Second self, p.4
Second Self, page 4
“I’ll take Raffi back down,” said Pella.
“Fine by me,” said Northey. “Good luck with whatever you decide to do about Ordeve, Raffi. Most of all—good luck getting permission to visit. I hear from our friends—and they are our friends—over at the Cardassian desk that the new castellan is getting irritated at the way that Starfleet has been leaning on her over this extradition. She might not want you sniffing around the place.”
Thanks for that vote of confidence, Raffi told Northey’s departing back.
Pella said, “Come on, Raff. Show’s over.”
Pella led her back through the open-plan office toward the lift. Raffi, hearing the low whispering of the junior lieutenants as she passed by, was caught between anger at the treatment she had received, and deep regret for the decisions that had led her to this. These three people—they had been her friends. She had trusted them—and they had trusted her. Another part of her life, squandered, fallen into ruin and overgrown with weeds. In the turbolift, she leaned her head back against the wall.
“Damn it.”
“I’m sorry that didn’t go so well,” said Pella.
“Are you, Vaz?” said Raffi.
“Yes,” said Pella. “I never… I never blamed you, Raffi, for everything that happened. I know that the relief mission ending was a shock. I felt…”
Don’t say sorry for me.
“I’ve only ever wanted you to find your way again,” said Pella.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” said Raffi. “Do you know that I’ve been invited to return to Romulan Affairs?”
“Yes,” said Pella, and added nothing more.
“Hey,” said Raffi. “Don’t fall over yourself in excitement. Do the others know?”
“Yes,” said Pella.
“And?”
“Well, I’d be glad to have you back,” said Pella. “But that might not be the same for everyone. You know there was some reputational damage—”
“You said yourself that everything I claimed turned out to be true!”
“Yes, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Have you thought about that? Thought about what it was like here? Romulan Affairs was the butt of every joke, for years. Good people, doing first-rate work, and everyone would finish up meetings saying, ‘Have you run this past Raffi Musiker? She might have caught something you’ve missed.’ ”
“When you put it like that,” said Raffi, “I can see how that might rankle.”
“Anyway, this is what you’ll be coming back to.” Pella shook her head in exasperation. “You can’t expect to walk back in after all these years, after everything that happened, and pick up where you left off! Particularly if it seems like important people are pulling strings for you—”
“That’s not fair,” said Raffi hotly.
“Almost certainly not,” said Pella. “But that’s what people are thinking.” She gave Raffi a sharp look. “And no, you don’t need to be telepathic to know that.” She leaned in. “Speaking confidentially, I think Kebil was probably angrier that you were the one recruited by Picard than at the shocking mess of things you made after the synth attack.”
“I was right, Vaz—”
“Yes, Raffi, but still…”
Again, the memory of her desperation at that time made her burn with embarrassment. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.” She felt a smile twitch at her lips. “He didn’t like that, hey?”
“You were the superstar, Raffi. Out of all of us. Kebil always resented that.”
“I never knew.”
“As long as you were part of the team, he could ignore that. He could feel like he was your equal. But then you got the call from the mighty admiral, and you left…”
“Yeah, well, look how that turned out,” said Raffi.
“You made the right choice,” said Pella. “We all would have jumped at the chance. You did great work, Raffi, for as long as you could. And it wasn’t your fault the mission failed. I’m sorry you were another casualty.”
That was good to hear. Kind. What a friend might say. They walked back through the entrance hall and Raffi checked herself out at the security desk. Pella followed her outside and they stood together in the bright sunshine.
“Anything you need,” said Pella, “come straight to me. I’m not saying that people back there would set you up to fail, but they might not set you up to succeed.”
“Copy that,” said Raffi. “Were the internal politics always this bad? I don’t remember them being this bad.”
“Who knows?” said Pella. “I’m like the lobster in the pot. Maybe the water’s been getting hotter all the time, and I’ve never noticed.” She reached into her pocket and drew out an isolinear chip. “Apropos of nothing, you’ll find this contains some interesting reading.”
Raffi reached over to take the chip. “Yes?”
“The situation on Ordeve right now with the Romulan refugees is tricky. And you’ve got plenty of experience with Romulan refugees. Just read the files, Raff.”
Raffi, staring at the crystal, said, “Vaz, are you sure?”
“Those guys upstairs,” Pella replied. “Too emotional. But you’re right. Someone needs to bring this man to justice. Cardassian Affairs can’t intervene, and the Romulan desk can’t justify intervening. So why not you?” Pella smiled. “Walking back inside that building was the easy part, Raffi. But you’re going to need a big success on Ordeve, if you want to win back people’s confidence. But you can at least consider me…”
“On my team?”
“Cheering you on from the sidelines,” said Pella.
“Thank you, Vaz.”
“It’s okay. But Raffi—I want you to think carefully about this. Are you sure coming back here is what you want?”
“I don’t know yet,” Raffi admitted. “That’s part of the point of doing this.”
“You can’t go back to how it was,” Pella said. “None of us can. We can only…”
“Move on?”
“Move forward,” said Pella. “You can’t fix the past. Only learn to live with it.”
That, thought Raffi, as she headed for the public transporters, would be better than nothing.
* * *
Vazreen’s files were gold. Not for the first time, Raffi thought that it wasn’t the friends in high places that mattered most. Friends in high places sometimes forgot to look down from their lofty heights. But people like Vaz Pella always came through. Her report on the Romulan refugee situation on Ordeve was precise, clear, and informative. The current governor of Ordeve—the exarch, to use the Cardassian term—had allowed a large number of Romulan settlers over the past decade. But over the last few months, fewer and fewer permits had been granted, and the exarch had indicated that she intended to stop the flow of settlers to Ordeve. Naturally, the Romulans were frustrated, because family members of people already living there were struggling to join them.
A matter requiring attention, Pella had written alongside this. If only there was anybody available with expertise in the resettlement of Romulan refugees.
Raffi, reading through the personnel files, saw that Vaz had highlighted one for her attention: the Romulan liaison to the Cardassian exarch, Nuvu Sokara. Raffi recognized his name immediately—in fact, it was a shock to see it, after all these years. Damn. How strange that he was back on Ordeve. Sokara had been on Earth throughout the Dominion War, a liaison between the Tal Shiar and Starfleet Intelligence. Raffi had gotten to know him during the course of the war. When she’d been assigned to Ordeve, she’d bumped into him in the capital, Merna. Their paths had then run alongside each other for a few short, intense weeks. After which—nothing. Until now.
Raffi studied his picture: he looked older (who didn’t?), wearied no doubt by the struggles and privations of recent Romulan history. She had not liked him (was it possible to like a Tal Shiar agent?), but their working relationship during the Dominion War had been mutually beneficial. She hadn’t trusted him (was it possible to trust Tal Shiar?), but she had respected him. He’d understood the gray area in which they operated, and how to make it work for both of them. He had come through for her on Ordeve. Now he was back there—a refugee, presumably, but one with some authority. How strange, though, that he should be on Ordeve. How strange that their paths would cross, once more, there, of all places. If you thought too hard about that, you might start to feel uneasy.
Securing a channel to speak to Sokara proved straightforward, testament to the length of time there had been Romulan settlements on Ordeve, and hopefully indicative of the relative stability of the world in recent years. Raffi wondered, as she waited for him to appear on-screen, how different she might appear from the young lieutenant he had known all those years ago. She wondered how much she had changed.
When she saw him on-screen, her heart went out to him. These past years of chaos and turmoil had undoubtedly taken their toll. The austere, pristine, and seemingly unaging Tal Shiar agent that she remembered was now gray, tired, and wearing worn civilian clothes. But alive. How had Sokara escaped, Raffi wondered, when so many other Romulans had not? Membership in the Tal Shiar must have helped, easing his passage out of the danger zones when so many others were left behind. When they had been opposite numbers on Earth, he had been broad-minded and willing to work with her. And then, there was everything that he had done for her on Ordeve, a debt that she was not sure could ever be repaid. She was glad to see him and touched that he seemed glad to see her. His stern and weary face was lightened by a wan smile.
“Lieutenant Commander Musiker,” he said. “After all this time—what a surprise.”
“Pleasant, I hope.”
“Entirely, let me assure you. I hope the passing years have treated you well.”
Those years had been something of a mixed bag, but when Raffi compared her own recent history with what must have happened to him, she couldn’t complain. She’d been lost, sure, but it turned out there had been places to come back to.
“They’ve not been bad,” she said. “How about you?”
“Less than good,” he admitted. “But they could have been considerably worse. What can I do for you, Commander?”
“It’s more what I might be able to do for you,” she said. “I took a break from Romulan Affairs for a while, but I’ve been back in touch with my old colleagues recently. They knew I was stationed on Ordeve once upon a time and drew my attention to what’s happening there now.”
“Yes?” He looked cagier now. “What did they say?”
“My information is fairly limited, but my impression from reading the files is that there’s a continuing dispute between the Romulans and the Cardassians. I wondered if I might be able to help.”
“Given your prior experience mediating between Romulans and Cardassians here?”
“Something like that,” she said. “You never know when some pressure from Starfleet might come in handy.”
“That was certainly what I learned all those years ago,” he observed dryly. “But I have to admit interest from a Starfleet officer would be very timely. The situation here is becoming acute.” He looked very weary now. “I’d be glad to see you, Raffi. I’d be glad if someone helped.” He sighed: a man with limited resources that were surely close to being exhausted. Maybe helping him would make her less ambivalent. Maybe if her real mission did not work out (who even knew if her target was still on Ordeve; he could be long gone), she could do some good, for a man to whom she owed a great deal.
“I heard about your work with Picard on the Verity,” said Sokara.
“We tried,” Raffi said. Which was true, although she was conscious—so very conscious—of how profoundly they had failed. “We’d barely started when the brass called off the mission.”
The Romulan relief mission had depended critically—and unwisely, perhaps, in retrospect—on the use of synth labor for the rapid manufacture of the massive number of starships required to move thousands and thousands of Romulans. When the synths employed at the Utopia Planitia shipyards went rogue, killing everyone, it led to the subsequent ban on synthetic life. That ended the mission. It was, to Raffi, one of the Federation’s gravest mistakes. Worse than that—one of the greatest betrayals of their ideals. Millions of Romulans left without assistance. A retreat from their oaths and obligations. A truly dark day for the United Federation of Planets.
“The movement of people out of Romulan space has continued apace.” Sokara’s clipped words concealed millions of devastating stories: homes abandoned, never to be recovered; people lost who could never be brought back. The Federation could have done more. They should have done more.
“You know,” said Raffi, “I’m surprised any Romulan would choose to go into Cardassian territory.” The Cardassian-Romulan front, during the Dominion War, had been a byword for brutality and excess. There was no love lost between these two species. “But I guess there isn’t a choice when you’re running for your life.”
“Just so,” said Sokara. “But I must be fair to our hosts—they have been remarkably sympathetic to our plight. I think that after their own experiences, the Cardassians understand what it is like to be desperate. To be the beggars of the quadrant.”
Raffi could understand his reasoning. The Fire, they called it on Cardassia; the mass slaughter of the population and destruction of buildings and infrastructure that the retreating Jem’Hadar had inflicted across the entire Cardassian Union. Cardassia, bombed almost into extinction, had relied significantly on Federation aid during the postwar period. To their credit, they had rebuilt rapidly, and with considerably less of the nationalistic posturing that had been their pre-war trademark. Their population had grown, although it was nowhere near the pre-war levels, and to some extent you could even call them the success story of the quadrant. When the Federation withdrew from the Romulan refugee relief effort, successive Cardassian governments had enjoyed pointing out how much more they were doing for their Romulan neighbors. Taking the moral high ground over the Federation took some cheek, particularly when you had war criminals still at liberty, but nobody had ever said that the Cardassians lacked chutzpah.
“As far as I could tell from the reports, everything was going well on Ordeve,” said Raffi, “until recently.”
“The situation has been mutually beneficial,” said Sokara. “Many of the Cardassian colony worlds—like Ordeve—were almost emptied after the Jem’Hadar massacres. They needed people to rebuild. Romulan settlers have been extremely useful. That was the case here, for a long time.”
“Impressive,” said Raffi. “Given the history.”
“Indeed. But now we seem to have reached an impasse. A barrier to progress.”
Faintly, as if from a great distance, Raffi heard a ringing in her ears, like a warning bell, an alarm. She shook her head. “Go on.”
“We’ve been a model of successful settlement. We were made to feel very welcome. We helped rebuild the towns and villages. Brought in harvests. We have lived peacefully alongside our hosts for many years now.”
This hadn’t been the case on other worlds, Raffi knew, where the promises of good homes and real work had turned out to be nothing. The Romulans had been consigned to hopeless shanty towns. “What’s gone wrong?”
“Success brings its own problems,” said Sokara. “As we put down roots, made lives here, more and more of us have been drawn to Ordeve. And now the Cardassians are refusing permission for us to expand.”
“You know,” said Raffi, “Ordeve wasn’t exactly the most overpopulated place, even before the Jem’Hadar were let loose. There’s surely space—”
“There’s land here that’s been empty for decades. But the Cardassians intend to close Ordeve to new settlers…”
“Would it help,” said Raffi, “if an independent observer came to Ordeve? Someone from Starfleet, there on the ground?”
He looked at her in amazement. “You’d do that? You’d come back here?”
The alarm went to red-alert klaxons. Raffi ignored it. “I’d do that. If you think it would help.”
Sokara stared at her for a few moments, and then began to laugh, very quietly. “Why not?” he said. “It worked well last time, didn’t it? I’ll put in a request to the exarch.”
“Let me see what I can do at this end,” said Raffi.
“Thank you,” he said. “I… am very touched—very grateful—that you would consider returning here, on my account.” He gave a crooked smile. “I still owe you that drink.”
“Why else have I tracked you down?” said Raffi. “But I think I’m the one that owes you. Put in that request to the exarch’s office. I’ll get things moving here. And I hope to see you soon. On Ordeve.”
Raffi cut the comm. She opened a new, secure channel and left a message.
“JL. We have our back door.”
* * *
“Not to take advantage of the man,” Raffi said to JL, an hour later, “but the situation definitely works to our advantage. They’ve reached an impasse over new Romulan settlements on Ordeve. Sokara is happy for Starfleet to come and observe. But we’ll need to get permission from the Cardassians to visit.”
“I can understand the Cardassian perspective,” said JL. Did he always have to be so damn evenhanded? “Ordeve was almost taken from them by the Romulans at the end of the Dominion War. Perhaps they feel unwilling to hand the world to Romulan settlers—”
“They’re not being asked to give Ordeve over to Romulan jurisdiction.”
“Perhaps they’re concerned that it’s only a matter of time,” said JL.
“Things change,” said Raffi.
JL eyed her thoughtfully. “You’re on the Romulan side in this dispute.”
“I know Sokara,” she said. “I don’t think he would ask for anything unreasonable.”
“Things change,” said JL. “So do people. But perhaps we can do some good here, Raffi. Your prior experience with the place and Sokara surely puts you in an ideal position to act as mediator in this situation.”
Raffi couldn’t help but laugh. “First you want me to be an Academy instructor, now you want me to be a mediator! Any other wildly inappropriate jobs you’ve got in mind?”
