Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [92]
Riker nodded, frowning.
“And you know that someone tampered with the tranquilizer darts in an attempt to make my kaphoora less than successful.”
“Yes,” Riker said, struggling to follow Akarr’s line of thought and deciding he was just too tired. “But I don’t see the connection between those two things.”
“That is because you do not know that I did not know we didn’t consult the Fandreans. My father did not know. Our coordinating engineer reported that the Fandreans had inspected and approved of the Federation shuttle shield specifications. At the time Zefan spoke of this, I truly believed him to be mistaken. That is no longer the case.” Now Akarr’s expression held unmistakeable misery, from his drooping ears to his sagging chin pouch. But he held Riker’s gaze.
“Well, I’ll be…” Riker muttered. Someone really hadn’t wanted Akarr to have an easy trip. In fact, someone probably hadn’t wanted him to come back alive.
Akarr shifted uneasily, and settled into a moderately assertive stance. “Whoever planned this had no idea the two … difficulties would combine as they did.”
“You can’t know that,” Riker objected.
“I have said it,” Akarr responded instantly, and there was no mistaking it, he was headed for the Akarr Riker knew best, the stiff and difficult young Tsoran in daleura posture.
He’d get nowhere with Akarr if that happened. Riker backed off, started at the whole thing from another direction. That which was more pertinent. “So both events were likely an attempt to keep you from gathering kaphoora trophy.” What else had he said? That the ReynSa had exchanged favors with the people who didn’t want the charts to go out, and was now therefore obliged to champion their cause? Favors. . Like sabotage?
Startled beyond diplomacy, he said, “And you think your morfzer—that the ReynSa was behind the sabotage?”
Stiffly, Akarr nodded—a human gesture that clearly remained awkward to him. “On occasion, the inherited position of ReynKa goes to the second child; it is the
ReynKa’s choice, always. It is simply tradition to choose firstborn.” He gestured at the blank screen. “Takarr is the ReynSa’s favored child. Her… natural child.”
Ah. Akarr, the firstborn, hale and hearty and well versed in terms of daleura, the kaphoora, and all other things a budding Tsoran politician would need. Takarr, a slightly built young man clearly trying to live up to his mother’s expectations … but who apparently had already become the scientist of the family.
In short, the kid didn’t have a chance as long as Akarr was around and doing well. The ReynSa must have been beside herself when Atann arranged the Federation escort for Akarr’s kaphoora.
“I understand,” he said. And he did. But what he didn’t know was how to handle it. How to tell Picard the one bit of information that, if badly handled, could severely embarrass the ReynKa past wanting to give them the charts. He could insist on privacy, but that, too, could cause more trouble ….”ReynTa,” he said, most carefully, “I’d like to offer you the chance to handle this in the way you think would most benefit your family and your people.”
Akarr just stared at him.
Riker gestured at the comm screen, currently plastered with an astonishingly garish Fandrean seal. “Be my guest.”
Akarr gave him a look that said the colloquialism hadn’t translated well, but Riker paid it no heed. Instead he moved away from the comm system, and allowed Akarr to reinitiate the connection.
“Glad to have you back,” Picard said, in that exquisitely dry way he had—and which told Riker that things weren’t going well at all. One glance at Troi’s face confirmed it; she was wearing her “determinedlyunaffected” expression … which actually worked quite well until you got to know it.
Akarr said, “We have been discussing information that has become available to us during our time in the Legacy.”
“I’m hard put to imagine any pertinent information you might have obtained while behind the Legacy force field Picard