"I still don't believe they thought we were a couple," Dellis says angrily. "Just because I'm, well, built the way I am... and I'm military... I still prefer men, damn it, is that so hard to understand?" She sits down heavily on the camp bed and glares at me.
My own bed is on the other side of the little room; I say nothing. I turn and look out of the window at the glow along the sky. Tyrallis II is a partially terraformed world, its atmosphere still too thin to support life unaided... so, the transit camp is enclosed in a forcefield dome that thickens and concentrates the breathable atmosphere within it. I could walk through the glowing field easily enough, feeling only a slight pressure... but if I walked out, into the open landscape, into that thin, tenacious, scrubby vegetation growing on the barren rocks... I would be unconscious within an hour, dead within three, from oxygen starvation.
We are not, precisely, imprisoned - we simply have nowhere safe to go. The camp is a metaphor for the condition of the refugees who pass through it.
I sit down on my bed and smile wryly at Dellis. The hefty blonde tech has her uses - I may need assistance, and it is best that that assistance comes from someone who cannot possibly be known as an associate of mine. "We might have been more comfortable with a double bed," I say. Dellis sniffs.
"What do you think of it, anyway?" I ask her.
"The camp? It's well run, at least... Vulcan efficiency, I guess. Food's replicated, but I've tasted worse."
"Me too." I look around. The refugee barracks consist of pre-fabricated modular units, churned out by a replicator and bolted together in some haste... but they are solid, they seem suitable for Tyrallis II's climate, and the power grid is running smoothly and steadily. Through the window, I can see shuttles moving in orderly lines, above the omnipresent glow of the forcefield. "Sonic showers, and... have you tested any of the plumbing?"
"It all seems to work fine." Dellis swings her legs onto the bed and lies down. "There was a notice, lights out at 2230 hours...."
"All the lighting on one circuit. Well, it's not unreasonable, I suppose." I turn and lie at full length, too. "We'll need some sleep in any case. And tomorrow, off to see this placement officer...."
---
The transit camp is one of at least a dozen that have opened up on the Vulcan side of the Hegemony. Displaced Romulans are flocking to them, those that are able to... and, I suppose, this could be a good thing. The Republic has tried to help our people, but there are so many refugees, so few resources. If the Hegemony of Bresar will take those people in... that, in itself, is a good thing.
Isn't it?
I think of this as I walk along the grassy street to the administration complex. It is one curious thing about the camp; its streets are paved with grass. The tough, stringy vegetation is part of the terraforming process, its function to release much-needed oxygen into the thin air - the camp has been set up in one fringe of the terraformed area, and the feet of thousands of refugees have yet to wear the grass away, down to the bare earth. It will happen, no doubt, in time.
The administration buildings are constructed to the same pattern as the barracks - simple, modular, bleakly functional. I was expecting to have to wait a long time, but I am very soon ushered through into a small, spartan office. Of course, I reflect, many of the refugees will take an opportunity to rest, to heal, to reacquaint themselves with regular meals and hygiene....
"Aneia i-Kallaram t'Nallus," I say to the placement officer. He is a small, friendly-looking Romulan who gives his name as Tresul; Aneia is a name I have used before, and perhaps will again... last time, it was in the Tal Shiar archive, but after the spectacular destruction of that base, I doubt anyone will notice Aneia's survival.
"I don't have much in the way of documents," I add in wary tones.
"Not many do," Tresul says cheerfully. "And you came here with, ahh, a partner...?"
"Just a friend," I say. Then I decide to play that angle up, so I add, with a quick grin, "For now, at least." It might annoy Dellis, but at least it is one more thing no one will associate with T'Laihhae.
"Ah," says Tresul, "ah. So, you'd prefer not to be separated...?"
"She's a damn good tech," I say - which has the merit of being true. "Saved my life, one time."
Tresul nods. "I've heard a lot of stories like that," he says. "Now, then. You were Imperial military - specialization?"
"Engineering. Warp drives, mostly, and transporter systems." I look at my boots and mutter, "Don't have any documentation for that, either."
"Not a problem." Tresul fiddles with a desk console. "The Hegemony is going to need engineers... how would you feel about one of these?"
He touches a button, and a holographic image glows into life above the console. I lean forward and narrow my eyes, with unfeigned curiosity.
The image is that of a starship, with a long, tapering, ovoid hull, overlapped by a hollow ring structure a little way aft of the midsection. "Classical Vulcan cruiser design?" I look at Tresul with a frown.
"The Hegemony's using them, and they need engineers and technicians. What do you say?"
Interesting. But it doesn't fit my needs. "Yeah, but," I say, "it's an antique. They stopped using those annular warp generators, didn't they? For any serious jobs, I mean." Tresul looks faintly baffled, which is good. "Look, it's all right for science and exploration, but in combat, you've got weak nodes in the warp field here and here -" I point at the image "- and you'd need to reinforce the generators to stop an enemy overloading them with a power surge." I pretend to think for a moment. "Now maybe, with modern superconductors, you could feed those surges back and dissipate them in the power grid - you'd need, hmm, I don't know, I'd have to see the specs on the warp coils, but -"
"Whoa," says Tresul, with a slightly shaky smile. "I can see you know your stuff, all right." Actually, it's an old issue with warp configuration, one that got batted around many times in late-night talk sessions during my engineering courses. But it's having the desired effect now. "All right, we definitely need people like you - and maybe not just serving on one of those ships, too. What would you say to a posting to the Vulcan shipyards, put that knowledge and expertise to use?"
Something like that is exactly what I want - my mission is to infiltrate the Hegemony at its heart - but I shrug my shoulders and look hopeless. "Sounds great. But a job like that needs security clearances, and I told you - no documentation." The real Subcommander Aneia was vaporized along with her whole colony at Tantaris II, and only Republic Intelligence has the personnel database - a useful source of cover identities.
"That need not be a problem," says Tresul soothingly. "We're not the Tal Shiar, we're not professionally paranoid - and we need good people. This place offers you materials and education to pass our Hegemony citizenship test, and once you've done that, you're in."
I glower and look dubious.
"Look," Tresul says, "maybe you've got something in your past you don't want me to know about. That's all right. We've all been there, we've all had to - do things - just to survive. But that's all over now. Right now, you've got a safe place to rest for a while - and once you pass that citizenship test, you're in. A fresh start, a clean slate, all the past forgotten." He points to the holo-image again. "And there's work for people like you. And when you get to know the Hegemony's philosophy, that's when you'll understand just how important that is."
---
"Yes," Dellis says thoughtfully, leaning back against the wall as she sits on the bed. "While you were out being interviewed, I asked around about this citizenship thing."
"And?"
She leans forwards, reaches for a datapad, tosses it to me. "There's the standard text. The Twelve Maxims, the Seven Axioms and the Ten Principles of Bresar's theory of government." She leans back again. "Everyone gets one of those if they ask for it - sometimes even when they don't."
"And the citizenship test is based on this?" I activate the datapad and start to read.
"From what I gather, it's a pretty thorough test, too," says Dellis. "You can't just learn the answers by rote, you have to memorize that lot and explain how it applies in a bunch of different situations."
"Hmm. Well, if we want to get out of this camp and into a decent job, we'd better get memorizing and extrapolating, then."
Dellis groans. "Swotting for tests, at my time of life."
"The tests never stop coming," I say quietly, "at any time."
"Oh." Dellis laughs loudly. "You're a natural. That pretty much sums up the Fourth Maxim."
"Oh, right." I flash a quick smile at her. "Eleven more to go, then."
It's a standard practice, of course. Indoctrination. Nothing so blatant as brainwashing, just exposure to a set list of concepts, thoughts, principles - a constant and omnipresent exposure, so that they settle into the background of one's consciousness and become as natural as breathing. Every cult with a sacred book, every political movement whose founder has Great Thoughts, uses the same technique. I know how it works. Does that make me ready for it?
Thousands of people have passed through this camp already, and there are more like it along the borders between Federation and Romulan space. Untold numbers of Romulan refugees have already entered Vulcan space, steeped in the maxims and axioms and principles of Bresar. They may have nothing else in common, but they all have that.
How will that bind them together, as a group? Is it enough to make them a Bresarite Fifth Column in the Vulcan state?
The room's lighting goes out, but the datapad still glows. I read the illuminated words, and never let my growing disquiet show in my face.
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