Tooth and Claw

by Doranna Durgin

  “We are fifteen kilometers from the portal,” Worf announced, triggering the shuttle door and powering down what was left of the engines. “Take what you will need in that time.”

  Med kits—especially the Tsoran med kit. Ketan looked much better since Gavare’s ministrations before takeoff, but he’d no doubt need painkillers before the end of the walk—not that he’d be doing much actual walking. They’d left the litter behind, but Ketan wouldn’t be going anywhere without some serious support from his fellow Tsorans. And they’d need food, and definitely water. Riker hoped for a breeze, now that they were out of the trees, but the heat would no doubt remain oppressive.

  Unless it rained here as it had rained in the jungle. In which case they might have the floodplain to worry about.

  Riker joined Worf at the door, looking out across the rough, undulating landscape, beyond the kilometers they had yet to traverse and onward to the sparkle of the forcefield, barely visible from this side of the barrier. There, starting at the horizon and extending up in a square, was a dark blot. “What . . .?” he said, as it slowly shrunk into nothingness—and then, realizing, stood suddenly straighter, lifting his chin a little at the challenge before them. “The portal. We just missed the second opening. And now we’ve got six hours to make those fifteen kilometers.” Over rough terrain, with most of their party filling the role of walking wounded—or barely walking wounded.

  “Then there is no time to waste.” Worf disappeared back into the shuttle, no doubt to reclaim his bat’leth.

  Riker followed.

  * * *

  On the Enterprise, Atann straightened from his final “kill,” panting like a dog. His stiff leather vest—clawed, dented, gore-stained and in other ways much the worse for wear—spoke as much of his effort here as the blood—not his—splashed on his fur and the similar blood—his—trickling from his nose.

  Picard wore creaking leather-plate armor and bore his own bruises—and took his cue from Atann’s changed posture. No longer ready for the next opponent. “Computer, remove holocharacters.”

  In silent compliance, the computer cleaned the area of temporary bodies, abruptly stopping the approach of the creature—a stouter, Tsoran-sized version of the original beings Worf had programmed—that had been slinking up on Atann.

  They stood in silence for a moment, assessing one another, Atann somewhat more warily than he had earlier. “You were right, Captain Picard. Seeing this aspect of your people does help me to gain a better understanding of you.”

  “I hope it does, ReynKa,” Picard said, quite sincerely. Because otherwise, you’re in for a really big surprise.

  “I am now ready to take this knowledge back to Tsora with me and consider it as regards the other matter we need to attend together.”

  Picard gave him a quiet smile. “Oh, I think not, ReynKa.”

  Atann stilled his panting with visible effort and focused his entire self on Picard—stiff, but a little too tired to call up his most daleura-filled expression. “Again, you are not making yourself understood.”

  “I expect that you understand me perfectly well, and you simply don’t like it.” Picard tossed his Klingon sword away, letting it clatter against the partial structure of the ruins behind him. “We came with polite words, making every attempt to respect your daleura in our interactions both formal and informal. That doesn’t seem to have done us very much good. Now, we’ll deal with this situation as we choose.”

  “And I choose to return home.” Atann raised his voice as if preparing to call for his men, even glancing over his shoulder out of the habit of having them there.

  “They can’t hear you,” Picard said. “This deck is, out of necessity, perfectly soundproofed.” He walked around Atann, circling him, playing the part of the hunter. “ReynKa, we came here for a very specific reason. It was not to ferry your son to Fandre, and it was not to play waiting games with you and your ReynSa. We came to discuss the navigational charts we need in order to save the Ntignano people. When we approached you about this goal, you indicated you were amenable to discussion about it. Based on that response, we not only came to your system, we allowed you the use of our shuttles, the expertise of my chief engineer, and the escort of my first officer.” Picard lifted an eyebrow. “Did you think we wouldn’t notice if you made no attempt to follow up on your end of the discussions?”

  “Things changed. My son—”

  “Is not relevant to this conversation.” Picard lifted a hand to cut short Atann’s instant protest. “As crucial as his fate is to all of us, it is a separate issue. It is not a reason to discontinue discussions that we never even started!”

  “It is reason enough to me!” Atann snarled. “We make our own decisions in this regard!”

  “Look around, Atann!” Picard raised his own voice, meeting Atann’s escalating body language, and gestured widely at the fight ground. “Why did you come here today? Because I was about to snatch you up and bring you here. Have you learned nothing from this exercise? We are not a people who give up easily. We are not a people who give up at all. We’re not simply going to walk away without having even discussed the terms under which you’re willing to give us temporary use of the charts for that crucial space corridor.” He rounded on the ReynKa, and pushed his voice back down low. “Unless you’re going to tell me here and now that you brought the flagship of the United Federation of Planets out here on a pretense to run errands for you?”

  “No, no, of course not—”

  “Then you’d better find some way to convince me of that, and fast. Because we’re not leaving here until you do.”

  Atann shifted his gaze from object to object until it rested off to Picard’s left, very much like a man caught in a lie . . . with the spotlight on . . . and surrounded by evidence of why he shouldn’t even try to work up the gall to bluff it through.

  * * *

  Akarr seethed with resentment. Here they were, walking again, and Riker had somehow made it seem like Akarr’s fault. Not only were they walking, they were a straggling, limping group, interfering with his final chance to collect a trophy—as if there was anything around here from which it was worth collecting anything, now that he had tranks that worked. The vegetation continued to trip them, the rocks twisted under their feet, and small scaled creatures ran away from their approach . . . but there was nothing here big enough to threaten them. And if it couldn’t threaten them, it wasn’t worth collecting. Yes, Akarr seethed.

  It was so much easier than thinking about the things he’d learned on this trip.

  Things like the fact that his people could betray him. Not only by outright treachery, but with ingrained patterns of daleura that deluded him—that deluded them all—into thinking he was prepared for this deep jungle kaphoora. Such thinking had created an attitude that left him unprepared—for the aggressiveness of the predators, for their sheer size and number, for the effectiveness of their attack methods. He’d come without an adequate med kit . . . and armed with a false assurance that had led him to march his men out into the Legacy, away from the safe shelter of the Federation shuttle. All because he’d never thought to question that daleura might drive his elders to assume and pass on a knowledge of things they hadn’t actually experienced, simply because they could never admit it was so.

  He had never even considered these things before. Hadn’t even been capable of formulating the concept. And he hated the thought that they occurred to him now. Their existence took his neat world of daleura, posturing, and self-assurance and turned it into something else—a place where the wrong decisions were made not honestly, but because no one could afford to open their eyes. A place where he himself could no longer act instinctively on his skills for preserving daleura, but would have to stop and consider the true ramifications of his actions.

  That’s what this trip had done to him.

  He wondered if Atann had ever struggled with such concepts. But Atann had not dealt extensively with offworlders before now—at least, not o
ffworlders other than the Fandreans, who were used to Tsoran ways and had found their own passive countermeasures—with rules and regulations. These new offworlders had a lack of understanding, a tendency to challenge behaviors and decisions that had stood Akarr’s people in good stead for generation after generation.

  At least, as long as his people were only dealing with themselves.

  Gah. His head hurt. Too many hours under this infernal sun. Akarr kicked a rock from his path, and watched with satisfaction as it took flight in a long, shallow arc and dropped out of sight beyond the next patch of vegetation. The others turned to look at him, and he pretended not to notice.

  Were they even any closer to the portal? Too sybling hard to judge the distance of a shimmer in the sky.

  And still he didn’t think about the thing that truly bothered him. That someone hadn’t wanted him to seize his trophy. Had sabotaged his dart supply so he couldn’t. Because surely, that had been the intent behind the tampered darts. Denying him the daleura of this hunt, daleura no one else would ever have the chance to obtain. Federation flagship. Transport deep into the jungle.

  Transport deep into the jungle . . . When the leap of thought first hit him, Akarr stumbled over a root, barely catching his balance in time to save himself from a nasty fall. What if Zefan had been right? What if the Fandreans hadn’t ever seen the report? If the coordinating engineer had falsified Fandrean approval? Both events led to the same potential outcome. What if it hadn’t really been about his daleura at all, but something . . . more? He could have died in that crash. The tampered darts. He could have died in the jaws of the Legacy’s predators.

  Maybe . . . someone hadn’t wanted him to come back.

  Akarr tried to compose his face, to keep his thoughts from it. No one must know where those thoughts had led him, past conjecture and on to such complete treachery. It was a Tsoran thing, a private thing, and no one outside his family could ever know. It would damage them beyond repair, and ruin the dynasty that had followed his father’s line for years almost beyond counting.

  “Akarr?” Riker said, stopping to look back at him.

  Akarr realized that he was standing alone, some distance behind the rest of them. And of course Riker had noticed. He glared at the man. It was all Riker’s fault, this confusion of his—it was Riker who had been pounding at him since the very beginning of this trip. Presenting him with conflicting input—how could he not respect a man who fought with such determination as this one? How could he not despise a man who so flagrantly disrespected Tsoran ways? Always Akarr had found it easy to assign beings into one category or the other. Always until now.

  “Are you all right?” Riker persisted, not wise enough to back off at Akarr’s clearly meaningful expression. Human with a bat’leth, standing there, waiting stupidly for trouble—

  With movement off to his side. Not small and skittery, not something blown about by the breeze. Akarr, his every fiber focused on glaring at Riker, gave the movement a startled look, a change that Riker did not ignore. But though Akarr examined the area carefully, he saw nothing. Riker’s frown would seem to indicate a similar experience.

  “Commander?” Worf called, hesitating at the front of the group.

  “Coming,” Riker said, giving the spot one last glance, and then looking back to Akarr.

  Akarr bit back a snarl and moved to join the rest of the group, not wanting to do it but wanting less to be the one who kept them from reaching the portal in time.

  Within moments, Worf had stopped them again, performing his own narrow-eyed scan of the area. And then it was Gavare who pointed, and then Rakal—which surprised Akarr, since the ravaged guard was on enough painkiller to keep him seeing everything but reality.

  “Cartiga,” Zefan finally said, and Shefen nodded unhappily.

  “Cartiga,” Worf repeated. “The creature from the museum.”

  The one between whose paws La Forge had stood while Akarr had so successfully baited Riker in the museum. Huge. Endowed with astonishing camouflage. Akarr remembered them well from kaphoora training . . . they stalked in pairs, day or night. They lurked on the edges of the Legacy, the barren areas east of the Eccedama ridgeline. There weren’t many of them. No one had ever returned with a cartiga trophy, and the trainees were frankly advised against trying it their first time out. And second.

  They were bigger than sholjaggs. Faster.

  Akarr glanced back over his shoulder at the ridge the shuttle had managed to clear before going down. The Eccedama.

  Cartiga trophy. It might well make up for all the frustration he’d endured.

  “They travel in pairs,” Zefan said, and at the surprised response of all the Tsorans, added, “Something we’ve only just discovered. It’s difficult to track them when we work only with visuals.”

  “Then we’ll all have to keep a watch for them,” Riker said, looking surprisingly bolstered by the injection he’d received. Darkly, Akarr wondered how long it would last. “But we’d better do it on the move. We don’t have any time to waste.”

  Worf looked at the sun—their only time device, in the absence of tricorders and chronometers—and shook his head. “We have less than that. We must pick up the pace.”

  Which they did, without complaint. Akarr took his turn at Ketan’s side, supporting the weight of the guard’s wounded leg; Worf led the way, while Riker held back to pick up the drag position, one hand always on the trank gun he now carried. Ketan’s gun, appropriated and loaded with viable tranks.

  It wasn’t long before Akarr got his first good look at a cartiga. A startingly close look, with the animal not there and suddenly there, coming from nowhere to bound along aside the group for a few strides, then fade back and crouch against the rock, its randomly patterned coat—sand and taupe variations with edges of brown— allowing it to almost literally disappear from sight when Akarr blinked and lost his visual hold on it.

  “Damn,” Riker said under his breath, probably not expecting Akarr’s sharp Tsoran ears to pick it up. They locked gazes and he knew he’d been heard, though he didn’t seem to care, didn’t seem to feel it had decreased whatever humans were wont to call daleura. Instead he took the connection as an excuse to say, “Take it down, if you can. Maybe we can get far enough away before the trank wears off to discourage it from following.” Then he gave a strange smile—showing his teeth as the humans did, but in an asymmetrical way, and with something extra in his eye. Something . . . acknowledging. “Besides,” he said, “something from a cartiga would make one helluva impression on the folks back home, don’t you think?”

  Akarr had no idea how to reply. How was he supposed to interpret this expression within the ever-present structure of daleura? It was in no way formal, but it seemed to hold some respect, regardless. Then Ketan gave a shout and pointed, nearly losing his balance despite the arm he had flung over Akarr’s shoulder. Akarr clutched at him, turning at the same time, trying to follow Ketan’s gesture—

  Two of them, one on either side. Making a strafing run and veering off again.

  “They’re checking us out,” Zefan said. “They might see a ranger in a scooterpod occasionally, but they’ve probably never seen such a large party on foot. We generally put down the kaphoora parties just on the other side of the ridge.”

  “And when they’re through checking us out?” Riker asked, still squinting at the last spot he’d seen the cartigas and literally walking backward in the process as he kept pace.

  “They’ll quit playing with us and do their best to eat us,” said Shefen.

  Worf said, “It won’t be good enough.” He, too, held a trank gun at the ready. They all did, aside from Rakal and Ketan. Even Gavare, though his aim looked less than steady.

  “There!” Riker said, using the two-handed aim of his trank gun to point, following the target smoothly as the creature came at them.

  “Here, also,” Worf said without raising his voice, focused in the opposite direction.

  But Akarr was watching Rike
r, trying to spot the cartiga Riker had targeted—there, he had it; he raised his gun, lining up the sights of the short barrel, still supporting Ketan with his other arm. The cartiga was close enough, veering in at them, a massive thing of ponderous fluidity within the gun’s range—but Riker hadn’t acted. Akarr hesitated, following the rules of the kaphoora—the first hunter to acquire sights on a creature had priority—

  “Take the shot, Akarr,” Riker said evenly, still targeting the creature, sounding distracted and intent at the same time. “Take the shot, dammit—before I have to.”

  Because this time the thing was coming in for a kill.

  Akarr’s hair stood on end with the sudden thrill of it, but his training held firm, and even as the cartiga loped in at them with lazily deceptive speed—at his side, Ketan flinched—he checked his sights and gently squeezed the release.

  The dart lodged in the thin skin at the base of one huge, broad-based ear, and the cartiga squalled in surprise, breaking stride to bat at its face and snarl—movement which quickly became a lurching parody of the creature’s normal grace.

  “The second one is running,” Worf announced as the tranked cartiga folded into a pile of fur.

  “I doubt it’s ever seen one of its own kind go down,” Zefan said.

  “And just how long will a trank keep one of these things down?”

  “Not long,” Zefan admitted. “We have little practical experience with the cartiga. But two of the darts might damage it, and we cannot risk that.”

  Akarr quit listening as he ran to the creature; its half-closed eyes glittered dully at him, and it twitched, as though it knew he was there and badly wanted to sink its teeth into him.

  He’d done it. Despite the crash, despite the sabotage, despite his time in the deep Legacy, over night and fighting for their lives the whole time. And now he had his first trophy choice before him.

  Akarr circled the animal; his men were silent, as was proper. On this animal, there were a number of legal trophies. Akarr retrieved his trophy knife, touching the lush fur, touching a semiretractable claw—which could only be trimmed, not removed—running his fingers over the full brush of the creature’s whiskers. Those were fair trophy. If it had had spines on the ends of its tails like so many creatures here, those would have been fair, also.