“What did you do?”
“I reset mine to the lowest nonstun setting.” A stun would knock someone unconscious. Kirk wanted whoever was inside to be talking.
With another code pressed into the key console, the hatch hissed open and Kirk took a tentative step in. “Keep yours on wide-stun and hope we’re attacked by the broad side of a barn.”
McCoy followed him. “That’s not very damned funny.”
The lights were on, and the main cabin looked clear. Kirk searched forward, looking in the head, then the galley, then finally the small bridge, which was where the two men were sitting, in the pilot’s and copilot’s seat.
“Gentlemen, you’re on my ship.”
Kirk didn’t actually set foot on the bridge. He wasn’t sure there wasn’t a third hiding behind the lip of the doorway.
“You’re Temple?” the man in the pilot’s seat said. He wasn’t Payav, but some non-descript thickish, human-looking offworlder. For a moment Kirk was fooled—the man was bald and had some tattoo on his neck, but the eyebrows, eyelashes, and lack of a neck said he was not a native.
“That’s him,” the other of the two said. He was, in fact, a Payav, also pretty strong, but didn’t have a great deal of tattooing. Kirk was able to see just how pale their skin was without the inked decorations, and it was ghostly. “He killed Dedir.”
Dead? Kirk couldn’t imagine Dedir killing himself, but he likely tried to run, and perhaps when the man named Alur found out, he killed Dedir. Or had it done.
“You’re mistaken,” Kirk said, and took a step back, which led McCoy to take a few steps back as well. Kirk wanted them out of the bridge and into the main cabin.
“You were seen on the surveillance record,” the Payav said. “You assaulted Dedir.”
Kirk didn’t try to debate the assault. “I didn’t kill him.”
The oily human-looking one smirked. “You misunderstand,” he said. “We saw what he told you. You pressured him into giving you our employer’s name, and the result is that he was killed for his betrayal. That makes you responsible.”
“Legally?” Kirk asked, allowing a bit of his anger to tinge his voice. “Maybe we should call the local constabulary and see if they agree.”
Moving forward into the main cabin, the human pulled out a weapon—some type of disruptor Kirk was unfamiliar with but had a distinctly Klingon style—and aimed it at Kirk. In his periphery Kirk could see McCoy silently brace himself.
The Payav followed his human companion, and now all four of them were in the largest part of Kirk’s small ship. The Payav had his own disruptor, and it looked to be specially made with a modified grip that accommodated his additional digit.
“The constabulary can’t help you,” the human said. “Unless you want to end up like Dedir, we suggest you leave this planet, and do not return.”
Kirk nodded, more to himself than anyone else, as if weighing the offer. “You killed Dedir because he caused you trouble. Why not kill us?”
“Jim!” McCoy shifted his balance anxiously. “Let’s try not to give them unnecessary suggestions.”
“That is,” the human said, “a very valid option… Jim.”
“But you’d rather we just left.” Kirk smiled politely.
“I would,” the man admitted. “Two dead humans are harder to explain than just another dead Payav.”
At this the Payav reacted, ever so slightly. Kirk saw his jawline twitch and his eyes narrow as he quickly glanced at his human comrade.
“That doesn’t mean,” the man continued, “that we can’t choose that option should it become necessary.”
“I don’t suppose we could talk this over with your employer,” Kirk offered.
The Payav spoke this time. “That is not an option at all.”
Holding up his disruptor in a threatening manner, but not pointing it directly at Kirk, the human made the mistake Kirk was waiting for.
“Message received,” Kirk said, and then without moving his hand from his side, he slipped his phaser into position and fired once—point blank—at the man’s hand. In a flash an orange beam connected Kirk’s weapon with the human’s wrist. Skin sizzled and he dropped his disruptor with a yelp. When he saw the burning flesh wound that cut down to bone he screamed and covered it with his other hand and collapsed to his knees in shock.
“What the hell? What did you do? What did you do!” he hollered.
Pivoting quickly, Kirk now fully aimed his weapon at the Payav man who instantly tossed his disruptor to the deck.
“Best option yet,” Kirk said, keeping his phaser trained on him as McCoy slipped around Kirk and pressed a hypo to the other man’s arm.
With the hiss of a hypodermic, McCoy stopped the injured man from grunting in agony. He collapsed, sedated, but for all the Payav knew McCoy could have killed him where he lay.
“Now,” Kirk said. “I want Alur’s full name, and I want to know where I can find him.”
The Payav twitched again, his expression one of emotional agony. They were an expressive people and this one in particular broadcast his fear easily. “I will be killed.”
“I can try to protect you,” Kirk told him. “But you have to answer my questions.”
“I will not,” the Payav insisted. “I will not. I will not.”
Thumbing the control on his phaser back to stun, Kirk fired and the Payav collapsed back against the doorjamb to the bridge.
McCoy moved over to him for a moment, checked to make sure his head hadn’t hit the bulkhead too hard, then collected the disruptor on which he’d collapsed.
He handed it to Kirk, who’d scooped up the other man’s weapon as well. Kirk examined it, but found no markings, no serial numbers, no indication as to its origin. It certainly wasn’t Payav technology.
“This is a Klingon design,” Kirk said to McCoy, holding the weapon up. “I’d stake my braid on it, Bones.”
“What do we do with them?”
“I’ll contact Raya, have the Pesh-Manut arrest and question them.” Kirk tapped the barrel of one of the disruptors on his palm a few times. “Get your tricorder and we’ll send a detailed scan of these back to Starfleet. I want to know where this came from.”
The next morning Kirk and McCoy had brunch with Raya and her elor, her grandmother. The meal was a mixture of local favorites—or what had become so since the disaster. There were foods from all over the Federation, and locally grown greens from the hydroponics fields of the Norrb. Some of it was delicious, and some Kirk found gag-inducing, but the company was more important than the fare.
“I’m glad we had the chance to see your elor again,” Kirk told Raya, but looked and smiled at her grandmother. “You know, I don’t think I even know your name, other than to call you Raya’s elor.”
A wise woman, with not just years behind her but much experience, she said, “Raya could not pronounce elor as a baby, and so I have been her Elee for so long within our family and to friends as well, that Elee I have been and Elee you shall call me.”
“Elee it is,” Kirk said, and tipped his juice glass toward her with honor.
“Oh, be careful of this one, child,” Elee said to Raya, removing her spectacles and rolling them between the thumbs of her right hand. “He is a charmer.”
Finishing his plate and pushing it away, McCoy covered it with his napkin. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about what the Federation has to offer?” He asked in jest but from her expression, Elee took the question very seriously.
“I imagine you ask this,” she said slowly, returning her eyeglasses to her nose, “because of my comments upon my first meeting your captain.”
Raya leaned toward her grandmother and whispered, “He’s an admiral now, Elee.”
She waved the comment away as if it were a morning gnat. “What have you. It’s hardly the point.” Slowly, choosing her words carefully, Elee continued. “I remember it well because I got quite a lecture on diplomacy that evening when my granddaughter and I return
ed to our quarters.”
Kirk saw Elee flash a quick glare at Raya, then she looked back to McCoy, giving him her full attention.
“You know,” she continued, “I was quite harsh, and I was perhaps speaking out of turn for such an event as that gathering was, but I believe in honesty.”
“As do I,” Kirk said, and looked at Raya, searching her eyes.
She looked away.
Elee drew Kirk’s attention back when she took a deep breath as if to begin a long monologue.
“I understand what the Federation has done for us,” Elee said. “I’ve seen the kindness of your hearts. But I also have seen the coldness of your bureaucracy. There were times in the aftermath of the Pulse that we wondered whether you were our saviors, or our tormenters. When a child is dying from radiation poisoning, and a shipment of medicine is overdue, for whatever reason… When your people’s tongues swell with dehydration and clean water is on a ship that arrives too late for them, and so they’ve run to contaminated pools to quench their thirst…” She removed her glasses again and clasped her hands on her lap. “I am an old woman who should have died long before the millions of Payav I’ve seen pass from our world, including my own children. I simply ask that you forgive a woman, who has seen too much death and despair, her occasional sharp tongue. But you see, do you not, how it isn’t a large leap for a very tired people to believe that their tormenters somehow planned the entire scenario for some malevolent purpose.” She sighed and there was silence across the table. “In the darkest of times it is hard not to see the universe, even those who offer some light, as being as bleak as the moonless, overcast sky.”
Next to her, a tear was welling in Raya’s eye. Kirk reached out across the table, touched her hand, and she gave his a squeeze before pulling hers back to her lap.
“I fully understand,” McCoy said, and Kirk thought there might have been the beginning of a lump in the old doctor’s throat. “And anyone who doesn’t is a fool.”
McCoy and Elee went for a walk around the Zamestaad complex, which in the years since their first visit had grown to include many living complexes for hundreds of thousands of Payav. That left Kirk and Raya time to talk, and so they repaired to her office.
“By now,” Kirk said, “you’ve read a report from your Pesh-Manut about who we found in my ship last night.”
Raya nodded. “I’m afraid there wasn’t much to learn. No more than you told the agents last night. Both men requested counsel when questioned, and refuse to speak until such an accommodation can be made.”
“We have similar laws,” Kirk said. “I suppose you don’t have many active lawyers these days.”
Behind Raya’s desk were a number of framed pictures. Some of her and Elee, some with a young girl who looked vaguely familiar to Kirk, and one of what looked like a large family gathering under a large tree and had obviously been taken before the disaster.
“There are few lawyers, yes,” she said, “and they are overtaxed. It will be some months before we can interrogate them again.”
Kirk tried not to frown, but wasn’t sure he managed it. “That’s convenient.”
“Pardon me? I don’t understand.”
“For them—it’s convenient.”
“I’m sure having to stay in custody is no convenience,” Raya said, and it was the first flash of anger he’d really ever seen from her.
“So have the Pesh-Manut learned anything of value?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
Increasingly, Kirk was both equal parts frustrated and disappointed with Raya. Before meeting with her and Elee, Kirk and McCoy had managed to do a little more legwork. They returned to the customs office that Kirk had visited the day before, and spoke to Izra orCina again. He knew well the name Alur, and confirmed it was the same man Dedir had been working for.
Even more disturbing was the fact that in their legwork Kirk and McCoy had no sign that the Pesh-Manut was investigating anything. They’d not talked to anyone about Dedir’s death, they’d not talked to the docking crew about the men they had in custody who broke into Kirk’s ship, and they certainly didn’t want to step on the great Alur’s toes.
“I think I can help you,” Kirk said after a long moment of thought.
She looked at him across her paper-scattered desk. Maybe McCoy was right and Kirk didn’t know how to read her. Stranger things had happened. But if hunches were worth anything anymore, what he saw in her eyes was desperation.
“Can you?” she asked.
For what seemed like a minute and a half they just looked at each other, sizing each other up. When McCoy and Elee returned, Kirk stood and said his good-byes quickly and he and McCoy left the Zamestaad complex. He marched at such a quick pace that McCoy was beginning to fall behind.
“Jim, you’re moving like a bat out of hell. Do you want to tell me where the fire is?” McCoy pleaded.
“She wants me to help her, Bones,” Kirk said determinedly. “So that’s what we’re going to do.”
Chapter Eight
Alur orJada lived in a house, which was why once Kirk had his full name he wasn’t hard to find. It was also why everyone did indeed know Alur, and why Raya’s claims not to made no sense. And if it didn’t make sense… it wasn’t true.
For a Payav, Alur was rich. He had his own “estate,” which consisted of an old machine shop that, like the customs office, had survived the disaster aftermath with little damage, and its two outbuildings, which had been damaged but strongly reconstructed. He had people living in the outbuildings—people who needed places for one reason or another—and such charity bought him a certain amount of goodwill with the populace.
There was no “sneaking” into Alur’s compound, even at night. A tricorder reading confirmed a significant surveillance perimeter, and it was most decidedly not a technology native to Mestiko.
Given that Kirk’s ship didn’t have a transporter, the best way in was the direct way: through the front door.
As soon as he and McCoy approached, the door to the main house opened and four Payav swelled forward to confront them. Kirk wondered for a moment if he should have brought McCoy along for this one. It was his strong conjecture that Alur wasn’t going to just kill Kirk and McCoy outright. There was little to be gained by that, and in fact had Alur thought he could get away with it, that would have been done already. Alur wasn’t unintelligent—one didn’t build what he obviously had by making stupid mistakes.
The lead Payav came forward as the others surrounded Kirk and McCoy on all sides, weapons similar to the Klingon-design trained on them.
“I’m here to see Alur orJada,” Kirk said.
“We know why you’re here,” the first Payav said and motioned to the one closes to Kirk. “Check him for weapons.”
Before the man could get close enough, another man stepped into the doorway of the building and ordered him to stop. “He’s not here to kill me, Zizandil. Let them pass untouched.” He was a somewhat older Payav man—it was always a bit hard to tell without the receding or graying hair that more easily placed a human’s age—who was well dressed in a thick robe of what was likely expensive material.
He ushered his men to bring Kirk and McCoy into the building, which was obviously a very large room, not brightly lit, that had been sectioned into smaller areas. An old wooden desk was in one corner, with three chairs in front of it, and a padded wooden bench beyond. Wood meant rich on Mestiko, a now treeless planet that had adored them.
The room was far less ornate than Kirk would have thought, and he was beginning to wonder if a Spartan design sensibility had less to do with the Pulse aftermath and more to do with a certain Payav tradition.
With dramatic flourish, Alur adjusted his robes so he could sit easily in his desk chair, and he motioned for Kirk and McCoy to take seats in front of him. The chair sat lower than Alur’s, Kirk noticed; that little tactic was perhaps a universal standard.
“Take your men, Zizandil,” Alur told his guard. “I will speak w
ith Admiral Kirk alone.”
As the other Payav men left, McCoy grumbled under his breath. “Apparently I’m not even here.”
“My apology, Dr. McCoy,” Alur said, and finally Kirk noticed he was not speaking his own language but a perfectly unaccented Federation Standard. “I did not mean to slight you. I just assumed,” he leveled his gaze directly at Kirk, “that it was the admiral and I who had the more pressing business. I understood you to be on Mestiko more as a favor to him, and of course to visit Dr. Lon.”
“You seem to know a lot about us,” McCoy said.
That he did confirmed much about Alur. “If Nawaz Mazari thought he had his finger on the pulse of Indalo Station,” Kirk said admiringly, “he had nothing on you.”
Alur grasped the bridge of his nose near his eyes with the two thumbs of his left hand and with the other hand rubbed his temple. “Ah, Nawaz. A bit lost, really. Good for what he does, but a bad judge of character in terms of whom he chooses to employ. I’m afraid I’ve had to deal with some of his bumbling associates.”
What did that mean? Curly and some of the others were dead for not having killed Kirk and McCoy? Probably. That was where Alur would have wanted them killed—off Mestiko, and away from where suspicion might fall on him.
“Is that supposed to frighten me?” Kirk asked.
“No, no,” Alur gestured with one hand, waving off the notion. “After last night I didn’t believe you could be frightened off. And to be honest I should have realized it earlier, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I learned ‘Mr. Temple’ was Admiral Kirk.”
“And what gave that away?” McCoy asked.
Alur smiled, and for someone who didn’t want to be threatening he was showing a lot of teeth.
“Bones,” Kirk said to McCoy, but kept his eyes fixed on Alur, “I’d guess there’s very little that happens on Mestiko, especially in the Zamestaad, that Mr. orJada here doesn’t know about.”
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