Shadows Have Offended

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Their appearance was immediately noted by a Ferengi standing near the entrance. He leaped to his feet and hurried over to greet them, energy whip in one hand, a disruptor in the other.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Worf sneered at him. “You speak to the great collectors of antiquity, Dorota Cusk and Amica Cossio!”

  “Who?” The Ferengi stepped closer and Worf pulled his disruptor. The Ferengi stood his ground.

  He’s enjoying this, Virox said.

  Yes.

  “Forgive our bodyguard,” Troi said, moving up alongside Worf and putting her hand softly on his arm. “As he said, I am Dorota Cusk, dealer of ancient curiosities, and this is my associate, Amica Cossio.”

  “Never heard of you,” the Ferengi snapped. Immediately his eyes flashed up to Worf, then back to Troi.

  Troi smiled. She stepped closer to the guard. He swallowed nervously. “Your knowledge gaps are not my concern,” she said haughtily. “I’m not here to see you.”

  You would have made a good intelligence operative, Virox thought.

  “Bryt’s never heard of you either,” the Ferengi said, pointing to Worf’s disruptor. “Could you please lower that thing?”

  “No,” Worf said.

  “I heard from an acquaintance that your employer has recently acquired items of immense interest to my associate.”

  The Ferengi’s eyes settled on Virox. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Worf growled.

  “We both know that’s not true,” Troi said. They had rescanned the planet. Now the ship sensors only recorded a dead spot in the middle of the Essar ruins. Worf was certain that Xiomara’s treasures were there.

  Virox’s voice in Troi’s head was warm and oddly disconcerting. This is all about the big lie to get what we want.

  Troi had to resist the urge to share her disgust with Virox. But she had to admit that the House leader was right.

  “Look,” the Ferengi said. “Bryt’s not seeing anyone. Situation’s hot.”

  Troi raised an eyebrow. “Hot? Is it because Bryt recently acquired three items of cultural significance?”

  The Ferengi’s eyes went wide, and Troi knew she had him. Suddenly, Worf yanked the energy whip out of his hand and tossed it away, out of reach.

  “Hey!” the Ferengi protested. “That’s not your property!”

  “But this is yours.” Worf slipped a half slip of latinum into his pocket.

  The guard looked insulted.

  Virox lifted an eyebrow. Worf pulled out a whole slip.

  Before he could grab it, Troi stepped in front of the guard, aware of Virox following behind her. “Take us to see Bryt the Baron.”

  The Ferengi gazed up at her, something like panic in his eyes. “You don’t know much about Bryt, do you?”

  You don’t have to lie about everything when you’re under cover, Virox offered.

  “No,” Troi said finally. “I am bound and determined to obtain those artifacts.”

  Virox stepped forward. “Profit enough for everyone.”

  “That’s well and good,” the Ferengi said. “Bryt doesn’t see anyone.”

  Troi frowned. “He is not interested in our latinum?”

  Good, said Virox.

  “He’s very interested,” the Ferengi said, and Worf stepped back. “Finally. Thank you.” He smoothed out his shirt. “Bryt doesn’t let anyone see him face-to-face. Not me, not his contractors, and not even clothed fe-males.”

  Troi narrowed her eyes at him. “Can we speak to him?”

  The Ferengi hesitated. Worf slipped the latinum into his pocket. “Uh, that I can probably manage. No promises.”

  Troi felt her shoulders soften. She hadn’t realized how tense she was.

  “Bryt will be very interested in hearing from us when he finds out what we can offer,” Virox said, sweeping her arm about grandly. “Unless the Ferengi are no longer interested in profit.” She leaned down and traced her finger along the Ferengi’s ear, making him tremble.

  Worf watched Virox’s display stone-faced. Troi stepped over to him while Virox whispered something into the Ferengi’s ear.

  “Is that really necessary?” Worf murmured.

  “Hija’,” Troi answered.

  “You’ve been practicing.”

  Troi winked at him.

  The Ferengi let out a shivery little noise of delight while Virox grinned wickedly and Troi schooled her expression.

  “Fine, fine!” he yelped. “You can wait inside. I’ll see what I can do about getting you in contact with Bryt.”

  Virox peeled away from the guard, looking pleased with herself. “Thank you, darling,” she purred. “I know Bryt won’t be disappointed.” She smiled slyly. “Nor will you.”

  Worf made a sound like a strangled cough.

  Aviana Virox looped her arm into the guard’s as he led them over to the entrance. He slapped his hand on the identity pad while he gazed dreamily up at her. The door slid open, releasing a sweet, heady scent. Some kind of incense. It smelled expensive.

  “I have potential buyers,” the Ferengi announced to an Orion woman lounging behind an ornately carved desk, positioned at the entrance to the structure. She looked up at the group appraisingly as they stepped inside. The space was small and dark.

  “Bryt’s busy,” she cooed, picking up a slim silver nail tipper and then fitting it over her index finger. It buzzed and when she slid it off, her nail had been transformed into a sharp, curling black talon. She held her hand out and admired her work.

  “I know that,” the Ferengi said, scuttling up to the desk. “They can wait until he’s ready.”

  The Orion dropped her hand in her lap. “Fine,” she said. “But the Klingon has to give up his disruptor.” She frowned. “And run them through the weapons scanner.”

  “You heard the lady.” The Ferengi turned to Worf with a grin, although it quickly vanished once Worf met his eye.

  “I’m keeping my mek’leth,” he snarled.

  The Ferengi looked nervously at the Orion woman, but she just waved one hand dismissively. “Fine,” she said, returning to her nails.

  Worf glowered. He dropped the disruptor on the Orion’s desk.

  “Right this way,” the Ferengi said solicitously.

  “Weapons scanner,” the Orion called out without looking up.

  The Ferengi scowled at her, but he did pull out a scanner and waved it apologetically over Troi and Virox. It beeped at Troi’s hip, and she sighed and gave him her phaser. Then he scanned Worf.

  “All clear,” he said. “Now—” He held out his hand toward a darkened staircase.

  “Absolutely not!” Worf barked out. He put his hand on Troi’s shoulder. “I am not allowing them to go down in the dark.”

  The Orion woman was now watching them with bemused interest.

  “What do you care?” the Ferengi said. “You’ll be with them.”

  Worf growled. The Ferengi skittered backward, bumping up against Virox.

  “Oh, don’t mind my Klingon associate.” Virox drew the Ferengi closer to her and brushed her fingers over his ears. “I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.”

  To Troi, she sent a thought: Tell Worf not to be so overprotective.

  Troi touched Worf’s arm. “It’s fine,” she said in Klingon.

  She felt Worf’s worry and his frustrated distrust of the Ferengi, of Bryt the Baron, and the inky darkness waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yeah, nothing to worry about, big guy.” The Ferengi eyed the mek’leth as he squeezed past them and started down the stairs. Worf stepped right behind him. Troi followed, with Virox right behind her.

  This Bryt is apparently reclusive, Virox thought, although our Ferengi friend there won’t tell me much more than that. No one knows much about him, only that he’s terribly rich and feared in the criminal underworld.

  Troi glanced back at Virox. You got all that?

  Virox smiled, her thoughts sparkling.

  She was having f
un, Troi realized.

  What do you think I was talking to him about? If this Bryt the Baron is as reclusive as our friend says, we’re going to have our work cut out for us.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs. The air was cooler down here, lit by pale lights that traced a path through the stony walls. A cave deep underground was exactly what Troi pictured when she imagined the lair of a wealthy Ferengi criminal.

  “The VIP lounge is right this way,” the Ferengi called out, stepping sideways to avoid Worf.

  “If this is a trap—” Worf started.

  “It’s not!” The Ferengi looked over his shoulder. “The baron just prefers his spaces dark.”

  Eventually, they came to a door set into the rock of the wall. “Here we are,” the Ferengi said. “The VIP lounge, for VIPs.” He grinned at Virox for half a second before whirling around and pressing his hand against the ID pad.

  The door whisked open, and Troi was grateful to see that it was well lit with warm golden lights. Soft, tinkling music spilled out into the hallway.

  The Ferengi gestured for them to go in, still beaming at Virox. Worf stepped inside. Troi tried to check out the room.

  Recognition shot through Worf.

  Troi reached into her pocket, ready to call the Enterprise for an extraction.

  There was another person in the lounge. She sat in an elaborate brocaded chair in the corner, her legs kicked up on what looked like a rather expensive and very old Bajoran-style table.

  She looked up, a smile curved across her lips.

  Thuvetha.

  She’d spotted them, and it was clear from her expression and from the sense of giddy delight pouring out of her that she recognized them.

  28

  “First order of business,” Cecil Solanko said. “Get Commander Data to the camp.”

  The crew was standing outside the station, which was still without power. Solanko had estimated that they had another seven or eight hours before the autoshutdown would start, and tensions were high. Josefina Rikkilä felt as if she were racing against the clock. Earlier, no tech was working; now the combadges had reconnected. It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t—it just meant another unknown variable.

  “Transporters are still down,” Malisson said. “And I wouldn’t recommend using them.”

  “Agreed,” Solanko said.

  Rikkilä raised her hand. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I went through the full round of field-medic training at the Academy. I can put together a simple gurney to transport the lieutenant out of the station.” She gestured over at the table. “I can dismantle some of this furniture.”

  “Perfect,” Solanko said. “Talma, you help her. Malisson, keep working on that replicator. Get as many rations as you can out of it.”

  Malisson turned back to the replicator, below which sand still littered the floor. She was running the replicator off a battery she’d retrieved from dismantling some of the laboratory scanners. It gave the replicator power, but that didn’t mean it was functioning normally.

  “Muñoz, you and I will focus on moving equipment over to the camp.” He nodded once. “Let’s go.”

  Rikkilä joined Talma over by the table. “We can use this as the frame,” she said. “Although we’re going to need to break it in half.” She frowned. “It’s too big. And the phasers—”

  “No phasers,” Talma said glumly. That had been one of Riker’s orders before he set out for the beach with Doctor Crusher.

  “Much harder without our equipment,” Rikkilä muttered. Her field-medic training had covered some of these kinds of contingencies—what to do if you didn’t have access to a replicator or a padd—but it hadn’t covered a full-on power failure. Still, she had learned how to create a gurney using standard equipment.

  Like phasers.

  “The table’s not one piece,” Talma said, flipping it on its side. “We can separate the top from the legs easily enough.”

  “Good point,” Rikkilä said. The table had clearly been replicated in pieces and then assembled afterward. They quickly removed the legs and set them aside. “If we can brace the tabletop,” Talma said, “I bet we can snap it in half.”

  Rikkilä’s eyes were itching—smoke. It was coming from the common room.

  “Sorry!” shouted Malisson from over by the replicator. “I’m trying to get some protein packs from this stupid thing—”

  The smoke belched out, thick and black, and hung around the rafters of the common room.

  “Is that the battery?” Rikkilä asked.

  “No, it’s the replicator itself!” Malisson sounded exasperated. The smoke grew thicker, forming into dark clouds. “There’s no fire,” she added.

  “That’s something, at least,” Rikkilä said.

  The smoke hung heavy, like an encroaching storm. Rikkilä hoisted up the table and leaned it against a clear spot on the wall and nodded at Talma.

  “Let’s see if my Bolian martial-arts training comes in handy,” he said with a grin, and then he hoisted up his left leg, hooking it at an angle. Rikkilä held her breath as he slammed his foot into the table.

  There was a loud, sharp crack. A line arced through the material of the table.

  “It’s working,” Josefina said.

  Talma brought his foot down on the table a second time. Splinters of material scattered up into the air. The table cracked in the center.

  “Third time’s the charm,” Talma said, and kicked again.

  The table snapped in half, the bottom piece skittering out across the floor. But the top piece didn’t clatter down like Rikkilä expected. It had jammed into the wall.

  “Oh no,” she breathed. She ran up to inspect the wall. “The biomass,” she said. “It’s getting soft!”

  “That’s not possible,” Talma said. “We have eight more hours, and Commander Riker hasn’t given the execution code.”

  “I know. But look!” Rikkilä grabbed the piece of the table and tugged. It came away easily, bringing with it a few flecks of biomass. She pressed her fingers against the indentation. It still felt solid, but there was a faint sponginess that sent a chill down her spine.

  She tapped her combadge. “Rikkilä to Solanko.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We have a problem here.”

  * * *

  Josefina Rikkilä knotted the last bedsheet around the makeshift gurney, securing the final handle. She was in the sleeping quarters, working quickly. It was hard to stop herself from looking up at the walls, trying to see if they had gotten softer in the time it had taken her and Talma to assemble the gurney.

  “Malisson can’t find out what’s happening with the station.” Solanko strode into the sleeping quarters. “But the biomass is definitely starting to decay.”

  “It shouldn’t be starting so soon,” Talma said.

  Solanko’s face was dark. “I know. Which is why we need to work fast. I hope you have some good news for me.” He gestured at the gurney.

  “We do,” Rikkilä said. “Just finished.”

  “Perfect.” Solanko walked over to where the gurney was set up on a bed. Rikkilä had wrapped the table in sheets stripped from the beds, knotting them the way she’d learned in training to create the handles. Now all they had to do was transfer Lieutenant Data onto it.

  “As soon as the lieutenant is secured at camp,” Solanko said, “I want the two of you gathering as many supplies as you can from the station. With the biomass softening, we don’t know how long we’ve got.”

  “Understood,” Talma said, and Rikkilä nodded in agreement.

  “Now, Ensign,” Solanko said, “how do we do this without an antigrav device?”

  “Push the beds together,” Rikkilä said. “Minimize the space.”

  Talma was already on it, shoving the bed with the gurney up against Data’s own bed.

  “One of you at his head, the other at his feet,” Rikkilä said. “I’ll help lift from his ce
nter.” She had learned how to transfer patients in training—antigrav devices and transporters weren’t always available in the field—but she hadn’t expected to have to do it on her first away mission.

  Talma and Solanko arranged themselves. Rikkilä slipped her hands under Data’s hips. He was unmoving, his face blank. She only hoped they would be able to bring him back once they were on the Enterprise again.

  “Count of three,” she murmured. “One. Two. Three.”

  With a burst of breath, all three of them lifted Data off the bed. Josefina’s grip was light, but she could see the strain in Solanko’s and Talma’s arms as they moved Data sideways, setting him on the gurney.

  She allowed herself a sigh of relief. “We did it.”

  Solanko was already twining the handle around his arm. “Let’s get him to camp.”

  As they lifted up the gurney, Rikkilä’s chest was tight: she had visions of the sheets unwrapping, of Data crashing onto the floor. But her work held, and Solanko and Talma headed toward the exit, the gurney holding fast between them. Josefina grabbed ahold of the third handle, which she had affixed to the front of the gurney, and guided them into the hallway, toward the front exit.

  Malisson was back at the replicator, muttering under her breath as more sand piled up.

  “I got some water,” she called out as they moved Data past her. “But it’s salt water. At least the battery is holding up.”

  “Keep trying,” Solanko said. “I can send Muñoz foraging for food. Water’s going to be more precious.”

  The smoke was still hanging in black clouds near the ceiling, and Rikkilä thought she caught a dark, earthy scent. A whiff of mulch.

  Biomass.

  They spilled out into the sunlight. The sun was at a high angle in the sky, bright and golden. Doctor Crusher and Commander Riker said to come find them if they weren’t back by sunset. Which seemed like too long.

  The team had started building the camp about five hundred meters away from the station, to give themselves plenty of space in the event that it collapsed unexpectedly. It didn’t seem far when they’d been hiking out here with the initial supplies. But carrying the lieutenant made the walk feel like a hundred kilometers. The sun was sweltering; sweat dripped down Rikkilä’s spine. She could see the flash of red from the emergency tarp, a stunning contrast against the endless sweep of pale grass.