Текст книги "Sword of Damocles "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Thorne

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  “But the quantum rippling is just an aftereffect,” said Jaza. “Like waves in a pond after a stone drops in.”

  “Nonetheless, sir,” said the Antarean ensign, clearly excited. “I found what has to be months, perhaps years, of broadcast signal bleed-informational communications, some sort of dramatic entertainment, sports contests-all compressed and recompressed so many times they initially came across as static.”

  “How is that possible?” said Jaza.

  “We don’t know, sir,” said Modan. “Our mйtier is linguistics, code-breaking, not physics.”

  “This certainly adds weight to the theory that the pulse was created by sentients,” said Riker. “If we can find these people, we might be able to convince them to stop whatever it is they’re doing that’s causing this.”

  “At least until we make repairs and locate Charon,” said Vale. “I’d settle for that.”

  It was clear from the electric silence that descended upon the party that more than a few of those present agreed with the XO, though Troi cautioned against too much optimism. There were still a great many unknowns to account for, any one of which could pull the rug out from under them.

  “After all, we have no idea as yet who these people are,” she said. “Or how they may respond to an alien first contact.”

  “Well,” said the captain. “Let’s hope for the best and plan for the worst.”

  “In other words,” said Vale, forcing her face into a plastic grin, “standard operating procedure.”

  “Well put, Number One,” said Riker.

  For a moment, the frictions that had been burning the life out of the room regressed to a simple simmer.

  Captain Riker, grateful for the momentary sea change, sailed forward, tasking his people with providing him with as many options as they could in as short a time as possible.

  The cryptolinguists’ information had to be catalogued and translated. The mystery civilization had to be found, understood, and contacted.

   Titanwas almost completely dead in space, and though she seemed to have ridden out the worst of the pulse effect, it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere. There were hours of hard work ahead on that score, if not days.

  Their duties set, the officers fairly scrambled to get to work, leaving Vale alone.

  “That was enlightening,” said a scratchy, high-pitched voice, apparently from nowhere. “And this was a much better plan than hiding me in a satchel.”

  “You heard all of it then,” said Vale.

  “With ears this size?” said Huilan, climbing out from where he’d concealed himself beneath the table. “Most definitely.”

  “And?”

  “And,” said the little S’ti’ach, scrambling up into what had been Troi’s chair. “I think you’re right about them all.” Vale knew it was only an illusion created by the natural structure of his face, but Huilan’s perpetual smile softened her mood somewhat.

  “So, I’m right that the command staff is on the verge of a complete meltdown,” said Vale. “Great.”

  “But the pigment in your hair smells lovely,” said Huilan. “Take comfort in that.”

  Hours crept along like weeks as the crew split their time between repairing as much of Titanas they could and ferreting out the location of the mystery aliens deemed responsible for their predicament.

  The warp core gave the engineers fits, refusing to initialize despite their most creative efforts. Titan’s sensor nets, ironically the most durable of the state-of-the-art systems, were back online, their operators trying furiously to penetrate the soup of exotic particles that held the ship in the subatomic equivalent of a tar pit.

  As more of the mystery signals were tagged and deciphered, Troi spent increasing time shuttling between Tuvok and Jaza’s coordinated effort to pinpoint the broadcast source and Ensign Modan’s station in the linguistics lab.

  If nothing else, Vale was grateful that their predicament had forced Troi squarely into her role as diplomatic officer, leaving Counselors Huilan and Pral glasch Haaj to manage the emotional well-being of the crew.

  Ra-Havreii remained a problem, but no longer a serious one. Once Riker had spelled out in no uncertain terms precisely how little leeway the engineer had when it came to upgrading versus repairing, the chief engineer had beat a polite but clear retreat back to his quarters.

  Under normal circumstances Vale would have forced him back onto the floor with the rest of his people. Yet, somehow, in spite of his self-imposed mini-exile, Ra-Havreii managed to stay on top of the repair schedule, disseminating the necessary orders and recommendations via the comms. Department heads-particularly chief engineers-were afforded a degree of latitude in how they ran things in their corners of a starship. The Efrosian’s tendency to ruffle feathers notwithstanding, Vale had to concede that he was getting the job done.

  The impulse engines, while still unable to shift Titanmore than a few thousand kilometers in any direction, managed to remain a point or two above the red zone.

   Good enough, she thought, leaning back in her chair for a quick look around the bridge. Ensign Lavena, having wrestled first with her helm control console and then with the overloaded chipset meant to facilitate that control, seemed finally content with her lot. She and Ensign Revtem Prin Oorteshk, the beta shift navigator, were occupying themselves with increasingly esoteric theories as to how they might shift the ship’s position should drive capability never return.

  Vale enjoyed Oorteshk whenever it was present. It gave off an agreeable odor of mint when it was pleased, which was, apparently, most of the time. It spoke by vibrating the reedy protuberances around its oral cavity, giving its words a breathy, almost childlike tone and lilt.

  “Controlled plasma eruption from one of the nacelles,” said Oorteshk. “Big enough blast, we spin out of this swamp too quick, I think.”

  “And spin and spin,” said Lavena with a snort that created a flow of small bubbles behind her hydration suit’s faceplate. “No directional control. No friction to slow us down or stop us.”

  “Sure, we stop,” said Oorteshk. “We explode second nacelle, force counterinertial reaction. Too easy.”

  “So your solution is to blow both the nacelles and leave us adrift in some other equally unmapped part of the Beta Quadrant?”

  “Contact other starships, wait for pickup,” said Oorteshk. “Spend interim swimming with Lavena.”

  “I’m not sure your epidermis could take the salt content in my pool, Oort,” said Lavena.

  “For Aili Lavena, many dangers could be risked.”

  Vale smiled. For a sexless being, Oorteshk was a hell of a flirt.

  The captain was pretty well locked into a triangular tennis match, between working with Tuvok and Jaza on the sensor modifications, Ra-Havreii with power distribution, and Vale’s own seven billion crew-related tasks. His hands were full, and from what she could tell, he was happy to have them so. And with Troi equally engaged by the crisis, whatever was going on between them had been sidelined for the time being, as well it should be. But Vale’s concerns remained, and not just for the sake of the ship, but for these two people she considered her friends.

  “The captain’s and Deanna’s solution to their problem seems correct,” Huilan volunteered in their most recent clandestine turbolift chat.

  “They’re too busy to be working on it,” said Vale. “I’m not sure that actually solves anything.”

  “Their scents are less mingled, true. But both their rates of respiration are within the norm.”

  “So, they’re breathing okay.”

  “They seem to require distance from one another, Commander. Titan’s current predicament provides that.”

  “How much distance can they get?” said Vale. “This isn’t that big a ship.”

  “We’ll have to watch and see what develops between them.”

  Excellent. More waiting for the other boot to kick.

  “And Dr. Ra-Havreii,” said Vale wondering just how long she could extend her current round of “spot checks” before the captain began looking for her. “What’s the prognosis there?”

  For once Huilan’s perpetual smile seemed to fade a bit. His ears drooped ever so slightly and he let out a sigh that Vale thought was about two sizes too big for his body.

  “S’ti’ach have a game,” he said. “Volition. We all play. We mix fast-breeding bacteria to see which will out-evolve the others. Many new forms are created and die in the span of a few minutes.”

  “Sounds interesting,” said Vale, and thought, not to mention morally questionable. “What’s it got to do with Ra-Havreii?”

  “The winner of the game is the one with the most complex surviving bacteria,” said Huilan. “Observing our chief engineer was like watching the championship match of Volition.”

  “If one more person tells me he’s complex-”

  “Then let me say simply that I begin to see why Deanna kept his therapy for herself.”

  “I notice he’s still dictating things from his quarters,” Vale said.

  “Which seems also to suit both his staff and the ship,” said Huilan. “Obviously isolation is not a permanent solution, but for now, at least, his eccentricity seems to be serving the repair effort rather than hindering it.”

  “So,” Vale said, resigning herself to Huilan’s hands-off approach. “We just tread water with Ra-Havreii.”

  “For now, yes.”

  “And we just trust that Will and Deanna can solve whatever’s going on between them on their own?”

  “In my experience with primates, that way is often best.”

  “ ‘Primates?’ ” said Vale, not sure if she and all the other humans on Titanweren’t being insulted.

  “With mates of any sort,” said Huilan.

Chapter Four

   REPORT OF PRELIMARY ANALYSIS AND EXTRAPOLATION

   prepared by COMMANDER DEANNA TROI

   (CDO, U.S.S. TITAN )

   SUBJECT:

   PLANET ORISHA

  (STARFLEET DESIGNATION: Elysia Incendae II)

   CLASS: M (variant)

  Captain, as requested, after collating 35% of the data culled from the alien signal bleed, we believe we have enough information to provide a foundation for any action you may decide to take vis а vis First Contact. Be advised that this is only a preliminary assessment and that subsequent data retrieval may necessitate reformulation of any plan based upon these findings.

   FINDINGS:

  A) Planetary Characteristics

  Elysia Incendae II is a Class-M planet with a variant oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere with a gravity of 5.1 on the Federation standard scale of measurement and orbiting Elysia Incendae (Class-G stellar body) at one hundred forty-two point six million kilometers.

  Though it has no moons, it is likely that the two larger gas giants orbiting at the mid and outermost regions of the system serve to protect their smaller sibling from meteor strikes, allowing for life to thrive there over the last several billion years.

  Elysia Incendae II is a lush world, composed of four contiguous landmasses and an H ₂0 ocean that covers three-fifths of the planet’s surface. The atmosphere is rich with ambient water, the landmasses are thick with vegetation and teeming with a multitude of different forms of animal and insect life, many of which are, at this juncture, outside Starfleet’s bestiary.

  The dominant Orishan form is an insectoid species (see Xindi, Nasat, Lactran) who refer to themselves as the Children of Erykon.

  B) Sociopolitical Development

  Thus far we have been able to determine that the Orishan society is a modified theocracy, broken in three or more distinct castes and organized around worship of their deity, Erykon.

  All Orishan communications, including entertainment and governmental transmissions, are oriented around the Orishans’ perception of the wishes of their deity.

  We cannot be sure how much is simply local custom and how much is truth, but the snippets of Orishan history we have been able to retrieve thus far seem to indicate at least two and perhaps as many as six civilization-ending cataclysms over the last thousand years.

  While we have no means as yet of determining the veracity of these beliefs, it is clear that the Orishans have organized much of their social and religious discourse around discussing and analyzing the significance of each of these events.

  C) Technology

  Current Orishan technology is approximately that of 23rd-century Earth or 15th-century Bajor, including etheric communications and multiple variant technologies used to manipulate energy fields, but where the cited Federation cultures always displayed a strong bent toward exploration and expansion, the Orishans are decidedly insular in their outlook.

  There are indications that the Orishans may have been extremely violent in times past. Several discussions of ancient conflicts permeate the available data distillations, and for a society this stable and homogenous, there simply isn’t the necessary spark to create large conflicts.

  D) Physical Structure

  At this point in our observations we have determined that the average Orishan (see holographic representation) stands roughly two meters tall and has six extremities-two legs and four upper arms, two on either side of its body. Like other insectoids, they seem possessed of a durable exoskeleton and sensory organs that include a set of antennae set on their heads above their four faceted eyes.

  It is possible that this species has specialized representatives-hunters, workers, breeders, etc., each with variant characteristics-but at this time we have seen no evidence of this.

  E) Addenda

  They seem wholly uninterested in the universe at large or even in the local bodies and idiosyncrasies of their own system. All their attention seems focused on maintaining perfect piety in the eyes of their deity or, in this case, the Eye.

  The Eye of Erykon is the dominant symbol of this culture, and while we are not yet sure of its full significance, it is clear that the Orishans believe the Eye to be a physical manifestation of some sort, capable of inflicting apocalyptic damage upon their civilization should some aspect be found wanting.

  They have no artificial communication devices in orbit and seem to have organized themselves into hive-like cities of various sizes. There is no indication that they have developed any vehicle or technology capable of reaching much less traveling in space. They are simply not interested in anything outside their religious construct of the universe.

   RECOMMENDATIONS:

  The Orishans, stated, are not truly xenophobic, only intensely insular. Their single driving ethos seems so far to be worship of Erykon and fear of this so-called Eye.

  Under normal circumstances I would advise we bypass this planet or, at most, leave a clandestine observation team behind according to the “duck blind” scenario, to get a better idea of how well they will handle a true First Contact situation.

  Of course, these are not normal circumstances, so the expected recommendations do not apply. We will have to improvise something.

  Filed on Stardate 58443.7 by Commander Deanna Troi, Diplomatic Officer, U.S.S. TITAN

  DISTRIBUTION: Capt. W.T. Riker; Cmdr. C.J. Vale; Cmdr. Tuvok; Cmdr. S.Y.E. Ree, Cmdr. Jaza N.; Lt. Cmdr. R. Keru, Cmdr. X. Ra-Havreii, inclusive.

  “Wait a minute,” said Vale, looking up from the padd in disbelief. “You’re saying these people are in the process of developing warp technology, but they don’t plan to use it for space travel?”

  “That seems to be the case,” said Troi. “They’re extremely insular, and while they are aware of the larger universe and the possibility of alien intelligence, they have no interest in exploration.”

  It was obvious that no one in the room was happy with this news, least of all Captain Riker. His eyes had taken on a hooded, steely quality, the one he generally reserved for facing down opponents in contests of resolve.

  Troi didn’t need her telepathy or her telempathy to know what he was thinking. Starfleet’s Prime Directive was in danger of dropping down on their plans with the force of an archaic firewall.

   Will?she touched his mind tentatively, nervous after their long weeks on opposite sides of the chasm.

  He blocked her, as had become his custom, keeping her probing mind out of even the shallows of his, just as completely as he had on every other recent occasion.

  It was as if he’d shut his mental door, boarded it up, and painted do not enter in large garish letters across its face.

  Behind that door, as the briefing continued, Riker’s mind flickered like lightning between the regulations, searching for any loophole or exception, anything that would allow them to save their lives without risking the Orishans’ natural development.

  “Are we absolutely certain of these findings?” he asked at length.

  “Thus far the data seem to indicate a uniform cultural viewpoint, sir,” said Tuvok. “They are not truly xenophobic so much as intensely pious and self-focused.”

  “Granted, we’ve only deciphered about a tenth of what’s been culled from their transmissions, Captain,” said Troi.

  “I’m still bothered by the fact that there was so much signal compression,” said Jaza. “There’s some missing piece here that I don’t understand.”

  “We can ask the Orishans about it, maybe,” said Modan. “Once we contact them.”

  The rest of the news, including the revelations about the Orishans, was pretty bleak.

  Science and engineering had done what they could to get Titanmoving again, which, as it turned out, wasn’t much.

  Power held steady at just above forty percent, allowing the crew to resume a version of normalcy, but Titanwas still becalmed, as Riker had put it.

  The quantum distortion that surrounded them continued to prevent the shields from achieving full strength and the phasers from initializing. It also prevented any motion beyond the herky-jerky one hundred meter lurches that so distressed Ensign Lavena and currently kept Xin Ra-Havreii cloistered away in his quarters.

  When he’d reconvened his staff, Riker had hoped to be presented with more than just a few more scraps of cultural data. There was something about the Orishans that made him nervous, though he couldn’t yet say why.

  Cultural myopia wasn’t unusual, even in known space. In fact, out-and-out xenophobia was common. The Organians, the Melkotians, even the Daledians had all taken the protection of their privacy to what seemed to many to be insane extremes. But these sorts of cultures, when they developed warp tech, either exploited it for limited space travel or, as with the Organians, had no use for it at all.

  Beings from a culture that avoided the sky but wielded a technology with that much destructive potential had to be handled with extreme delicacy if they were handled at all.

  “Why would one develop warp technology if not to move between worlds?” asked Dr. Ree.

  “Power,” said Jaza. “A stable warp reactor generates a considerable amount of energy. A single rudimentary device could power an entire planetary culture for centuries.”

  “Wow,” said Vale. “Why haven’t I ever heard of anyone using warp generators that way?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” said Jaza. “Creating a warp field inside a planet’s atmosphere and having it destabilize could have catastrophic effects, and perhaps not confined to the planet.”

  “That’s if things go wrong,” said Ra-Havreii. “If they continue using their device without trouble, Titanwill be trapped here indefinitely.”

   Indefinitely. It might as well mean infinitely. The same conditions that prevented Titanfrom regaining power, from sparking the warp core, from using nearly any of its energy-based systems were the same ones that prevented them from scanning the area for their missing sister ship or contacting it even if they should succeed in finding it.

  “I have the beginnings of a notion about the warp core, Captain,” said Ra-Havreii thoughtfully, after the silence stretched too far. “And another about, perhaps, using the shuttles to tow us free of the affected area.”

  “The problem with that idea,” Jaza said, “is that the second the shuttles launch, they’ll be subjected to the distortion effect. They’ll be just as becalmed as we are.”

  “Can we contact the Orishans by subspace?” said Vale. “Just let them know there’s somebody up here who needs them to hold off their experiments for a while?”

  “Not at the present time, Commander,” said Tuvok. “The distortion effect, though somewhat weaker around the planet Orisha, is also in a more pronounced state of flux. While their signals seem capable of bleeding into open space, Titanlacks both the technology and the power to punch through the flux from the outside.”

  “Even if we are able to figure some way of contacting them,” said Jaza. “It may not be as simple as just asking them to please stop.”

  “Are you concerned about the potential Prime Directive violation, Commander?” asked Tuvok.

  Jaza frowned. “Aren’t you?”

  “I admit this situation does present some unique permutations,” said the Vulcan judiciously.

  “Pardon me,” said Ree, his great reptilian head cocked slightly to the side. “I don’t believe I understand. How do these circumstances invoke the Prime Directive? Starfleet is prohibited from contacting civilizations before they have independently developed warp technology, yes?”

  “That is correct, Doctor,” said Tuvok.

  “But our current predicament is due to these Orishans having done precisely that.”

  “Not exactly,” said Troi, eliciting a look of mild confusion from Vale. What the hell was she talking about? It was clear from her expression that she too was uncomfortable with the way the conversation had turned. “The Orishans have warp technology, or a version of it, but they do not engage in space travel, so we may not be permitted to-”

  “Wait,” said Vale, switching from Troi to Riker. She knew her incredulity was plastered across her face like Hybarian wall art and she didn’t care. “Are you saying, even though we know what’s causing this and who’s responsible, we aren’t going to ask them to stop?”

  No one spoke. No one moved. All their eyes were on the captain, waiting for the only response that actually mattered.

  “You’re all dismissed,” he said at last. “Chris, Counselor, you stay.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Vale. “You can’t honestly be considering not contacting the Orishans.”

  “I think she’s right, Will,” said Troi softly. It wasn’t the most solid declaration of support one might hope for. Vale wasn’t sure how happy she was to have the counselor on her side. The trouble between her and her husband couldn’t possibly help his mood, which was darkening by the second. “I think we have to find some way to-”

  “John Gill,” he said, cutting her off. By this time he had positioned himself by the plexi window wall and was gazing out into the black.

  “Don’t give me that,” said Troi, moving closer. “There’s no similarity.” She kept her distance though. Something about Riker’s posture screamed back off.

  “Leonard McCoy,” he said, turning to face her.

  “Will…”

  “Benjamin Sisko,” he said and rattled off several more names in quick succession. “James Kirk, Mark Jameson, Rudolph Ransom, Joshua Grant.”

  Vale recognized some of the names of course-Sisko and Kirk were immediately ID’d-but the others gave her trouble. Troi obviously knew them all. With each one, she seemed to withdraw further into her original mask of emotional distance. He was striking at her with the names, obviously, but how?

  Riker spat out more names-Tracey, Pike, April, Calhoun, B’Liit. Still more captains? What did they have in common? What did any of them have to do with Titan’s current distress?

  “Jean-Luc Picard,” said Troi, as if coming to the end of some lengthy and fantastically constructed legal argument. To Vale her demeanor was like that of an Izarian judge that had slammed her gavel down on the marble top of the bench.

  Riker stiffened, almost as though he’d been told to snap to attention.

  “No, dammit,” he said, slamming one big fist down on the conference table, making Vale’s padd dance. “No.”

  He left the two women standing there, silent in the wake of his anger. When Vale had deemed an appropriate amount of time had passed, she asked what the hell that had been about.

  “All of those people have violated the Prime Directive, Christine,” said Troi. Her voice was low, full of some powerful emotion. Anger? Disgust? It was too complex for Vale to decipher. “Almost all of their violations brought irreversible change, sometimes complete destruction to an entire culture. Will doesn’t want to be added to the list.”

  “But,” said Vale. “I thought-I mean, he’s never been happy with the PD.”

  “He’s fine with the spirit of the directive,” said Troi, clearly in agreement with her husband on this matter. “It’s the letter he doesn’t like. How can we judge the worthiness of a culture simply by the level of their technological development? There are many things that constitute civilization and maturity. Why is technology the Federation’s only arbiter?”

  Vale didn’t have an answer. Warp tech was so potentially volatile-even more than she’d first imagined, thanks to her attendance at the Jaza and Ra-Havreii Show-that it seemed to her the perfect yardstick by which to measure a new culture.

  If a civilization could handle it without blowing itself up, it followed that they were mature enough to be invited into the larger universe, the one teeming with beings totally unlike themselves.

  If they weren’t mature enough? Ka-boom; they wiped themselves out with escalating warfare or planetary environmental degradation, cleaning the slate and giving some other species its shot in the sun.

  It had always seemed so cut and dried to her, a perfect expression of everything the Federation stood for. Now, with Titanin its current state, breaching the PD might be their only way to freedom.

   Not so easy now, eh?said her mother’s voice from the past. Not quite the grand adventure you thought.

  “There are three hundred and fifty sentients on Titan, Deanna,” said Vale quietly. “There are children here. Babies.”

  Another indecipherable expression, possibly some esoteric mixture of surprise and sorrow, flickered across Troi’s face and was gone.

  “He knows that, Commander,” she said. “He knows.” The doors shushed open, Troi passed through, and Vale was alone with her thoughts.

   Males. Can’t live with them. Can’t rip out their throats and eat them for supper.

  Ensign Hriss had thought that so many times during her days at the Academy and her subsequent duty aboard the U.S.S. Voorhees. Tonight was no different.

  She’d bristled when Keru had assigned her this duty. In the middle of a Red Alert, pandemonium and shattered tech all over and he sticks her down here in the guts looking after ships that can’t fly and would have nowhere to go if they could. Was he expecting crazed crew members to steal one of these tubs and scramble off into the black? It would be a hell of a trick, considering the current state of affairs.

  Nevertheless, “It’s not all blood and sex, Hriss,” Keru had told her. “Sometimes you get to sit.”

  So she sat in the shadows of the huge empty hangar, the minutes crawling over her fur like blood mites.

  The hangar’s high vaulted ceiling, the many deck protrusions, the hulking shapes of the new heavy-duty shuttles all combined to remind her of the great cavern on Cait and the gatherings of the various prides that she had attended there in her youth.

  Even then she had never been content to sit with the other cubs through the interminable boasting speeches of the elder males.

   Females do all the work, she had thought to herself more than once. Why am I even listening to this nonsense?

  Males. They had their uses, certainly, some of them quite pleasant, but, once they fell to chattering, it could be hours before anything meaningful got done. And it seemed so regardless of the species.

  Aside from Mr. Tuvok, who managed to adopt an appropriately stoic demeanor, even the males who outranked her could all stand a good grab by the scruff and a shake. Even Keru. What was he thinking sticking her down here when he could have saddled that cold fish Pava with the job? Andorians were good at standing around waiting. It was practically their religion.

  Humanoid. Felinoid. Reptiloid. It didn’t matter. Wherever you went, a male was a male was a male.

  Hriss was a hunter, and while the art certainly employed stillness and quiet from time to time, it was only the quick bloody action of the culmination that brought sparkle to her eyes.

  She amused herself by varying the path she took on her circuit of the hangar deck. Instead of simply walking the length and breadth of the place in the same clockwork fashion, Hriss devised a complex patrol pattern that involved climbing the nearly frictionless walls up to the shadowy heights and leaping from shuttle roof to shuttle roof as silently as possible.

  She had just landed atop the massive, larger-than-normal heavy-duty shuttle Ellingtonand was eyeing the Marsalisas the site of her next perch when Mr. Jaza entered the hangar. He was followed in short order by Chief Engineer Ra-Havreii, who was obviously well into a snit.

  “I’m telling you,” said the Bajoran scientist sharply, turning on the engineer. “It can’t work.”

  “It can,” said Ra-Havreii. “When I was with the Skunk-works, we-”

  “I don’t need to hear another dissertation about your great past, Commander,” said Jaza, cutting him off. “Everyone has a past.”

  “True,” said the Efrosian. “But mine mostly involves research and discovery rather than, say, blowing up random Cardassians to make some arcane political point.”

  Hriss had never worked with Bajorans before coming aboard Titanand really not much since. Thus far the best she could tell about them was that they didn’t smell as much like prey as other humanoids, which was a blessing. It was so hard sometimes not to just tear one of the furless apes open and eat, especially after pulling a double shift without a meal break.

  Mr. Jaza was broad across the chest and long of limb like a Caitian male, and the hue of his flesh matched some of their coats. He was obviously intelligent. Starfleet valued that over blood skills for reasons Hriss sometimes still didn’t quite grasp. You couldn’t rise high in the sciences without a laser-sharp mind.