Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [91]
“Whatever your Commander Riker has to say, Captain Picard, it will not change how we feel about the charts,” Tehra said. “You must command your people to cease working on the transfer protocol.”
Picard looked at the young Tsoran standing beside her, doing his best to radiate the same belligerent stiffness as his mother, and at Atann, who eyed Picard with a certain amount of suspicion displayed in his tightly pursed chin and lower lip. “Let’s just see what the commander has to say,” he told them all. “In the meanwhile, it does no harm to complete the transfer protocol. They cannot upload the chart data without your command.”
“Which we will never give.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.” Picard went to the food replicator and said, “Tea. Earl Grey, hot.” And then, as his tea materialized, “Would you like anything, Counselor? ReynTa?”
Tehra made a snorting noise and turned away.
Troi gave him a grim little smile. “Hot chocolate,” she said.
She was going for the chocolate. Maybe things were indeed as bad as they looked.
“What’s this about, Akarr?” Riker lifted one shoulder out of pure habit, hurt himself doing it, and consciously relaxed.
Akarr looked around the crowded communications
console. Worf, La Forge, Zefan, the Fandrean museum and city managers, and Kugen, the resident Tsoran representative all of them crowded into this small room on the museum’s main floor. It held only the comm unit—a pedestal-like affair with the screen set too low for Riker’s use and a short standing work table beside it—and it was clearly not meant for all these people.
Just as clearly, Akarr did not want them there.
“Gentlemen,” Riker said, a hint that La Forge and Worf took immediately.
“We will be right outside,” Worf said, as if anything could happen to them here. Once he and La Forge were gone, it finally occurred to the others that Riker had been asking for privacy, and with some embarrassment, they left.
Aside from Kugen, who didn’t move. When the room had emptied, he said to Akarr, “Are you sure you want to be alone here?”
Akarr snorted. “You think too much of yourself. Do you second-guess your ReynTa?”
“No,” Kugen said, clearly startled; he gave a hasty bow and left the room.
Akarr wrinkled his lip, a quick gesture that Riker would have missed had he not come to know the Tsoran. “He’s been here too long, with too much authority. I’ll have to mention it to my father.”
“Do that,” Riker said. “But that’s not why you asked to speak to me. You stopped me from telling Captain Pi card about the… shall we call it a miscommunication . over the shuttle shields.”
“Yes,” Akarr said, and hesitated. “There is more. I think it is pertinent…” he started, and then stopped. After a moment he took a breath and started again, holding Riker’s eye in the most neutral gaze-hold he’d ever
shown Riker. Standing his ground without any challenge at all. “I think it is possible that certain people in my government never intended to see those charts in Federation hands. I suspect that my ReynSa has been … in discussion with them, and that they have exchanged commitments of support.”
Riker stared at him. “That fits with your notions of daleura? Implying an honest interest in negotiations when no such interest exists, in order to pry favors from the other party?”
Akarr filled his considerable chin pouch with air and released it all at once with a sharp sound. “It does not fit my understanding of daleura. I am … beginning to understand that some of my people twist daleura for their own desires.”
Riker let out his own pent-up breath. “So do some of mine, Akarr. And while I appreciate your consideration of the matter, I’m not sure I understand its immediate relevance.”
“Because,” Akarr said sharply, “there is more to it than that. Information you can use.”
Against his own people, or against some faction of his own people. Riker began to understand Akarr’s agitation. “I’m listening.”
“You believe that the Fandreans