Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [11]
Stepping inside the guard of the darker, smaller swordsman, the yellow-haired fighter suddenly trapped his opponent’s thick neck between his blades. Though both men abruptly froze in place, Zweller half-expected the victor to snip the other man’s head off, like a gardener trimming a shrub. Instead, the winner sheathed his blades after a moment, and the other man followed suit. The fighters bowed to one another.
Shaking perspiration from his abundant hair, the winner of the contest turned toward the Starfleet contingent. The Chiarosan’s head made the motion first, turning almost 180 degrees before the rest of his body followed. He greeted his “guests” with a smile made eerie by his preternaturally wide mouth and his razor-sharp, silver-hued teeth.
“Clear water and rich soil to you, my guests,” he said in heavily accented but intelligible Federation Standard. “Please allow me to thank you for coming among us.”
“You didn’t give us a great deal of choice in the matter,” Roget said, his face an impassive mask.
The blond Chiarosan chuckled. His sparring partner merely stared belligerently at the captured officers.
“My name is Falhain, and I command the Army of Light,” the yellow-haired Chiarosan said. “Allow me to introduce Grelun, my Good Right Hand.”
Zweller heard Gomp muttering behind him. “And here I am without my dress uniform.”
“Shut the hell up, Gomp,” Tuohy hissed. Sullenly, Gomp complied.
Fortunately, Falhain appeared to be ignoring everyone except for Zweller and Roget, perhaps sensing from their body language that they were the senior officers present. Or maybe, Zweller thought, the Chiarosan rebels are familiar with Starfleet rank insignia.
“As you may have gathered,” Falhain said, “my people are having… difficulty accepting our government’s plan to enter the Federation.”
Zweller opened his mouth to reply, but Roget beat him to it. “Sir, abducting Federation citizens is hardly a constructive way to air your grievances.”
“Desperate times prescribe desperate tactics,” Grelun said, his eyes narrowing to slits.
Falhain nodded toward his lieutenant, then locked a humorless gaze upon Roget. “I will cut straight to the heart of our ‘grievances,’ as you so trivially characterize them: Ruardh, our world’s ‘duly elected leader,’ leads a government of murderers.”
Zweller tensed. His superiors had not included that information in his mission briefing.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“I’m talking about unanimity, my honored guests,” Falhain said. “The kind of unanimity that earns a planet Federation membership. My people are paying the price for that unanimity. With their lives.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Roget said, shaking his head.
“I speak for many of the outlying tribes and clans-a tiny minority of this planet’s population, to be sure-but a people who prize their tradition of independence. That independence is unpopular in the capital, where we are seen as little better than vermin who compete with the cities for water and arable land, which our world gives to no one in abundance.”
“The Federation can help you resolve those problems, if you let us,” Roget said. “Besides, your alternative is far worse. The Romulan Empire isn’t likely to respect your people’s independence.”
Falhain laughed mirthlessly. “The Romulans have never frightened us. Nor have they ever tried to conquer us.”
“We have nothing that they want,” Grelun said.
“Maybe Ruardh and her ministers don’t believe that,” Zweller said. After all, the Romulans always want something.
“Perhaps,” Falhain said. “But none of that matters. What does matter is that the Federation has allied itself with an ender-of-bloodlines.”
His eyes as cold as a Nightside storm, Grelun addressed Zweller. “For the past six years, Ruardh’s people have been trying to extinguish the clans, to increase the cities’ share of our scarce subsistence resources. At last count, this has cost my people over 600,000 lives. Only a small fraction of that number survive, to fight on and avenge the murdered.