Chapter 18: ...Or So We Thought
December 2409
“If you’d just let me speak to Commander Temer again, I’d…”
“The Commander is extremely busy right now.” Without allowing the doctor so much as another word, the security officer quite literally shut the door in Kirina’s face. She stepped quickly backwards, only narrowly avoiding a broken nose.
Months had passed since the brutal assault on Artaleirh that never happened. Months, since a group of assimilated Romulan colonists were sacrificed to halt an Elachi advance. Months, since the IRW Irix and her fleet were set adrift, after their crew’s thalaron-induced demise. And months since two Romulans risked everything to safeguard billions of innocent lives.
They could have stayed with the fleet they’d just decimated and taken credit for their work, but Aurelia t’Veras and Kirina t’Nalah weren’t looking for fame or glory. They wanted to do what was right, and best for their people, and they wanted to survive. They left the abandoned fleet intact, to be salvaged, and were picked up in a small shuttle. It was weeks before they managed to make contact with the only-months-old Romulan Republic. They strode aboard, hoping to join a cause.
Instead – after a short meeting with the Commander in charge – they were separated and confined.
From that point on every week was the same, for Kirina. One day of debriefing. Three of isolation. One day in the medical bay. Two more of isolation. She offered what she knew freely, but she was only met with hostility. Where she expected to be welcomed with open arms, she found instead skepticism and paranoia.
To an extent, she understood it. Reports of her experiments – and those of similar scientists – had begun to leak out of the Empire. Kirina couldn’t blame the Republic for being angry. In their place she might have felt the very same way. But she wasn’t in their place. She was stuck. Waiting.
It was maddening.
Maybe Aurelia’s having better luck, Kirina thought to herself.