WAITING HIS TURN in the Elizsen's transporter room, Rinagh suddenly felt his legs grow shaky. He locked back his knees, willing the tremors away. The last thing he needed was to collapse like some swooning character in a melodrama. Nonchalantly, his eyes flicked briefly around the room, checking to see if any of the other Romulans crowding the area had noticed.
It didn't appear they had, and it wasn't likely they would in any case. They, like he, had more important things on their minds. Rinagh read their body language as easily as he read a medical reference manual. He recognized the shifting, the clenched hands, and the tight, short bursts of nervous laughter as company to his own swirl of emotions. What they began here this day would sing through the annals of Romulan history for all time and make the rest of the galaxy finally sit up and take notice.
It seemed almost impossible that this well-tended and long-nurtured dream had finally borne fruit only a few days earlier. . . .
He was in the clinic when the news came. Though largely retired from active medical practice, Rinagh still enjoyed maintaining a small clientele by tending to the needs of patient families he'd administered to throughout the years. He was too much of a doctor to retire outright. The itch to keep active was pervasive, like an incurable skin disorder.
So he was doing just that, tending to the grandson of a longtime patient, when his wife, Elani, poked her head around the doorjamb.
"Rinagh? I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's a call for you."
He didn't look up, just kept winding the bandage around Aifor's forearm and talking quietly to the youngster. "This is going to keep happening if you continue to persist in playing near knifeweed." When he answered her, his voice did not break its gentle cadence. "Elani, please tell whoever it is to hold on. I'll be right with them in a minute."
"I don't think it can wait."
He looked up at her then, his attention completely caught. Elani had been his nurse before she was his wife, and he knew and respected her judgment better than anyone's. She would never have used that particular phrase unless she felt it was completely warranted. He read her expression and paused in his ministrations, his hand wavering uncertainly over the half-wrapped bandage. There was a particular look in her eyes he'd learned to appreciate.
"I see." He nodded. "All right, then." Nervousness abruptly fluttered in his stomach, like an insect beating its wings between his hands. Rinagh covered it by patting the boy's shoulder. "I need to take an important call, Aifor. Elani will finish wrapping this for you."
"Yes sir."
"Good boy." He waved an admonishing forefinger under the boy's nose. "But no more playing near knifeweed." Rinagh smiled reassuringly and tried not to hurry too quickly out of the examining room. He crossed the hall to his office, closed the door behind him, and sat down behind the communications console on his desk.
Nervousness sprang into full bloom when Kashi's handsome face appeared on the screen. The first thing Rinagh noticed was the excitement in the dark eyes of the young Romulan officer. The second was the brand-new insignia pinned over the left breast of Kashi's black uniform. It shone like a newly minted coin, and Rinagh could hardly tear his eyes away. "Kashi! By all the Hells—! You got it, didn't you? You got the commission!"
One hand swept gently over the golden polyhedron bars, and Kashi's head dipped in a brief nod. "I just came from the proconsul's office." Sheer emotion drew a joyous laugh from the usually staid Romulan. "Rinagh, you're looking at the commander of the new Romulan space station Reltah!"
The doctor leaned back in his chair and stared in amazement. "Excellent, Kashi! Congratulations!"
"Thank you." Kashi couldn't hold back an expectant grin, even if he'd been inclined to try, which Rinagh doubted. "And I'm looking at the station's newly appointed chief physician."
It was one of those moments in time when the entire world around one comes to a standstill. It was a moment before Rinagh remembered to breathe. "You— You're joking." He shook his head. "You must be joking. There are other men, younger men—"
"But none with your background and abilities," Kashi avowed. "The proconsul and the Senate confirmed it for me after my appointment. Our Lady seems very pleased that you're going to be a part of this endeavor. She expressed the greatest confidence in your contribution to the success of the project. She made it quite clear that she's expecting great things from this venture." He winked somberly, only half joking, for the proconsul's wishes and expectations were never to be taken lightly. "Let's make certain we don't disappoint her."
"I'll endeavor to do my best," Rinagh promised breathlessly.
"I don't doubt that for a moment, my friend." Kashi glanced away and nodded at someone off-screen, then looked back. "I have a lot to do and my time is short, so I'll make this quick and speak to you in more detail later. Now that the proconsul has assigned personnel to the station, she wants us aboard Reltah as soon as possible. A transport will pick you up this evening—"
"This evening!?"
Kashi pretended not to notice the physician's discomfort. "—and convey you to the capital city, where we will be shuttled to the Elizsen, the ship that will take us to the station." He held up a hand apologetically, forestalling any interruptions. "I know this is abrupt, Rinagh, but we must move swiftly if we hope to gain any upper hand over the hold the Federation and its cursed Starfleet have on the galaxy." Kashi's eyes were serious now, brooking no argument. He had been made commander of the space station and their mission, and commander he would be, starting now. "The majority of your possessions will be shipped later, when Elani comes to join you. Bring only those personal effects you want or need. I'll see you in a few hours." He cut the connection without saying goodbye.
And that was that. Rinagh stared at the blank screen, shaky hands splayed atop his thighs, his mind fighting the desire to run in six different directions at once. On the one hand, he wanted to laugh with excitement. At the same instant, he wanted to hide under the couch like one of Elani's pets and forget that he ever had the temerity to apply for a coveted position at his advanced age. In the space of a few heartbeats, he had gone from being a contented, semiretired doctor with a tiny practice to fill his declining years, to the chief physician of a project the likes of which the Romulan Empire had never before undertaken.
And here he stood now, with the others who would make the proconsul's and the Senate's dreams come true. What in the name of all the Blue Hells had possessed him to apply for this job, it was far too late to back down now, whatever his personal fears. He knew he could do whatever the job required. He had the experience and the knowledge, and he'd been fortunate enough to have one of the more distinguished medical careers on Romulus.
But I'm an old man, he thought fleetingly. Certainly too old to be picking up my entire life and heading for the stars.
The stars. Until Kashi's call, they were the stuff of nursery chants to his grandchildren. Since coming aboard Elizsen, they had become a daily, wondrous vista a hand's breadth beyond the ship's lounge. No, he'd trade his place with no one, Romulan or alien, fears or no fears.
His foot tapped against the small carryall on the floor between his feet. Kashi had said to bring only what he felt he needed, and inside were the few baubles of personal sentimental value in which he allowed himself to indulge: a hand-sized painting of his family, two medical awards conferred upon him by his peers several years earlier, and a carefully preserved book of real paper, page after page filled with his tiny, cramped penmanship.
The diary was an affectation he allowed himself and shared with no one. Not even Elani, whom he trusted in all things, knew of its existence, chiefly because he found it slightly embarrassing. Logs and diaries were meant for computers, for the daily roll of life and duty. This small book was something entirely different, something he would have been hard put to explain to anyone. Rinagh was not even altogether certain himself why he felt such a deep desire to put his feelings, thoughts, and dreams into written words, only that doing so gave him a sense of peace and completion that nothing else ever had, not even his pursuit of medicine.
"Next group, please." The transporter technician's voice brought Rinagh out of his reverie as those ahead shouldered their packs and stepped onto the transporter platform. Two more groups and it would be his turn.
His eyes sought the large screen over the transporter console. Reltah looked like a jewel flung against a patina of stars. The big station reflected the brilliant starlight, glowing like a star itself and champion of those lesser lights.
The first of her kind, the station was a radical step forward for a race so long imbued in tradition and form, and so much more conservative compared to the galaxy's other conquering races. In ages past, Romulans were content to use their home worlds as a common base of operations. But with the continued advance of Humanity into the galaxy, the Romulans found themselves forced to readjust their way of thinking. They could no longer remain blindly content with one center, one hub. They must endeavor to be as rapacious as the growing hoard of infesting Humans, or never hope to survive as a people.
Hence, they followed the Humans' unwitting lead and built what they had every confidence would be the first of many such space stations throughout Romulan territory. In ages to come, how far might they venture? Perhaps the Humans, and the Klingons too, would one day know of reckoning and destruction, servitude and death.
In anticipation of that grand event, they now stood on the brink of taking control of the station for the very first time. In the ensuing weeks, these administrative officers and their crews would bring Reltah up to running trim and prepare for the arrival of those others who would pump further life into the station's arterial corridors. After that would come the ships, glorious vessels of Romulan pride that would dock here and clarion to the rest of the galaxy the bright power and promise of the Romulan Empire! Then the others would come, every race eager to partake of what the Romulans could offer in their bid for supremacy. The thought made Rinagh's skin tingle, and his heart grew tight in his chest with an upswelling of pride and satisfaction.
"Doctor?" Rinagh brought his eyes down, and the transporter chief gave him a tiny smile. "Your turn, sir."
"Thank you." He picked up his pack and joined the others of his group on the transporter platform. Eyes forward, he waited in the rising hum from the pad beneath his feet. There was a slight sense of disorientation and a moment's deprivation of the senses, then, abruptly, Rinagh found himself blinking at an unfamiliar wall and knew they'd made a successful transport to the space station.
He followed the others off the transporter pad, joining the excited exodus out the door and along the corridors in dispersal to duty stations. When the doctor's feet hit the decking for the first time, a thrill of anticipation shuddered up his legs, and he grinned with excitement. Oh, they were going to do wonderful things here, and the Federation be damned!