Battlestations!, page 13
At this, McCoy elbowed his way between us. “How does it do that?”
“It gives us two choices,” I explained. “Either we sit and wait for the captain to show up, or we take action according to what we already know. The captain wanted us to do one of those, and it can’t be the first choice because he apparently didn’t know when he’d be able to get here. I don’t think he’d expect us to make a decision based on an unknown, so we’ll act based on what we do know.”
McCoy’s brows went up.
Spock pursed his lips. “Logical.”
From the passenger seat on the port side, Merete said, “Then it’s our move. But what move do we make?”
She had to ask, didn’t she? I licked my lips, hoping some revelation would slide out. “Well … make ourselves indigenous to the planet, I guess. Get down there and start looking. We’re not getting very far sitting around in orbit. Sir, you said you have Argelian costumes for us?”
“Yes, aboard my shuttle,” Spock said. “Mr. Sandage and I will remain aboard and continue broadcasting the signal. In the meantime, I shall use connections in the government of Argelius to arrange for a base from which you’ll be able to prowl the area. The prefect is already advised of the situation. You should have no trouble.”
The Argelian prefect’s idea of a base was a squalid little alley cantina deep in Yelgor City’s north quarter. Spock had also arranged jobs for us, so no one would wonder what three strangers were doing there. At least we would have a central core to start from.
I led the way, feeling conspicuous, as Merete and McCoy followed me through the streets according to Spock’s directions once we’d beamed down in an unpopulated dock area. Through the narrow, foggy streets we walked, flanked closely by scowling Gothic buildings of wood and stone, passing natives and their guests, the latter consisting of Star Fleet personnel on shore leave, Klingons and Romulans likewise, and even the occasional nonhumanoid, though those were rare. Argelius simply wasn’t conditioned to make itself comfortable to a wide range of life forms. Of course, even the serene atmosphere couldn’t dissolve military prejudices, much less racial ones. The Fleet people watched the Klingons and the Romulans, the Klingons watched the Fleet people, and the Romulans watched everybody. I felt everyone watching us. It might have been my imagination. It might have been the veils and the beaded curly-toed slippers. Or the plume pants. Or the feathers. Purple and chartreuse just weren’t my colors. Somehow I got the feeling the clothing didn’t completely hide our foreignness.
“I’ll get Spock for this,” McCoy vowed, glancing over his shoulder at a passing group of Argelians who had just given him the curious eye. Self-consciously he tugged at the tight brocaded vest and cummerbund. Purple wasn’t his color either, especially under the bright orange fez. He looked like an animated piece of tapestry as he adjusted the shoulder bag that carried our tricorders.
“I hope we’re not far from this cantina we’re supposed to go to,” Merete said. “It’s damp in the streets.”
“Don’t complain,” I told her, briefly scanning her ankle-length blue robe. “You’re the only one of us who’s not dressed up like a tropical bird.” I clutched the wad of flight suit and boots under my arm. Spock had suggested I leave them behind, but I couldn’t reconcile the idea of staging a phaser raid on extortionists while wearing feathers and veils.
“This is it,” I said, turning down a loud alley and into a low-slung doorway. Acrid and dim, the cantina was crowded with laughing patrons. Sagging curtains decorated each of five walls, their colors and fringes faded by smoke and time. The patrons squatted on cushions or lay on long, low couches, munching confections I wouldn’t have touched with a field prod. Squeaky music twanged from one corner, where a clutch of musicians wavered to their own questionable melody, and on a velvet podium a young girl twisted and spun in some kind of dance.
We were barely inside the door when a fat, surly-looking man approached us, babbling in Argelian, and grabbed my elbow to drag me farther into the cantina.
“What?” I blurted. “What do you want?”
He shook his head in disgruntlement and switched easily to English, practically on the attack for an Argelian. “You’re late! I do a favor for Chamberman Yiri and what do I get? I’m expected to operate shorthanded on the first night of the Archtide. You … take this tray.” He shoved a wide metal tray heavy with confections into Merete’s arms and ordered, “Serve those Klingons over there. Keep them happy. And you,” he said, gesturing to McCoy, “pour more drinks. Over there.”
Within seconds, I was alone with this charming round curmudgeon and he was walking me through a sea of legs and pillows. “It’ll be your turn soon. Do you know the litika?”
“I … might,” I stammered, stepping over a sleeping Argelian. “Have you seen any Vulcans around lately?”
His hands waggled in the air. “Who can tell? Vulcans, Romulans, they’re all the same.” He led me to a shimmering curtain and told me to stand there until he came back, which was fine with me. I took the moment to slip behind the curtain and retrieve my communicator from the folds of the veils, which had sounded a lot easier when I’d told Spock and Scanner I could hide it there. The communicator chirped when the antenna screen flipped up. “Piper to Rex,” I said quietly.
“Spock here.”
“Any change, sir?”
“None as yet. I am continuing to send the carrier waves. Since only one of us is needed here, Mr. Sandage requested to join you on the planet, and I agreed. He has changed clothing and should be meeting you there within a few minutes. What is your situation?”
“I think we’ve just been hired on for the season. We won’t be too conspicuous here. I’ll be able to ask a few questions, maybe get some answers or a lead to follow. Sarda’s alive and he’s in the area—I can practically feel him.”
There was a stern, reproving silence after my exuberant claim, a kind of logic-to-nonsense wrist slapping, but he didn’t make any direct comments. “Yes. … Advise me if there is any change of plans. I shall hail you in thirty minutes for a check-in.”
“Affirmative. Piper out.”
I tucked the communicator into the pocket of my folded flight suit, dumped the whole wad behind the shimmery curtain, then slipped back out into the cantina, only to get a faceful of chubby proprietor.
“There you are! I told you to stay here and where did you go? Behind a curtain. Those cubicles aren’t meant for you. You stay out in the open and do your job. Well? Go ahead!”
The music had stopped. The patrons were all looking at me. I blinked back at them.
“Well?” the proprietor urged.
“Yes. … Well. …” I straightened my veils. The patrons started banging their hands on squat tables. Finally I asked him, “What am I supposed to be doing?”
“Doing? Dancing, of course! What do you think you’re dressed for?”
“Ah. Of course. Sorry.”
“Don’t ’sorry.’ Dance!”
From across the cantina, McCoy’s eyes became very wide when I stepped hesitantly onto that velvet podium. The podium, fringed with silver, looked fairly nice from a distance, but up close I saw that the threads were separated and rotting from years of being trod upon. It felt mushy. I could barely stand on it, much less dance.
Dance? Me, dance?
The pounding grew louder. A gaggle of faces leered up at me in brutal expectation. Klingons, humans, Argelians, two Mengenites in the back … not a very promising group as audiences go.
The proprietor got impatient and clapped his hands sharply. The band groaned to life. Their music once again whined. The audience kept pounding the tables.
I raised one veiled arm and lowered it, letting the veil softly fly. Then the other. Two steps left, two right … dance, huh? Now I could see Merete also frozen in place, staring at me with the same saucer eyes I was getting from McCoy. And now there was Scanner at the doorway dressed in a waiter’s ecru shirt and red vest and holding a tricorder. Wasn’t this nice? What a privilege to have my Star Fleet colleagues on hand to watch my un-Fleetlike gyrations.
Whatever I was doing, I was doing it wrong. The audience howled their complaints, and I tried to improve my twisting to imitate what I’d seen the other girl doing earlier. Not to much avail. I simply wasn’t trained to move in those combinations. After a few minutes of this, I managed to find the beat of the tune they were assaulting us with and was able to improve my act by making the veils and feathers fly. Eventually, the audience started to treat me better. It was probably just sympathy.
The Klingons at the table to my left began showing their appreciation by snatching at my veils, and succeeded in yanking some free before I got possessive and yanked back. They hooted at my un-Argelian defiance and raised their mugs of a favorite Klingon wine involving distilled butterflies. The smell identified it quite well. They took my reaction for encouragement—as I should have guessed Klingons would. Their sooty complexions shined in the torchlight, cut by bright teeth and sharp black beards. One of them grasped my ankle.
“For an Argelian woman, you’re a supernova,” he snarled up at me. “Come down here.”
“Can’t,” I said. “I’m working.”
“You’ll still be working.” He stripped off my slipper, brought it to his face and started sniffing it while he leered at me. “tlhIngan Hoi Dajatlh’ a’?”
I didn’t know what he was asking me and wasn’t about to get into a discussion with him anyway. I twisted my foot, hoping to break his grasp, but he held fast to my ankle.
“You’re not much of a dancer,” the Klingon said.
The only female member of the group threw her head back and laughed. “’elaS-ngan ghaH.” Whatever she said, they got a roar out of it at my expense.
The first gorilla pulled harder on my foot. “Kyrtu calls you a woman of Elas. Is that why you fight? You don’t look like an Elasian!”
More laughter.
Another male downed the last gulp from a dented goblet. “There are other things Argelian women can do, Gelt, She’s not working in this place without qualifications.”
I stopped dancing. I glared down at him, gritting my teeth to keep in what I was thinking.
Gelt laughed along with his companions, then turned that gray face up to me again and gave my ankle a rough tug. “Enough dancing,” he said.
My eyes grew narrow. My voice rumbled across the cantina. “Let go of the foot,” I suggested, “or you’ll be wearing it.”
The laughter faded. A moment later, the music.
“I will teach things to you,” Gelt said. “Things of Klingon. Strong things. A salute to things of Kling on!” He raised his mug and addressed the others, still holding my foot. “May you die angry!”
After a group swig, they watched for my reaction.
My lips grew flat. “Not bad for somebody who just learned to walk upright.”
He had no misconceptions of my meaning. The grip on my ankle tightened. In my periphery, the tavernkeeper had his fists clamped to his mouth in frozen panic. McCoy was poised for trouble. Scanner and Merete were out of my line of vision. This wasn’t the time to worry about them. This was the time to kick the lard out of a Klingon.
There was no sense in trying to talk my way out of this; that was clear in the Klingon’s eyes. So I closed them with my other foot—a good, clean, Star Fleet kick to the bridge of his nose. His hand fell away from my leg, but the blow that would’ve floored any human merely echoed briefly within the misshapen Klingon skull. Gelt collapsed backward, his face crumpled in astonishment, but he was soon clawing his way back to me through a forest of his companions, who were also grabbing for me. I felt myself going down in a sea of Klingons, and caught a glimpse of Scanner’s body flying head-on into the clutch like a giant brown-haired torpedo.
Star Fleet self-defense tactics did their best to keep our heads above those slimy waters, but there were five of them and only two of us. McCoy was trying to reach us, but the flood of Argelians who were trying to escape kept him from making much headway. Merete, too, was lost somewhere in the rush for the door. A party of three human vacationers hesitated for a moment, then cast their lot with Scanner and me, smoothing out the odds a bit, but we still had that awful Klingon ruthlessness to deal with, as well as their superior strength. I heard a bone crack somewhere in the forest of arms and legs before I fully comprehended the Klingon bar-fight mode. After that, I quit playing Star-Fleet fair.
I pulled ears and gouged eyes and even took a bite out of a fuzzy forearm. Scanner flew by me at least twice, neither time in control of his course, and by now McCoy had discovered the art of smashing bottles over Klingon heads. But Klingon heads are hard, and the Klingon temper short-fused. Gelt was still furious and he kept me occupied. I could barely keep him from getting a grip on me much less worry about helping my friends. I landed a few good blows, still kicking at that tender spot on his forehead where I’d kicked him before, and this dazed him. He was slowing down, though his copper-gray face was still screwed up with rage. Where moments ago this had been only a saloon free-for-all, something had changed. The Klingon sense of pride had taken charge. If Gelt got a good hold on me, he would kill me.
It was a lucky thing that Argelian edicts prevented the possession of any weapons while on the planet, or I’d have been dead already. As the Argelians scrambled into the alley, the cantina slowly emptied out, leaving only a tangle of humans and Klingons, and one petrified tavernkeeper who was frantically ringing an alarm bell. The sound of an alarm on Argelius usually translated into, “Run in the other direction,” so if help was to arrive, it wouldn’t be soon enough.
Gelt was circling me. I had managed to get the podium between us. Roaring, he dived over it, fingers waggling at my throat. I slithered clumsily to one side, feeling his scratch rake across my upper arm, and I tore one of the veils from the waistband of my plume pants. I jumped up onto the podium and for a frantic moment lost my balance. Gelt rolled over, but a solid slam on the ear rocked him back onto his stomach. I looped the veil around his neck, dropped onto his back, and twisted.
He clawed at me, scoring my wrists. I kept pulling.
His throat grew taut against the veil, and he drew blood on his own neck in an attempt to free himself. He gagged and spat, then twisted around to grasp the veil near my hands. Neck muscles stiffening, he made me believe he wasn’t going to let himself black out. So I snatched up the nearest stone jug and introduced it to the side of his head. He wavered under me, and at the first sign of recovery, I clubbed him again. This went on three, count ’em, three more times. Finally his eyes rolled up and he drooped back. As soon as I felt his struggle slacken, I let go of the veil and leaned over him long enough to be sure he was breathing. It was a ragged, throaty kind of breathing, but the job was done.
I rolled off the podium only to realize that I was wrong; the job was far from done. Scanner was being pummeled by a large Klingon, two of the human vacationers were trying to rescue him while holding off their own problems, and Dr. McCoy was grappling with the spitting Klingon woman—and losing. With a deep breath, I steeled myself for more.
Hardly had I drawn the breath when the ogling crowd at the alley door parted and the cavalry sailed in. Merete, followed by Mr. Spock, cape flying, and to my astonishment, Captain Cavalry himself—Kirk.
Though I was stunned with relief, McCoy knew exactly what to do. He grimaced with effort and shoved the Klingon woman straight at Spock, who was able to down her with a slightly modified version of the Vulcan nerve pinch. Evidently he’d bothered to learn how to numb a Klingon nervous system in his years of dealing with them. Handy data.
Kirk was not so subtle. He ran headlong into the fight, took a leap, and bodyslammed two Klingons right into the tavern wall. He was on his feet before they had a chance to shake off the surprise. He picked one, hauled him to his feet, and let fly a classic right cross that rearranged the Klingon’s jawline. In spite of the victory, I saw the captain wince and shake his aching hand before turning to deal with the second Klingon, Number two was quickly dispatched, but it took an extra punch.
The cantina was littered with bodies. At every door and window, Argelian faces goggled at us, amazed at our willingness to defend ourselves and each other with physical force. This would keep their gossip lines buzzing for years.
Kirk rubbed his knuckles, surveying his happy hunting ground. A quick glance around the room gave him a head count, and he seemed satisfied when he turned to me. “Ah, Piper. On the job as usual. And looking dapper.”
I turned red, quite aware of the torn veils, the one bare foot (which was almost as bad as the foot still wearing the absurd slipper), the filmy harem pants, and the scanty top. I would’ve told him it wasn’t my idea, but that meant having to tell him it was Spock’s idea, and I decided not to do that. Of course, Kirk wasn’t in uniform either. He also wore some version of Argelian clothing: a simple toast-brown tunic, beige trousers, and Federation boots. Well, nobody’s perfect.
Limply I said, “I think I blew my cover.”
Captain Kirk raised his brows and blinked. “Yes, you do seem rather uncovered.” He surveyed the clumps of Klingon. “Well, it was worth it.”
Scanner stumbled to my side, holding his elbow. “Bet you’re a fun date.”
“Klingons!”
We all turned abruptly at Merete’s warning call as she stood near the dockside window.
Kirk took a step toward her. “Where?”
“Heading this way,” she told him. “They must’ve heard the noise.”
McCoy joined her and leaned out the window for a better look.
The captain asked, “How many, Bones?”
McCoy pushed himself off the windowsill and blurted, “Too many!”
“Let’s go. Move.”
The captain led us out of the tavern and down the alley, stepping aside to herd us through a narrow doorway into the next building, then out again into the open Argelian night. He’d barely given me time to retrieve my gear, but we got away before the Klingons discovered us standing over their fallen comrades. Panting, we slipped behind a huge stone cistern and knelt there for horrible moments while a barrage of Klingons thundered past, looking for us and frothing for revenge. We held our breath as their hard-soled boots clattered down the docks.
