The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [65]
“How far away is this shelter, Ensign?”
“A few meters down the street from us, sir.”
“What do you want to do, Mr. Data?”
“I believe we should go to the shelter and see what happens, Captain. We will not learn anything by returning to the ship at this time.”
“I agree, sir,” Ro said.
“Then go ahead. We’ll keep a transporter lock on you and have you both out of there in an instant, if need be.”
“Understood, Captain. Data out.”
Together, Data and Ro hurried the short distance to the shelter entrance. It was fairly narrow and was obviously not intended to handle great numbers of people heading in or out at the same time. There was a red diamond-shaped sign centered over the entrance. There was a small bit of white lettering on it: HERE.
Data and Ro passed through the doorway and into a small, bare lobby. The only light came from outside.
“This can’t be it,” Ro said, frowning. “It’s wide open to the street.”
“There is a stairway in that direction,” Data said, pointing into the dimness at the back of the lobby. “It leads down.” Seeing there was no one around, he took out his tricorder. “There are two people located in a confined area some ten meters below us. That must be the shelter.”
Ro nodded. “That sounds more like what we’re looking for, sir. I’ve been in a few of these things in my time.” She took out her own tricorder. “There’s a reinforced shell of metal and concrete surrounding the shelter on all sides, but it shouldn’t interfere with our beaming out, if we need to. Shall I lead, Commander?”
“As you like.”
When they were halfway down the stairs, they heard a heavy rumbling behind them. Data hurried back upstairs just far enough to be able to see what was happening.
A heavy blast door was descending from a hidden pocket located above the entryway. The grayish light from the street above disappeared, leaving them only a small scattering of artificial light that managed to find its way up the winding stairway from the shelter below them.
“Hey!” came a rough female voice. “Is there still somebody up there?”
“Yes,” Data called. “There are two of us. We will be down there directly.”
“Well, hurry the hell up, then,” the voice complained. “I want to close this damn hatch, and we haven’t got all damn day.”
Chapter Twelve
“I’M JUST ASTONISHED,” Riker said finally. “As they used to say down in the Big Easy, this joint is jumpin’. You wouldn’t think there was a war on.”
Whatever holiday celebration Riker and Troi had stumbled upon was continuing unabated. The happy crowds in the corridor had grown substantially since their arrival. Everyone seemed to be buying something. Some of the Krann were absolutely loaded down with sacks and packages.
“Ever see those old films?” Troi asked. “The ones with a lot of holiday shopping in them? Miracle on Tenth Avenue, or something like that. This reminds me of that. Shopping was part of the religious ritual, wasn’t it?”
“You think all this is somehow religious? It doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“I don’t know,” said Troi. “Probably not, as the usual symbology is absent. They all seem to be celebrating something, though, and it’s a major celebration.”
Riker and Troi had been walking along the arcade for more than three hours, taking their time and looking at everything worth noticing. No one had challenged them. They were now about halfway around the nine-kilometer concourse from Rosco’s clothing stall. They now knew that Rosco’s was only one of literally thousands of shops, restaurants, and other kinds of outlets of various sizes that lined both sides of the promenade.
“I certainly wouldn’t have expected to find entrepreneurial capitalism here,” Troi remarked. “I thought a closed society would have chosen another way—communal economics, perhaps.”
“Not a chance, Deanna. These people would give the Ferengi a run for their gold-plated latinum.”
“They surely would. To tell you the truth, I was expecting to find the Krann living like ants in a colony.”
“We’ve been making a big mistake,” Riker