Faces of Fire

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Then again, did they have a choice in the matter?

  "Come, my friend," said Omalas. "You've asked me to rely on your word. You must rely on mine."

  Reluctantly, the captain placed the phaser in the Obirrhat's hand. Muttering a curse beneath his breath, Scotty followed suit.

  "Excellent," said the Obirrhat, restoring the phasers to their proper owners. "Now come with me," he told the humans, "and I'll have someone remove the rest of your ropes. Then we can talk all you like."

  Chapter Sixteen

  KIRK WASN'T VERY HUNGRY, but Omalas insisted that they eat. "No one ever learned wisdom on an empty stomach," he told them.

  Leading them into a small room with a chest of drawers, a wooden table, and some chairs, he asked them to sit. Then he had a fellow Obirrhat bring bread, a pitcher of cold scented water, and a couple of mugs.

  As it turned out, the Obirrhat bread—round and hard on the outside, sweet and soft on the inside—tasted as good as any meal Kirk could remember. Scotty seemed to be enjoying it as well. Tearing off another sizable chunk, he shoved it into his mouth and chewed vigorously.

  "Careful, Mr. Scott," Kirk jibed. "You'll split a prosthesis."

  The engineer grunted as he lifted a mugful of water. "Seein' as how we've already blown our cover, sir, ye'll excuse me if it's nae my first concern."

  Omalas himself sat at the table with them but declined to eat anything, a fact that at first gave the captain pause. But then, he told himself, if the Obirrhat had wanted to do away with them, there were easier methods than poisoning.

  "Not that I don't appreciate the hospitality," Kirk said, "but why is it so important that we eat?"

  The minister smiled. "Because you will not have another opportunity until you have finished becoming wise. It is our law."

  That seemed to get Scotty's attention. "Ye know," he commented, "such an enterprise might take a fair amount o' time."

  Omalas shook his head judiciously. "Not more than a single night."

  Scott looked at the captain. Kirk shrugged.

  When they were finished with the fare the Obhirrat had set before them, Omalas himself cleared the table of crumbs with his bare hand. Then he went over to the chest of drawers that stood against the wall.

  "You, say you wish to understand the Obirrhat?"

  The captain smiled. "That's why we're here, at no small risk to life and limb."

  "Good," said Omalas. Opening a drawer, he extracted three ancient-looking, leather-bound books. With unmistakable reverence, he placed them on the table.

  "All you need to know of us," he told them, "you will find in these."

  Kirk reached out and touched the nearest of the tomes. As he'd guessed, the leather was oily to the touch. Obviously well cared for.

  He looked up and saw Omalas scrutinizing him.

  "You have such books where you come from?"

  The captain withdrew his hand. "Yes. We do."

  Sitting down, the minister drew one of the tomes to him and opened it to the first delicate yellowed page. Tilting his head, he indicated that the humans follow suit.

  Carefully, they did just that.

  Aoras sighed.

  They'd been searching for the human children for a day and a night, a remarkable—and remarkably frustrating—amount of time, considering who their prey was. But Gidris had refused to ask for help from either the captain or the Kad'nra.

  And now the search had led the two of them to this flat, narrow notch between two slopes. Down here, out of the wind, it wasn't quite as cold as elsewhere. But the sun was still a damned knife in each eye.

  And the sun wasn't the only problem.

  "Kruge is a fool," said Gidris, between clenched teeth.

  Aoras didn't answer. He knew better.

  After all, Kruge may have come after Gidris in the chain of command, but he came before Aoras. And it wasn't wise for one to criticize one's superior, even in the company of a greater superior.

  Besides, Aoras told himself, Gidris wasn't really speaking to him. Nettled by his inability to find the human children, the man was indiscriminately venting his spleen at anyone who'd ever crossed him, and Aoras just happened to be there.

  "First, he grins like an imbecile at the captain's remarks. Then, when I take him to task for it, he tells me he's intrigued by the possibilities." Gidris snarled. "I'll give him more intrigue than he bargained for."

  Aoras didn't want to hear that sort of talk, even if he didn't understand very much of it. It was too dangerous.

  Someday, no doubt, Kruge would challenge Gidris for his position on the Kad'nra. And if Kruge became first officer, Aoras certainly didn't want to be known as the man in whom Gidris had confided his personal likes and dislikes, particularly when Gidris's greatest dislike was Kruge.

  Despite Aoras's silent wishes to the contrary, Gidris railed on. "You need pursue this no further, he tells me. But wouldn't I have loved to pursue it! Wouldn't I have relished the opportunity to sweep Kruge's maggot-infested head from his palsied shoulders!"

  Please, thought Aoras. Save it for another time and another set of ears. I'm too young to wake up with a dagger in my throat.

  Eyes bulging, dark with anger, Gidris reeled off a string of curses, and then remained silent for a while, as if finally answering Aoras's plea. Aoras had no doubt, however, that the second-in-command was continuing his tirade in the privacy of his own brain.

  Now there was only the sun to contend with. Couldn't the damned Federation colonists have chosen a place that wasn't so—

  Suddenly, something on the path ahead caught his eye. Stopping dead in his tracks, he realized what it was.

  A child. A human child.

  And her back was to them—she hadn't seen them yet. With luck, she might lead them to the rest of the pack.

  Aoras put his hand in front of Gidris to alert him. But the first officer had seen her too, and he brushed his companion's hand away with more than a little disdain.

  Then they waited, all but holding their breath, still as statues, not daring to move lest they alert the girl and give her a chance to sound the alarm. The human children had been devils to find; neither Gidris nor Aoras wanted to waste what seemed to be a stroke of great fortune.

  Fortunately for them, the child seemed oblivious to her surroundings. She was doing something with her long, black hair—twisting it into a braid, Aoras thought—and the effort seemed to occupy her completely.

  Or at least that's how it appeared. But just before she would have disappeared around a bend in the slope to their left, some sixth sense gripped her. The girl turned and saw them. Wide-eyed, she fled.

  The chase was on. Aoras plunged ahead, legs churning, striving to make up the distance between them. Normally, he'd have taken his time, believing no mere human child could elude them for long. But these children had managed to keep them guessing for hours now; they had earned the right to be taken seriously.

  Gidris was right beside him, matching him stride for stride. He'd already whipped out his disruptor, prepared to use it if it meant fulfilling his mission—and cementing his position in the captain's good graces. Not wishing to appear uncommitted to their success, Aoras pulled out his weapon as well.

  Then something happened, Aoras wasn't sure what. The next thing he knew, the ground had slid out from under him, there was the sound of something snapping, and dirt was hissing all around him.

  He was tumbling down into darkness, though that only lasted for the briefest of moments. Then he felt himself hit bottom, hard, and a weight that could only have been Gidris slammed down on top of him, knocking the wind out of his lungs.

  As he lay there gasping in the dust-clotted air, he realized that Gidris was unconscious, or worse. Nor did he have the strength to move the man off him; his whole being was involved in desperately trying to pull air down his throat. But even through the mist of still falling debris, he could make out a light above, a light twisted and torn by some sort of fragments he couldn't quite identify
. That's when it came home to him: the hole they'd fallen into was deep, very deep. Too deep, certainly, to have been made by nature.

  An instant later, there were flashes in the light, flashes that reminded Aoras of disruptor fire. He tried to shout, to tell whoever was firing to stop, that there was someone down here. But it was no use. He couldn't get out anything more than a painful wheeze.

  What in hell's name was going on? The tastes of fear and anger mixed in his open mouth. Who'd dug this hole? Why were they being fired on?

  And then it came to him. Kruge. He'd decided to take advantage of the situation to become second-in-command, and—

  But why do it this way? Why not just pick them off at a distance? Did he want to show his men how clever he was? Wait, that didn't make sense. The girl—she'd been part of it, hadn't she? How could Kruge have enlisted her? No matter. It had to be Kruge—who else could it be?

  Meanwhile, the disruptor fire continued, flaring in the darkness. Little by little, the debris above Aoras was removed, improving his view. And he was able to drag enough air into his lungs to groan in protest—to let the disruptor wielder know there was someone down here, just in case it wasn't Kruge.

  As he'd expected, however, it didn't stop the barrage. If only he knew where his own disruptor had gone. But it was lost when they fell into the hole: by now, it could have been eaten up in one of the blasts.

  Helplessly, Aoras watched as a figure came into view at the lip of the pit, gaining definition as the fragments above him were blasted out of existence.

  Strange. It didn't look like Kruge. For that matter, it didn't look like a Klingon at all. Finally, the disruptor had cleared away enough of the debris to show him his captor's identity. Aoras's eyes opened wide with loathing.

  A Vulcan! And in a Starfleet uniform, no less!

  Even with only half his breath back, he managed to spit out a curse. He understood now how the G-7 unit had disappeared and how the children had managed to elude them so well. They were led by a Starfleet officer!

  "Go ahead," he rasped. "Kill us! We will not go unavenged!"

  The Vulcan peered down at him. "I have no intention of killing you," he said. "I only wished to make certain you were unarmed and had nothing to climb over in your attempts to get out. If I were you, I would conserve my strength. You are likely to be down there for some time."

  And then he vanished, amid what sounded like a chorus of childish laughter. Confused, feeling as if he'd just dodged a dagger, Aoras just stared at the circle of blue sky above him until Gidris began to stir.

  Aoras grunted. The second-in-command would never believe this. Never.

  "Sir?"

  It was Scotty, sitting across the table from him. The engineer was peering at Kirk with bloodshot eyes.

  "Sorry," said the captain, shaking his head. "I guess I must've dozed off for a moment."

  "It's all right," Scotty told him. "After stayin' up all night readin' these scriptures, I'm feelin' a wee bit woozy m'self."

  Kirk looked around. "Where did Omalas go?"

  "He didnae say," the engineer reported. "Only that he'd be right back."

  Now the captain remembered. "That's right," he muttered. "How long ago was that?"

  "Just a couple o' minutes, sir." A pause. "After all that, have ye got any ideas? Fer solvin' the cubaya problem, I mean?"

  Kirk smiled unenthusiastically. The Obirrhat's holy book had covered every subject from dietary laws to funeral rites, from farming tips to marriage vows. The rules governing the sacred precinct had been only a small portion of the information contained in the scriptures. "Can't say I do, Scotty. You?"

  "Not a one. Not yet, anyway."

  Abruptly, the door opened, and Omalas stood on the threshold. He had a tray of fresh bread and a cold pitcher on it, the same as the night before.

  "To celebrate the acquisition of wisdom," he explained.

  There was something else on the tray as well—two somethings, in fact. Their communicators.

  "After we celebrate," Omalas told them, "we will blindfold you and bring you back to the place where you were—" He smiled. "Where you lost consciousness. Then you may call up to your ship or return to the Hall of Government, whichever you prefer. But I would not recommend lingering in the precinct. Menikki is not happy about the way I have accommodated you. He will not hesitate to use force if he finds you skulking about again."

  "I understand," said the captain. "But you need not worry. We got what we came for."

  The question now, he mused, is whether we can do something with it.

  Vheled seethed with anger. "Say that again," he told Kruge.

  The second officer met his gaze. "The first officer seems to have vanished. Also, Loutek, Aoras, Iglat, and Shrof." If he was pleased about the apparent breakdown of Gidris's efforts, he didn't let on. "Only Dirat and Rogh are left, and they have been unable to complete their assignment."

  The captain cursed and spat. "How difficult can it be to find a pack of human brats?"

  Kruge shrugged. "Not very difficult, one would think. If you wish, I will take a second squad and investigate."

  Vheled scowled. "No," he said. "Stay here. Until I return, you are in charge of the mission."

  The second officer's eyes narrowed. "Until you return?"

  The captain nodded. "Yes. I am going out there myself to see what this is about, and to finish the job Gidris started." He grunted. "You may find yourself first officer of the Kad'nra sooner than any of us expected, Kruge."

  The second officer responded with a subtle grin. "I would be pleased to serve you in whatever capacity you deem appropriate," he said.

  Vheled growled. "I'll bet you would. Now, round up some men for me, and good ones—Chorrl, Engath, Norgh, Zoragh. And the Nik'nash, Grael. We have already wasted more than a day on this foolishness; I want to finish it as quickly as possible."

  Chapter Seventeen

  MCCOY WAS IN SICKBAY, muttering to himself, trying to figure out why the new biomonitors still wouldn't work right, when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Whirling, he saw two Malurians standing in the middle of sickbay.

  His first impulse was to call for security. What in blazes were Malurians doing on the Enterprise, much less here?

  Then he realized that they weren't Malurians at all. "Jim!" he cried. "Scotty!"

  "In the flesh, if not exactly our own," Kirk joked.

  "For a moment," the engineer said, "I didnae think ye recognized us."

  For a moment, the doctor mused, I didn't. Damn, but I do good work!

  But what he said was, "Balderdash." And then, "It's good to see you two. I was starting to wonder what happened to you." He paused, and he could feel his cheeks turning hot. "At one point, in fact, I even wondered out loud—to the ambassador."

  The captain looked at him and frowned. At least, McCoy thought it was a frown. It was hard to tell with Kirk's prosthesis getting in the way.

  "Sorry, Jim," he added. "I was worried. I thought we might have to send the Manteil in after you." He cleared his throat. "Fortunately, it didn't come to that."

  The captain nodded. "It's all right, Bones. I understand. Now, if you're not too busy with those monitors, could you get this thing off my face? It feels like a Tetracite mudpack."

  Tetracite mud was famous for the nearly microscopic parasites that inhabited it. Nor was the analogy lost on the doctor, who once spent an itchy week recovering from those parasites' bites.

  "Actually," said McCoy, "if I recall correctly, it was Mr. Scott who had his prosthesis applied first. In all fairness, I think his should be the first to come off."

  The engineer held up his hands to signal his indifference. "I dinnae mind—"

  But Kirk cut him off. "The doctor's right, Scotty. You go first."

  "Sir, I—"

  "And don't argue to be polite," the captain continued. "You know you hate that prosthesis as much as I do."

  His protest subsiding, Scotty went over to the nearest biobed. "A
ll right," he told McCoy, "work yer magic, Doctor."

  Crossing the breadth of sickbay, Bones opened a drawer and got out a freshly charged laser-scalpel.

  "Just be sure the prosthesis is all ye remove," Scotty admonished.

  The doctor smiled. "No promises, Commander. Now shut up and lie down. This won't take but a minute."

  While he was waiting, Kirk opened his communicator. McCoy could hear the device click in the background.

  "How's it going up there, Mr. Sulu?"

  The helmsman had been sitting in for the captain up on the bridge, of course. His response was quick and efficient.

  "Couldn't be better, sir. Welcome back."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. Carry on." And then, as an afterthought, "You're taking care of my fire-blossom, aren't you?"

  This time, McCoy heard Sulu chuckle before he answered. "It's one of my top priorities, Captain. Why? Can't you smell it from sickbay?"

  Kirk chuckled too. "Carry on." There was another click, as the captain closed the device.

  By then, the doctor had excised the bulk of the prosthesis from Scotty's face. The engineer's skin was still black, naturally, and his eyes were still silver, but at least his features had been restored.

  "Och, but it feels good t' get that off," said Scotty.

  "Hold still," McCoy warned him, "or you might lose something I'm not supposed to take off." Then, without losing his focus on the laser surgery, he asked, "So, Jim? Did you get what you went down there for?"

  Behind him, the captain grunted audibly. "Hard to say, Doctor. We managed to speak with Omalas and Menikki, all right. We even got a chance to read the Obirrhats' holy scriptures, with Omalas's help. But we're still not within sniffing distance of—"

  Suddenly Kirk snapped his fingers. "Damn it, Bones! That's it!"

  Deactivating his scalpel, McCoy turned to look over his shoulder. "I'll have you know I'm trying to conduct surgery here! Now, what the devil are you shouting about?"

  The captain was fairly beaming. "I've got the solution, Doctor, the answer to the Malurians' problem. And wait'll you hear what it is."