Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [22]
“If it were as easy as contacting the Rahjah to check it out, I wouldn’t be here working on their communications board,” La Forge said ruefully. “I haven’t had a chance to discuss this with the Fandreans, and Worf is on his way—some of Akarr’s staff insisted on showing him how Tsoran goods are improving the city, but I finally tracked him down. I have some ideas … but I’d
like to confirm them with our hosts and get back to you, Captain.”
“Make it quick,” Picard said.
“Understood.” From the look on La Forge’s face as his image blinked out, no doubt he did.
Picard pinched the bridge of his nose. “Counselor,” he said, his eyes closed, preparing himself for the scene to come, “I think it best if you accompany Atann and Tehra here. If there’s one thing we can’t afford to do—”
“It’s to offer them inadvertent offense,” she finished for him. “I’ll be right back.”
The Tsoran ReynTa, under Federation escort, in trouble in the Fandrean Legacy preserve—while negotiations with his father held the fate of a world’s people in balance.
And Will, right there in trouble with him.
Chapter Five
the silence filled his head so completely that Riker momentarily wondered if he were deaf… or dead. And then the shuttle settled, creaking and groaning, and he knew he was neither.
He’d navigated the plummeting shuttle with a mere scrap of power at his command, doing no more than trying to aim between the trees, to keep the nose up, to allow them to skim to a stop along the rugged earth …. In reality, they’d skipped more like a stone across choppy water. Unpredictably. Bouncing. And striking hard, that one, final time. Now, as Riker pried his eyes open and took in the sights, sounds—and smells—of the shuttle, he found the cabin dim and tilted, no flicker of power in evidence. Someone gave a throaty Tsoran groan, but subsided again. Riker took a deep breath of his own and decided that although everything hurt, nothing was significantly damaged. He ran his tongue over
the sharp taste of blood on his lip, and disengaged himself from the console, glancing over at Akarr. The Tso ran lay draped half over the console, half over the seat, and was just beginning to look around in a dazed way. No blood in evidence; no obvious injury.
But there’d been that groan. And there was that… smell. Someone was hurt, all right. Slowly, still not quite trusting his legs, Riker slid out of his seat onto the unnaturally sloping deck. Individual battery-powered emergency lights painted the back of the cabin in soft shadows, but he saw the blood clearly enough-splashed across the deck and wall and even the ceiling. Not quite the color he was used to, but ominous enough. There had been six of them, he thought, realizing then that among the tangle of limbs, among the mostly seated Tsorans leaning against one another like dolls, and just now coming to life—there were only five heads.
Touching a wall here, a seat there, he made his way back and found the sixth Tsoran, the one who’d gotten up at the last minute, more or less splattered against the back of the shuttle. Breathe slowly, he told himself. And then he was past the momentary reaction, switching to problem-solving mode. He gripped the shoulder of the Tsoran nearest him—the fellow looked as whole as any of them—and said, “What’s your name?”
The being looked around as if seeking Akarr’s guidance, and—upon seeing his ReynTa still dazed in the copilot’s seat, though clearly stirring and as alert as any of them—said, “Rakal.”
“Rakal, check on your friends. I want a report of the injuries.” Back to the front of the shuttle, then, to assess Akarr for himself.
The ReynTa looked up at him, a thin smear of purplish blood running from his nose. “This was not what
we expected of the Federation,” he said, although for the moment his tone lacked its usual edge. He rubbed a double-thumbed hand over his arm, apparently dismissing whatever pained him.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Riker glanced out the front viewport, into the thick jungle, remembering