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Chapter Thirteen

“THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!” Lir Kirnis screamed. “Hold your fire! Cordracite vessel, you’ve made a mistake! There are no weapons here, nothing of value.” She licked her lips. “There are children … children, damn it! Come down and see for your-“

Jean-Luc Picard watched in horrified silence-along with the rest of the Kellasian Congress-as Melacronai Master Scientist Lir Kirnis frantically tried to dissuade the attack that ultimately destroyed her.

Kirnis stared up at something, her eyes wide, her face bathed in a sickly green light. Her mouth moved, but it didn’t produce any words. Then the image on his screen went blank.

The captain’s teeth ground together. After all, he had seen the terror in Kirnis’s expression. He had seen the damning sensor data downloaded from the colony computers, which somehow survived the attack. And he had seen the list of those who had perished.

As Kirnis had indicated, there had indeed been children at the outpost-a great many of them, it seemed. And they had all fallen victim to the Cordracite war vessel.

“There can be no error!” shrilled the Melacronai G’aha of Finance, his eyes wide with fury. “On the eve of our most sacred and holy time, the Cordracite monsters appear like demons out of legend to massacre the young, the helpless and the innocent!”

“No!” countered Sammis Tarv, on his feet now, his antennae bent forward with indignation. “This is not just an error-it is a cold, calculated attempt by the Melacronai government to blame the Cordracites for their tragedy! These-these creatures murdered their own scientists and made it look as if we did it!”

“We would kill our own?” The G’aha was stunned by the accusation. “And we would do this on the eve of Inseeing? Trust a Cordracite to think of something so irrational… so abominable!”

“Trust a Melacron to do something so abominable!” came a rasping reply from one of the Cordracites.

And then it happened. The assemblage’s carefully built foundation of diplomacy and reason shattered like fine crystal under the impact of a level-ten phaser barrage. The Cordracite Elected One charged the Melacronai G’aha, his jaw pincers extending from his mouth as he hissed the ancient blood cry of his people. Just as eager for a confrontation, the G’aha bellowed and met the Elected One halfway.

Picard couldn’t allow it. Leaping down from the podium with Ben Zoma on his heels, he made a beeline for the combatants.

As it turned out, Gerrid Thul reached them first. He threw his body between them and struggled to keep the delegates from killing each other-no easy task. Fortunately, others arrived to help, the captain and his first officer among them.

The Cordracite was the more formidable of the delegates. His pincers and his claw-like ringers tore clothing and flesh alike.

“Peace! Peace in these halls, I beg you!” Cabrid Culunnh’s voice was shrill with grief-over the murders of innocents, over the violence displayed in a hall meant to nurture peace, over the looming specter of war and even more death. He hastened down from the stage, his small, round face expressing his apprehension as eloquently as any words he might utter.

“The First Minister is right!” said Picard, raising his voice to be heard over the uproar. “These halls are meant for dialogue, not defamation… debate, not indictment!’

The combatants glowered at each other, their chests heaving and their faces flushed with emotion. But it seemed that, for the moment at least, the fight had gone out of them.

“You are right, Captain Picard,” said Sammis Tarv.

There was blood on the front of his tunic-though the captain couldn’t tell whose it was. “This chamber is for discourse. It is not for combat.”

Then, before anyone could stop him or even guess what he was about to do, the Cordracite darted forward and slashed the G’aha’s face with his hand. And as quickly as he had attacked, he stepped back.

“That is an informal declaration of hostility,” Tarv spat at the Melacron. “Rest assured that a formal declaration will be dispatched from my