Riker hadn’t known what to say to that. Data had left after a few hours with both parties, his befuddlement threatening to damage his neural net. At least the android hadn’t been forced to suffer the experience of dining with the Baladonians. Tasting their food, Riker understood their tendency to miss their mouths while eating.
Today was his third go-around with the Ekorr—and here, in Zorrayn’s bunker, he was wishing he could phase through matter and disappear. He was leaning back in a metal chair that was too small for him, exhausted and trying to focus. Standing wasn’t a good idea, since all the buildings the Ekorr had constructed for themselves had ceilings low enough to brain the average human. Riker had found that out the hard way more than once.
Troi sat at the far end of the table. Her eyes were open but she was plainly asleep. He envied her.
“Okay, let’s see if we can reset things . . . again,” he said to Zorrayn. “Captain Picard believes that we should start by looking at what the current zones of control on the island are.” He held up his padd. “This schematic is what our sensors show, with our life-signs superimposed upon it. Do these positions look right to you?”
The fat-footed Ekorr leader glanced up from his pedicure. He looked first at the padd in Riker’s hand, then up his arm to his head. “You know, Federation-man, I don’t like your hair!”
“Excuse me?”
“Your hair. It offends. And that beard! Won’t do at all. Did you grow it just to offend me? Makes this impossible process impossible. The Baladonians have hair where it doesn’t belong too. We’re surely sure of it—it must be what’s fouling the filtration systems. I can’t speak peace with such a hairy person!”
“You haven’t spoken peace at all yet,” Riker said. He sighed. “And your title is Peacebroker?”
“That’s Peacebreaker. You Federation-type people never get anything right. We were born to inherit this world, this one world in all the universe created just for us—”
“Not counting your homeworld.” I’m beginning to suspect they threw you out, Riker did not say.
“Your hairy-person nonsense aside, this is our world, and the very concept of peace with interlopers is a sacrilege. A betrayal of the timeless truths inscribed on the sacred altar!”
“I read that inscription. It’s the manufacturer’s address on Vulcan, Zorrayn. It’s an anvil.”
“To you, yes! To us—”
Riker shook his head. “Never mind. I give up.” He stood, this time avoiding knocking himself silly on the ceiling. He looked at Troi, whose eyes had flickered shut. “Come on, Counselor.”
She stirred. “Huh?”
“Let’s get some air,” he said, ducking beneath the door frame and stepping out into the twilight. The local atmosphere was still putrid, and yet it felt like a marvelous relief to be outside.
Wearily, Troi joined him. She shook her head. “There’s always the captain, Will. Nobody is better at navigating rough diplomatic waters—and that’s coming from a Betazoid. He’s the best there is. He’s probably already got it figured out. You’ll see.”
“I hope so.” Riker looked across the clearing to where Picard had just passed through the Ekorr checkpoint. “Maybe he’s got some good news.”
They strolled up to him. Picard was staring back at the Baladonian lines, seemingly unaware of his officers’ arrival. At last, he turned to them, his eyes tired. He rubbed his forehead with his palm. “You know,” he said, “I think I’ll just quit.”
Riker and Troi looked at each other.
“They are impossible,” Picard said. “This is an intractable conflict, between impossible peoples!” He looked back and forth between the two sides’ front lines. “They will not talk. They will not talk about talking. They will barely even grant, on one side, that the other party exists.” Wearily, he looked back at his officers. “It’s enough to make you doubt that peace is the way.”
Riker nodded. “There’s more give in a Klingon blood feud.”
The exhausted men stepped away from Troi to look from the edge of the battlements. There, through the cover, they could see Ekorr and Baladonians again blasting at each other—while all around, parts of the city that could still burn were newly alight. “You know, I thought I could solve this,” the captain said. “It was hubris. Ninety years of fighting, and yet I thought that I—”
“I don’t think Spock could have solved this,” Riker said.
“Don’t you know? Spock was the first. He advised that the Federation keep sending someone back.” He looked up at the tower. “He thought the fact that the environmental systems needed regular repair would give us ample opportunities.” He shook his head. “Heaven help the people on this planet—and whoever’s next to try to help them.”
Riker shook his head and exhaled. “I know this kind of work is part of the job, Captain—” He didn’t need to say the rest: Heaven help me if taking care of these situations is ever my main duty. I’ll resign my commission and fly freighters!
“It’s all right, Number One. Enjoy your years of exploration. Soon enough, you’ll see that problems like these are the perks of promotion.” Picard sighed and straightened himself. “Ah, well. Speaking of Klingons . . .” He slapped his combadge. “Mister Worf, I think we’re about done here.”
“Understood, Captain,” replied a gruff remote voice from Enterprise. “Mission accomplished?”
“Most emphatically not.”
“With emphasis,” Riker added.
“Has Mister La Forge completed his work on the final water-treatment facility?” Picard asked.
Worf replied in the affirmative. “But he’s still finishing up inventory planetside. A few items are missing—”
“Tell him to forget them. These people aren’t covered by the Prime Directive—by any directive, really.”
“Could I be of assistance to your mission?” Worf asked. “Perhaps if I joined the away team—”
“No!” Riker and Picard said at the same time. “Picard out.” The captain clicked his combadge twice.
Picard and Riker looked at each other, exhausted. Then Picard chuckled, in spite of himself. “Can you imagine Mister Worf down here?”
Riker smiled. “It would be like dropping a bomb on the city.”
Picard giggled. “He’d be hitting the Baladonians—”
“—with the Ekorr!”
Now both men were laughing aloud. Troi approached, looking at the two of them as if they’d lost their senses. “Never mind,” she said.
Picard blinked away tears and hit his combadge again. “Enterprise, beam us the hell up.”
Four
* * *
2385
The Titan bridge was abuzz with activity. “I want all the teams ready,” Admiral Riker said. “No mistakes, no delays. Every second is critical.”
“Aye-aye, Admiral.”
“Critical, do you understand?”
“Aye, Admiral. We’re on it.” Commander Vale watched as he stalked back into her ready room.
Ensign Dakal relaxed from attention. “Can we breathe now?”
“I’m not planning on it.” Vale shook her head at the Cardassian ops officer. “Check again with me in a few days.”
Vale had participated in many battle preparations before. Against the Romulan pretender Shinzon, against the Borg, against the Typhon Pact powers—she knew what it was like in the hours and days before a great conflict. There was never enough time to do everything that was necessary. The more worried a crew was, the harder they prepared—so as to leave no spare moment available for trepidation.
This, however, was different. There was, to her mind, nothing to worry about on Garadius IV. Yes, Riker had endured an exasperating stay years earlier as part of the Enterprise expedition. As Troi had recounted the story back in the ready room, Vale could see the admiral grimacing. Before her tale wa
s over, Riker had called down to Doctor Ree to get something for a headache. The counselor herself, normally centered, seemed similarly impacted, her voice getting a little wobbly before the end. The Baladonians and Ekorr sounded like prizes, all right.
Just not dangerous, so long as you stayed out of their crossfire.
And yet after the tale was told, Riker had wasted no time in starting the crew on crash preparations for his return visit. Starfleet had indeed sent Dax, with her experience dealing with the Breen, to continue the watch at Zellman’s Find. Leaving Aventine behind to block the Breen landers, Titan had made best speed to Garadius IV. Every second of that time they had spent figuring out how to fulfill the letter of the Federation’s directive without becoming mired in another round of insanity.
The admiral took the lead. At great pains to his psyche—as Troi had put it—Riker had reviewed the logs of all the past peace missions, from Enterprise-D all the way back to Ambassador Spock. He’d looked paler than Ensign Dakal when he was through. But he seemed to think it necessary.
The past failures weren’t anyone’s fault but the warring parties’, he’d concluded—but in the case of his own expedition, he now saw a dozen things that could have gone better. “Because we had to divert help to the Romulans—and then lost La Forge and Ro temporarily in that phasing accident—we didn’t have time to prepare as we should have.” Riker had put every idea he’d had in the years since into action.
He reemerged from the ready room, two different padds in hand. “Are we triply sure on those Vulcan water- and air-treatment facilities?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Tuvok said. “Mister Ra-Havreii’s engineering squads are divided up and ready. All five squads have full data, not just on the original systems but on every modification that’s been made since.”
“I want a backup team standing by for each of those squads,” Riker said.
“Each?” Vale cleared her throat. “Admiral, I could see a single backup team if something should prevent one squad from—”
“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Riker said. “They’ve had years more to fight. Our old beam-in areas could be under piles of debris at this point. If any away team has trouble reaching its repair objective, I want another ready to go.”
Ensign Dakal blinked. “This—this is just a repair mission, right? We’re not sending teams to storm a fortress.”
Riker turned his eyes on the Cardassian. “No, Mister Dakal, this is a peace mission. But the peace mission only has to last as long as the repair mission does. We complete that quickly, then we’re out.”
Dakal stammered. “That—that makes it sound as if you expect the peace mission to fail.”
Riker looked back at Vale. “You tell him the story, will you? I don’t have time.” The admiral and Troi had only shared the goriest details of the Enterprise expedition with her and Tuvok. He turned to the tactical console. “Mister Tuvok, let’s go over our approaches again to the two parties.”
The Vulcan nodded, shooting a covert look of concern to Vale as he followed the admiral. The door slid shut.
Behind the tactical station, the elevator doors opened. Troi stepped out, looking upset. “Commander—”
Vale folded her arms. “Really, Deanna, this is getting a little crazy.”
Troi shook her head and walked around to Vale’s side. She’d sensed her husband’s angst, all right. “You have to understand,” she said in a quiet tone, “Will’s a bit of a . . . well, let’s just say he likes being in control. Our trip to Garadius was like stepping through the looking glass to a world where nothing made sense, and where you couldn’t talk sense to anyone.” She paused, searching for words. “It was like . . . reasoning with cats. Cats carrying phasers.” She bit her lip, clearly thinking that wasn’t the right simile.
“You’re both parents of a small child now. After dealing with Natasha, it ought to be more up your alley,” Vale said, smirking.
“Just give the admiral time. He’ll get his bearings.”
Vale looked over her shoulder. “Maybe it’s already happened.”
Riker stepped out of the ready room and stood in the doorway. He seemed calmer. “I’m sorry if this situation has alarmed anyone,” he announced, starting to pace. “It shouldn’t. The fact is, I fully expected that no Federation mission would have to return to Garadius for at least another dozen years. Repairs made by Commanders La Forge and Data should have lasted at least that long—but someone set off the signal calling for our help.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “That alone would be enough to warrant a mission by someone. We got the call because the Federation is concerned that with the Typhon Pact vying for satellite worlds, Garadius IV might be in play. Now, I can’t imagine anyone wanting this mess in their backyard, no matter what minerals are down in that ocean—but it’s not my call.”
He walked to the front of the bridge and turned. “But I can see to it that the away teams inspect the situation and do their work quickly—so that we can get back to the real conflict, without getting bogged down in the local nonsense. Understood?”
“Entering the Garadius system,” reported Ensign Lavena from flight.
Riker looked strangely at peace. “Okay. This time we do it right. Ensign Modan, you’re with me. Are you prepared?”
The golden-skinned cryptolinguist stood at attention, the spiny tendrils from the back of her head bristling. “I’ve studied Ekorr and Baladonian written languages as requested, Admiral, in case there’s another treaty problem.”
“They also speak nonsense down there . . . never mind. Tuvok, you’re with me as well. Logic seems to be the thing in shortest supply in this conflict—let’s see what you can do.” He looked about. “Okay, that’s it. Deanna—”
“—is going too,” his wife said. “No need to shield me from this. If you can take it, I can.”
The admiral shook his head and smiled. “I hope you won’t regret that.”
“Maybe it won’t be so bad this time. Things change. Shall we?”
* * *
Funny the little things you remember, Riker thought. This time he had remembered to take a deep breath before being transported—which he released when he materialized on Garadius IV. He followed it up with small sample breaths this time, so as not to shock his system with the stench. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as he remembered. La Forge’s work on the air scrubber had held up fairly well over the years.
Tuvok put a finer point on it, as he was wont to do. “I am reading levels of noxious gases thirty-five percent above recommended limits, Admiral.” He held his tricorder aloft. “It is better than when Enterprise-D was here, but there will still be work for Mister Ra-Havreii’s teams.”
Riker nodded and looked around. If the air had marginally improved, Sanctum Isle’s appearance hadn’t. Rubble piles had replaced buildings that had stood near the transport zone years earlier—and craters now existed where ruins used to be.
“Movement up ahead,” Tuvok said, pointing to figures up a street. “Perhaps our greeting party?”
“I don’t think so.” Riker peered through the haze—which, this time, seemed a purely natural phenomenon. No fires were burning anywhere. It didn’t take long for him to recognize the figures were Baladonian.
“They see us,” Troi said, standing alongside Ensign Modan. “But they’re in no hurry to say hello.”
“I infer that the Ekorr lost control of this site,” Tuvok said, eyes wide and wary.
“Everything changes hands all the time,” Riker said. And yet, seeing other Baladonians wandering through side alleys, he began to doubt that this was just a normal day on Garadius IV.
“Something’s wrong,” Troi said. “Something’s missing.”
Riker punched his combadge, which beeped. “Vale. Give me a life-sign sweep of this island. Push the sensors to the max.” They hadn’t done a focused
check on entering orbit, other than to see that the number of residents had predictably fallen again due to the warfare. “I want species counts.”
Tuvok squinted into the air. “It may be difficult given all the complex carbon compounds in this atmosphere, Admiral.”
But Vale didn’t miss a beat. “We find twenty-seven thousand metabolic patterns corresponding to expected parameters for Lurians. Plus or minus three hundred.”
Riker nodded. “Those are the Baladonians. And how many Ekorr?”
“A moment, sir.”
Vale went silent. And in that moment, Riker looked around some more. It wasn’t just that there were Baladonians in the area once controlled by the Ekorr. They seemed absolutely unconcerned—and except for a couple, all were unarmed.
“What . . . is it, Chris?” Riker asked, knowing what the answer was and feeling it already gnawing at his gut. “Tell me.”
“I just rechecked, Admiral. Number of Ekorr: zero.”
Five
* * *
Look out, Modan!”
Y’lira Modan ducked out of the way. The metal beam the Baladonian workers were carrying on their shoulders barely missed her head. Riker pulled her out of the foot traffic.
“Sorry, Admiral,” she said, a slight orange blush coming to her cheeks.
“Just want to keep you alive until we find something for you to read.”
The Ekorr sector had become something that Garadius IV hadn’t seen in ages: a construction project. Battle-damaged hovels designed for creatures the Ekorr’s height were being dismantled and rebuilt. For their new owners, Riker imagined.
“To the victors, the spoils,” he said—loudly, so the passing Baladonian workers could hear.
They didn’t respond. No Baladonian had, to any of his or Modan’s questions about the Ekorr. Instead, the first Baladonians they’d met had merely directed the Starfleet envoys to a location in the west—to what had once been the capital building for the Ekorr. The Enterprise away team had visited it years earlier.
Star Trek: Titan: Absent Enemies Page 3