Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [56]
The blood-tipped needle delivery system.
This dart hadn’t missed; it hadn’t hit thick fur and failed to penetrate. This dart had found its mark and been dislodged … but none of the sculpers had fallen here last night. None of them had fallen anywhere within the bounds of the firelight, and as far as Riker knew, the sculper he’d injured had been the only one to go down at all.
Dart in hand, he returned to the cave, and found the Tsorans in the middle of an intense conversation, with which the Universal Translator struggled.
“Morning … part of the day to travel,” Rakal said, looking at Gavare for confirmation, which he received in the form of a short gesture. “We can’t afford to waste it.”
“Travel in which direction?” Riker said from the cave entrance, not bothering to ease into the issue. “Worf will be looking for us.”
Akarr snuffled rudely at him. “So you say. What if the shuttle we heard last night also crashed? What if your Worf is dead? We could be killing ourselves, too, if we backtrack now.”
“There was nothing wrong with that shuttle’s engines.” Riker jammed his water bottle back into his pack, made sure the rain jacket was on top, where he’d need it this afternoon—and stuck the dart into a side pocket as an afterthought. “If we move on, we’ll be moving away from safety.”
“If we go back, we’ll be moving away from safety,” Akarr countered, with just as much certainty.
“What is it?” Riker asked. “Do you get more points if you get out of this in the hardest possible manner?”
“Do not presume to mock our ways,” Akarr snarled, and this time all the Tsorans turned their challenge-gazes on him—all but Ketan, who was simply too miserable. Even Gavare, the only Tsoran who had offered Riker any small degree of respect—in fact, Gavare most of all, his gaze not only hard but his lip lifted in a gesture of snarl.
Riker took a deep breath. “My intent is not to mock your ways.” Well, maybe it was, but at least it got your attention. “Just because you don’t push your courage to the obvious limit doesn’t mean you don’t have it, Akarr. Courage can mean facing that of which you’re most afraid. It looks to me like you’re afraid of returning to the museum in a manner in which it looks like you’ve been rescued.”
“He doesn’t need to be rescued,” Gavare snapped. “None of us do.”
“Rescuing you is not why Worf is here,” Riker said. Word games. How he hated them. “He’s here to replace the faulty transportation.”
Word games … but it got then-attention.
“You’ve already done more than any before you-even those on their tenth kaphoora,” Takan said thoughtfully to Akarr. “It should be enough.”
Enough for what?
“Not without a trophy,” Akarr responded. But he looked over at Ketan.
“There’s still time for that,” Rakal said, giving Riker a hard look, one that said stay out of this.
Riker was glad to, although he couldn’t help an inner observation that there was bound to be plenty of opportunity for further contact with trophy beasts on a walk back to the shuttle, given their experience so far. As if to reinforce the thought, the clattering cry from the day before echoed above them, starting out in one place, ending in another entirely. They’d never identified that cry, Riker recalled uneasily.
Gavare gestured at Ketan. “Ketan needs a litter; he cannot walk on that leg. Once we have made that, we can act on the decision you make.”
“Attend to it.” Akarr’s echoing gesture seemed casual, but he caught each of his guards in a hard stare, holding them that way until each twisted his head to bare a flash of throat.
The Tsorans dispersed, leaving Riker to watch Ketan against any morning activity. Gavare left last, giving Riker a parting look that would have been hard to interpret had it been coming from a familiar human face; Riker couldn’t make much of it from a Tsoran.
Until he realized that Gavare had accomplished just exactly what Riker had hoped for—a delay. And Akarr’s dignity, still intact. Gavare hadn’t abandoned