Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [58]
“See that you do,” Picard said, giving them each a hard look. And, turning to stride out of engineering, reminding himself that Geordi La Forge had placed his trust in these two men. He would have to do the same.
And move on to other problems. “Picard to Data.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Mr. Data, please contact Atann’s estate. Don’t waste time trying to raise Atann himself, but see if you can determine if he’s within earshot.”
Moments after Data’s acknowledgment, Picard sat at his desk to face one of Atann’s many social secretaries.
“Captain,” the Tsoran started, before Picard was even
fully seated. “It is always a pleasure to speak with you. The ReynKa, however, is unavailable—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Picard said, interrupting with startling rudeness. Startling to aTsoran of this one’s daleura, in any event, which got just the results Picard wanted—a moment of stunned silence, which he wasted no time filling. “We need to talk to the ReynKa. The ReynKa has made himself unavailable to us despite a stated commitment to the negotiations that brought us here, and our own good-faith efforts to fulfill the favors we offered to his son. Our patience is at an end. Therefore, we will make the ReynKa available to us in our own way.”
“I—I don’t understand—”
“No, you wouldn’t. Let me explain. Each time we beam someone up with our transporters, as we have done with your ReynKa, our transporter system makes a record of that individual’s molecular pattern. With that molecular pattern, we can search for, find, and beam up anyone who’s been aboard the Enterprise.” Picard didn’t elaborate on the time involved in carrying out such a procedure with a population the size of Aksanna’s. Need to know information, and the Tsorans definitely didn’t. “We have every intention of prevailing upon the ReynKa in just this manner. However…” and he let the word trail off most thoughtfully.
“However… ?” the secretary obligingly repeated, a bit of a squeak in his under-purr.
“We are not unmindful of the undignified position in which this would place your ReynKa. The purpose of this communication is to offer him the choice to make the beam-up arrangements himself.”
Silence. The Tsoran simply stared at him, his under purr filling the silence as its squeaky quality intensified, until his gaze darted off to the side and he said, suddenly
and so quickly his words spilled out over one another, “Please stand by.”
The viewscreen filled with the official Tsoran seal of orange, red, and purple, a complex thing full of glyphs and images. Picard blinked and looked away, but a smile lurked around the corners of his mouth, and he didn’t expect to wait long.
He didn’t.
The Tsoran returned, cleared his throat, glanced off-screen once, and said, “As it happens, ReynKa Atann has just contacted me with a request to arrange boarding. He considers it convenient that this seems to be a good time for you.”
“It is indeed convenient,” Picard said, keeping his expression neutral. “I have great expectations for our next conversation.”
If only the ReynKa knew.
“Tktktktktktktk!”
Now, there was a sound to brighten anyone’s day. Whatever it was.
Whatever it was, Riker didn’t like it. And it was getting closer.
“Doesn’t anything ever sleep in this place?” he muttered.
Akarr heard him, and offered a grim smile—his teeth covered, but a mocking look in his eye. “If it were easy, it wouldn’t earn so much daleura,” he said. “The harder it is, the better for me.”
Riker eyed him a moment. “And just why is that?”
Startled out of his posturing, Akarr fumbled around like any teenager caught off his guard. “It’s just the way it is,” he managed, after a moment of looking for words.
A simple enough answer, if it had been simple for
Akarr to come up with. But that he’d had to search so hard to find those words that said so little … “I don’t think so,” Riker said. “The prime kaphoora is meant to be hard … not impossible. It’s meant to challenge you, not kill you.”
“As if you’d know anything about it.” Akarr watched as Rakal and Takan returned to the clearing, moving warily