Unification - Jeri Taylor [61]
She knew he was from the Enterprise, for he wore a similar uniform; he had been sent by Will Riker according to their plan. But she was unprepared for his powerful virility, and her heart thudded a bit as she looked at him. His bony ridge marked him as a Klingon; Amarie thought he was the most devastat-ingly attractive man she had ever seen.
She asked if there was anything special he wanted to hear. “Do you know any Klingon opera?” he demanded. Amarie thrilled to the assertiveness of his command. She wished she had studied more opera. Maybe she could improvise
“I don’t get a lot of requests for it,” she admitted~ hoping this manly being would not think her unso-phisticated for not knowing his music.
“Surely you must know at least one theme from Aktuh and Maylota,” said the Klingon.
Somewhere in the dim regions of her memory Amarie touched on one aria from the opera, a bari-tone’s lament. It had been popular when her mother was young, and she had seen holographic recordings of it. Maybe she could retrieve enough of it to please this exciting man.
Her four hands trailed gracefully over the keys, finding the melody and gradually filling in accompani-ment. “I may be a little rusty,” she said, but surprisingly it was all coming back to her, and she began to play with increasing sureness. And then, unbidden, she began to sing, her throat opening to the achingly beautiful sentiments of the doomed love affair.
To her delight, a pleased expression appeared on the Klingon’s face, and he nodded emphatically. Then he seemed to sink into a euphoric rapture, and from his throat a softly growling sound emerged as he began to hum. This aroused Amarie incredibly. Her mind began to hunt feverishly for other Klingon operas she might have heard.
“MayIota, Maaaay-lot-aaaaa,” the Klingon bellowed. He had lost all sense of the place and had thrown back his head, pouring out the sorrows of an unrequited love in his rich basso voice. Amarie shivered. She wanted all time to stop, and to spend eternity in this moment, playing a love theme while her Klingon warrior sang at her side.
“What is that dreadful noise?” The harsh nasal voice knifed through the fetid air of the room like a laser. “It sounds like a Bardakian pronghorn moose.”
The Klingon stopped singing and turned to see who it was who had interrupted his aria. Amarie knew only too well.
Omag the Ferengi was a regular at the bar, coming in every few nights. Why he came there she never understood, because Omag was so rich and powerful he could have bought the place and had it delivered to his dwelling.
He was also the fattest man she had ever encountered. He waddled toward a table, his rotund body stuffed, sausage-like, into an outfit so large it could have held four normal-size Ferengi. On either arm, as usual, were two striking women in skimpy, disgusting-ly revealing dresses. One had no back to it, the other almost no front, and the bottoms of the woman’s breasts and all of her skinny stomach were open to the wind. Amarie sniffed slightly as she glanced at the two. They were cheap runey slatterns, as far as she was concerned, and far too thin. Those women could never bounce like Amarie.
Omag looked at her and gave her a nod. “You know what I want to hear,” he announced, and took a seat. He couldn’t draw his chair up close to the table because of his stomach, so he snapped his fingers and one of the women handed him a basket of palag crackers, which he immediately began stuffing into his mouth.
Amarie turned to the Klingon and gave him a slight nod, then began to drift into the familiar strains of Omag’s favorite song, “Melor Famagal.” She saw the officer casually touch the insignia he wore on his uniform, and softly say, “Worf to Enterprise. “No one except her could have heard him.
“Go ahead,” came