The Black Shore

by Greg Cox

  Especially when they refused to cooperate, like the one who was annoying her now. His name was Nimdir, and someone had said he was a technician, but he might as well have been a hair stylist for all the useful data she had managed to extract from him. Indeed, his yellow mane was more elaborately curled and coifed than that of any other Ryol she had encountered so far. A mass of golden ringlets framed his face, reminding her of the flowing wigs that had once been the fashion back on Earth, even though she couldn’t remember precisely where or when. Pre-industrial England, maybe, or France? She didn’t search her memory too hard; she was an engineer, not an historian, and she had more important things to find out.

  “But do you use an electro-plasma system for power conduction,” she asked for what felt like the tenth time, “or a microwave-based energy stream using individual station relays?”

  Nimdir leaned against the wall of the nightclub, sipping from a half-filled goblet. He had discarded a green silk vest, the better to show off his manly chest. Torres was distinctly unimpressed, but that didn’t stop the man from sucking in his gut and puffing up his chest as much as physically possible. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Microwaves, plasma . . . what difference does it make as long as the music keeps playing?”

  Was he being evasive, she wondered, or was he just as stupid as he looked? Torres fought down an urge to grab him by his curls and knock some sense into him. The music was so loud that she had to stand only centimeters away from him, their faces practically touching, in order to hear him at all. She wondered if that was the idea behind the ear-splitting din.

  “But when the music does break down,” she pressed him, “then you have to know how it works in order to fix it, right? So what kind of technology do you need to repair?”

  “What if I told you that nothing on our planet ever breaks down?” Nimdir said with what he clearly considered an impish grin. “Would you believe me?”

  “No,” Torres said flatly. She was tempted to demonstrate the traditional Klingon punishment for lying, but figured the Captain would want him to keep his tongue. It’s odd, she thought. The longer she stayed on this decadent playground of a planet, the closer she felt to her embarrassing Klingon roots. Another good reason, she thought, for finding some dilithium and getting the hell out of here.

  “Ah, I should have known better than to try and fool such an intelligent, not to mention attractive, woman as yourself. Of course things malfunction occasionally,” he admitted, “and some small labor is required to set things right, but it’s such a boring topic of conversation that I can’t imagine you’re really interested in hearing all the tedious details.” Nimdir dropped an overly familiar hand onto her shoulder. “What a shame, really, that the neffaler can’t handle all the repairs themselves, but they just don’t have the faculties to handle anything too complicated.”

  “Move the hand,” Torres growled.

  • • •

  A timid neffaler, its body speckled with mangy clumps of hair, brought another round of drinks to the table. Paris groaned aloud as he observed that his request for water had somehow gotten lost in the transmission. “Just my luck,” he muttered. “More wine.”

  “Don’t you like our wine, Tom?” Laazia’s long lashes fluttered above her pale green eyes. The motion of the lashes was almost hypnotic, he thought. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from them. If he leaned in closer, he could see his own reflection in the gemlike depths of her eyes. The scented smoke hovering over the table did strange things to the light, the shadows moving sinuously over the elegant planes of her face.

  “It’s wonderful wine,” he murmured, “almost too wonderful to resist.” His lips hung above her ear. The downy fleece covering her scalp looked soft and inviting. “I don’t trust myself.” He edged even closer to her, feeling her warmth even through his Starfleet uniform.

  Something jabbed him under the table. Hard.

  Paris sat up straight. He turned his head to see Harry Kim sitting nearby, an innocent expression on his face. One of Kim’s hands slid out from beneath the low table. Paris saw a fork gripped in Kim’s fingers. He shook his head, trying to rescue his senses from Laazia’s seductive allure. He didn’t know whether to thank Harry or punch him.

  “Is something wrong, Tom?” Laazia asked, giving Kim a suspicious look. It dawned on him that, aside from a few pleasantries, she had barely spoken to Kim since she sat down. Three was definitely a crowd, he guessed, at least as far as she was concerned. From where he was sitting, however, safety in numbers was the key. I’m going to owe Harry big time, he thought, if I can get out of this mess with my reputation intact.

  A roar of laughter came from the dance floor, briefly overcoming the throbbing pulse of the music. Paris glanced at the revelers. Susan Tukwila was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared into the night with her handsome Ryol admirer, but Paris spotted Kellar, Felice, S’dbrg, Dembinski, and several other acquaintances from Voyager still dancing up a storm. He even thought he glimpsed B’Elanna Torres talking to a curly-headed Ryol on the other side of the club. Poor guy, he thought. Torres probably had him trapped in a discussion of inertial damping fields or something.

  “So,” he addressed Laazia, looking for a suitably safe topic for small talk, “the captain tells me you’re an arbitrator. Is that like a lawyer or something?”

  “More like a judge,” she said, “or so I gather from what I’ve learned about your Federation legal practices. The judicious use of authority is a valuable skill to develop, especially for one in my position.”

  “Which is designated heir to your father?” Paris said. He tried to imagine Laazia draped in austere black robes. It wasn’t easy.

  “Precisely.” Laazia shrugged modestly. “It is important that our people learn to accept my judgments.”

  “A pretty big responsibility,” Paris commented, remembering his own struggles to live up to his father’s lofty reputation. Maybe he and Laazia had more in common than he realized.

  Harry Kim joined the conversation. “What sort of disputes do you mediate?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the music.

  “Nothing too interesting,” she said. “We have a shockingly placid society. Why, I haven’t had to execute anyone for days.” She frowned for a moment, then broke out laughing at the Starfleet officers’ shocked expressions. “You should see your faces!” Her green eyes sparkled with mischievous glee. “I was only joking!”

  “Oh, right,” Kim said sheepishly. He started to say something more, but Laazia held up her hand to cut him off.

  “Please, no more shop talk,” she insisted. “I come to this club to relax and forget about my duties.” She grabbed on to Paris’s wrist. “Come dancing with me, Tom. That looks like so much fun!”

  He and Kim exchanged a stricken look. Now what do we do? he wondered. Laazia was halfway to her feet already. Paris felt the pointed tips of her nails digging into his skin. “Wait!” he said.

  The Elder’s daughter looked down on him, her full lips forming an unmistakable and irresistible pout. Her pupils expanded until there was only a thin green outline around their beckoning darkness. “What’s the matter now? Don’t you want to dance with me?”

  “I’d love to,” he said, not entirely lying, “but what about Harry here? I can’t just abandon him. What sort of friend would I be if I left my best buddy stranded at an empty table with nobody to talk to—and on an alien planet, no less!”

  Laazia kept a tight hold on his wrist. Kim just rolled his eyes. “Oh brother,” he muttered.

  “I’m sure he’ll do just fine,” she insisted, tugging on his arm. Against his will, he found himself rising to his feet. Wow, he thought, she’s a lot stronger than she looks.

  “You don’t know Harry,” he said, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “I shouldn’t say this, but Harry . . . well, he’s sort of socially challenged, if you know what I mean.”

  Kim groaned and buried his face in his hands. He�
��s going to kill me for this, Paris thought, but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment.

  Laazia could not be dissuaded. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I can remedy that.” She raised her voice and called out to the tightly packed throng filling the dance floor. “Romeela! Sitruua! Come to me!”

  Like genies summoned from a magic lamp, or fantasies conjured up by a compliant holodeck, two stunning young women emerged from a crowd of dancers. Paris was impressed with how quickly they responded to Laazia’s call. Were these women her friends or her subjects, he wondered, and exactly how much clout did an Elder’s daughter have anyway?

  Both women were, like all the Ryol, remarkably attractive by humanoid standards. Maybe not as breathtaking as Laazia herself, Paris decided, but beautiful enough to make a Dabo girl green with envy and an Orion belly dancer even greener. Fresh from the dance floor, their red-hued flesh gleamed with perspiration while their satiny gowns clung to their bodies. Kim lifted his head from the tabletop and his eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “Ladies,” Laazia said, pointing toward the table, “this is the eminently fascinating Ensign Harry Kim of the U.S.S. Voyager. He’s been from one end of the universe to another. If you’re nice to him, I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it.”

  With an explosion of smiles and laughter, the women descended on Kim. Paris wasn’t sure which one was Romeela and which was Sitruua, but they planted themselves on both sides of his friend, chattering merrily and holding on to his arms. Laazia tugged again on his own arm, and Paris looked down at Kim, suddenly unsure who was most in need of rescue. “Harry . . . ?” he began.

  Kim’s gaze swung back and forth between the beauties flanking him, then turned sheepishly toward Paris. He gave Paris a this-is-bigger-than-the-both-of-us sort of look. Paris nodded back. He had to concede that he had been hopelessly outmaneuvered. He was on his own. “See you later, Harry,” he said as Laazia pulled him toward the music, “I hope.”

  “At last,” she whispered into his ear, “I have you all to myself!”

  Shields buckling, Captain, he thought. We can’t take much more of this.

  • • •

  “The hand,” Torres said again. “Move it now.” It was a snarl, not a request.

  Nimdir pretended he couldn’t hear her. “What’s that?” he said, cupping his free hand around his ear. “This music is really quite deafening, isn’t it?”

  Torres clenched her fists at her sides. In the old days, before Voyager, she would have already fed this preening idiot his own mane, curl by curl. Since signing on as the chief of Engineering, however, she had been doing her best to control her temper and justify both the captain’s and Chakotay’s faith in her. She was an officer now and she had to adhere to a higher standard of behavior, set a better example, than she had as an out-of-control rebel firebrand. Give me strength, she prayed to nobody in particular. Let me stay in control.

  “I don’t have time for these games,” she said firmly. “Either talk to me about your technology or go away and leave me alone. It’s your choice.”

  A wink and a smile, clearly intended by Nimdir to be ingratiating, had the opposite effect. Torres ground her teeth together while visions of bloodshed played on the viewscreen of her mind. Her blood came to a near boil, but she kept the beast within her at bay. Focus on your primary objective, she told herself. Remember the dilithium.

  “Have I mentioned yet,” Nimdir said, “how intriguing I find those ridges on your forehead? Do they have any special significance?”

  It was exactly the wrong thing to say.

  • • •

  The music, which had been fast-paced and raucous all evening, slackened just as Paris and Laazia located an empty patch of floor. A languid romantic melody wound its way through the warm and smoky air. Oh, terrific, Paris thought. A slow dance. Things couldn’t have gone more disastrously if he had planned them, which made him wonder if Laazia had done just that.

  “Listen,” she murmured, “they’re playing our song.”

  Either my Universal Translator is getting lazy, he thought, or some clichés stretch all the way to the Delta Quadrant. He struggled to hang on to a snide sarcastic attitude; that was the only way, he decided, that he was going to keep from succumbing to the seductive web that seemed to be forming around him. Good thing fate is throwing all this temptation at a cynical veteran like myself, he thought. Poor Harry wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Laazia placed her hands upon his shoulders. Following her lead, he rested his own hands lightly upon her hips. Then they glided across the floor, crossing back and forth between various other couples, most consisting of one Ryol and one visitor from Voyager. Paris was relieved to see that he wasn’t the only crew member fraternizing with the natives tonight, just the only one doing so against the explicit advice of the captain. I can handle this, he reassured himself. All I have to do is keep cool.

  Easier said than done. Laazia’s fingers danced beyond his shoulders, entwining themselves behind his neck. She pressed herself against him while the slow haunting melody seemed to go on and on. Paris couldn’t believe how hot and sultry the club’s interior had become. It was all he could do to keep his sweaty palms from sliding down Laazia’s swaying hips.

  “What are you thinking of?” she whispered huskily in his ear.

  Exactly what I shouldn’t, he thought. “Oh, gravity wells, wormholes, subspace anomalies . . . you know, all that starship stuff. I’m really a very boring person once you get to know me.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said. Her fingertips traced circles on the back of his neck, tangling themselves in his hair. Her eyes were dark singularities, drawing him in. “And I intend to know you very well indeed.”

  Her open declaration unnerved him. He missed a step of the dance, inadvertently bumping into a Ryol male dancing nearby. “Sorry about that,” Paris said to the man. “Would you believe I’m supposed to be a navigator?”

  “You!” the man said angrily, letting go of his dance partner and turning around to confront Paris. “I should have known!”

  Paris recognized the haughty indignant tone even before he spotted the thin white line running down Naxor’s face. Just my luck, he thought bitterly. Mr. Hospitality himself.

  Naxor’s eyes grew wider when he saw Laazia standing beside Paris, clutching on to the lieutenant’s arm. Behind him, a Bajoran ensign, whose name Paris could not recall, observed the scene with a puzzled expression on her face. “Laazia,” Naxor said. “What are you doing here . . . with him?” He did not bother to explain or introduce his Bajoran companion; apparently, Paris guessed, the double standard was alive and well on Ryolanov.

  “What does it look like?” Laazia replied defiantly, embracing Paris more tightly than he would have liked under the circumstances. He tried to gently disengage himself, but her arms again proved stronger than they appeared. Obviously, the Elder’s daughter was not going to be any help in calming her jealous admirer.

  “Look, I’m sorry I jostled you a moment ago,” Paris said. “Two left feet and all that. How about I buy you a drink?”

  Naxor sneered at him disdainfully. “I would sooner share wine with a neffaler, although, in truth, I see little difference between you and the lowliest of our servitors.”

  This guy is really getting on my nerves, Paris thought. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t take this sort of abuse from anybody, let alone this scar-faced snob, but he knew the captain was counting on him to avoid any unpleasant encounters with the Ryol. Let it go, he thought, wondering if the ship’s holodeck could whip up a punching bag that looked exactly like Naxor. Something to check out later.

  Laazia showed no such restraint. “You go too far, Naxor,” she told him, her sultry voice now cold and contemptuous. “Leave us at once or I will report your . . . lack of discretion . . . to my father.”

  But Naxor was too furious to heed Laazia’s warning. “One less human will make no great difference
in the end,” he declared. His pupils grew slowly larger. He raised his hands in front of his chest, the sharp points of his brown nails extended toward Paris. Is he planning to punch me or slash me, Paris wondered, and how in the world am I going to get out of this mess?

  “Lieutenant?” the Bajoran ensign asked nervously, apparently unsure where her duty lay.

  “Stay out of this,” Paris ordered. He saw no need for anyone else to get into trouble. “I don’t want to do this,” he told Naxor, clenching his fists just in case the Ryol proved impossible to reason with. Captain’s orders or not, Paris didn’t plan on turning the other cheek.

  “Neffaler!” Naxor said and spit upon the floor. Paris guessed the term was not meant as a compliment. Naxor’s saliva, pooled atop the black stone tiles, had a faintly orangish tint.

  “Naxor, I forbid this!” Laazia said. Letting go of Paris, she stepped between the two men, but Naxor refused to give up. He dodged past Laazia, then marched toward Paris, his green eyes assuming a predatory gleam. Sorry, Captain, Paris thought, I did my best. He waited for Naxor to throw the first blow.

  A sudden crash caught both men by surprise. Paris spun around to see B’Elanna Torres lifting a curly-haired Ryol off the floor. Blood, dark and watery, gushed from the man’s crumpled nose. “Son of a targ!” Torres roared and hurled the man physically into the air. He came flying at the dance floor, a cry of alarm escaping his wide-open mouth. Paris ducked at the last minute and the B’Elanna-propelled Ryol slammed into Naxor, bowling the man over. They crashed to the floor, landing in a tangle of limbs that threatened the vertical stability of every couple dancing nearby. Naxor’s angry curses mixed with the other man’s groans, spoiling the romantic mood music.

  Saved by the Klingon, Paris thought. The captain wouldn’t be happy about this turn of events, but at least he wasn’t to blame. Paris looked at Laazia. For the first time since he’d met her, the Elder’s daughter appeared stunned and at a loss for words. Paris caught her gaze, shrugged his shoulders, and ran for the door. He grabbed Torres by the arm on his way. The sooner they both got out of there, the better.