Captain Picard did not like the brittle tone of his counterpart"s announcement. "Mute signal."
"I suggest beaming our people out of there," said Riker.
Worf consulted his display screen, then shook his head. "Impossible, Commander. The tractor beam will interfere with our transporter signal."
Geordi La Forge turned from his engineering nook. "We could try to recalibrate for a one-shot beam-out, but it"ll take time."
"We do not have time," Worf suddenly said, glaring down at his console. "The Tenirans just increased tractor intensity by eighty percent. The shuttle cannot withstand the stress for longer than ninety seconds."
"d.a.m.n," Picard muttered, still facing Worf and Geordi, his back to the main viewscreen. "Channel open. Captain Arit, your aggressive action is unacceptable. Release the shuttle immediately or we will be forced to-"
"What the h.e.l.l is that?" Geordi muttered, taking a stride forward, staring across the bridge at the viewscreen.
Picard and Riker whirled just in time to see a splash of skittering colors surrounding the little shuttlecraft. The gaseous tendrils sliced right through the Teniran energy beam and seemed to tenderly caress the endangered Onizuka like sinuous fingers. Their colors blended and bled with such rapid fluidity that human eyes could not be sure what colors they"d seen.
Then the shuttle began to sparkle and fade, turning translucent.
"What"s happening?" Picard demanded.
Before anyone on the Enterprise bridge could answer, the shuttle dissolved in a rainbow blaze of sparkling hues-and vanished without a trace.
Chapter Three.
AS PICARD GAPED at the viewer, be felt a queasy shudder in the pit of his stomach, as if he"d just been shoved off a precipice into free-fall. What the h.e.l.l happened to the shuttlecraft?
But reflexes honed by long years of command took hold and he forced the stunned expression off his face. "Mr. Worf, report."
Worf seemed to be groping for a reply. "It is ... simply gone, Captain. There is no correlation to this phenomenon in our data banks."
Picard responded with a nod. "Add visual to our signal. If the Tenirans respond in kind, put it on screen."
"Aye, sir," Worf said.
"Captain Arit," Picard boomed, "the unwarranted destruction of our shuttlecraft is an act of war."
The bland blue globe of Domarus Four left the main viewscreen, and Picard got his first look at the face of his adversary.
"We did nothing to your shuttle," Captain Arit said flatly, flashing small but noticeable fangs not quite hidden under full golden lips. Her large eyes, tinted a faint green, betrayed no fear-no emotion at all.
Picard had never seen a Teniran before, neither in the flesh nor in pictures, not even in pa.s.sing. He would have remembered beings embodying such savage beauty. Momentarily mesmerized by Arit"s tawny complexion and the rich black mane circling the delicate contours of her face, he wondered whether her appearance was typical of her species. Then he noticed the ragged quilting of her uniform, with fraying around the collar and an unmended rip at the shoulder seam. A flagship commander wearing tattered hand-me-downs ... ?
"Then what happened to it?"
"That is your problem, Picard. Be out of Teniran s.p.a.ce within one of your hours. Arit out." Her face disappeared from the viewscreen.
"That was a grave mistake, Captain Arit."
Arit winced at the sharp words from the pinched voice behind her. She didn"t want to deal with this, not now. If she ignored him, didn"t turn at all, maybe he"d just disappear from her bridge. Maybe- "Why wasn"t I consulted?"
He wouldn"t disappear and she knew it. He never did, so why should this situation be any different. She would have to deal with him.
"Consulted about what, Egin?" With a grudging swivel of her chair, she faced the aging official. Egin"s clenched fists rested on his hips in what Arit had long since accepted as a more or less permanent stance of aggressive impatience. His ill-fitting doublet stretched across his ample girth, and she found herself wondering whether the faded garment might just surrender to structural stresses and spontaneously pop apart.
"You know d.a.m.n well what, Captain. You may command this ship, but I"m the First Valend of our government and I should have been consulted on your dealings with the Enterprise."
"Egin, you"re First Valend by default. You"re the only Valend left-and I don"t have to consult you on matters pertaining to the running of the Glin-Kale."
Egin"s head shook vigorously, setting a wispy mane of silver hair fluttering as his jowls quivered. "You can"t just dismiss my authority like-"
She cut him off. "I"m tired of this argument, Egin. I was tired of it the first time we had it, and the hundredth time and the thousandth time."
His pursed mouth clamped shut for a longer than expected interval, but he wasn"t ready to retreat. "Fine. Then I"ll just state my case. We should have told this Picard that we had his shuttle and crewmen-it would have been the perfect bargaining trade-off."
Arit couldn"t quite believe what she was hearing. Forget the fact that this starship Enterprise looked like a gleaming example of the Federation"s finest-dismiss the likelihood that its sensors could probably have probed to the core of her own vessel. Could Egin really have failed to grasp the meaning of his own words? Trade-off implied that you actually had something to trade-or the strength to back up a bluff. She stared at him. "And what would"ve happened when they discovered we were lying?"
That shut him up. And to her astonishment, he turned smartly on one worn boot heel and marched off the bridge as if he"d been the victor. She muttered a disbelieving oath to herself, marveling at Egin"s unflagging ability to fail to think any strategy through to its most obvious conclusion. No wonder he"s spent his entire thirty-year career on the Council of Valends mired in the nether depths of government hierarchy. His colleagues must have perceived him for what he was-a drudge, stunningly limited in scope, though with a few political uses.
And now, in what Arit saw as one of the great cosmic jokes of all time, fate had spared Egin and taken him to heights even he had never imagined himself occupying. If only I could see the humor in this particular joke ...
"Was the shuttlecraft destroyed, or was it not?" Jean-Luc Picard tried to keep the testiness out of his voice, but failed.
As Picard"s words hung in the air, he glanced around the conference-room table at Riker, Worf and Geordi. No one seemed anxious to break the uncomfortable silence, but the burly Klingon spoke up first.
"If so, then it was disintegrated more completely than is possible with any weapon-or weapon theory-known to us."
Picard rubbed his chin and leaned back in his chair, certain that Worf"s stark observation would stimulate the discussion. "Hmm ... Please elaborate, Lieutenant."
"There was no explosion, no debris-not even the residual particles left after an object is destroyed by our phasers."
"If the Tenirans do have some unknown weapon," Riker said, "then they"re a clear danger not only to this ship but to the entire Federation. And if they"ve got more ships like this one ..."
Geordi shook his head. "I don"t think it was a weapon. And I don"t think the shuttle was destroyed."
Everyone stared at the chief engineer. They obviously wanted to agree with his statement, but their experience tempered that desire with skepticism. "Then what happened to it?" Riker asked.
"I think it was transported, for lack of a better term-and, pleasant as they are, I don"t think the Tenirans had anything to do with it."
"Transported?" Riker repeated, his face pinched into a doubtful squint. "How and where?"
"I"m not sure how ... and I don"t know where."
"Mr. La Forge," Picard said, "I"ve never known you to make wild guesses."
"And I"m not making "em now, Captain. Not entirely, anyway."
"Geordi, if you"re not guessing," Riker said, "then what are you basing this on?"
The chief engineer clasped his hands and his gaze drifted across the table toward the observation windows. "Something weird that showed up in sensor a.n.a.lyses. Those swirling colors around the shuttle-?They were the visible result of strange energy patterns converging right around the shuttle."
Picard leaned forward, the intensity of his interest glittering in his eyes. "Energy patterns?"
"Yes, sir, and they were incredibly diffused. Once these energy patterns reached their target-the shuttlecraft-they coalesced into those swirling colors we saw."
"And you are saying that this diffused energy didn"t come from the Teniran ship?" Picard asked.
"Yes, sir. I"m about ninety-five percent certain it came from the planet."
Riker thumped his fist on the table. "Then we should be able to pinpoint a source."
"I wish," Geordi sighed. "I already looked for residual energy readings down there-anything telltale. The energy patterns did not originate from one spot."
"Yet," Picard said, "you are still certain they did in fact come from the Domaran surface?"
"Positive, sir. I"ve ordered up continuous intensive scanning of the planet. If there"s anything at all to be found down there-either some weird power source or the shuttle-we"ll find it."
The captain frowned. "I wonder what else we might find ..."
Arit sat in her dimly lit cabin, her jacket open to reveal a threadbare undervest beneath. She stared at the wide-bottomed bottle in her hand, her fingers wrapped firmly around its tapered neck. Did it hold answers, or merely escape? And what did that matter anyway? She liked the way the purple wine tasted, savored its fire as it went down. She felt so little these days-at least the burning in her belly reminded her she was still alive.
But the sensation was fleeting. Arit knew the truth. She was dying a lingering death. They all were. And she didn"t really believe this place, this Domarus, would be their salvation.
"The peroheen again?" a gravelly voice scolded from behind her.
Arit turned slightly to see a familiar portly silhouette in the doorway where the hatch was stuck half-open. "You"re not my mother, Jevlin."
"No, I"m your first officer, and I never should"ve let you take that case of peroheen when we-"
"A last reminder of home. Come in and join me, or go away and leave me alone. But please-don"t stand there lecturing me."
"I"m not lecturing, Cap"n." He limped into the cramped cabin, leaning on a stout walking stick and dragging his gimpy right leg. "I"ve been more intimate with more bottles than you"ll ever see. You can bet your life on that."
She poured the purple liquid into an extra gla.s.s and pushed it across the desk as Jevlin lowered his bulk into a chair. He shoved the gla.s.s back at her.
"Suit yourself," she said, adding the rejected drink to her own nearly empty gla.s.s. "There"s nothing more dull than a reformed drunk." Then she downed half the combination in several continuous gulps.
"I could try to fix that," Jevlin said, wagging his thumb back toward the inoperative hatch.
"Fix what-being dull or being a reformed drunk?" Arit peered over the rim of her gla.s.s, wondering if she"d ever live to be as old and fat and gray as Jevlin.
"The door," he said sourly.
"Oh." She shrugged, honestly not caring. Somehow, it seemed harder and harder to care about much of anything these days, much less a broken door mechanism. "Why bother? It"s been like that for months."
"A ship"s cap"n needs privacy sometimes."
"On this ship?" She gave a skeptical snort. "Besides, I think of my hatch as the perfect symbol of everything else that doesn"t work on the glorious old Glin-Kale."
Jevlin seemed offended. "That"s not fair, Cap"n. She"s got us this far. She"s got some heart left."
"The Enterprise may take care of that."
"We"ll work things out," he said with a grin that showed his chipped fangs. "But n.o.body"s going to help us, Cap"n, n.o.body at all. It"s up to us."
"You should"ve been on the bridge to see Egin in action this time."
"I heard."
Arit rubbed her eyes. She seemed to be tired most of the time these days. She still managed to sleep at night, but she couldn"t recall the last time she"d awakened feeling rested. "I don"t know why, but Egin"s stupidity still astonishes me. Has it occurred to you that if we get through this, he"ll have the same authority as Gansheya had? She was brilliant, and he"s a t.u.r.d."
Jevlin nodded. "Not quite fair that he"s the only one who survived to make it this far. Who knows, Cap"n ... anything could still happen."
"Ever the optimist. Have you got your little shleeyah with you?"
He patted the breast pocket of his shabby coat. "You know I"m never without it since it replaced the wine."
"Then play me a song, Jev." Arit closed her eyes and took a pensive sip of her wine.
"Any special song?" Jevlin asked as he slid the small instrument out of his pocket. The shleeyah was a black, flute-like tube about the size of his thumb, and he buffed it against his sleeve until it glinted in the glow of the desk lamp.
"First officer"s discretion," she said with a hazy smile softened by the wine.
His hands were stubby and roughened by a life of hard labor, but his fingers cradled the instrument with a tenderness reserved for the touch of a lover"s hand. He raised it to his lips and breathed into the slender mouthpiece; inside the cylinder, his warm breath blended into music and came out as a lilting tune that broadened the smile on Captain Arit"s face.
As she listened to Jevlin"s s.p.a.ce chantey, she gazed out through the large square viewport over her bed. And she wondered what happened to that little shuttlecraft. She"d never intended to do any damage to the tiny defenseless ship, or harm those aboard it. But she"d learned the hard way that a little bl.u.s.ter up front could save a lot of scrambling for cover later on. And her strategy had indeed been working-until the Enterprise arrived. One look at that gleaming starship, and she knew there"d be no way for the old Glin-Kale to outgun her. But she"d still been willing to play out her hand. She"d have retained control over that shuttle only as long as it kept the Enterprise at bay. Then she"d have released it. A simple enough plan, ruined by ... by what? Arit fervently wished she had the answer to that question.
Arit hated the unknown. She hated losing control. And she found herself driven by the simplest of yearnings-to feel a planet surface beneath her feet instead of metal decking, to breathe the fresh scent of a free-blowing breeze instead of the stale air recirculated through filters long since shot to h.e.l.l. This planet, this Domarus Four, had appeared to be the answer to prayers- But no longer. The way things were going, it might yet turn out to be the graveyard of what remained of the Teniran people.
The hour she"d given Picard would soon be up. Whatever happened, she knew she could not back down now.
"Your shuttle is gone, Picard," Arit said from the small viewscreen atop Picard"s ready room desk. "Permission to intrude on Teniran s.p.a.ce is now rescinded. The Enterprise must depart immediately."
Picard sat at the desk with his hands folded, his face tranquil. "We have reason to believe our missing shuttlecraft has been transported down to Domarus Four and we-"
"Transported-? By what? You admitted yourself that Federation surveys cla.s.sify this world as uninhabited by sentient life."
"Surveys can be incomplete, or wrong. We will not leave this system until we can be certain that our missing crew members are not somewhere down there on Domarus Four."
"Down there laying claim to our planet!" Arit said explosively.
"If Domarus does have native sentient life-forms," Picard countered, "then it is not your planet-"
"That is between us and these theoretical life-forms of yours. It is none of the Federation"s business. I"m warning you, Picard-we will defend our territory."