"There's the ship they came in." Tang
pointed. Sure enough, situated on top of the
building was a small Sindareen vessel, of the
style commonly called a Spider, so nicknamed
for its odd sectional style and eight leglike
extensions.
"Can you pick it off from here? Disable it?"
Tang studied Riker for a moment and said,
"Yes. Do you want us to?"
Riker pondered that. "No. It wouldn't be a
good idea. Then they'll be trapped, and
desperate. The first thing we have to do is secure the
safety of whoever's inside."
Tang nodded briskly and Riker
realized that the veteran spacer had already come to the
same conclusion. For some reason, Riker felt a
brief flash of pride. But his mind was already
racing ahead. "Who's your communications expert?"
"Hirsch," said Tang, and before Riker could
say anything further, Tang tapped his
communicator and said, "Hirsch--haul your butt
over here."
Riker studied the building as they waited for
Hirsch to show up. "Do we know how many people are in
there?"
"Not for certain, sir. Some people on the lower
floors managed to get out. One of the more
sensitive mind-types said she detected about
thirty or so locals, and about nine Sindareen--which
would be consistent with the known crew complement of ten for a
Spider."
Hirsch, a stocky brunette woman, ran
up to them. She was cradling a small phaser
rifle, but also had with her a portable comm unit.
Of greater power and range than the standard portable
communicators, it was also capable of more functions.
"Yes, Sergeant?"
Tang merely pointed to Riker, and she turned
to face him, waiting.
"I want to talk to the Sindareen," said
Riker. "The odds are that they left someone behind in
the ship with whom they're in communication, to be their
eyes and ears outside."
"You want me to find the frequency they're
talking on and break in so you can come on?"
"That's right. Keep in mind their communications
might be scrambled."
Hirsch's contemptuous expression showed
precisely what she thought of Sindareen
scrambling capabilities. "No disrespect,
Lieutenant, but I thought you were going to give me
something hard to do." She dropped down to one knee,
removing the large comm unit from her equipment
pack and studying the frequencies registering over
it. Her fingers flew over the touch padds.
"Got it, Lieutenant," she announced after
less than thirty seconds. "Just need a few
more moments to unscramble." She smirked.
"Apparently they think we can't do it."
"Enlighten them, Hirsch," said Riker, "as
to the error of their ways."
The Sindareen who had cut off Deanna and
Chandra's escape was apparently the
leader of the group. As was mostly the case with the
Sindareen, his hair was tightly swept back and
coal black. His skin was pale, virtually to the
point of the chalk white shade of an albino.
Although he possessed a mouth, it existed
exclusively for eating. Speech issued from the
nictating membranes on his long throat.
"Baytzah!" he snapped to others of his
group. "Zroah! What are you standing around for?
Charoset, you and Chazeret get to the other room and
clear that out. And you others--move! We don't have
all day!"
The Sindareen were moving through the great museum,
carrying with them large cases. They hurriedly
pulled paintings off the wall, shoved glittering
sculptures into the cases. Each action was
greeted by gasps and audible protestations by the
Betazoids--which were quickly silenced by the leader's
subtle movement of his weapon in the direction of the
prisoners.
"My dear Betazoids," he said, sounding
unexpectedly reasonable. "I am called
Maror. If you would be so kind as to cooperate,
we can do this briskly and without serious difficulty
for any of you."
"But why!"
The uncontrolled outburst had originated from
Deanna, who had said it without thinking. Chandra
tried to pull her back into the relative
obscurity of the crowd, but it was too late. She
had attracted Maror's attention. Somehow,
though, surviving the emotional trauma of being
shoved, courtesy of a blaster in her mouth, had
emboldened her.
Maror's gaze wandered along the lines of her
body in a manner that made Deanna suddenly
feel dirty. She derived the feeling purely
from the surface, however. She found that she couldn't
get an empathic lock on any of them, which was
unusual and frustrating for her. The
uncontrolled, and unwise, question had been a
manifestation of that small but aggravating defeat.
"But why what?" asked Maror. Behind him the
rest of his men continued with their task. "Why should you
not interfere with our little procedure?"
Deanna, keep quiet! Chandra's
voice rang in Deanna's head. But she knew
that wasn't possible. Her outburst had already
attracted the Sindareen's attention. Besides ...
some part of her genuinely wanted to understand
what in the world could be motivating these beings into these
destructive acts.
She called on the image of her mother, who had
never seemed intimidated by any situation. She
squared her shoulders and firming up her voice,
demanded, "Why are you stealing our art treasures?
They can't hold any meaning for you. They're works
that spring from the hearts and minds of Betazoid
artists."
Maror made a noise that must have been the
Sindareen equivalent of laughter--it was a more
rapid fluttering of the membranes,
unaccompanied by any noise other than the
flapping sound. "Are you really under the
impression," he asked when he had recovered
himself, "that we are going to sit around and look at the
pretty pictures? Don't be ridiculous.
What we have is a client who is a very avid
collector, with a taste for one-of-a-kind
pieces. And he is very wealthy, and very willing
to pay whatever it takes to obtain those things that have
struck his fancy. You should be flattered that your work
has attracted his attention--he's very
discriminating."
And now whatever fears Deanna might have had were
overwhelmed by a fundamental sense of indignation.
"You would deprive a people of their cultural
heritage just to satisfy the greed of an
individual? What sort of beings are you?"
His mouth turned up slightly as he replied,
"Entrepreneurs." Then he stepped back,
clearly ending the discussion, or at least his interest
in it. He tapped his wrist comm unit and said,
&
nbsp; "Karpas. Report."
Over the comm unit came back a voice,
saying, "There's a fairly large assemblage
on the street. Typical bunch of Betazoids
--everyone standing around, trying to understand how everyone
else feels about the situation, and nobody doing
anything about it."
"Yes, that is typical," grunted Maror.
"Anything else?"
"Yeah. What appears to be a squad of
Starfleet security men. Apparently they're
taking charge of the situation."
"Let them. I know their regs. As long as
we've got the hostages in here, they won't dare
make a move against us. Keep the engines
primed. I estimate we have another three
to four--"
But before Maror could complete the instruction,
another voice broke in on the comm unit.
"Attention, Sindareen raiders. You are
completely surrounded and cannot escape. Surrender
is your only alternative."
Deanna's dark eyes widened and she looked
at Chandra, who immediately knew what was going through
Deanna's mind. For the briefest of moments,
Deanna wanted to shout out, "Will! I'm trapped
in here with them! Do something!" But fortunately, and
wisely, she held her tongue. Riker
certainly did not need personal involvement
dragged into the middle of all this.
Maror, for his part, bubbled in fury. "Who is
this!" he demanded.
"Lieutenant Riker, of Starfleet," came
the stern reply. "Who is this?"
"Maror of the Sindareen. So tell me,
Starfleet man ... where's your ship? We
didn't see it coming in, and there's none within
light-years of here. We checked."
"A ship isn't necessary to deal with this situation."
"You flatter me," said Maror sarcastically.
"No. I warn you. I have an entire squad
of men, with more on the way. The entire area has
been sealed off. You cannot escape. If you
surrender now, your cooperation will be noted."
""ationoted."' How nice. That will make a
lovely tombstone: "Here lies Maror. He
cooperated."' I think I'll take my chances,
Lieutenant, thank you. Now if you're
interested in taking chances, then I invite you to try
and impede our departure." Then Maror's voice
grew cold and harsh. "And you can explain the three
dozen Betazoid corpses to your superiors! Do
we understand each other, Lieutenant?"
Riker's reply was firm and unyielding. "You
will not escape."
"You will not stop me," shot back Maror.
"Now get off my comm unit."
"We are scrambling your transmissions. You
will not be able to communicate with your ship for as long as
you refuse to cooperate."
"Oh, really." Without hesitation, Maror
swung his weapon around and squeezed off a shot.
The blast struck Chandra in the upper thigh.
She went down with a shriek that echoed throughout the
museum and certainly was audible over the comm
unit. Deanna dropped to the floor with her,
Chandra clutching her leg and whimpering.
An ugly carbon-scored gash was across her thigh.
"Did you hear that?" demanded Maror. "I could
have killed her just then! That is the extent of the
cooperation you'll have from me, Lieutenant! The
next time I fire it's going to be at
somebody's heart, and I assure you, Riker,
I hit what I aim at! Now unclutter my
transmission or somebody dies in the next ten
seconds--and that's on your head, Lieutenant
Riker. Yours!"
There was only the briefest of pauses before
Riker's voice came back. "In the interest
of cooperation, I'll put you back in touch with your
ship. I anticipate you'll extend further
good-faith courtesies in the future."
A moment later, Karpas's concerned voice was
back on the air. "They're going to give us
trouble, Maror! Did you hear what they--"
"Of course I heard, you idiot," snapped
Maror. "And what's more, they're going to hear.
Namely, they'll hear everything that's being said over this
frequency. I don't need them eavesdropping!
Maintain radio silence except in case of
extreme emergency! Maror out!"
He lowered his comm unit and turned to the
Betazoids. Deanna had ripped a length of
cloth from her sleeve and wrapped it around the burn
that was blistering the skin on Chandra's leg. She
looked up at Maror with anger and defiance
flashing in her eyes. Maror, for his part, looked
utterly calm, and again Deanna met frustration
in being unable to get any sort of feeling for what
was going through his mind. Something in his psychological
makeup--in the makeup of all of them, in fact
--rendered them impervious to Deanna's empathy.
Or at least, for the moment it did.
"Your rescuers," said Maror, "are only
going to make matters worse for you. I suggest you
pray to whatever gods you believe in that the
Starfleet security and their noble lieutenant are
less effective than they think they are. Because their
effectiveness will be measured entirely in the
number of deaths that arise because of them."
CHAPTER 24
Riker turned away from Hirsch and looked at
Tang with frustration. "That could have gone better,"
Riker said.
"It could have gone worse," replied
Tang. "At least nobody's dead."
"We have to determine what they want. What their
demands are."
"No, we don't. We know what they want,"
said Tang reasonably. "It's whatever is in this
building. We know what their demands are--they
demand we let them get away with it. The only
question becomes, do we let them?"
Riker's face was set. "No. We
don't."
"Even if people die?"
"We try to avoid that at all costs,"
Riker said slowly. "But the bottom line is that
if we let them get away, we simply invite
them to continue their activities at the expense and
lives of other innocent people. It has to stop here and
now."
At that moment, Gart Xerx appeared at
Riker's side, his huff+ and puff+ indicating that
he had been running the entire way. "Sindareen
raiders!" he gasped out.
Riker glanced at him and said, "Yes, sir,
we know. We're handling this. Now if you'll just--"
"Chandra's in there!"
"What?" Riker turned back to him. "How do
you ..." And then he caught himself, remembering with
whom he was dealing. "Yes, of course you'd know,
wouldn't you. Is she all right?"
"She's been hurt. The bastard shot her in the
leg."
Riker's face darkened, thinking of the sweet,
eager bride he'd seen all those weeks back.
"Is she all right?"
"As all right as can be expected, considering
she's been shot," said Xerx evenly. Clearly
he was trying to fight down the panic that threatened
to overwhelm him. He was obviously searching for that
place of central calm that Deanna had told
Riker about. And then, almost as an afterthought, Xerx
added, "Deanna's with her. She's bandaging the
wound as best she can."
Riker tried not to show his reaction to this latest
bit of information. In fact, instead of acknowledging
the news, he merely said, "Good." But the way
Xerx looked up at him spoke volumes
to Riker; Xerx must have immediately intuited
precisely what was going through Riker's mind, and
what his true feelings about learning of Deanna's
presence were.
Riker was determined to remain all
business. "Can you communicate with her? Find out
information?"
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
Deanna dabbed at the wound with the cloth, the
bleeding having slowed down significantly. She
looked up at Chandra, ready to offer some ^ws of
comfort, but she saw from Chandra's expression that her
friend's mind was not on the trouble at hand. At first
she assumed that Chandra had merely separated herself
in order to spare herself the pain. But then she
realized precisely what was going on: Chandra was
communicating with someone outside. Chandra took a
moment to glance at Deanna and nod slowly in
confirmation.
Maror came up behind them and looked at them
once before no.ing brisk approval. "Good. No
whimpering. Keeping things to yourself. That's what we like
to see. You're making this much easier on all of
us." Then he raised his comm unit to get a very
brief assessment from Karpas as to the movements
of the Federation personnel ... brief since he was
perfectly aware that Riker was doubtlessly
monitoring every ^w.
"Precisely thirty-two of our people in there,"
said Xerx to Riker. He wasn't looking at
Riker, but instead seemed to be staring off into thin
air. "There are nine of the Sindareen. This Maror
you spoke to is definitely the leader. They aren't
threatening the hostages beyond telling them to keep out of
trouble. They seem intent on stripping the museum
of its works for the purpose of selling them to some
private collector." Xerx shuddered
slightly. "What a barbaric idea."
"Compared to some of the things I've heard about the
Sindareen doing, that's positively civilized,"
replied Riker. "They're probably the only
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