Tooth and Claw Page 5

  “We’ll get used to it,” Picard said, with more hope than assurance. “As I recall, the Tsorans don’t see color quite like we do—perhaps to Atann this is a subtle effect.” He stepped aside from the door—no point in blocking someone else’s overwhelming initial sight of the room—and tried to get his bearings.

  The food, at least, smelled wonderful. By that smell, it leaned toward meat dishes and spices, although Picard also saw an entire table devoted to desserts. He spotted the Federation’s token offering against the wall and nearly engulfed by one of the curtains, the food mostly untouched. Well, that would probably make Atann happy. He noted, too, that despite the pleasantly cool air, almost everyone was sweating. His officers dabbed their upper lips with their napkins, their cheeks flushed; if the Tsorans showed any similar signs, Picard couldn’t discern them. And thankfully, the Tsorans—dressed in plated leather uniforms and loose flowing trousers, with their females in unusual combinations of leather and flowing silks—seemed to be mingling freely and happily enough.

  Atann himself stood at the center of one of the larger groups, entertaining them all with a tale that took wide gestures and exaggerated expressions requiring much display of tooth—a hunt, no doubt. Nearby, the ReynSa had her own collection of listeners. Dressed much like the other Tsoran women, she nonetheless bore an unmistakable air of authority, and unless Picard was mistaken, she, too, spoke of the hunt.

  “Captain Picard!” the ReynKa bellowed, breaking into the middle of his own story and walking away from his gathered listeners without even appearing to take note of them. “What do you think of your ship now? An improvement, don’t you think? Have you tried the heessla?”

  Every sweating crew member within earshot stiffened, shooting desperate sidelong glances their way.

  “I’ve only just arrived,” Picard said, not quite prepared for such a casual greeting. “I have to say you’ve made some amazing changes here.”

  “Just so,” Atann agreed. “It is not, of course, as regal as my own fete room, but I did my best.”

  “I hope the view helps to make up for anything the accommodations might be lacking,” Picard said, trying out the line between holding his own and treading on Tsoran daleura.

  Atann smiled—at least, Picard thought it was a smile. “I find myself much too taken with the sight of my own ReynSa,” he said, gesturing at Tehra. “I recall the hunt she describes; she was magnificent. After the death of my first ReynSa, I had convinced myself I would never find another with her daleura, but that hunt changed my mind.”

  “Did it?” Picard said, trying to remember if the information had been in his mission brief.

  “Indeed. Tehra offers all things—beauty, an acute sense of daleura, the skills to thrive in the ReynSa’s competitive life . . . not only has she raised Akarr as if he were her own, she honored him by naming her own son—my second son—Takarr.” He looked back at Troi. “But I am rude, to so praise another woman while enjoying your presence.”

  Troi gave him a genuine smile, and Picard took note—the Tsorans could turn on charm as well as the brusque daleura tones Akarr had thrown at them.

  “Please,” said Atann, “let me expose you to the advantages of living on Tsora.” Without waiting for a response, he turned away to lead them to the food.

  Picard glanced at Troi, and found her exotic features tinged with alarm. Was it something he’d said? Some reaction she felt from Atann? Or—he glanced again at the Enterprise officers around him. They had plates, he noticed, but no one seemed to be going back for seconds. Or finishing what they had.

  When he met Troi’s gaze again and saw her eyes widen slightly, he knew he’d guessed right. Apparently those spices were just as strong as they smelled.

  “This is the heessla, “ Atann said, picking up a stylish Tsoran serving utensil and scooping a steaming meat entree onto an equally stylistic plate. “One of the favored foods of my region. This vegetable is from the southern continent—you’ll want to try it, too.” And he applied some to the plate. Picard’s plate.

  “I want to be sure to sample everything,” Picard said, resigning himself to an evening of gastrointestinal upset. “Smaller portions would make that easier, don’t you think?”

  “Eh?” Atann twisted back to look up at him. “Mighty sybyls, you humans have a puny appetite.”

  There was a stir at the doorway as Beverly Crusher entered, attracting more attention than one might expect; Enterprise personnel immediately gravitated toward her, as though she were some sort of pied piper. She was dressed for the reception in flowing slacks and a tunic of subtle greens and blues that were a soothing balm to Picard’s eyes in contrast to the rest of the room. And—odd—she carried a small matching satchel. In another time, he would have called it a purse. Her fair cheeks carried a fading blush not unlike the one the rest of the room’s occupants sported.

  She scanned the room, spotted him, and swooped in just as Troi put a hesitant scoop full of heessla on her oval plate. “Good afternoon,” she said breezily, not at all like herself. “Glad you made it, Jean-Luc.”

  “Where else would I be?” Picard said, somewhat taken aback.

  But she didn’t answer; instead she nodded respectfully at the ReynKa—and while she was at it, she pressed something into Picard’s hand, a wafer of some sort. To judge by the look on Troi’s face, she had received a similar offering.

  “You were late, Captain,” Atann said, no more or less belligerently than usual; Picard would have said he enjoyed the chance to point it out, though he didn’t hesitate in his self-appointed task of heaping Picard’s plate with food.

  And while Picard sought a suitable reply, Crusher leaned over to his ear and murmured, “Chew that very well before you put one bite of that food in your mouth!” Then, rather more brightly than her wont, she said, “Oh, there’s the ReynSa. I brought back that little token from Risa she was asking about a moment ago.”

  “Surely not,” Picard managed, but she was gone— and if she was on her way to the ReynSa, she was taking the long way around, and surrounded all along the way by crew behaving like beggars imploring a tourist for coins.

  Troi, he noticed, had already consumed her wafer. He slipped his own into his mouth, nodding at Atann’s enthusiastic endorsement of the pureed . . . whatever it was. Good Lord, the wafer tasted awful.

  Picard glanced at the crowd of discomfitted, red-faced crew members . . .

  And chewed.

  * * *

  Akarr clutched the edges of his padded, extra-wide seat, feeling a quick flash of annoyance. They’d only just started their short journey when the Rahjah shuddered; the engines shifted pitch. It didn’t matter, he told himself. They were through the forcefield . . . there was no one to see the man’s clumsy piloting. No one but his men.

  They sat behind him, in padded seats no less comfortable than his own. Special seats, installed by the flagship just for his kaphoora. He’d seen the pleased looks on his men’s faces as they inspected their conveyance. Nothing like the minimalist Tsoran space vehicles they were used to . . . although of all his men, only Gavare had been on kaphoora before. The others were his own personal security, those who had trained hard to protect Akarr in all aspects of his life. Pavar, the light-coated and curious one, Regen, Ketan, Takan—all had started out with him when he was merely a child and they were young men barely past kaphoora. Rakal ranked them all, Rakal who had been caught scratching by the Starfleet woman. A disgrace that she had not immediately looked away; Rakal no doubt still felt the shame of it.

  Now Rakal moved to the other side of the shuttle, the side consumed by stowage compartments and a fancy head. The stowage held their food—enough preserved rations for an extended hunt, if that’s what it took. They couldn’t judge the length of this kaphoora by any others . . . it was not only his first, it was a first for all Tsorans to go so deep in the Legacy . . .

  The stowage also held their trank weapons and darts, shelter-building materials, and medical supplies. With al
l of that, there was also much empty space; on the trip from Tsora to Fandre, these compartments had been stuffed with engineering components, and had been sized for those needs.

  Rakal, lurching in the shuttle’s turbulent progress, double-checked the stowage latches, giving the doors a good thump for extra measure. Shifting back to his place, he lost his balance entirely, falling into the padded chair instead of sitting with dignity.

  Enough! Akarr moved to the empty copilot’s seat, his balance unhampered by the shuddering ship. He took one look at Riker’s grim expression—these humans were hard enough to read, never mind the fact that this one had unusually patterned hair on his face—and demanded, “What’s happening?”

  Riker didn’t look up from the shuttle console; his fingers flew over controls that meant nothing to Akarr. “Trouble,” he said shortly, and then swore, abruptly shifting to reach the console in front of Akarr. The shuttle lurched, straightened, and lurched again; Riker responded too quickly to be doing anything but randomly punching at controls.

  Akarr drew back just enough to keep from hindering his pilot, but not so far that he couldn’t see out the viewport, where the trees seemed to be rising at an alarming rate. Something scraped the bottom of the shuttle, tilting them.

  “Sit back,” Riker said, intent on the controls as they somehow straightened. “And hang on.”

  “What kind of superior technology is this?” Akarr demanded, ignoring the command, feeling nothing but offense at the fact that the Federation flagship would put him on a faulty shuttle. “The Fandrean scooterpods have never failed us!”

  “Technology that wasn’t built to function within a tech damper!” Riker hit a few controls in quick sequence, and made a satisfied noise; Akarr knew only enough to guess it had something to do with communications—even though Riker hadn’t said anything. Then Riker glanced at Akarr, sitting on the edge of the human-sized seat, and gave a jerk of his head, a commanding gesture. “That seat is built to protect you when we hit—sit back!”

  “Hit?” Akarr repeated, even as the shuttle dipped wildly, barely recovering to level flight. Behind them, his men stirred; a glance showed Pavar rising from his seat to come forward.

  “Crash. Wreck. Smash into the ground.” Riker didn’t even look at him, intent on the controls as the engine whine faded almost to nothing, fingers dancing as the shuttle bobbled and straightened, one arm braced against the edge of the console.

  Akarr couldn’t believe his ears. His prime kaphoora, ruined! “You’re supposed to be the best pilot the Enterprise has!”

  Riker lifted an eyebrow at him. Cocky. “Then you’d better hope I’m good enough to keep you alive.”

  * * *

  “Whoa,” La Forge said, jerking his head away from the communications console as a blast of static burst through. “What was that?”

  Yenan looked just as startled as La Forge felt. Deep in the building, where few people worked and even fewer made any noise while about it, only the constant hum of the shield generators in the background served as a reminder that this was indeed a crucial nexus of Legacy management. But a background hum was all it was, and it in no way ameliorated the brief, startling cacophony of the incoming transmission.

  “I don’t know,” the Fandrean finally admitted. “We have no expected communication of that type coming in on this board.”

  La Forge finished the job in which he’d been engaged—installing a translator module into the Fandrean system so all its blinking displays appeared in Federation Standard at request—and stared thoughtfully at the resulting console. Getting the lay of the land. There were only so many logical ways to organize a communications board, after all, and the Fandrean sense of order suited human needs quite well. This entire complex—squared-off cubbies of spartan design, not quite large enough for human comfort; Worf or Riker would bounce their heads off the ceiling—could have been enlarged and fit neatly within a human facility. Of course, that somehow made it twice as disconcerting when he ran into something uniquely Fandrean . . . .

  Ah. There. “Looks like it came from within the Legacy,” he said. “Thought you couldn’t get anything through?”

  “This is so,” Yenan admitted, bobbing his head with a strange twist that also exposed his throat. “On occasion we have received partial transmissions from within the preserve, but none more than a few seconds. As with that one. A word, maybe half a word . . . and that is with special equipment built for use behind the forcefields.”

  La Forge frowned at the console. “Is there anyone else in the preserve right now? Besides the shuttle that just left?”

  “There are always Legacy rangers at work,” Yenan said. “We monitor the preserve very carefully.”

  “But . . . they would be using the special equipment—the transmitters that provide clear signals if they get through.”

  “Yes.”

  La Forge tapped his way through a series of hesitant commands, still getting the feel for the Fandrean system and possessed of a foreboding that it would be a while before he was truly able to work on the actual problem he’d been sent to address. “There’s no way to tell just where the signal originates?”

  “Not through the forcefields,” Yenan said, bobbing his head again. “Please don’t distress yourself over it, Lieutenant Commander La Forge.”

  “You can call me Geordi,” La Forge said, pulling up the band the communication had used.

  “It’s probably a random transmission, possibly caused by the energy surge you yourself witnessed.”

  Not one band. All of them.

  At least, all of the bands of communication—from sublight to obsolete radiowaves—that were readily available to a Federation shuttle.

  La Forge shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t think this was a simple noise burst. I don’t think that’s it at all.”

  * * *

  Thanks to Beverly’s foresight, Picard made his way through the reception with his taste buds intact and his stomach without need of heroic repair. He spoke to as many of the Tsorans as possible, trying to build on Ambassador Jesson’s reports and on Troi’s comments, and finally found himself in front of the ReynKa, in a position to mention the negotiations. “Just over to the right,” he said, pointing out at the starscape before them after he and Akarr had stood before the viewport for a moment of contemplation. The noise of the reception bubbled on behind them—somewhat more active than before, thanks to the addition of several theremin-like instruments and the Tsoran musicians who mastered them. There, to the right—the Ntignano system. A bright, perfectly normal-looking star.

  “The fools who destroyed their own sun?”

  “Only a handful of people took the action that instigated the sun’s impending nova,” Picard said. “A few members of an extremist doomsday cult, reacting to a significant religious date.”

  “That still makes them fools.”

  “You and I might think so.” Picard looked away from the stars and held Atann’s eye just long enough—as far as he could tell—to indicate the utmost polite emphasis to his words. “But that doesn’t mean the entire population of the planet deserves to die.” And then, before Atann felt cornered into an immediate response, Picard made his posture more casual and looked out to the stars again. “Amazing things, those graviton eddies. One can hardly perceive them from here—only a faint rippling in the stars. And yet right now they control the fate of all the Ntignanos.” He glanced back at Atann, who seemed not to know what to say, but whose expression didn’t look promising. “As do you,” Picard told him. “That kind of responsibility must carry much prestige with it. As does how one manages the responsibility.”

  Atann made a noise that Picard couldn’t interpret one way or another, but the pursed shape of his mobile and considerable lower mouth looked no more promising than before.

  Still. It was a start. Now, to find something to put the conversation on more casual terms, so Atann wouldn’t feel he’d been challenged.

  “Data to Captain Pica
rd.”

  Blast. “What is it, Data?”

  “Incoming message from Lieutenant Commander La Forge, sir.” And, as Picard hesitated, Data added, “I suggest you take it outside the reception, Captain.”

  Not for the casual ear. And not a transmission to delay. “Understood,” Picard said. “I’ll get back to you momentarily.” He looked down at Atann and quickly away, a deliberately submissive—and hopefully placating—gesture. “If you’ll excuse me, ReynKa—”

  The ReynKa turned away with no further ado; Picard’s final words may or may not have been lost on him. It was hard enough to read the Tsoran’s facial reactions, never mind his stout, stiff back. Picard made a final effort before taking leave. “I’ll look forward to resuming our conversation at your earliest possible convenience.”

  Troi, never far, moved in to join him as he wended through the reception—and a much happier contingent from the Enterprise, since Crusher had returned—and toward the door. “That last,” she said, “was embarrassment.”

  “I thought as much,” Picard said. No one likes to be told you have more important things to do.

  And this had better be that important.

  Picard headed for the nearby bridge, nodded to Data on the way by, and ended up in his ready room, Troi still at his side. He sat behind the desk and touched the computer console. Data had already routed the transmission through, and La Forge waited. “Captain,” he said immediately, and then hesitated. “Are you alone?”

  “Counselor Troi is here,” Picard said, somewhat brusquely. “What’s happened?”

  “Trouble, I think,” La Forge said. He seemed to be alone, in a control room of some sort. The wall behind him sported a variety of screens, monitors, and input devices; the ceiling loomed low over his head.

  “You think? Mr. La Forge, either there is trouble or there isn’t.” Crabby. Picard definitely found himself feeling crabby. By-product of the Tsoran food . . . or, more likely, the Tsorans themselves.

  “It’s not that clear-cut, Captain.” La Forge appeared unfazed. “We’ve just received a broad-band transmission from within the preserve—more like a burst of noise than anything else. It’s not a transmission event the Fandreans have experienced before, and . . . Captain, I have a hunch that it came from Commander Riker.”