Star Trek - Imbalance Part 7

Vish waited for her to get to her feet. As she separated herself from the broken gla.s.sware, Crusher realized that the Jarada's posture was far more deferential than she had ever seen it. "Forgive the attack, Honored Crusher-Doctor. If we had known that one was so unstable, we would not have brought you to see its most important project."

"Does this sort of thing happen very often?" Her temper was finally starting to waken, and Crusher made no attempt to rein it in. It was about time the Jarada gave her some answers.

"We will show you to a place where you may cover your injuries, and afterward we will answer any questions." Vish started for the door, as if to pull Crusher along by its movement.

The tactic might have worked if the throbbing in her arm hadn't compounded Crusher's irritation. She planted her boots on the floor and refused to budge. "I want some answers and I want them now. Does this happen very often?"

Vish turned to study Crusher with eyes that flickered from amber to green to red. Finally, it lifted all four hands to its shoulders in the Jaradan equivalent of a shrug. "As you wish, although this is not the place I would choose for such discussions. Since we have come to this planet, it has been happening with increasing frequency. None of our researchers know why this should happen, and as each one becomes crazy, the ripples of its madness pa.s.s through the rest of our group.

"We are now so diminished that only the strongest are still able to continue our work. Soon all of us will lack the support of our hive-mates and will become as lost and insane as the youngling that attacked you. Since you are a solitary being and can function without the support of your hive-mind, we brought you here to help us. You will find the cause of this insanity before it destroys our entire hive."

Crusher stared at the Jarada, wondering what she had missed. Of course she would help them; she was a doctor and never refused help to anyone who needed it. However, the implied threat in Vish's words made her uneasy. What was it they wanted of her? "I'd be glad to help you. Let me beam the relevant materials back to the Enterprise and I'll put all my research facilities to work solving the problem."

"No. You don't understand." Vish's voice was flat with certainty. "We cannot let word of this affliction go beyond this place. You will work here, without contacting anyone, until you have solved the problem."

Chapter Eleven.

LONG SHADOWS lay across the campsite when Keiko finally crawled out of her tent. She looked around and groaned, thinking of the entire afternoon lost. Tanaka was sitting beside his tent, fussing with his tricorder and with something on a cloth in front of him. "Why didn't you wake me up sooner?" she asked. "You know we have work to do."

Tanaka looked up, noticing that she was outside her tent. He glanced around, taking in the shadows and the low angle of the sun as if he hadn't been aware of them either. "I didn't realize what time it was." He pointed to the ground in front of him.

Keiko looked at the scattering of miniature electronic components, miscellaneous bits and pieces of metal, and a.s.sorted tools. At first she couldn't fit things together into anything she recognized. Her second thought was that, just like Kiyoshi, Tanaka had managed to cram more tools and gadgets into his pack than was humanly possible. Finally, with a sense of dawning horror, she recognized the scattered components. "Our communicators? What have you done to them?" She hadn't thought anyone could disa.s.semble them without access to a complete diagnostics and repair unit.

If her attack insulted him, Tanaka gave no sign of it. Instead, he examined his handiwork with a rueful grimace. "The damage was done long before I touched them." He picked up one of the components and handed it to her on the flat of his palm. "This is the frequency modulator. Without it, we don't send anything anywhere."

Gingerly, she took the tiny object and examined it. When it came to electronics, her entire knowledge could have been inscribed in readable letters on the part she held, with room left over for the complete works of Shakespeare. However, the modulator looked strange, almost as if it had been heated with a plasma torch. "It looks melted," she said with a frown.

"That's a good description, for a nonspecialist." He took the modulator back, examined it critically, and replaced it on the cloth. "Someone wanted to cut us off from the Enterprise pretty badly. I'd guess they zapped us with a high-gain subs.p.a.ce transmitter at very close range. Whatever it was, it put out far more power than these circuits were designed to absorb. It also seems to have overloaded the data links in the tricorders, although everything else works."

She knelt beside the cloth and looked closer at the other parts. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see that most of the components showed signs of damage. "Could it have been an accident? I mean, could we have driven past something that did it?"

"Oh, we drove past something, all right." He gave the scattered bits of circuitry a final scowl and then began putting them into a specimen bag. "But it wasn't any accident. Otherwise, the tricorders and my diagnostic equipment wouldn't work either. Whatever it was, they picked the precise frequency that would burn out the communications relays without damaging anything else."

"That means we could be in a lot of trouble." Keiko sat back on her heels, thinking. Before she could deal with their next step, though, there was something she needed to know. "How come you've got all that repair equipment in your pack? It's not standard policy to bring an electronics kit with you."

Tanaka's expression went grim. "I've been on away teams with Lieutenant Deyllar. Have you ever seen what that man can do to a tricorder?"

Keiko groaned in sympathy, remembering the time Deyllar had managed to get sulfuric acid from a particularly unpleasant carnivorous plant inside the casing of his tricorder. To this day she had no idea how he had gotten the acid into the sealed device while not getting any on himself. The tricorder, however, had been a dead loss and the captain had ordered Deyllar to return to the ship until the doctor had checked him over for acid burns. Several other members of the away team had received multiple burns before they finished the survey, but Deyllar had emerged unscathed, except for his tricorder.

Tanaka continued. "Since he ranks me, when we're on a survey together, he always takes my tricorder after he ruins his own. If I want to get any work done-even if it is on lichens-I have to repair his junk before I can do anything."

"Why don't you just call the ship for a replacement? Wouldn't that be easier?"

"I tried that-once. Deyllar put me on report for damaging Starfleet property."

"Because he ranks you." Keiko shook her head at her own foolishness. Deyllar was the botany section's albatross, completely incompetent but with connections somewhere that kept him from being booted out of Starfleet for his offenses. She shuddered, wondering why they were wasting time on unsolvable problems. "Enough. We should be planning our next move."

Thumbing the lock tab to activate it, Tanaka sealed the bag with the damaged pieces of their communicators. "I'm open to suggestions, but right now I'm a little short on ideas." He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the Jarada camp. "Since our hosts sabotaged our communicators, you could say that I'm feeling somewhat reluctant to trust them."

Keiko leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands while she considered their situation. As per standard policy for such excursions, they had enough ration bars and water purification tablets to last them several days, so they wouldn't starve or die of dehydration. They were scheduled to be gone two nights, but the captain would probably start looking for them sooner.

She was sure Miles would insist when she failed to call him and when neither of their communicators showed up on the ship's scans. On the down side, she had no idea where they were and she doubted that anyone on the Enterprise knew which direction away from the city their vehicle had gone. Separating the sensor traces of two humans from a busload of Jarada shouldn't be too difficult once the sensors were pointing in the right place, but she had no idea how long it would take for the ship to focus its search in their area. After a long silence she spoke. "The problem as I see it is that we don't have any transportation. And we could be upward of three hundred kilometers from the city in almost any direction."

"Northwest." Tanaka stared out over the lake, a glum expression on his face. "But the only way the ship would know that is if they were tracking our communicators while we were riding out here."

She studied his face, thinking how transparent he was. Reading his moods was like reading a book, with everything spelled out in terms only a fool or a blind man could miss. "You're positive that the communicators were damaged before we left the city?"

He shrugged, his expression still bleak. "That would be easiest. Besides, wouldn't the point be to separate us from the rest of our people? If they waited until the ship got a bearing on us, it wouldn't work. The bus would have to change directions and double back onto another heading, or why bother?"

"What's the point? What do they want with us?" The whole situation was ludicrous. Kidnapping them would only antagonize Picard and, through him, the Federation. There was nothing she or Tanaka could do for the Jarada that they could not better achieve by completing their negotiations with the Federation.

"Maybe they want hostages. Maybe they want to hold us for ransom or something." All the animation left him suddenly, and he reminded Keiko of a lifelike wooden doll. She wondered what had caused the sudden change, but this didn't seem like the time to pursue the matter. They had other problems to settle first.

She pushed herself to her feet, determined to force some answers from their hosts. A wave of dizziness swept through her as her body struggled to cope with the sudden movement. Tanaka reached for her, steadied her until her head cleared. "Thanks, Reggie," Keiko murmured, unsettled by her reaction.

She had done that hundreds of times without being dizzy, so why should she have problems now, when she needed all her faculties at peak efficiency? Squaring her shoulders and straightening her back, she mentally ordered her body to stay under control for the rest of the mission. Crossing to her tent, she pulled out her jacket and shrugged into it. "As I recall, the Jarada are expecting us for dinner. I for one would like some answers. Are you coming?"

Tanaka climbed slowly to his feet, still in the grip of the strange mood that had hit him along with the idea that the Jarada wanted them as hostages. "I can't let you go alone." His words came slowly, in a flat, dead voice. "But I don't think I'd trust them very far if I were you."

"About as far as I can throw them." She gave him a sharp look, wondering what had come over him. "You don't have to come if you really don't want to."

He shook his head, a little life returning to his face. "Regulations. We've got to stick together now that our communicators don't work."

"In that case, let's go hunt some explanations." She started off, wishing she had a phaser to back up her brave words. She started to ask Tanaka if he had one somewhere in his collection of nonregulation field equipment, but decided he would have volunteered it if he did. Besides, she wasn't sure she would trust him with a weapon in his present mood. That thought made her change her mind. "I don't suppose you have a phaser hidden somewhere in your pack, Reggie?"

"No." He sighed, his expression still oddly remote. "I never thought about needing one."

It was probably just as well, Keiko thought. She wasn't sure she could trust herself. The more she thought of Miles, worrying about her because she hadn't talked to him in six hours, the angrier she got at the Jarada. It was one thing to insist on away-team duty, even though it separated them for a few days, and quite another to be deprived of all means of communications for the duration. The longer she thought about it, the more furious it made her. By the time they reached the outskirts of the Jaradan camp, Keiko had decided she was going to demand an explanation from the teachers and insist that she and Tanaka be returned to the city immediately.

The Jaradan camp was laid out in cl.u.s.ters of domed tents half buried in the sand. The tents ranged in color from pale gold to almost black, much like the Jarada themselves. No two tents were the same color, although within each cl.u.s.ter the colors were similar. Looking at the sand piled around the base of each dome, Keiko realized Tanaka had been correct about the artificial beach. From her brief survey of the meadow's ecosystem, she knew the soil in the area was mostly clay. Such large amounts of sand were not natural in that environment.

The second thing she noticed was the camp's silence. She looked around, trying to find anyone at all. This close to the announced dinner hour, she expected to see part of the group fixing the meal while the others relaxed or worked on their lessons. Instead, the camp appeared deserted. The only sounds were the rustle of the wind through the gra.s.s and the distant call of a bird or bird-a.n.a.log.

"This is d.a.m.ned odd!" Tanaka muttered, twisting his head around as if trying to watch every angle at once. "Where did they all go?"

"I suppose they're still at their a.s.sembly." She looked around, trying to convince herself. Canjiir had said that the evening meal would be at sunset, and already Beltaxiya had dropped below the treetops. Unless the Jarada had a unique interpretation of the word "sunset," the food should be served within minutes. Keiko shivered with a cold premonition, wondering if she and Tanaka had been deliberately abandoned here or if there was some other explanation for the complete absence of their hosts.

"I don't know. The Jarada don't strike me as the sort of beings that ever change a schedule once it's announced." He looked around the encampment, as if searching for a way to force it to reveal its secrets. Instead, he ended up staring at the empty level area at the end of the road. "They've taken the transport."

Keiko, turning to see where he was looking, felt her hope shrinking fast. The Jarada had probably sent the vehicle back to the city and it would return only when the students were ready to leave. That complicated their situation, though, because it deprived them of any means of getting back to the Enterprise until the Jarada were through with the field trip. She heaved a sigh of frustration. "I don't think they took it, Reggie. I think they sent it back to the city until they need it again."

"Still ..." Tanaka looked at the empty parking s.p.a.ce and shivered. His eyes had a flat, empty look that frightened and angered Keiko more than the Jarada's apparent treachery. What was wrong with him anyway?

"Let's see if we can find where they went." She started through the camp, keeping her eyes on the ground to see what story she could piece together from the tracks. As she expected, the sand near the tents was too churned up to tell her anything. She cast wider, hurrying now to find any clues before it became too dark. Even with flashlights and the b.u.t.tery glow reflected off the three-quarters-lit gas giant, she did not want to go charging through an unexplored forest on an unsurveyed planet after dark, pursuing someone who didn't want to see her. Still, for her own sanity, she could not stand around waiting for the answers to find her, and she desperately needed to shatter Tanaka's pa.s.sivity.

Finally, when she had almost given up finding anything in the churned sand, she spotted a line of indentations running in a straight line toward the trees. She gestured for Tanaka to join her and pointed to the tracks. They followed them across the beach, away from their own tents and to the edge of the meadow. Where the trail left the sand, the stems of the gra.s.s were bent over or broken. Keiko crouched down, examining the soil until she found the sharp imprint of a clawed Jaradan foot. "They definitely went this way," she said, pointing toward the trees. "Let's see what they're up to."

"Do you think that's wise?" Tanaka's hesitant tone was what she would have expected from a green cadet, not an experienced officer.

"It beats sitting around waiting for them to do something to us! What's your problem anyway?" The last thing I need right now is a partner who goes to pieces at the smallest sign of trouble! Keiko thought. Since the captain insisted on a.s.signing her a partner, at the very least he could have given her someone who could handle the pressure. She started for the trees without waiting for his answer.

After a few moments Tanaka's footsteps followed her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tick you off, but it's getting dark and we don't know anything about the local predators. Wouldn't it be wiser to wait till morning?"

Keiko heaved an exasperated sigh and picked up her pace a little. "Use your head, Reggie. On this planet sunrise is almost thirty-six hours away. I for one have no desire to wait that long to find out what's happening."

"I just meant, without the communicators, we don't have any access to the ship's sensor scans of this planet. It really isn't safe to go exploring after dark without getting as much information as we can."

They entered the trees, ducking under the dense branches that formed a screen along the edge of the meadow. Overhead, the trees tangled together, forming an interlocking web of limbs and foliage. Vines twisted around the trunks and looped over the branches, adding to the ma.s.sed greenery above them. Despite that, it was light beneath the trees, a curious half-light that diffused downward from the canopy. Tanaka moved up beside Keiko and thumbed his flashlight to its minimum setting, although they barely needed it to follow the line of tracks. The scuffs and gouges in the litter of dead leaves and twigs that covered the forest floor could mean only that a large group had pa.s.sed that way recently. When she inhaled deeply, Keiko caught a whiff of the mixed, spicy scents of the Jarada, even though the smell of damp soil almost overwhelmed any other odor.

Glancing around, Keiko decided that Tanaka's nervousness was probably justified. There was something eerie about the forest, something ominous that reminded her of the forests in the old j.a.panese stories her grandfather had read to her as a child. Nothing good had ever happened in those stories, and to be caught in a place that evoked the same feeling of menace was decidedly unsettling. "Tell you what, Reggie." Keiko hoped her voice did not betray her own jitters. "If we don't find anything in the next twenty minutes, we'll head back. As much as I'd like some answers, I don't think we should leave our camp undefended for too long."

Tanaka touched his tricorder case to a.s.sure himself that the device was still there. "I've got a full pack of ration bars if we need them. But the rest of our stuff is in our tents, and we both know how secure those are."

"Yeah. They're good for about thirty seconds in a buffalo stampede or against a determined thief. Neither of which are we supposed to meet in the line of duty." Keiko paused, her head c.o.c.ked to one side. From somewhere ahead came m.u.f.fled pounding, like someone playing a large drum. She glanced at Tanaka to see if he heard it too. "Do you think that's them?"

He shrugged. "If so, they're not being quiet about whatever they're doing. And if not-I'm not sure I really want to know who else in this forest can play the bongos."

She frowned, considering his words. The sounds she heard were too rhythmic, too purposeful, to be caused by an animal-or even a child-banging on a hollow log. If the unknown drummers were not the Jarada they had come with, then they needed to find out fast who else was here. Zelfreetrollan had told Keiko that their group would be the only people for many kilometers around the study site. Gesturing to Tanaka for silence, she moved forward as quietly as she could. He dropped behind a step, watching her back, although that meant someone could take him from the rear if he was not sufficiently alert.

After ten minutes they reached a dense wall of bushes that extended as far as they could see in both directions. The claw-tracks led through the only break in the foliage. Flickering orange light suggested a fire in the open s.p.a.ce beyond the trees. As they approached, the drumming became louder, until the heavy, monotonous throbbing filled the air with its insistent beat. Shrill, ululating cries punctuated the rhythmic pounding. The mixed scents of the Jarada clogged the air and overwhelmed the commonplace odors of soil and trees and night-blooming flowers.

Keiko and Tanaka exchanged glances. The sounds were unsettling, like the battle cries of a horde of primitives psyching themselves up to attack their neighbors, and their translators did nothing to interpret the sounds. They looked at each other and simultaneously thumbed the devices off. Keiko nodded to their left and Tanaka shrugged, indicating he had no preference. He turned off the flashlight to avoid attracting attention and slid it into the pocket of his jacket. Moving as quietly as they could, although Keiko doubted that anyone could hear them over the drums, they left the trail and crept along the curving line of bushes.

Finally, Keiko spotted a gap, small and close to the ground. Dropping to her stomach, she wiggled forward to see what was happening beyond the barrier. After a moment Tanaka followed her example, squeezing beside her to share the tiny hole.

A broad meadow, much larger than the one where they were camped, opened beyond the bushes that hid them. Keiko tried to guess how far the open s.p.a.ce extended, but the twilight distorted the perspective and blurred the more distant trees with shadow until she was unable to estimate the distance. The mottled orange and beige ball of Bel-Major hung over them, the cloud patterns on its sunlit side glaring in brilliant contrast to the darkening sky.

Keiko shook herself and tore her attention away from the giant planet. She and Tanaka were concealed by a narrow tongue of bushes. Except for one small break, the undergrowth formed a dense, leafy wall between the main meadow and a satellite clearing. In the smaller meadow the Jarada were dancing around a bonfire. Except for the teachers, who were pounding the large, wooden drums with all four hands, everyone was running and leaping in unison, as though they were a dance troupe performing a ch.o.r.eographed number.

At first Keiko thought their timing was perfect, with each Jarada repeating the set patterns flawlessly. However, the longer she watched, the more discrepancies she saw. One tan-colored youth kept jerking its head in an erratic rhythm, while a red-brown individual and another tan Jarada twitched their upper limbs in spasmodic gestures that sent shivers up her spine.

"You see it too?" They were lying so close that Tanaka's lips brushed her ear.

"Like they're just a little crazy?" She, too, felt the need to whisper her answer, although she doubted that anyone could have filtered their voices from the noise the Jarada were making.

Suddenly a large black Jarada broke from the circle, screeching furiously. The two nearest youths raced after him. The black swung on his pursuers, knocking the smaller one off its feet and slashing his claws across the eye of the other. Several more youths charged toward the black, overwhelming him with sheer numbers. Canjiir dropped her drum and dashed over, crouching to reach the black's exposed neck. Even over the drumming Keiko heard the crunch of Canjiir's teeth shearing through the sh.e.l.l that covered the black's throat. She crammed her hand into her mouth to keep her stomach from emptying itself.

The black's dying shriek descended into gurgles that were covered by the sound of the remaining drum. He twitched and jerked spasmodically, fighting to hold on to life. Finally, he went still and, one by one, the other Jarada got to their feet.

Canjiir returned to her drum, pounding it with furious intensity. Slowly the youths rejoined the circle, resuming their dancing as though nothing had happened. However, as she watched them, Keiko realized that more of the young Jarada showed erratic behavior-twitches and jerks and breaks in the rhythm that seemed to upset the others in the group.

"More than a little crazy," Tanaka murmured, starting to wiggle backward. "Let's get out of here."

Keiko nodded and waited for him to squirm free. She had just started her own retreat when more loud screeches interrupted the chanting of the dancers. Glancing toward the meadow, she saw three Jarada attacking their cla.s.smates. A fourth, the largest student in the group, was streaking for their hiding place. By sheer bad luck he would trip over them no matter what they did.

"Run!" she ordered Tanaka. Twisting around, she tried to force her way out of the bushes. The branches were tough and springy, and they pushed back. Tanaka grabbed her wrist and pulled, jerking her clear of the slapping, scratching foliage. As soon as she was free, they ran, racing to put as much distance between themselves and the insane Jarada as they could.

Behind them the large Jarada hit the bushes and crashed through, seemingly oblivious of the grabbing, tearing limbs. His shriek, when he saw the fleeing humans, was echoed by more distant yells and then by other crashing noises. Keiko risked a quick glance over her shoulder and saw that several more Jarada were struggling through the barrier in pursuit. The large Jarada was gaining on them fast, even though Keiko was sure she had beaten her personal best time for the two hundred meter dash. Her lungs screamed for oxygen and she knew she wouldn't be able to hold her speed much longer. Even though he had gotten a head start, Tanaka couldn't be in much better shape, since his preferred sport was swimming.

She glanced in his direction and saw that he was slowing, angling toward a st.u.r.dy tree slightly off their course. He extended his arm and swung around it, using the change in direction to stop himself. "Up!" he said, pointing toward the treetops to emphasize the message. Keiko veered toward him, feeling her speed lessen in spite of herself, but she was still moving too fast to stop when she reached him. Tanaka grabbed her arm and swung her around the tree in a repeat of the maneuver he had used to kill his own momentum. Before she could catch her breath for the climb, he knelt and offered her a boost. She set her foot into his cupped hands and let him shove her upward.

For a moment she felt as though she were flying, and then her right hand hit the lowest branch of the tree. She wrapped her fingers around it, struggling to keep her hold, and threw her other arm and her legs around the trunk, pressing as much of her body as possible against the bark. After several tense seconds she halted her downward slide. Taking a deep breath and pulling on the branch, she dragged herself up to the next limb and freed the first one for Tanaka.

The next branch was closer and the one after that, even closer. Above that the limbs separated from the trunk in groups, with the branches and the trunk at each split all having nearly the same diameter. The tree shuddered as Tanaka leapt for the first handhold. Keiko continued working her way upward until she found a secure spot in the crotch between the trunk and a st.u.r.dy limb.

Leaning against the tree to catch her breath, she risked a glance downward to see how Tanaka was doing. A wave of vertigo swept through her, but she forced it away. Tanaka was two meters away from the tree, bracing for a running start at a second jump, and the pursuing Jarada had almost closed the distance. Launching himself at top speed, Tanaka raced for the tree and leapt, catching the branch with his outstretched hands. For a moment he just hung there, swinging, before he started pulling himself upward.

With a shriek the Jarada flung itself at Tanaka, jaws open and claws outstretched. Tanaka almost made it to safety, but he wasn't quite fast enough. The Jarada's claws caught his leg, slashing through his uniform and deeply into his flesh. Tanaka continued to climb upward, as if unaware of the injury, although Keiko could see the blood welling through his ripped pants. Adrenaline, she thought, realizing that the need to escape had probably blocked his awareness of the wounded leg.

Below them, more Jarada had arrived. In a hysterical frenzy they threw themselves at the tree, attacking again and again. The tree shuddered under the blows and Keiko wondered how long before the Jarada tried something more effective. And whether she and Tanaka could survive without water or medical supplies until the Enterprise found them. For the first time ever, she wished she had listened to her husband. Then she wouldn't be in this situation-trapped with an injured partner twenty meters off the ground at the start of a thirty-six-hour night on an unsurveyed planet, with no water or communicators, and surrounded by hostile aliens. It was enough to make her wish she had never left j.a.pan. Unable to help herself, Keiko laid her head against the tree and cried.

Chapter Twelve.

WORF RACED DOWN THE CORRIDOR and turned right, with the Jarada guardians hot on his heels. Having so many enemies so close behind gave him no chance to test his theories about the door locks. Even if he were correct, his pursuers would be on him before he could finish entering the nine digit code to open the door. What he needed was a hiding place where he could observe his enemy and study the terrain while he planned his next move. Given his observations of Jarada architecture, he had about the same chance of finding what he needed as he had of getting rescued by Romulans.

On the off chance that Data might be listening, he tapped his communicator again. This time he could hear the dull click of the pressure switch, but that sound was not followed by the chirp that indicated the device was active. Somehow, the Jarada had managed to deactivate the communicator, isolating him both from the captain and from the Enterprise. A low growl escaped Worf's throat. If these insectoids wanted to test the prowess of a real warrior, then he was ready to oblige them.

He had seen no windows since he and Breen left the Council Chambers, which meant he had only a rough idea of where he was. His first priority, he decided, was to find a spot where he could see the city and the position of the Beltaxiyan sun. He would have liked to have a map as well, but he doubted that the Jarada would give him the key to their defenses. Remembering the layout of the Governance Complex, Worf took the first upward-sloping corridor that he encountered. After that, each time he had a choice he continued to move upward. Surprisingly, his pursuers lost ground, their shrieking and the clatter of their claws diminishing as he put more distance between himself and the workout room.

Finally, Worf slowed his pace to a jog, both to conserve his energy and to concentrate on the sounds behind him. After a brief lull, the shrieks rose to a crescendo punctuated by dull thuds. Apparently his pursuers had begun fighting each other again. If that was the case, it was time for him to get out of the corridor before he encountered someone else eager to take up the fight where the Jarada behind him had abandoned it. With the warriors of this society acting like lunatics, who knew what the ordinary Jarada might do? He had to get back to the captain!

Dropping to a walk, Worf began scanning carefully. Although the corridor was well lit, the light exaggerated the rough texture of the plaster walls. It was an effective camouflage, and Worf was beginning to worry that it might delay him too long, when he finally spotted the telltale dark line of a door. He studied the surface carefully, locating the exact outline of the opening before he made his next move. He sc.r.a.ped his thumb, forefinger, and little finger across the wall at waist height. After a moment, as if the computer that controlled the mechanism had to repeat the a.n.a.lysis of his stroke before giving him access, the control panel lit up. Worf fitted his fingers into the touch points and entered the code Breen had used: 1-1-3-2-1-2-3-3-1. Again there was a delay while the computer processed the code, but then the door slid into the wall.

Worf stepped into the shaft, listening for the sound of someone moving inside it. Silence, broken only by the hum of the air circulators, greeted him. Quickly, he moved farther inside to let the door close behind him. If Breen's boasts about the Jarada's faith in their security locks reflected a general att.i.tude, then he had shaken his pursuers and needed to worry only about chance encounters delaying him. What he could not guess was how to find the quickest route back to the Governance Complex. He wondered if the Jarada memorized the entire maze of tunnels beneath their city or if the major pa.s.sages were marked in some way the Enterprise's away team had not discerned. Neither method was going to do him much good. He had to get outside, where he could see enough landmarks to orient himself.

He started downward, testing the ribbed surface of the ramp. It was well suited for the Jarada, with narrow shelves to catch their claws, but the ridges were badly s.p.a.ced for a Klingon, particularly one as large as Worf. A growl rose in his throat, born of his frustration at running from a fight and from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With an effort he suppressed the outburst, knowing it would attract attention that he didn't need.

Three turns down the ramp, near the level where he thought he had lost his pursuers, he heard shrieking and pounding in the corridor outside the shaft. Apparently the melee was still in progress, with the Jarada tearing into one another with reckless abandon. Worf would have loved to watch the fight and to observe how the guardians handled actual combat, but he knew he would become the target as soon as they saw him. While he couldn't fault their zeal in defending their hive, he had no intention of letting it interfere with his duty to return to the captain.

Four turns farther down, Worf judged he was nearing the ground floor. As he started to search for a door, he heard the sounds of several Jarada entering the shaft a level above him. Quickly, he deactivated the Jaradan translator before its sounds could betray him. Hoping they were not going far, he started downward again, moving as fast as be dared. One level, two levels, three-still they descended, the chittering of their footsteps unhurried and the singing interplay of their conversation betraying no hint that they suspected his presence. Worf noticed that a heavy, spicy smell floated down the shaft ahead of them.

The acoustics in the enclosed s.p.a.ce multiplied the noises, making it hard to separate out source and distance. From below, Worf thought he heard echoes of the Jarada behind him, which meant they were approaching the bottom. However, as he listened, he realized the sounds were growing louder. He rounded another turn and almost collided with three russet-colored guardians.

At the sight of the Klingon on the ramp above them, the three Jarada shrieked a battle cry and charged. The Jarada behind him echoed the shriek and the clattering of their foot-claws speeded up. Worf roared an eager response and dropped into a defensive crouch, letting the Jarada bring the attack to him. On this sloping ramp the disadvantage lay with the attackers, and as a true warrior, he knew how to exploit his enemies' weaknesses.

The first Jarada reached him, and Worf lashed out with his leg, landing a perfect kick to the Jarada's thorax. The Jarada was unbalanced from running up the ramp, and Worf's kick threw it off its feet. It landed on its back, limbs flailing in all directions, and skidded into one of its companions. The second Jarada fell too, its limbs tangling with those of the first insectoid. Both slid downward, their exoskeletons b.u.mping and sc.r.a.ping against the rough surface of the ramp.