The Best And The Brightest Part 16

Shuddering in sympathy, Reoh left the dancing bar.

"Conditions are intolerable!" he pleaded with Commander Keethzarn, the security supervisor of Starbase 3. "You should see what they make these women do!"

Commander Keethzarn was half-Human and half-Vulcan, but at first Reoh had thought he was a Romulan, since he had never seen a pointy-eared humanoid smile. But even with only a few days on Starbase 3, he had heard of Keethzarn's very humanlike exploits of fun that were practically legendary. Some of the other security officers said he was aiming to be known as the "happiest Vulcan in the galaxy," and everyone pretty much figured he had the t.i.tle won, hands down.

"Slow down, Ensign," Keethzarn told him. "I've seen the dancing bars. And I hate to tell you, kid, but I've seen far worse than that. We're always working on ways to stop the slave trade on Beltos. Soon as we plug up one hole, four other leaks show up."

"Can't the Federation at least make them close the dancing bars on the stations? There's ... there are Starfleet officers in there."

"The station's regulations are an internal matter, kid."

As one of the oldest cadets at the Academy, Reoh wasn't used to being called "kid." But he figured the commander called all ensigns that.

Keethzarn gave him a sympathetic grin. "Don't let it get to you. We've been working on that cesspool for a century, and already the slave quarter has shrunk to half its size. It's only a matter of time before the Pa'a are squeezed out."

"Time?" Reoh asked, feeling the furrows being permanently etched into his forehead. "Meesa doesn't have time. She's stuck in there now. All of them are."

Keethzarn glanced sideways, motioning for someone to wait. "I tell you what, Ensign. You make a report of the situation there on Station 14 and drop it by my office when you get back to Starbase 3." The Commander grinned, looking like a plump-checked elf. "Leave the problem to the higher-ups who know how to deal with it, kid. Or you'll wake up one day old before your time."

Reoh returned to the dancing bar that night with a tricorder covertly tucked in his jacket. He was going to submit the most thorough report Commander Keethzarn had ever seen.

He quickly found Meesa again, as if she had been waiting for him to come. She showed him to an upper ledge where the music didn't penetrate his bones so deeply, where he could talk to her if he wanted.

There wasn't much to find out about Meesa's scant two decades of life. She had been raised in a creche, working her natural trade since she could remember, dancing even as a tiny girl with a host of other Orion animal-girls, trained in the most seductive maneuvers. She had succeeded in a manner of speaking, and was purchased by "master" after "master," and was finally brought to Station 14 to dance.

It almost broke his heart to hear her simple voice. "Maybe," she whispered, rising up to breathe right into his ear. "Maybe you can be my master now."

He swallowed, patting her arm without saying a word.

Reoh performed his other scheduled investigation for a Pa'a transport the next day. He had also left several messages for Captain Jord, but he hadn't heard from her. So he was on his way into the dancing bar again, tricorder cleverly concealed on his person, when a rough voice accosted him from down the corridor, "Ensign Nev!"

A Pa'a woman in her middle years stood there, with hair shorn so short there was only a faint silver fuzz across her skull. "Is that you?"

"Captain Jord?" he asked, stopping uncertainly at the doorway.

"I'm in a hurry," she said, turning on her heel. "Let's get on with the inspection."

Reoh looked longingly back at the dancing bar, wishing he could have at least said h.e.l.lo to Meesa. He kept worrying about her.

Captain Jord led the way through the freight gate to one of the upper levels. The Belle Star was a transport ship, but Jord was obviously one of the midlevel Pa'a, trusted with the delicate cargo and the enticing run to Federation planets. Pa'a had been known to jump their route before, with the captain and two-man crew turning pirate for a chance of freedom.

Reoh accepted the manifest from Captain Jord, who curtly gestured belowdecks saying, "Come to ops when you're done."

"Here's your encryption pa.s.s, Captain Jord." Reoh handed over the approved departure notice.

Jord examined it carefully. "I hope you haven't made me late with this shipment, Ensign Nev. Where were you yesterday?"

Reoh shook his head. "I was waiting at the bar."

"Well, you must have been having a good time because I didn't see you."

Wondering if he should be insulted, Reoh straightened his shoulders. "I was waiting for you at the time you requested."

"Sure, I get it." Jord's smile twisted in a knowing grin. "I have a few slaves in that bar myself."

He looked at her with distaste. "Does Meesa belong to you?"

"I don't know their names." Jord shrugged, checking off the approval marks for each storage bin on her tricorder to confirm the manifest was complete. "I only cash out their dance totals."

Reoh felt like he was choking in the foul air as he clutched his spectro-a.n.a.lyzer to his chest. "You're horrible people, you Pa'a! Enslaving those poor Orion women, using them to make money for yourselves."

"Since when does the Federation care, as long as they get their dicosilium?" Jord drawled.

"There are more important things than rocks!" Reoh cried out irrationally.

"Calm down, Starfleet." Captain Jord seemed amused. "We're all slaves in one way or another. The Pa'a expect me to work harder than I can, and I expect my girls to work hard. There's no room for deadwood in Beltos."

"That's so ... so ..." he said inarticulately.

"So practical?" Jord asked. "Listen, the only people I ever hear talking about freedom are in Starfleet, and you don't look all that free to me, or what are you doing here? Everyone I know is trying to get out of here before the whole thing blows up in our faces. Why are you snooping through other people's ships when you could be anywhere in the galaxy?"

"This is my duty-"

"Good, you do your duty." Captain Jord put her print on one of the encryption pa.s.ses and handed it back to him to file with the border patrol. "My duty is to stomp on anyone who gets in my way. I don't care if they're a slave or a Starfleet ensign."

He backed up, actually frightened by the malevolence in her flat, silver eyes.

"Now get off my ship," she ordered.

Reoh stumbled as he turned and tried not to walk too fast as he left the room. But his spine crawled with the thought of her looking at his defenseless back. He really thought she could do anything, even shoot him, because he had irritated her.

He went straight to the dancing bar and tracked down Meesa. He had to wait while one obsessed supernumerary insisted she dance number after number for him.

Finally Reoh got Meesa to himself, up on their private ledge out of the main pathways of activity. She was so pleased to see him, like a kitten starving for simple affection.

Reoh stayed for quite a while, and before he left he gave her a tiny spindle communicator. "That's in case you need to get hold of me. I'll be in range whenever I'm in this system."

She looked down at the spindle, then up at him. "You leave here?"

"Tomorrow."

Her lips pursed together. "When will you come back?"

Slowly he shook his head. "I don't know. Sometime next month, I'm sure."

Her indrawn breath revealed her horror. Reoh felt like he was deserting her. He had started out only trying to help her, but now it felt like he had incurred some sort of obligation.

He showed her how to operate the spindle communicator, and repeated that she was to call him if she was ever in danger. If he wasn't in range, a message would be sent, and he promised to locate her though the transponder in the spindle.

She didn't seem rea.s.sured. She followed him all the way to the door of the bar, her eyes pleading with him to stay. But he had no choice but to leave.

Nev Reoh wrote a ten-page report to Commander Keethzarn, ending with another four pages pleading to be allowed to bring Meesa with him to Starbase 3. Reoh worked for hours on the communique, and was fairly pleased with his persuasiveness. He was even prepared to delay his departure another day and lose one of his R&R days on Starbase 3, in order to give the commander time to reply to his request.

Getting ready for bed, the communicator beeped at him. He didn't know what it was at first, then it beeped again. He leaped for his jacket and the companion to Meesa's communicator.

Opening the spindle, he said carefully, "h.e.l.lo?"

In the silence, he wondered if Meesa's "master" had taken the communicator from her, or if she had lost it somehow. Then her tinny voice came through, "Help me."

"Meesa, is that you?" he asked, straining to hear.

"I'm Meesa," she agreed.

"Are you in the bar?" There was such a long silence that Reoh thought she was gone. "Meesa, where are you? Answer me!"

"Master took me from the bar," she said.

"Where are you now?" Reoh asked, frantic.

"Hmm ... inside a box."

Reoh realized he wasn't going to get anywhere like this. Meesa was probably fairly street-smart on her own turf, but Orion animal-women were taught to communicate in other ways than with words.

"You hang on to that communicator," he told her. "I'll track you down."

Reoh left through the pa.s.senger gate and made his way down to the lower levels, following the transponder signal of Meesa's spindle. These levels housed warehouses and holding cells for import/export merchandise for the planet Beltos. He kept his eyes on his tricorder for lifesigns, aware that he could be walking into a trap. But all he found was room after room filled with stacks of every size of storage container imaginable.

He began to methodically shift through the maze and finally tracked the transponder to a large square container almost as tall as he was. Meesa had said she was in a "box." The transponder pointed at the container even when he climbed over some barrels to circle it.

Rapping on the side, he listened for a response. It felt more solid than it looked. The tricorder indicated it was hermetically self-contained, yet distorted Orion humanoid readings leaked through. Something in the sealant was interfering, but he could tell there was at least one Orion inside, maybe even two.

"Meesa," he said into the communicator.

"Yes?"

"What is your master doing with you?"

"We are going away."

Reoh gripped the communicator harder. That's what he had figured. Meesa's master was planning to smuggle her off-world. They must have figured a way to get the container through the cargo gate without tripping the border sensors. Perhaps this was one of the "leaks" Keethzarn had spoken of.

Reoh was tempted to simply walk away and let the container go through as planned. Meanwhile he could get the transponder to Commander Keethzarn so he could track Meesa and destroy the smuggling chain.

Yet he knew he couldn't do that. It would take almost an entire day to get to Starbase 3 and back, and Meesa could have been shipped out and sent into warp for parts unknown long before they returned. He could ask Keethzarn to send border security to the station, but that would take a few hours. The container could be gone by the time he got back, and the thought of Meesa trapped in the hold of a freighter was enough to make him act immediately.

"Hang on," he said through the spindle. "I'm going to take you to my ship."

An antigrav pallet was nearby, and it only took a few minutes to load the container. Even for a station that never sleeps, there was a lull in the activity in the middle of the third shift. Reoh got the container all the way to the cargo gate without attracting too much attention.

When one Pa'a official pa.s.sed him, eyeing the large container, Reoh lamely offered, "Putting in a new bunk in my shuttle."

"Double-wide," the Pa'a said with a wink, leaving Reoh completely red and embarra.s.sed, knowing there was a woman stashed inside the container.

Reoh overrode the gate sensors to get the container through without sounding an alert. Since it was a Starfleet gate, it wouldn't be noticed until the beginning of the next shift, when the border patrols downloaded the logs. Hopefully by then he would be explaining to Commander Keethzarn, and everything would be all right.

He kept thinking to himself-it's only one small Orion animal-woman. What's the harm? Even if he did get a reprimand on his record, or demoted, what was that worth compared to saving another sentient being's life?

Sweat was pouring off him when he finally maneuvered the container through the corridors to the air lock bay in front of the Dilithium Node. Positioning the container so the opening faced the air lock, he took some time examining the locking system. No use in getting this far, only to alert Meesa's master that his goods were being tampered with. Reoh knew he was leaving a trail a pa.r.s.ec wide, but he wasn't expecting to get away with this.

"I'm hot," Meesa said plaintively through the communicator.

"I'm opening the door now," he replied.

After inserting a stasis bar into the sensor padd, Reoh cycled open the lock and slid back half the side of the container. "Meesa?" he called, peering in.

A face peeked out, but it wasn't Meesa. A naked green woman, and another, shifted and blinked in the sudden light. Reoh squinted, looking deeper inside. "Meesa?"

"I'm here!" her breathy voice responded.

"Wait there," Reoh told the startled, cringing women. He quickly opened his air lock and grabbed a blanket, trying to shield the bay from the corridor. "Hurry, get inside!" he ordered.

They hesitated for a moment, then several at once surged forward. Reoh stared and tried not to stare as one naked Orion animal-woman after another emerged from the container and scurried into his shuttle. Meesa was one of the last ones, and he wrapped the blanket around her, frantically ushering them into his shuttle.

"Meesa, how long were you in that box?"

"Not so long. Master went to get the ship."

Reoh cycled closed the air lock, figuring that eliminated the option of waiting for border security to show up. Meesa's master could be looking for that container right now, and the Pa'a weren't the type to let him get in their way.

He fought his way to the front and the controls, feeling heady already from the scent of so many Orion women in the tight quarters. There were so many green arms and legs crammed inside the Dilithium Node that he wondered how they had all fit into the container. This had suddenly turned from a minor infraction into a full-scale smuggling operation in its own right. He just hoped he got to Commander Keethzarn before anyone else did.

Getting away from Station 14 was no problem. Reoh was supposed to leave that day anyway; he simply moved up his departure time and was cleared by the border computer. The Starfleet officers were on drudge duty, too, and they let him through without a ha.s.sle. They probably figured he wanted a few more hours R&R on Starbase 3.

Reoh was really sweating the short communications exchange with the border patrol. There was no way he could explain the Orion animal-women without Commander Keethzarn to back him. He made Meesa sit in the auxiliary control seat to keep an eye on the other women crouched down on the floor, out of the line of sight. He couldn't even look back there-Meesa was bad enough, with her bare shoulders exposed by the blanket. The others were completely naked.

By the time they got two sectors away from the Beltos system, he finally began to breathe easier, figuring he was home free. Maybe he wouldn't be in too much trouble- Then he received a hail. It was the Belle Star, Captain Jord's transport ship.

Puzzled, Reoh opened the channel, voice-only, just to be safe. "Captain Jord?"

"Thank you, Ensign Nev," Jord said, sounding very pleased. "If you will please dock at my aft portal, I will take back my cargo. Now that you've gotten it through the border for me."

"Pardon me?" he croaked.

Meesa was cowering down, looking up at the speakers from which Jord's voice echoed down. "Master?" she asked.

Reoh glanced back at the other women. "Is Captain Jord your master?"

"Why not ask me?" Jord said over the speaker. "I arranged this whole transport, packed the girls up for you and everything."