A true son of the diplomatic corps. McCoy sighed too softly for anyone to notice. It had gotten to the point where he could smell the type a light-year away. They came in a dozen different shapes and sizes, but the defining attributes were, always the same: first, an irritating devotion to literal translations of Federation policy; and second, an inability to recognize the importance of any mission besides their own.
In rare cases, those less than endearing qualities were concealed beneath a veneer of fellowship and backslapping good cheer—a facade that was disingenuous but occasionally amusing. Even more rarely, they were fueled by an almost naive earnestness—something one could understand and even respect, if not quite embrace.
Unfortunately for Farquhar, he seemed to have neither of these attributes going for him. He was the standard model if McCoy had ever seen one.
Spock inclined his head. "Ambassador Farquhar," he repeated, in flat, even tones. His manner was reserved but not unfriendly.
The ambassador's reply was a simple one. "Commander Spock," Farquhar said, in a surprisingly deep and melodious voice that belied his appearance. Was it possible he'd misjudged their guest? McCoy wasn't so hardheaded he couldn't give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Bones held out his hand. "Nice to meet you." He searched for something innocuous to say. "Did you have a good flight out?"
"You could call it that, yes," Farquhar responded. The watery eyes narrowed, making their darting look even more furious. "Why? Has there been a problem with that route?"
Oh Lord, the doctor commented silently. "No, no problem," he assured the ambassador. "Just making conversation."
Farquhar looked at him. "I see." His mouth did that turning-down thing again. Abruptly, he turned to the captain. "I suppose we should get started now."
Kirk nodded. "Absolutely." Gesturing for the ambassador to take an empty chair, he pulled out another one for himself. "I'm sure we all want to hear about Alpha Maluria and what's going on there."
As the captain sat and pushed his seat in, McCoy could have sworn there was a "but" hanging in the air. It turned out he was right.
"But before we go any further," Kirk said, casting a couple of warning glances at his officers, "I should tell you there's been a change of plans."
Farquhar's brow wrinkled. "A change of plans?" he echoed, putting a more ominous spin on the phrase.
"That's right," the captain confirmed. "We received new orders only a few minutes ago—just before you arrived, Ambassador. I hope this doesn't cause you any inconvenience."
The ambassador leaned forward, temples working, cheeks ruddy. "I'm afraid I don't understand." His voice had a distinctly confrontational edge to it.
"We're still going to Alpha Maluria," Kirk stated emphatically. "But we're going to make a stop on the way." Reaching for the monitor in the middle of the table, he pressed a button. The screen displayed a star map.
"Beta Canzandia," the Vulcan announced, recognizing the configuration. "On the fringe of Federation space. Home to a research colony headed by Dr. Yves Boudreau, the Federation's leading expert on terraforming."
"Boudreau," McCoy repeated, picking up the ball and running with it. The longer they could keep away from the subject of Alpha Maluria, the more time Farquhar would have to cool off. "Isn't he the one who developed that G-Seven unit—the one that accelerates plant cell growth?"
"The same," Kirk affirmed. "What's more, Bones, you'll get a chance to meet him. You'll be conducting routine medical checkups for the entire colony." He turned to the Vulcan. "Spock, you'll be busy as well, assimilating data for a report on the terraformers' scientific progress. They're vastly overdue for a checkup in that respect as well."
Spock nodded. "I am quite interested to see how Dr. Boudreau's research is coming along."
The captain turned to Farquhar, whose gaze he'd been studiously avoiding. "All in all," he said, smiling hopefully, "it needn't be a long stopover. We can still be at Alpha Maluria inside of two weeks."
The ambassador's reply was anything but cooled off.
"This is an outrage," he fumed. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. Doesn't anyone at Starfleet have even a modicum of intelligence? Don't they see that a political cauldron like the one on Alpha Maluria Six must take precedence over everything else—much less a routine visit to yet another research colony?"
So much for the benefit of the doubt, Bones told himself. This joker's the ambassador to end all ambassadors.
"Medical checkups may be performed at any time," Farquhar went on. "But the Malurians need us now. Surely you can all see that."
The captain regarded Farquhar with equanimity. "Ambassador," he said, "I am merely following orders. Just as you are."
Farquhar eyed him. "There is a difference. I may not diverge from my orders. As the captain of this ship, you have the discretionary power to rearrange your itinerary if you feel it is necessary."
Kirk's shoulders straightened. McCoy knew what that meant: the captain would remain polite if it killed him, but he would not make a change he didn't believe in. And that was that.
Unfortunately for the ambassador, not to mention the rest of them, he had no such knowledge of Kirk's body language. He pressed his case.
"Starfleet knows nothing of Alpha Maluria Six," Farquhar persisted. "They have no idea what the Malurians are like, or of the lengths to which they will go in their devotion to their religious ideals. To them, it is just another world, another civil dispute." He snorted. "Idiots, that's what they are. Old men, who can no longer tell the difference between a beer barrel and a powder keg."
The captain was chewing the inside of his cheek. McCoy noticed and knew Farquhar was on the verge of being reined in.
"It's up to you, Captain." He pointed to Kirk. "You must turn your ship around and discharge your responsibility to the Malurians. Anything else would be—"
Kirk held up his hand. "I have to interrupt, Ambassador." Leaning forward, he met Farquhar's indignant stare head-on. "You've made your position clear. Now let me do the same." His voice took on a new note of authority. "You may think routine colony visits are a waste of time; they're not. I can't tell you how many lives have been saved because a ship's surgeon found some alien disease spreading through a Federation population."
The ambassador dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "That's—"
"Irrelevant?" the captain suggested. "Not to me. Lives are lives, and every one is important. I know that's hard to remember when you're focused on one planet, one set of circumstances, but that's the code I've got to live by." He frowned. "Now, you may say the Malurians are on the verge of civil war—and you may even be right. But I've got to go by the information available to me, including not only your opinions but the documentation the Federation has provided. And I must tell you, I see no reason to diverge from my orders. I'm not discounting the Malurian problem by any means, but those colonists have gone too long already without medical attention."
Farquhar fumed. "I see. And that's your final word?"
Kirk nodded. "My final word," he said without emotion.
McCoy admired the captain's restraint. In Kirk's place, he would have given the ambassador some friendly advice about interpersonal relations. But then, he wasn't the captain, was he?
A moment later, the ambassador got up and walked out. As the doors shooshed closed behind him, the captain looked at his officers.
"Well," he said, "that could have gone better."
McCoy grunted. "You sure you wouldn't have preferred the Klingon emperor?"
Kirk didn't answer. He just sighed.
David shaded his eyes from the frosty glare of Beta Canzandia and considered at the fissure at his feet. It was so deep that the bottom was lost in shadow. He kicked a medium-sized stone over the brink; it didn't hit bottom for a full three seconds.
Deep, all right. He felt its breath—a cold and clammy updraft, even chillier than the wintry air all around him. Protected as he was by his parka, it still made him shiv
er.
Of course, it wasn't all that unusual to find crevices in these cold, reddish brown highlands. His mother had told him the way they'd been formed; it had something to do with the ice that covered this part of the planet a long time ago.
But this was no small crack. The fissure was as wide as David was tall. No, he decided, even wider than that. It had to be a good six feet from one side to the other.
"What's the matter?" Riordan asked him, grinning crookedly beneath his broad nose and wide-set, pale green eyes. His breath froze on the air, seeming to prolong his words. "Don't think you can handle it?"
That stung. Timmy Riordan was the oldest of them. He'd had more practice in finding a person's' soft spots.
David studied the other four children who surrounded them. They looked back with varying levels of concern and anticipation: Pfeffer, with his tight curls of red hair and his red, freckled cheeks; Wan, with her shiny, black ponytail and her delicate features; Medford, with her chocolate brown eyes and complexion to match; and Garcia, whose dark, narrow face looked painfully sharp between his wind-bitten, jug-handle ears.
"Well?" Riordan prodded. "Are you going to take the dare? Or is it too dangerous for you?"
It was too dangerous. David knew that. If his mother had any idea what he was up to, she'd have restricted him to their dome for the rest of his life.
"Nope. Not too dangerous for me," he told the older boy, though the cold made his words seem hollow.
Riordan grunted. "Good."
"I think we ought to go home," Medford announced. "This is stupid. Someone's going to get hurt."
Riordan dismissed her with a roll of his eyes. "You're a girl. What do you know?"
Medford seemed to recoil, as if she'd been dealt a physical blow. "I know we're not supposed to be here," she insisted, though she seemed less sure of herself than before the disparaging remark.
"The only way anybody's going to know is if one of us says something," Riordan pressed. "And nobody's going to do that. So what's the big deal?"
Pfeffer and Garcia grunted their assent. They couldn't look like yellowbellies. Not in front of the girls. And definitely not in front of Riordan.
That settled, the older boy turned back to David. "So?
He took another look at the fissure. Maybe Medford was right. Maybe this was stupid.
"I've changed my mind," he said. "I'm not doing it."
Riordan's expression changed from one of challenge to one of derision. "Not doing it? What are you, chicken?"
David could feel his cheeks turning, as red as Pfeffer's. He shrugged, bunching the shoulders of his parka up around his ears.
The older boy smiled. "It's all right. I guess it's hard when you don't have a father."
David stiffened at the jibe. He could feel everyone looking at him, reminded of the fact that out of all the colonists' children, he was the only one who didn't have a male parent.
Riordan stood there with his arms folded across his chest, daring David to make the jump. It seemed to the younger boy he no longer had a choice in the matter.
He had to prove he was a man. He had to prove he had become one without a father.
Even if he was only ten.
"All right," David said, screwing up his resolve. "I guess I'll do it after all."
There was no possibility of Riordan going first. That just wasn't the way it worked around here, and it never had been. Riordan had ruled the roost since they'd all arrived on this world nearly two years ago.
Taking a last look into the fissure, David backed away from it a good twenty paces. He knew he'd need a running start; if he was at anything less than top speed, he'd fall short of the far brink. And more than likely, get himself killed.
For a fleeting moment, he had a vision of the eerie, cold darkness flying up at him, and the sound of crunching bones, and the sickening knowledge that the bones being crunched were his. Then the vision passed.
Riordan was silent. He must have sensed there was no longer any need to prod. Taking a deep breath, watching it dissipate on the wind, David crouched. His youthful muscles coiled like springs.
He was suddenly aware of the sounds that haunted these hills—the sighings and hootings of the wind as it explored every tiny niche and hollow. He could hear his heartbeat as well, big and loud in his chest.
Lowering his head, he began to sprint, to gather as much momentum as he could. After a second or two, he raised his head and saw the fissure looming before him, bounding closer and closer like the open jaws of some beast too big to comprehend.
As he passed the other children, he heard someone gasp. Medford, he thought. He didn't let it distract him, though.
Putting a little extra into his last two strides, he leapt high and far. Incredibly, there was an opportunity to think an entire thought between the time he became airborne and the time he saw the other side rushing up at him.
What he thought was this: I'd better not die or Mom will kill me.
And then his heels hit the ground and he was past the fissure, skidding and rolling and finally coming to a breathless halt on all fours. He stayed that way for a moment, gathering himself, trying to make his heart stop beating so fast. Then he got up and looked back at his companions.
Riordan was laughing. The others didn't know what to make of it, though Pfeffer looked like he wanted to laugh too. As David brushed himself off with his gloved hands, he barked, "What's so funny?"
The older boy pointed at him. "You are. I can't believe you did it. What a skeezit."
David flinched at the word. Riordan had told them it was a Klingon curse, and it meant the lowest, most disgusting thing in the whole galaxy.
"You dared me," the younger boy protested.
Riordan spread his arms wide, palms out, in a gesture of disbelief. "So? You do everything everybody tells you to?"
Riordan laughed again. And finally understanding, Pfeffer joined him. Garcia ventured a chuckle as well.
But David wasn't buying it. The older boy had changed the rules in the middle of the game, and that wasn't fair.
"No way," he called across the fissure. "You dared me and did it. Now you do it. Or are you too scared?"
Riordan reddened. His smile became stiff, and for a second or two, he seemed ready to accept the challenge. Then he shrugged it off—and somehow got away with it.
"First," the older boy decided, "you jump back the other way."
David shook his head. "Why? So you can make fun of me?"
The truth was, he was still trembling a little from his first jump. He had a bad feeling about trying it a second time.
Riordan grunted, as if he'd exposed David's brave leap as a fluke. Pfeffer grunted too, like an echo.
"Suit yourself," Riordan replied. Then, turning to the others, "Let's get back." He flung a backhand gesture at David. "Chicken here can take the long way around."
"Yeah," Pfeffer added. "The long way around."
David wanted to punch his face in. If the crack in the ground hadn't separated them, he might have. Then again, if the fissure weren't there, Pfeffer probably wouldn't have had the courage to say it.
As Riordan started back in the direction of the colony, the other four children fell into line behind him, though Wan hesitated a moment before she departed.
Overcome with anger, David's lower lip started to tremble. He almost threatened to tell their parents about what had happened here—almost. But he stopped himself in time. It wouldn't help him any to become a snitch; it would just make things worse.
Besides, he was the only one who'd jumped the fissure. The others would look innocent by comparison.
Suddenly, maybe half a dozen meters from the crevice, Medford did an about-face and started back. Riordan stopped for a moment to stare wonderingly at her; like puppets, the others stopped too.
"Forget something?" he asked, just a hint of a taunt in his voice.
She didn't look at him. Maybe she couldn't; maybe she'd reached the limits of her defiance alrea
dy.
"Nope," she said, a determined expression on her face. "I'm just going to wait for Marcus."
"He might be awhile," Riordan warned her, his tone decidedly more mocking now. More threatening, though David wasn't sure exactly what the threat was.
"That's okay," she said, wrapping her arms about herself as if she were cold, despite her parka. "I'm not in a hurry."
The older boy seemed about to say something more. He must have thought better of it, though, because he simply turned his back on David and Medford and left—with the others in tow, of course.
After a minute or so, when Riordan and his companions had dropped out of sight down an incline, Medford looked at David. To his surprise, she smirked. To his greater surprise, he smirked back.
"You know," she said, "he wasn't wrong. Riordan, I mean. You should never have jumped this crack, no matter who dared you."
David nodded freely. "I know. It was stupid." But somehow, he didn't feel so bad about it anymore. "You don't really have to wait for me, Medford."
"I know," she answered. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "But I sure as heck don't want to go back with them."
He laughed, then scanned east along the fissure—easier than scanning west, which would mean looking right into the yellow-white sun. The crack ran as far as the eye could see, though it seemed to get narrower as it went. In another hundred meters or so, it wouldn't take much of a jump to get across it.
David pointed and told Medford of his intention. "It shouldn't be any problem," he assured her.
She shook her head. "Nothing doing. We'll walk—you on that side and me on this side—and we'll keep walking till we find the end of this thing."
He started to protest but stifled it. "Whatever you say," he agreed. After all, he owed her something. Putting the sun at their backs, they began walking.
Chapter Two
KARRADH'S ESTATE was situated in the fog-shrouded foothills outside the imperial city. It was a typical Kamorh'dag residence, a combination of cunning angles and long, elegant curves, constructed of dark, polished woods that reflected the dying light. It managed in its pride and stolidity to look even more ancient than the hills surrounding it.
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