Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [11]
“Shortly before the … incident, I noted an annoying noise. I believe it was one of the Tsorans scratching. From the far back seats,” he added, in case Riker hadn’t caught the significance.
But Riker had. “Probably not something they prefer to do in public,” he said. “But there’s nowhere else to go.” He sighed. And then some wicked little spirit made him lean conspiratorially close to Worf as he said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
Worf hesitated. “Do not stare at them if they are scratching?”
“Watch where you’re scratching,” Riker said, and raised a meaningful eyebrow at Worf before slipping past and into the front cabin.
There. At least his tactical officer had something to think about for the rest of the trip. And as for Dougherty … she waited next to the pilot’s seat, stiffly at attention. “At ease,” he said, sorting through the modest stowage for… ah, yes, the padd. He extracted it and put it in her hand. “The contact protocol for the Tsorans,” he said, ignoring the ill-concealed dismay on her face. “Don’t bother reading it; there’s not a thing about staring when they’re scratching. However, I do believe there are several of the captain’s Dixon Hill novels in the padd’s library, and you might apply yourself to them. Whatever you choose to do, try to look appropriately studious while you’re at it, will you?”
She stared at the padd an instant, and then quite obviously decided not to question her good fate. “Yes, sir. Studious, sir!”
“And get cleaned up—have those cuts taken care of, too. See if there’s anything that’ll hide them. I suspect that Akarr would prefer us to look undamaged.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” She was doing her best to hide her relief, too, but without much success. Riker couldn’t help a grin at her retreating back.
And now … maybe he could get back to the comparatively easy job of guiding them through the rippling graviton eddies that could easily tear this shuttle apart, luxuriously modified appointments and all.
It seemed the shuttle’s occupants were willing to do that all on their own.
They did somehow manage to make the rest of the flight with no more excitement than one close brush
with graviton forces, which left Riker’s copilot—one of Worf’s men, security with a pilot rating pulling double duty this time around—white around the lips and Riker grinning at him, more exhilarated than anything else. Give him a good piloting challenge any day … it was diplomatic assignments that turned him pale.
Fandre presented itself as a much greener planet than Tsora, with smaller continents mostly concealed by thick banks of clouds—and, over the ocean, several swirling storm systems. Riker and La Forge brought the shuttles down through a thick and turbulent atmosphere, breaking through the clouds to land the shuttles in a precision lineup on the wet and puddled Legacy preserve tarmac, a space lit to startling brightness by large banks of lights looming at the edges.
Before them sat the Legacy museum, the headquarters for all preserve activity—of which there was plenty of evidence. A hangar, open along its entire front length, grew off the east side of the museum; at the moment, it held only a few small personal transport devices and the beings responsible for maintaining them. Short and stout like the Tsorans but with more of a waddle to their movement, the two at the closest end of the hangar barely glanced away from their energetic argument to look up at the descending shuttles.
Riker sat in the pilot’s seat for a moment after landing, staring at the great gray arc of the force field rising to the left of the shuttle. The artificial light slid smoothly off the field perimeter, but nothing about the force field seemed to discourage the jungle-like growth climbing the sides several stories high, heavy and healthy and still reaching upward.
The Fandreans might not be able to sort out their field problems, but they certainly had green thumbs.
Well, there was no putting this off. Riker stood and had the shuttle occupants arrange themselves as dictated for the ReynTa’s entrance