The alleyway swung sideways and Data hit the ground, stiff as a board.
Geordi saw Data go down—and that was the last thing he saw, for somebody landed a right cross into his face that sent his VISOR flying. Terror ripped through Geordi: in the blind alley, he was suddenly truly blind. “Damn!” he shouted, or started to. Then he was clubbed from behind and went down as well.
Worf had no time to mark the fate of his comrades, for the Sullurh were concentrating their resources on him. The phaser had been knocked from his grasp in the first assault, but fortunately the Sullurh seemed to be unarmed.
A couple leaped on his back and threaded their arms under the Klingon’s; in front of him, several more were pounding on his chest and stomach. With a roar, Worf drove his elbows back, breaking the hold of those behind him and getting a grip on them at the same time. Then, bending forward quickly, he sent the two Sullurh hurtling over his head and into the others, who went down like tenpins.
Abruptly, he was grabbed from behind by his heavy link sash. Before he could react, he was swung around and sent smashing into a wall.
Whoever held him still had a grip on the sash, and like lightning Worf dropped down and slid it off. Kneeling on the ground, he drove his fist into the nearest target, which happened to be the crotch of one of the Sullurh. The Sullurh screamed and went down, writhing in agony, and Worf grabbed up his sash just as the others regrouped and charged him.
He started to whirl. Two Sullurh came in from the side, and the heavy sash crunched against them. One of them caught the brunt of it and went down with a fractured jaw; the other was merely floored.
Worf swung the sash again and heard a satisfying scream. If he could find his phaser, he would be all set. . . .
Someone else found it first.
The phaser flashed in the darkness, blasting Worf back against the wall. Consciousness fled and, sagging to the ground, he rolled over on his side.
Thul lowered the phaser and turned toward the others, shaking his head. “Another minute or so and he would have finished you all.”
One of them grumbled, “We had him staggering.”
“You had him laughing,” observed Thul.
There were footsteps at the head of the alleyway, and Gezor and Zamorh appeared there. Gezor nodded approvingly.
Thul nodded back.
“Thank you for alerting us to our pursuit,” said Gezor, inspecting the three inert forms on the ground. He held up the small box that had beeped at him back at Busiek’s. “I see that the pulse generator worked as expected on the android.”
“It did,” confirmed Thul. “Of course it might have gone more smoothly if we had had enough phasers to go around. But then, our inexperience with the weapons might have proved our undoing.”
“What would you have us do with them?” asked Zamorh.
Thul grunted. “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. “They are saboteurs, prowling the K’Vin back streets to perpetrate more mischief. They—along with their humble servant, namely myself—must be brought to the authorities immediately. That is how law-abiding citizens always proceed.”
Chapter Eleven
ESQUAR HUDAK preferred the ambience of Busiek’s to what he saw around him—the flawless new plastiform tables, the cheap modern art, the freshly fabricated walls and ceilings and floors. He would take the eccentric time-worn quality of the big place on the Strip over the sterile regularity of this one any day. What was this pub called, anyway? He couldn’t even remember its name.
However, it was the very anonymity of this place, its lack of popularity among the Federation-side merchants, that had qualified it as the perfect venue for this meeting. For while it wasn’t exactly a secret convocation, it wasn’t the type of thing they wanted to advertise either.
He would say this much on the pub’s behalf: management had gone out of its way to make the merchants feel at home. All of them had drinks before them. Of course, that was just good business, wasn’t it? The sooner the drinks were served, the sooner the merchants would be ready for seconds.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hudak noticed Stephaleh’s Sullurh aide sitting in the farthest corner of the room. How long had he been here? Inwardly the Pandrilite laughed. It was so like a Sullurh to remain as unobtrusive as possible, even when he was supposed to be the embassy presence at the meeting.
The Pandrilite cleared his throat and immediately drew the attention of those assembled. He was not surprised by the efficacy of that simple action. When one towered over one’s fellows, one commanded a certain amount of respect.
“You all know why we’re here,” he began, watching the reaction of each face in the gathering. Most of the merchants were humans, but a half-dozen other races were also represented. “The atmosphere that has developed in Kirlosia is hardly good for business, and boneheaded stunts like storming the embassy are only going to make matters worse.” He stopped for a moment while a perfunctory wave of applause rose and fell. “Our only chance to salvage our livelihood—our future—is to stand behind Ambassador Stephaleh, as this group has done in the past.”
“The past,” said a wiry little Tetracite named Keeglo, “is a little different from the present, don’t you think? Make no mistake, I don’t put any faith in these crahglat droppings about the Federation wanting to start a war, but someone is doing something, and I haven’t seen Stephaleh make the first move to stop it. At least, I haven’t seen any results.”
Hudak had taken the occasion of the Tetracite’s speech to chug down some of his drink. It was an old Pandrilite ploy—diminish the opposition’s argument by appearing to do something else while the argument was presented.
Actually he couldn’t help noting that the drink wasn’t half bad. It went down with a certain amount of fire. Were the proprietors getting it from somewhere other than the usual sources?
“With all due respect,” said the Pandrilite, “we cannot gauge the effectiveness of the ambassador’s efforts at this point.” He indicated the Sullurh with a thrust of his chin. “Am I right, Zamorh?”
The aide got up and suffered the stares of the merchants. “What Esquar Hudak says is true. The ambassador is exercising all her power to protect you and your business interests.”
The Pandrilite wondered if he hadn’t made a strategic error by bringing Zamorh into the conversation. He’d hoped for something a little more convincing; it was as if the Sullurh didn’t have much faith in his own words—or anyway, that’s the way it sounded to him.
“However,” Zamorh went on, “it is difficult to know if her actions have borne fruit. The measure of success can only be the passage of time without further incidents.”
A Vulcan named Stokk stood and addressed the Sullurh. Hudak cringed a little, though he didn’t show it. Now he was sure he shouldn’t have involved Zamorh.
“Why did Stephaleh not attend this meeting herself?” asked Stokk. “Did she not consider it important enough?”
“I can answer that,” said the Pandrilite. Again all eyes were on him and the Sullurh was all but forgotten, except perhaps by the Vulcan. “Don’t forget, we are but a small part of the citizenry that lives under the aegis of the Federation. Stephaleh is the official representative of the Federation on Kirlos. She cannot seem to attach herself to any one group. That, in a sense, would be to say to all the other merchants that they do not count, that she and her chosen few will make all the decisions, and that their opinions are worthless, even if—and you will pardon my straightforwardness—they are.”
“I see,” said Stokk. “And this principle prevails even though we offer Stephaleh support while everyone else wishes to tear her limb from limb?”
Hudak decided to meet the Vulcan’s argument head-on. He couldn’t afford to linger on this point, not if order was to be restored and the K’Vin sector was to be reopened as a viable marketplace.
With his new shrol’dinaggi deal hanging in the balance, perhaps that meant more to him than to some of the others—but they all had a lot at stake he
re, Stokk included.
“You know it does,” he told the Vulcan. “There is no other way. And now, if we can at least agree among ourselves that we must remain aligned with the ambassador, we can...”
At first he thought it was just another objection rising up to meet him, this time in the form of Yudal Malat, his fellow Pandrilite. After all, the merchant had stood up and opened his mouth as if to speak.
But the sounds that came out weren’t words, not by any stretch of the imagination. They were strangled cries, garbled incoherencies from deep inside, as if something were eating away at Malat and doing so in the most painful way possible.
For a terrible second or two, the assembly just watched, too shocked to come to the Pandrilite’s aid. In the meantime, Malat began to froth at the mouth, and the froth was tinged blue with his blood.
“Ancestors,” rasped Hudak, launching himself through the other merchants to reach his racial brother. But before he could get there, Malat’s head jerked back and he slumped against the human beside him.
“A physician!” roared Hudak. He pointed to the man nearest the door. “You, go find the—” He never finished his instructions.
The pain that suddenly erupted in his gut was like nothing he had ever felt before. He tried to fight it, to somehow deny it its right to exist in him. But it was too great. It spread down to his intestines, reached up to clutch at his heart.
Burning . . . like a flame inside him, an acid, a blade twisting into each organ where the tender nerve endings were closest together . . .
“Eaghhh!” The cry was torn from him, wrenched from the smoldering pit of his stomach.
He was dying—he was certain of that. And with a Pandrilite’s insight into such things, he was certain what had caused it. The drink had been poisoned.
All around him now, other merchants were rising up, screaming or choking silently on their own blood-stained bile. The room was a madhouse, a scene of carnage that would have sickened even the most eager warrior.
And there in the corner, Hudak saw through red veils of agony, was the Sullurh. Unaffected, calm, aloof. Almost tranquil as he looked on.
So it was that before the Pandrilite died, his mouth full of his own white-hot insides, he knew not only what had killed him . . .
But also who.
This time the burden weighed too heavily on her. She could not snap out orders, though Zamorh awaited them as eagerly as ever. Stephaleh could only sit with her head bowed over her desk and try to trace the thread of events that had brought them to this pass.
Hudak had not truly been a friend, only a political ally. He had seen merit in supporting her, and in turn she had helped him prosper, just as she had attempted to help all the merchants prosper, within the bounds of her Federation-granted powers. It was just that Hudak had been so much better than the others at accepting that help.
So when she grieved, it was not solely for the individual, though she would certainly miss him. Just as much, she mourned what he represented—a sanity in the ranks of the merchants. A partnership that she had worked long and hard to cultivate.
And now her greatest supporters—perhaps the only supporters left to her in these troubled times—had been decimated. Only a few of the merchants still lived to tell of the incident, and they were too shaken to be of any use. Zamorh’s account had been the only coherent one.
She felt as if she were standing naked in an Andorian windstorm, her skin slowly being flayed off her still-living bones. For there was pain for her in this . . . this failure. All her life she had prided herself on her diplomatic skills, but the present situation seemed to defy her abilities.
“Ambassador?”
She looked up, saw Zamorh still waiting in the center of the room.
“Have you come to a decision? I told Chief Powell I would give him his instructions as soon as possible.”
Stephaleh took a deep breath, let it out. She straightened. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. We must have martial law. It’s the only way, as you so eloquently point out. But that is as far as I will go.”
The Sullurh regarded her. “Evacuation will take time, Ambassador. We must contact Starfleet now; later we may not have that option.”
She smiled inwardly at the urgency in her aide’s voice. Sometimes she thought Zamorh cared more about her responsibilities than she did.
“Be that as it may,” she said, “I will issue no evacuation order. The Federation did not establish a presence on Kirlos casually, Zamorh. This planet is our only real link with the K’Vin and their Hegemony. If the K’Vin are responsible for all this, and we leave now, we show them that we are weak; there are leaders among them who will see our departure as an opportunity to wrest certain contested planets from us. If the K’Vin are not responsible—as I am still inclined to believe—then evacuation will destroy our only chance for a rapprochement with them, and the outcome will likely be the same. In either case, we face a greater disaster than any that has taken place so far on Kirlos.”
“But, Ambassador, murders have been committed. No doubt, many more are in the offing.”
It was unlike Zamorh to speak so forcefully. But then, his family was part of the endangered populace.
She stopped herself suddenly, shaken by her callousness. Would the Sullurh be so wrong if that was his motive? After all, what did he care that some other world would be spared a bloodbath if the lives of his loved ones were forfeited in the process?
A face swam to the surface of her thoughts, that of Lars Trimble, the bearded man in the crowd. She had made a promise to him, hadn’t she?
It forced her to rethink her position. By keeping the Federation’s objectives before her, by making them her priority, was she playing fast and loose with the welfare of those who lived here? Was it possible that after all these years of trench diplomacy, she could look at her job as a game of dyson—an abstraction, wherein each individual part had no real meaning except as a means to an end?
Then again . . . did it really matter how she arrived at her conclusion—feeling the heart-wrenching difficulty of her decision or distancing herself from it? In the end, the result was the same.
There was so much potential for bloodshed here, and so much there, how could a thinking being come to grips with those possibilities other than to measure them as accurately as possible—and to take the action that would bring about the fewest casualties? Cold as it was, she knew no other way.
Forgive me, Lars Trimble.
“No,” she told Zamorh at last. “There will be no evacuation. We will not run from this. We will find those responsible and we will stop them. Is that clear?”
The Sullurh didn’t hesitate for long. “It is your decision,” he told her. “I can but advise, Ambassador.” Then, with a slight bow, he backed away and went to relay her instructions to Powell.
Chapter Twelve
THE TWO OFFICERS stood side by side on the bridge of the Enterprise. Both were staring intently at the viewscreen.
“Well, Ensign Davies?”
“You were right, Captain,” said the geologist. He stepped closer to the image of mottled green and swept his hand across the surface, tracing a pattern with his finger. “Those are definitely the outlines of an ancient quarry.”
Wesley Crusher sighed. He had seen the same image as the captain, but he hadn’t noticed those details. He could barely make sense of them even with Davies’s promptings. “But how can you tell?”
“Personal experience.” Picard had felt the tug of old memories even before he remembered the time and place. “As a child I often played in the remains of a Roman quarry. Parts of it were flooded, while other sections had been filled in with dirt; all of it was covered with trees and grasses. Yet I can remember my astonishment the first time I flew over the area in a hovercraft. Even after thousands of years the scars in the land were still visible. The signs on Tehuán are fainter, but familiar nonetheless.”
“These quarries are much older than those on earth,” announced L
ieutenant Dean, walking down the ramp to the command center. His face was flushed with embarrassment. “After cross-checking with the planet’s geological data, I’ve uncovered a reference to the excavations buried in a footnote in the original planet survey. The first scout team confirmed that Tehuán has never possessed an indigenous intelligent life-form, but they were unable to determine the identity of the space-traveling race that opened the quarries. And since the site was abandoned some five thousand years ago, they evidently didn’t consider it worth mentioning in the planet brief.”
The science officer tensed, as if bracing himself for a rebuke at his oversight. Picard eased the frown off his face. He could hardly upbraid the man for not being an android; even Data might have missed the significance of that footnote. But probably not.
“What was being excavated?” asked Picard.
Davies leaned over Wesley’s shoulder to examine the readings on the Conn console. “Sensor scans indicate recrystallized dolomite with trace amounts of iron oxide and diopside. This particular compound is sometimes referred to as arizite.”
“Arizite?”
“It’s a decorative marble, not very common in—”
“I’m familiar with it,” said Picard. “In fact, I have a statue carved from arizite sitting on my desk.” His thoughts jumped back to Kirlos and Professor Coleridge’s archaeological project. “Could the ancient Ariantu Empire have included this sector? Could Tehuán have been the source of arizite for the Ariantu sculptors?”
Dean was quick to answer. “There’s no direct evidence to indicate a connection. However, the preliminary dating of the site indicates the rock was being removed during the era in which the Ariantu were still in residence on Kirlos.”
“All of which may be of interest to Professor Coleridge,” said Picard slowly, “but I don’t see the relevance to—”
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