form an alliance with the Borg was to find the solution to their problem. Fortunately, I had a decided advantage over them, which we will discuss later.
"The instability of the Omega molecule, as it turns out, is due to its pseudo-biological effects on its surrounding environment. The molecule, when introduced to inanimate matter, will convert its molecular properties into a kind of false biological state. The weaker form of this is known commonly as protomatter, which is itself very unstable."
"The Genesis Project," I muttered, astonished. Spock looked sharply at me, and I realized that I should have kept my mouth shut.
"Indeed," Valeris concurred. "Do not worry, Spock. He has given nothing away that I did not already know. Omega is similar to the protomatter used in the Genesis Project, but it is much more potent. And it is the false nature of these protogenetic properties that cause Omega to be unstable; since the matter is not truly organic, it self-destructs, with crippling effects on surrounding matter. Also, since the instability is present even on the quantum level, Omega acts against space-time itself. The Borg knew this, but they had no way to combat it.
"That was why we began experimenting several years ago with thelaron radiation, which proved to be very effective in its obliteration of organic matter. As you are well aware, thelaron works on the subatomic level, which is far more effective than any other method we or the Borg had tried.
"There was one final step that had to be taken. We discovered that the false organic matter created by Omega had to be replaced with actual organic matter for the matrix to work. Specifically, genetic material was what we needed. We searched through numerous genome structures before we found the one that works. It was a stroke of beautiful irony when we found the right genetic material."
"What material was that?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Human."
