by Greg Cox
All around Riker and the giant warrior, wedding guests and serving women had drawn back, forming a circle of excited Pai around the two combatants. Scattered cups, dishes, and cushions remained strewn about the harem floor. Boisterous bachelors, clutching overflowing goblets of wine, cheered and booed the battlers, jostling each other to gain a better view, while the female servants scurried away toward safety or else hid behind the bodies of the men, peering at the fight over the bachelors’ shoulders. Even the humorless Chuan-chi appeared to be caught up in the growing excitement, shouting words of encouragement to Tu Fu just as the enraged soldier took a second swipe at Riker. Lowering his head just in time, Riker felt Tu Fu’s razor-sharp fingernails brush over his scalp. A lock of Riker’s dark brown hair fell almost unnoticed to the floor. I don’t think this is what the captain had in mind, he thought ruefully.
The fighters circled each other warily, with Riker taking care to remain at a safe distance from Tu Fu. The Pai was easily three times Riker’s weight; if they started grappling up close it would be too easy for the other man to use his mass against Riker. He wasn’t about to let that happen. “Coward!” Tu Fu taunted him. “Are you afraid to fight me?”
“Hah! Show him what you can do, Will!” Kan-hi yelled from the sidelines. Easy for him to say, Riker thought. At the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the Dragon’s scapegrace younger son standing in the forefront of the mob watching the fight. He had one arm each around the shoulders of two nearly naked serving girls who looked like they were holding the inebriated prince upright. Riker only got a quick look at the two women, but he could have sworn they were the same seductive pair who had tag-teamed him less than ten minutes ago. Had one of them taken his phaser? And if so, was Kan-hi in on the plot?
Tu Fu gave Riker no leisure to consider the possibilities. A ferocious growl rumbled out of the warrior’s wide chest and he raced at Riker with both clawed hands outstretched before him. Riker suddenly felt like a matador facing down an onrushing bull. Worf would love this, he mused at the exact moment that he tensed to dive out of the way. Left or right? he wondered, coolly considering his options. “Get him, Tu Fu!” a voice commanded from somewhere right behind him. “Destroy the foreigner for the honor of the Empire!”
That order could only have come from Chuan-chi, Riker realized, recognizing both the voice and contemptuous tone. Some host, he thought, scowling. Then the full implications of the situation hit him with the force of a disruptor blast. If he darted out of Tu Fu’s path, then the huge warrior’s headlong rush would carry him—and his deadly talons—straight into the Dragon-Heir himself. Would Tu Fu be able to halt his charge in time? Riker doubted it. A vivid image of the Heir impaled upon the big Pai’s bloody claws flared to life in Riker’s mind, as clear as anything he’d ever seen in a holodeck. In the flickering light of the painted paper lanterns Tu Fu’s immense shadow speeded ahead of him, casting a pall over Riker and, behind him, Chuan-chi. Ten sharpened, foot-long fingernails zeroed in on Riker’s face. He had only a heartbeat to react.
He met Tu Fu’s charge with one of his own. Crouching low, he surged under the giant’s arms, slamming his right shoulder into the Pai’s midsection with all the force he could muster. The impact was not enough to fully overcome Tu Fu’s accumulated momentum, but he slowed the other man down enough to give everyone else a chance to get out of the way. He heard gasps and squeals and wild laughter behind him, but, thankfully, no shouts of mortal anguish. The Heir had been spared an “accidental” demise. Riker was just paranoid enough, or properly suspicious enough, to wonder for a fleeting second whether or not Chuan-chi had been the actual target all along. After all, in the middle of an unplanned, uncontrolled scuffle, anything could happen. . . .
Sharp, burning pain brought an abrupt end to Riker’s theorizing. Tu Fu’s nails dug into his back, rending fabric and flesh. Only the fact that the warrior was still off-balance from his interrupted lunge kept Tu Fu from taking full advantage of his position and sinking his nails even deeper into Riker’s body, perhaps all the way to fragile internal organs. Riker knew he couldn’t let Tu Fu get a better grip. Before Tu Fu could strike again, he grabbed hold of the warrior’s right leg just above the kneecap. Years of martial-arts training paid off when Riker flipped Tu Fu over his shoulders. The Pai grunted in surprise as he somersaulted over Riker, landing flat on his back where only moments before the Dragon-Heir had cheered him on.
“Excellent! No, truly sublime!” Kan-hi exulted, wedged between (and seemingly propped up by) his brother’s women. He did not sound, Riker judged, like a man whose assassination plot has just been foiled. Perhaps he’d been totally oblivious of his brother’s recent close call. Or maybe he was a very good actor.
Riker spun around on his heels, hoping to take the offensive before Tu Fu climbed back on his feet. Maybe he could still finish the man off before anybody really got hurt. To his dismay, though, he saw that some of Tu Fu’s friends had already hauled him upright. He glared at Riker with sheer hatred and bloodlust in his good eye. “Damn,” Riker muttered, contemplating the way Tu Fu’s allies gathered in his wake. Once the bachelors really started taking sides, this one-on-one could easily escalate into a near-riot. There was no way he could guard both princes in that sort of bloody chaos.
“Another five hundred cycees on the Federation man,” Kan-hi said boldly. His handsome face was flushed with wine.
“A thousand cycees and one hundred concubines on Tu Fu of the Dragon Empire,” Chuan-chi responded. Raucous cheers greeted his challenge.
Great, Riker thought sarcastically. Make this a matter of imperial honor. He only hoped a thousand cycees (whatever a cycee was) wasn’t worth killing over.
Beverly could readily see why the warlord’s daughter was known as the Green Pearl. The girl’s most striking feature was her eyes, which were large, bright, and chartreuse, while her smooth, unblemished skin was pearly white. The contrast between the brilliance of her eyes and the paleness of her face was the like the flash of phaser fire against the void of interstellar space. The Green Pearl wore a simple, sea green gown, surprisingly unadorned by Pai standards. Apparently, even the design-crazy Pai realized that excess frills and ornamentation could only distract the eye from the future bride’s natural beauty. The tips of tiny velvet slippers peeked out from the beneath the hem of her gown. The Green Pearl was substantially younger than the Dragon-Heir; Beverly guessed she was about seventeen.
“My daughter,” Lu Tung addressed her, “this woman is a visitor from the United Federation of Planets. She has generously volunteered to look after you tonight. Dr. Crusher, please meet my daughter, Lady Yao Hu, called the Green Pearl of Lord Lu Tung.”
The girl rolled her eyes at her title. The extravagant label clearly embarrassed her. “She came on the starship? They travel with their women?”
“She is a skilled healer,” Lu Tung explained. “And a Starfleet officer, if you can imagine such a thing.”
“Really?” Her eyebrows shot up and became lost beneath her bangs. “How fascinating!” The girl gazed at Beverly with open curiosity. Beverly assumed Yao Hu seldom encountered strangers in her father’s harem.
“I am very happy to meet you, Lady Yao Hu,” Beverly said warmly.
“Thank you.” The girl nodded in Beverly’s direction, then turned back toward Lu Tung. “But really, Father, I don’t need a baby-sitter. I’m getting married tomorrow, which means I’m practically an adult!”
“Hah! That’s what you think!” A second girl popped up from where she had been hidden in the depths of an overstuffed couch farther within the shadowy confines of the chamber. “Greetings, Exalted Lord, and Esteemed Sire of the Green Pearl,” she said. “This one is honored and delighted and so forth. . . .”
“Hsiao!” the Pearl said indignantly. “That’s hardly respectful.”
The other girl looked a few years older than Yao Hu: shorter and tomboy-slim even in her scarlet robes, with dark hair cut short to the shoulders. “You’re not m
y mother yet,” she warned.
“I will be tomorrow, and then you’re going to have to be a lot nicer to me,” the Pearl said.
“I’ll still be the elder, and you will have to be nicer to me.”
“Indeed?” said the Pearl in a dangerous tone.
“That is enough,” Lu Tung commanded, silencing the bickering adolescents. “Dr. Crusher, this is Hsiao Har, the Heir’s daughter from his first marriage. Since she is soon to be my Pearl’s stepdaughter, she has been visiting for the past few weeks. After all, they must learn to live together . . . or so it is hoped.”
The tomboy tossed her head defiantly. “This is absurd. She can’t possibly be my mother. It’s ridiculous.”
“And I wouldn’t want her as a daughter, anyway!” the Pearl retorted. “She is far too disobedient and horrid.”
“You’re the horrid one.”
Lu Tung scowled, heavy furrows forming across his brow. He bowed in Beverly’s direction. “Madam, I leave my daughter—and future granddaughter—to your care.” Beverly suddenly felt like she was being left in command of the Enterprise during a Borg assault.
What in the world have I got myself into?
“Thrash him, Will!” Kan-hi urged. “For the Federation!”
A sneer twisted Tu Fu’s blocklike visage. Dark purple swelling had spread over his injured eye like some sort of cancerous tumor. “Federation . . . hah! This is what I think of your Federation!” he spat, heaving a wad of sticky, green, foul-looking saliva at Riker’s feet. “The Federation is pi t’i,” he snarled, using an insult apparently beyond the vocabulary of Riker’s Universal Translator. That was fine; Riker got the gist of it.
“Come now!” Kan-hi exhorted him. “You’re not actually going to let him say that, are you?”
Riker didn’t need a medical tricorder to know his blood pressure was rising. Ordinarily, he would have liked nothing better than to feed Tu Fu his own fingernails one finger at a time, but this wasn’t merely another shore-leave brawl. He had a job to do, so he forced himself to keep cool. He glanced again at the Pai’s blackened left eye; Tu Fu couldn’t possibly see anything through all that swelling. An idea occurred to Riker. . . .
“Pi t’i yourself,” Riker said, deliberately provoking his opponent. Tu Fu reacted exactly as planned. Bellowing like an incensed Klingon targ, he hurled his vast bulk across the empty floor at Riker. Riker weaved to the left with malice aforethought, coming up squarely on the Pai’s blind side. Now Tu Fu failed to block Riker’s punch. His right fist connected with the warrior’s exposed chin, sending a shock of vibration all the way down Riker’s arm to his shoulder bone. The man’s jaw felt like it was made out of duranium. Uh-oh, Riker thought. This didn’t look good.
If Riker’s blow hurt Tu Fu, he didn’t show it. He slammed into Riker with all his weight, carrying Riker backward with the force of a stampede. The crowd of onlookers must have parted to make way for them, for the next thing Riker knew he and his enemy had smashed through one of the vertical paper screens dividing the outer harem into various compartments. Paper shredded and wooden supports snapped beneath an avalanche of thrashing, battling human bodies. Riker heard women screaming and a male voice cursing. He saw five or six young ladies, mostly nude, running away in panic. A Pai nobleman, similarly unclad, was rolling frantically out of the way, grabbing up his discarded garments as he scrambled to his feet only a few meters distant. I guess someone isn’t a fight fan, Riker thought wryly—right before the back of his head came to rest against the floor of the harem. A surplus of overstuffed pillows cushioned his crash landing but failed to prevent the entire weight of the sumo-sized warrior from pounding him into the pillows. His battered rib cage shrieked in protest; he’d been on heavy-gravity worlds that hadn’t crushed him this much. He could barely breathe.
Even Tu Fu seemed momentarily stunned by the impact of their fall, or perhaps he was merely disoriented by the torn remnants of a colorful silk hanging currently wrapped around his head. His silk-shrouded face was only centimeters away from Riker’s. He sprawled on top of the Starfleet officer like a misplaced mountain. Riker briefly considered kneeing Tu Fu where it would hurt most, but figured that the Pai would probably judge that tactic dishonorable in the extreme. Instead he took a deep breath, straining to expand his lungs against the tremendous mass pressing down on him, then pried his arms out from beneath Tu Fu. Clasping both hands together, he drove his locked fists into the underside of the warrior’s chin. Tu Fu’s head snapped back, exposing his naked throat. Riker chopped him in the neck with the edge of his right hand. Tu Fu grunted in pain and tried to pull himself off Riker, who rocked back and forth on his spine until he had enough momentum to roll both himself and Tu Fu all the way over. Now Riker was on top, with Tu Fu’s unwieldy bulk spread out beneath him. He jabbed his knee into Tu Fu’s stomach, and heard shouts and laughter all around him. The circle of spectators had re-formed around the fighters, Kan-hi and the other bachelors whooping and hollering as Riker raised both fists high above his head, ready to bring them crashing down on Tu Fu and ending the show here and now. He wondered what Kan-hi would do with all the money and concubines he was about to win.
A splash of wine struck Riker in the face . . .
“Father, wait!” the Pearl objected as Lord Lu Tung prepared to depart. “You can’t leave her here.” Green eyes found Beverly’s. “I mean no disrespect, Doctor, but, as I said, I truly have no need of a nurse or chaperone. Your kindness does me great honor, but you must not inconvenience yourself for this one’s sake.”
“It’s no inconvenience,” Beverly insisted. As long as Yao Hu remained a potential target for an assassin’s deadly efforts, she could not afford to leave the young bride alone. Well, alone with Hsiao Har anyway. Not that she suspected the Heir’s tomboy daughter of any evil designs, but she didn’t think relying on one teenage girl to protect another was exactly what Jean-Luc had in mind.
“Indeed,” Lu Tung said sternly. “It is not right that a bride go to her wedding without the comfort and guidance of an older, wiser woman. You should be grateful Dr. Crusher has agreed to accompany you tonight.”
“I am, Father, truly I am,” the Pearl said, “but . . . but . . .” She seemed at a loss for words, but quite stricken at the prospect of being left in Beverly’s charge. Why is that? Beverly wondered. She was not offended, merely puzzled. Why is this so important to the Pearl?
“Don’t worry, Lord Lu Tung,” Hsiao Har spoke up. “I can look after your precious Pearl.”
“You?” The young bride appeared offended by the very idea, even more so than by the notion of Beverly watching over her. I guess I’m the lesser of two evils, Beverly thought with some amusement.
“Well, I am both older and wiser,” Hsiao Har said. She strode across the cushion-strewn floor until only a few meters separated her from the Pearl. Beverly noted that the Heir’s daughter was slightly taller than the other girl, who glowered at Hsiao Har. Beverly hoped she wouldn’t have to referee any actual wrestling matches between the two.
“Much older,” the Pearl taunted Hsiao Har. “Much, much older. But wiser? I hardly think so.”
Lu Tung sighed wearily, but did nothing to halt the verbal sparring between his daughter and Hsiao Har. Apparently, the disputes of mere females were beneath his dignity to notice or deal with. That’s women’s work, Beverly thought with a touch of resentment; her opinion of Lu Tung descended one notch. “Madam,” he said, bowing his head, “I wish you good luck.” He waved his hand before the heavy iron door and its guardian dragon. Lasers flashed briefly between the door and his ring, and Lord Lu Tung stepped through the now-open exit. Seconds later, door and dragon rematerialized, sealing Beverly in with her quarreling young charges.
“Brat,” the Pearl hissed at Hsiao Har the instant her father was out of sight. “Crone!”
“Baby,” returned Hsiao Har. “Fetus!” She dropped into what suspiciously resembled a martial-arts stance. Beverly suddenly suspected that the women of the harem
might not be the fragile flowers she had assumed them to be.
“Yao-goblin!” the Pearl said, raising her hands before her, karate-style.
“Nan hai tzu!” Hsiao Har responded. She raised one foot, the tip of her slipper extended toward the Pearl. The situation looked to be rapidly escalating out of control. Red alert. Beverly thought automatically.
“Girls!” Beverly clapped her hands together. I sound like the mother in a Victorian novel, she thought ruefully, but it seemed to work. The girls backed away from each other, their tense bodies gradually lapsing back into less aggressive postures. With any luck, she thought, they’ll be reluctant to misbehave too badly in front of a perfect stranger. Hsiao Har glared balefully at the Pearl, who, without much grace or warning, collapsed onto the nearest cushion. She crossed her arms sullenly in front her. Her lower lip formed a definite pout. What’s she most upset about, Beverly wondered, her fight with Hsiao Har, my presence here, or—a thought suddenly occurred to Beverly—her imminent wedding to the Heir? Whichever it was, Beverly figured she was in for a long and awkward evening.
All my years of Starfleet training, she reflected, and I end up playing den mother at a kung-fu slumber party. She was definitely going to have to talk to Jean-Luc about her job description.
She just hoped the others were having an easier time of it.
The wine splashed against Riker’s face, blinding him only seconds before his fists could complete their downward plunge. The harsh, stinging liquid caught him completely by surprise; he had no idea where it had come from or who had thrown it at him. He blinked and sputtered, shaking his head and flinging off tiny droplets of emerald-colored wine in every direction. The alcohol stung his eyes, its cloying, fruity flavor filling his mouth and nostrils. The lukewarm liquid ran down his cheeks and dripped from his beard. Damn, he cursed silently. When I get my hands on the joker who tossed that wine . . . !