Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [76]
“Things changed. My son—”
“Is not relevant to this conversation.” Picard lifted a hand to cut short Alarm’s instant protest. “As crucial as his fate is to all of us, it is a separate issue. It is not a reason to discontinue discussions that we never even started!”
“It is reason enough to me!” Atann snarled. “We make our own decisions in this regard!”
“Look around, Atann!” Picard raised his own voice, meeting Atann’s escalating body language, and gestured widely at the fight ground. “Why did you come here today? Because I was about to snatch you up and bring you here. Have you learned nothing from this exercise? We are not a people who give up easily. We are not a people who give up at all. We’re not simply going to walk away without having even discussed the terms under which you’re willing to give us temporary use of the charts for that crucial space corridor.” He rounded on the ReynKa, and pushed his voice back down low. “Unless you’re going to tell me here and now that you brought the flagship of the United Federation of Planets out here on a pretense to run errands for you?”
“No, no, of course not—”
“Then you’d better find some way to convince me of that, and fast. Because we’re not leaving here until you do.”
Atann shifted his gaze from object to object until it rested off to Picard’s left, very much like a man caught in a He … with the spotlight on … and surrounded by evidence of why he shouldn’t even try to work up the gall to bluff it through.
Akarr seethed with resentment. Here they were, walking again, and Riker had somehow made it seem like Akarr’s fault. Not only were they walking, they were a straggling, limping group, interfering with his final chance to collect a trophy—as if there was anything around here from which it was worth collecting anything, now that he had tranks that worked. The vegetation continued to trip them, the rocks twisted under their feet, and small scaled creatures ran away from their approach… but there was nothing here big enough to threaten them. And if it couldn’t threaten them, it wasn’t worth collecting. Yes, Akarr seethed.
It was so much easier than thinking about the things he’d learned on this trip.
Things like the fact that his people could betray him. Not only by outright treachery, but with ingrained patterns of daleura that deluded him—that deluded them all—into thinking he was prepared for this deep jungle kaphoora. Such thinking had created an attitude that left him unprepared—for the aggressiveness of the predators, for their sheer size and number, for the effectiveness of their attack methods. He’d come without an adequate med kit… and armed with a false assurance that had led him to march his men out into the Legacy, away from the safe shelter of the Federation shuttle. All
because he’d never thought to question that daleura might drive his elders to assume and pass on a knowledge of things they hadn’t actually experienced, simply because they could never admit it was so.
He had never even considered these things before. Hadn’t even been capable of formulating the concept. And he hated the thought that they occurred to him now. Their existence took his neat world of daleura, posturing, and self-assurance and turned it into something else—a place where the wrong decisions were made not honestly, but because no one could afford to open their eyes. A place where he himself could no longer act instinctively on his skills for preserving daleura, but would have to stop and consider the true ramifications of his actions.
That’s what this trip had done to him.
He wondered if Atann had ever struggled with such