Dragon's Honor - Kij Johnson [62]
Picard heard an amused chuckle from Troi, one quickly stifled into a fit of coughing. “Oh,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I am so sorry, Your Excellence, Captain. This one seems to have inhaled a bit of dust or flour.”
The Dragon smiled at Troi. “Here, have a sip of my wine, from my own glass.” The Emperor’s eyes twinkled as he spoke, and Picard experienced a sense of foreboding. The Dragon appeared to be taking too much of a liking to Deanna; Picard hoped the Emperor was not expecting the counselor as a wedding gift as well.
“Sir,” he said, hoping to distract the Dragon from Troi’s abundant charms. “Perhaps you can explain your move to me… .”
“Sir, I have intercepted another of those communications,” Lieutenant Melilli announced.
Seated in the captain’s chair, Data kept his gaze on the viewscreen ahead of him. The Dragon Nebula filled the screen, its swirling vapors concealing a myriad of mysteries. “I assume you are not using the word ‘communications’ unadvisedly.”
“Naturally not, sir,” Melilli replied with a certain asperity. “The computer clearly identifies it as some sort of communication.”
Data nodded. He had not yet broken what he assumed to be the G’kkau’s code. Their encryption techniques had proven unusually challenging, perhaps because of their distinctly nonhumanoid thought processes. Under other circumstances, and with less at stake, the puzzle might have provided him with a stimulating source of recreation. “Can you locate the origin of the transmission?” he asked.
The Bajoran’s earring jingled as she bent her head to inspect the readings displayed on her console. “Still hard to peg down,” she said, “but the message has just been repeated. I may be able to triangulate from our respective positions at the first and second iterations of the message.” She tapped a number of pressure-sensitive pads. “Yes, there we are. The message is being transmitted from a source in the Epsilon-Tertius sector of the nebula, one moving toward Pai at approximately warp six.”
“That would put them at Pai at roughly four in the morning, Imperial Palace Time,” Data calculated instantly, “at least two hours before the wedding. That is unfortunate. Because the treaty will not yet be in effect, there will be nothing we can do to obstruct the G’kkau.” He felt safe in assuming the intercepted messages came from the G’kkau; there was a 98.7445 percent probability that he was correct. Furthermore, judging from the rising plasma concentrations in the nebula, more than one ship was approaching Pai.
Lieutenant Melilli appeared to share his conclusions. “Could we engage the G’kkau fleet before they get there?”
“I am afraid not,” he said. “By the time we intercept the fleet, they will be well within the boundaries of the Dragon Empire. To take action against the G’kkau would violate the autonomy of the Empire.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do, sir?” Melilli exclaimed passionately. Data suspected that memories of Bajor’s own trials during the Cardassian Occupation were coloring the lieutenant’s emotional responses. In his experience, Bajorans placed little emphasis on the Prime Directive when confronted with political oppression. He, however, was not Bajoran, and neither was Captain Picard.
“We will do what we can,” he stated. He tapped his comm badge, opening a line to the planet below. “Enterprise to Captain Picard.”
“Have another glazed cornea,” the Dragon said. “Captain, you are far too thin.”
“Thank you,” Picard said. “I would be delighted.”
He was not, in fact, delighted in any way whatsoever. For several hours now, he had been consuming dishes composed almost entirely of various sorts of animal effluvia. He had always prided himself on his strong stomach, trained by decades of Starfleet service to accept the exotic cuisines of dozens of starfaring races, but on Pai he had finally met his match. There had been so much of it, and so much of it foul, that he felt more than a little queasy. An avid historian, he could not help remembering a twentieth-century American president who once disgorged