by L. A. Graf
Chekov dragged himself off the camel with considerably less aplomb. “And that there really is a landline we can use to call Eau Claire.”
“Yeah, that, too.”
He managed to land on his feet, although his legs felt so loose and exhausted that he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sprawled to the ground upon landing and had to be left there until morning. He’d never thought before about the details of what it meant to be saddle-sore. Now he understood why all the men in the old American western video plays walked as if they were bowlegged. Leaning forward to rest his forehead against the camel’s smelly flank, he listened to Thee trot up the short flight of stairs and pound on the municipal building’s wooden doors. Her knocking boomed flatly throughout the plaza, dying away as quickly as it sounded. He didn’t bother to lift his head until she rejoined him at the foot of the stairs. “No one home?” he asked wearily.
“No. But not every place is closed.” She nodded toward one of the lit windows on the other side of the square. “Let’s see if we can find somebody to let us in over there.”
She scooped up the camel’s reins on her way past, leading it across the plaza slowly enough that Chekov could steady himself on the girth as he walked alongside.
Desperate Measures looked and smelled like a drinking club, but without the voices and laughter. Music flirted with the nighttime mist, prerecorded and cheerfully inappropriate, and one or two shadowy figures drifted sluggishly past inside the olivium-frosted windows. Thee tied their camel to one of the wrought-iron benches, then called the dogs tight to her side while Chekov reached to open the old-fashioned hinged door. She caught his arm before he even touched the doorknob. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”
He blinked at her, trying to recall all the items on their agenda. The only thing his brain kept circling back to was the land communications line.
Plucking his jacket sleeve into view from underneath his dust wrap, she gave it a meaningful shake. “Rumor has it these dryland farmers aren’t the most neighborly types to begin with. Considering what we both know about Belle Terre’s relationship with Starfleet right now, maybe we’d be better off leaving this outside?”
He pulled his arm back under his cloak, stung by her suggestion. “I’m not going to lie—”
“You don’t have to lie,” she insisted. “Just don’t rub their faces in it.” When he only set his jaw in stubborn resistance, she sighed and crossed her arms. “Pavel, look, do you want to make this comm call? Or do you want to mount up for No Escape just because the locals don’t see any reason to make life easier for Starfleet?”
Teeth still clenched at the unfairness of it all, Chekov managed to squirm out of his jacket without actually taking off the outer wrap. What would it take to make these people see that Starfleet was not their enemy? The heavy uniform balled up almost small enough to fit into a saddlebag, but not really, leaving a wistful glimpse of burgundy to soak up the occasional cold scatters of rain, even after he fought to tie the cover flaps back down.
It took Chekov both hands to push the drinking establishment’s warped door inward. Sand gritted under the door’s lower edge, dragged between floor and portal like so much broken glass, and light slashed out to stab at Chekov’s night-adapted eyes. The pain in his head soared up another octave. A half-dozen patrons scattered down the length of the long, narrow room looked up with bored curiosity, as though daring anyone’s arrival to be worthy of their interest.
“What the hell—?” Just inside the door, a slim, dark man with a coil of hair that brushed the back of his seat pushed angrily away from his table. “Get those filthy beasts out of here! This isn’t a guanaco pen!”
Chekov jerked a look behind him, not sure what he expected to see. A flock of guanacos trying to avoid being made into sausage? A stampede of camels seeking shelter from the wind? Instead, he nearly bumped into Thee as she stooped to snatch reflexively at the dogs’ collars.
“It’s all right.” Neither one of the dust-laden sheepdogs had made any attempt to move forward, but she gave them a sharp tug back anyway, keeping them tight to her knees. “We’re only here to—”
The stranger produced a weapon from seemingly nowhere. A smaller, stockier version of the projectile rifle Chekov had left out on their camel, with handle and barrel shortened until it could be wielded in only one hand. “Take the damned things back outside,” the colonist said with deliberate slowness, brandishing the gun more than really aiming it, “before I shoot them.”
Chekov stepped more directly in front of Thee and the dogs, capturing the man’s gaze with his own. “If you so much as point that weapon in this direction,” he said evenly, “I will break your arm when I take it away from you.”
He felt Thee’s hand knot in the back of his wrap, but didn’t turn to look when he reached back to pry her fingers loose. He didn’t care if he was overreacting, didn’t care that every face in the bar turned toward them in the heavy silence following his threat. After fourteen hours on a camel, swallowing God only knew how many kilos of olivium dust, he was in no mood for incivility from disaffected colonists.
“We just need to get in touch with Big Muddy.” Thee grabbed hold of him again from behind, much more firmly this time. “Point us in the direction of whoever can get us into the comm office and we’ll be out of here.”
“Why would I want to do anything to help out a guanaco herder?” The man looked less certain than he sounded, but his gun was still up and ready to fire.
“Because I’ve had a very long day,” Chekov told him, “and I have a very short temper.”
This time, Thee twisted the collar of his wrap hard enough to make him put a hand up and tug for breathing room. “Because we’re all on this planet together, and all any of us wants to do is survive.” She leaned around Chekov to rake her eyes across every local in the room. “I’m not asking for your first grain harvest, for God’s sake. Just tell us who’s in charge of your communications office.”
One of the men closer to the bar went back to his reading as though no longer interested in the discussion now that violence wasn’t likely. Another spoke up grudgingly. “He’s not in charge, but the guy you want to see is Zander Nyrond. He owns the Seldom Inn, the ugly place on the other side of the quad.”
Thee waited until they were back outside to smack him. The blow, clearly intended for the side of Chekov’s head, swerved at the last second and hit his shoulder, as if she’d just remembered his concussion.
“Ow!” Even that distant impact renewed the echoes of pain that sloshed inside Chekov’s skull. “What was that for?”
“Was that your idea of keeping a low profile?” Thee dropped her voice an octave and adopted a fairly unconvincing Russian accent. “ ‘Shoot the dogs and I’ll break your arm’?”
He fell into step beside her and the camel, still rubbing his shoulder to hide the sting to his pride. “That was my idea of defending you and the dogs.”
Her snort sounded decidedly underwhelmed. “I should have just let you wear the jacket.”
Despite their informant’s description, the Seldom Inn was markedly more attractive than Desperate Measures, not to mention any other building in sight. Dust-tarnished brass trimmed the door and windows in dismal khaki, whorling into intricate feet beneath the bellies of empty planters, flattening into handplates for the door’s operational controls. There might once have been clever designs painted on the stucco walls. They were faded now to little more than pastel outlines, hinting at a lost grandeur that made the hotel’s current state seem that much more pitiful. For a building not even a year old, it could have been three hundred. Belle Terre seemed to have that effect on everything.
Chekov pulled Thee to a stop just outside the door. “Let me go in alone this time.”
“So you can get into another testosterone-oozing contest without me there to stop you?”
He decided not to comment on her characterization of their last encounter. “Remember what you said about my uniform? Do I need to make the sa
me speech about the dogs?”
He didn’t. She settled to the steps with one dog draped across her lap and the other seated patiently beside her.
The Seldom Inn’s entry turned out to be a surprisingly high-quality airlock, with a strong but not unpleasant atmosphere cycle that blasted dust off his clothes in a great whirling cloud. While Chekov didn’t particularly feel cleaner when the process was done, the warmth of the fresh air was a welcome contrast to the dank, dirty weather outside.
The inside door drifted open with a sigh, a stark contrast to the grinding manual entrance at Desperate Measures, and the smell of hot tea and jasmine rolled over him. Unlike its dilapidated exterior, the lobby of the Seldom Inn was tidy and well lit, draped with more greenery than all the rest of Llano Verde combined. Brightly colored ottomans and throws punctuated the room, while artfully placed display cabinets and laser sculptures granted it the illusion of being larger than it probably was. Half a lobby away, three men looked up from their table, then reached calmly but distinctly for the wide-brimmed hats sitting nearby. Chekov paused just inside the doorway and eyed those locals warily. Thee might not give him credit for it, but he really had learned something from the encounter at Desperate Measures.
“Oh, my God! Rupert!” The voice was loud, excited, and distinctly British. “What on Earth are you doing here?”
Chekov turned, not even sure the Englishman was addressing him, and found himself enveloped in a hug that knocked him nearly breathless. His attempt to push away earned him an even tighter squeeze and the disconcerting brush of a beard against his cheek. The voice in his ear was as cheerful as it was quiet.
“Unless you want to get your head blown off, give me a kiss and act like you’re glad to see me.”
The requested kiss was the hardest part.
After that, Chekov discovered that he was Zander Nyrond’s younger brother, Rupert, when Nyrond enthusiastically introduced him to the three men still eyeing him suspiciously. Once they were convinced, based on additional hugs and hair-rufflings, that he really was their host’s beloved sibling and therefore no one of any consequence, they grunted and went back to their beer. It was certainly an improvement over the hostile welcome they’d received just a few doors away.
“So, how the hell’re you doing?” Nyrond enthused, dragging Chekov back toward the front of the room. “How’s the wife and kids?” He stole a glance out the airlock, waved to attract Thee’s attention, and gave a little squeak. “Oh, you’ve brought ’em with you! Hello, Ethel! The girls look lovely! Come on inside!”
Whether or not she could hear Nyrond through the portal, Thee could obviously tell that his gesticulations were directed at her. She met Chekov’s gaze through the cloudy portal, eyebrows raised in query. All he could offer was a helpless shrug.
Nyrond kept up his animated monologue all through the airlock’s cycle, Thee’s uncertain embrace, and a whirlwind trip up the ornate spiral stairs to the second floor. It wasn’t until he’d filled them in on Aunt Pauline’s trip to Vulcan, Uncle Mort’s success at the anthropology symposium, and Mother’s latest bout with olivium-induced bronchitis that he ushered them into their own private suite and pulled the door shut behind him with a flourish.
“Well.” The moment of silence during which Nyrond took a noisy breath and ran both hands through his wavy dark hair reminded Chekov of an actor’s pause backstage before his next big scene. “What a good sport you are. If my brother were actually as pleasant, I might invite him over from Bad View more often.” He flashed a blinding and well-practiced smile as he extended his hand. “Zander Nyrond, sole proprietor of this fine hotel. And your host for the evening, since you’re not going anywhere until we find a way to smuggle you out of town safely.”
Thee recovered first, giving the man’s hand a single quick pump. “Gwen Thee.”
“Pavel Chekov.” He took Nyrond’s hand as an afterthought, and only because it was left hanging in the air until he did so. “And what do you mean, smuggle us out of town?”
Nyrond cocked his head, eyes dancing puckishly. “What? No rank? I thought you Starfleet fellows used your ranks like your first names.”
Chekov’s heart leapt up into his throat in surprise.
“He’s a lieutenant commander,” Thee offered, apparently unconcerned to discover that even discarding his Starfleet jacket could not confer anonymity on Chekov.
“There, you see? I was betting lieutenant.”
“It’s a recent promotion.”
“You knew I was Starfleet?” Chekov finally blurted. He still hadn’t gotten past the psychic nature of Nyrond’s comment. “I’m not even wearing my uniform!”
“It’s not the uniform that makes the man, you know,” Nyrond explained, somewhat sympathetically. “You fellows just all have a look about you.”
“You’re saying that it wouldn’t matter how I dressed, you’d recognize in an instant that I was Starfleet?”
The innkeeper bobbed forward to give him an amiable slap on the shoulder. The same one Thee had smacked, Chekov discovered with a wince. “Don’t feel bad, mate. It’s not your fault. It’s the haircut.”
Somehow, Chekov didn’t find that observation particularly reassuring. “I’ll keep that in mind on my next undercover mission,” he said glumly. “While I’m being tortured to death by Klingons.”
Thee snorted and patted the comforter to entice both dogs up on the bed, then began the careful task of stripping out of her dust wrap without showering sand all over the carpet. “Do you enjoy making strangers into extended family?” she asked Nyrond. “Or is there something more to this little charade?”
That much, at least, Chekov had figured out. “The men downstairs in the bar. They’re Carsons, aren’t they?”
Thee looked impressed, but Nyrond rolled his eyes in theatrical disbelief. “Carsons? Not by a long shot, they’re not. Those blokes are what you call Peacemakers.” He darted neatly forward to accept Thee’s wrap across his arms, then retreated back into the suite’s tiled foyer where the dust would be easier to sweep up. “They’re here to protect us from the Carsons, although personally I can’t say I feel very protected. They either work for our fine mayor or the other way around—it isn’t always easy to tell.”
“And I take it they don’t like Starfleet.” Chekov stayed next to Nyrond as he shrugged out of his own wrap.
“There’s been no particular mission statement, but . . .” Nyrond trailed off into a shrug as he bundled Chekov’s wrap up with Thee’s. “We had some Starfleet people show up yesterday. The Peacemakers took them off in a dust-crawler last night and came back without them this morning. And our dear mayor—who may or may not be the one giving the Peacemakers their orders—hasn’t been seen since then, either.” He ducked into the room’s small closet, produced a cleaning bag with a neat flourish, then stuffed both dust wraps inside. “Draw your own conclusions.”
Chekov already had. The image his mind conjured wasn’t pleasant. “Did you see these Starfleet people?”
“A couple of line officers and two of Big Muddy’s geologists—or biologists, or phrenologists, some kind of ’ologists.” The distinction was obviously unimportant to him. “I was rather hoping they’d spend the night. This hotel could stand the business.”
Chekov turned to where Thee sat on the bed, tugging off her boots. The dogs had curled up like commas around her, already half-asleep. “They must have been looking for me.”
“Why would they need geologists to look for you?”
He fought down a swell of irritation. “I don’t know why they need geologists,” he conceded, waving the question aside. “But the friends who invited me down here must know by now that I’m lost. They would look for me.” Then, because it seemed as compelling an argument as any: “Why else would anyone come to Desperation?”
Nyrond nodded. “He’s got a point there.”
Thee frowned, stripping off her socks to stuff them deep inside her boots. “Where did they take these Starfleet officers
in the dust-crawler?” she asked Nyrond.
The heavy plastic bag in his arms crackled under his shrug. “Haven’t a clue. Sorry, but the Peacemakers don’t let me read their diaries.”
A little bit of the hotel keeper’s dramatics went a long way. Chekov found himself beginning to miss Baldwin’s more forthright provocations. “We have to go out and find them,” he told Thee.
“There’s a lot of territory between here and nowhere.” Thee levered to her feet carefully between her sleeping dogs, cutting off his interruption with a frank shake of her head. “I’m tired, Pavel. The dogs are tired and the camel’s tired. And whether you want to admit it or not, so are you. I’m not going back out into the desert tonight just to get us both lost in the dust storm.”
The clatter of wind-whipped sand splashed loudly against the suite’s transparent aluminum windows, chased around the backside of the hotel by a ghostly moan. Chekov swallowed his protest with an effort. “Then we at least have to call Eau Claire and report them missing,” he insisted. “Someone needs to know what’s happening out here.” He swung to face Nyrond. “The person we need to contact is Commander Montgomery Scott, at the Continental Technical Services Lab.”
The Englishman’s brilliant smile never wavered. “How nice. And you expect me to do what? Hop on a camel and go chat with him while you sleep?” The razor’s edge of sarcasm all but sliced the words off his tongue.
“You don’t have to go there,” Chekov said irritably. “Just get a message through on your landline.”
Nyrond gave a little laugh. “I don’t have a landline. All I have is the local franchise for the camel express mail service.” He looked from Chekov to Thee as though amazed by the surprise on their faces. “Oh, come! With everything else you’ve already seen? Surely you’ve guessed how the communications hierarchy works here.” When Chekov only shook his head, the innkeeper leaned close with an air of delicious conspiracy. “Here’s the inside scoop, my dears. The only landline in Desperation belongs to the Peacemakers.”