“Yes?” she asked crisply. After the earlier attack on the suite, her nerves were slightly more on edge than she would have preferred. Her eyes searched the night sky for another flying metal disk. “What is it?”
“Something’s got the crowd all riled up,” Giusio reported. “Even more than usual, that is.”
That was hard to imagine; the demonstrations and been going nonstop for days now. Number One had briefly hoped that the Cyprian authorities might dispel the crowd after the incident with the disk, but that had proved wishful thinking on her part. Politics appeared to have trumped security where the protests were concerned, or perhaps, to be more charitable, the Cyprians simply prized free speech over the safety of their guests.
Either way, Number One found the security measures lacking.
Accompanied by a chorus of angry shouts, a lone individual charged onto the dais and attempted to seize the attention of the crowd. The man’s image supplanted the portrait of Elzy on the floating holographic display above him. Number One didn’t recognize him, but the man’s face was flushed with anger. Veins bulged at his temples and at his throat. His silver eyes were crazed and bloodshot. He shouted furiously, even though his voice was already being amplified.
“Listen to me, everyone! It’s true. The Enterprise has struck a deal with the Klingons. They’re going to give Elzy back to the savages!”
The crowd erupted thunderously. Fists, signs, and banners were shaken in the air.
Jones looked at Number One. “Is that true, Commander?”
“I doubt it,” Number One replied. “Probably just a rumor. But rumors don’t have to be true to be dangerous. They just need to be believed.”
“Oh, it looks like they’re believing it all right,” Nurse Olson said sourly. “Tough luck for us.”
His prediction, while pessimistic, proved all too accurate. Number One watched with alarm as the crowd turned into an angry mob, surging toward Envoy House like a sentient tidal wave. The Cyprian security guards posted in front of the building issued warnings and brandished their batons, but lacked the numbers to halt the mob even if they had been truly motivated to do so. The protestors smashed through the temporary barricades, trampling them underfoot, and shoved past the outnumbered guards, who offered only perfunctory resistance at best. As nearly as Number One could tell, the guards hadn’t even tried to employ their disruptor pistols. She had to wonder if they had been specifically instructed not to fire on their own people or if they had simply chosen not to of their own volition.
Not that it truly mattered at the moment. She heard the front doors crash open downstairs. Irate voices and threats of violence penetrated the penthouse suite, even from five stories below. Footsteps pounded through the lower levels of the residence, accompanied by the sound of random vandalism. Glass shattered audibly. Furniture was overturned. Rumor or not, the spurious news had obviously incited the crowd, who were eager to take out their anger on the nearest targets available: Number One and her landing party.
Olson’s face went pale. “What now, Commander?”
She swiftly assessed their situation. Without proper weapons or a ready avenue of escape, the best they could hope for was to buy time for help to arrive. Starfleet provided exemplary training in hand-to-hand combat, but that was not going to be sufficient to repel a bloodthirsty mob, even though Number One had excelled in her self-defense classes back at the Academy. At the moment, she would have gladly traded all her awards and citations for a single working laser pistol.
“Bar the door and secure it,” she ordered. “Arm yourselves as best you can.”
Guisio and Jones hopped to immediately. Grunting with effort, they shoved a sofa up against the door to the suite, then piled more furniture onto the makeshift barricade, while Number One retrieved the pair of knives she had hoarded before. Olson cracked open his medkit and took out a laser scalpel and hypospray. His hands shook as he loaded the hypo with what Number One assumed was a powerful tranquilizer or anesthetic.
Not a bad idea, she thought.
Footsteps stampeded up the stairs toward the fifth floor. Number One handed a knife to each of the two security officers. Jones accepted the crude weapon with obvious distaste.
“Maybe if we tell them that it’s not true?” she suggested. “That it’s just a dumb rumor?”
Her partner shook his head. “Doesn’t sound like that crowd’s in the mood to listen to anything, except maybe our skulls cracking.”
Number One had to agree. While she admired Jones’s faith in nonviolent conflict resolution, a crazed mob, inflamed by emotion and egged on by each other, could seldom be reasoned with. She and the others had to assume that they were in mortal jeopardy—and act accordingly. Spotting a fire extinguisher mounted on one wall, she claimed it as a possible means of crowd control. It was that or break off a chair leg to use as a club, and the former made her feel somewhat less like a Vetrian cave woman. She was still representing Starfleet after all.
“We don’t want to hurt or kill anyone if we can avoid it, but I’m ordering you all to defend yourselves to the best of your abilities. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Commander,” Olson said, swallowing hard. He gripped the scalpel in one hand and the hypospray in the other. He stared anxiously at the barricaded door. “I don’t suppose we can make a run for the shuttlecraft?”
“Through a city of enraged Cyprians out for our blood?” Number One shook her head. “The spaceport is kilometers outside the city. I would not rate our chances of success very highly, even assuming we could somehow get past the mob outside.”
As if to prove her point, the first wave of protestors reached the fifth floor and started hammering at the entrance to the suite. The sturdy wooden door shuddered from the impact of insistent bodies throwing themselves against it, the violence of which rattled the furniture propped up against the entrance. Number One found herself pining for the reinforced steel bulkheads and hatches aboard the Enterprise. The Cyprians’ fondness for using wood wherever possible had its downside when it came to home invasions . . .
“Open up!” a hostile voice demanded, while others added further threats and curses to the hubbub. “We’ll teach you Starfleet busybodies to help steal our children!”
Number One did not bother replying. The fact that the nameless speaker apparently expected the landing party to cooperate with the violent mob attacking them was a good indication that the rioters were not thinking rationally at this point. Instead of wasting her breath, she quickly surveyed her surroundings and concluded that the besieged suite offered little shelter once the mob inevitably made it through the door, which left only one option available to her.
“To the roof!” she ordered. “On the double!”
The roof was only slightly more defensible than the penthouse, but at least allowed for the possibility of being airlifted to safety, provided help arrived in time. She snatched her communicator from an end table as the landing party hustled for the roof, just as the door to the suite began to crack alarmingly. Clenched fists and groping fingers reached through the splintering door like the starving hordes on famine-racked Clephron V before the first Federation aid ships arrived. Cyprian faces, contorted with rage, could be glimpsed through the straining door as the weight of the rioters pushed against the barricade. Klingons in full battle mode could not have looked more ferocious.
“They’re in here!” somebody shouted. “Don’t let them get away!”
If only it were that easy, Number One thought.
A spiral staircase, carved from a single tree trunk, naturally, led to a rooftop garden, copiously bedecked with blooming flowers and greenery. The heady floral aroma seemed distinctly at odds with the dire circumstances. Sapprus was aglow with city lights and holographic advertising that all but drowned out the starry night sky. A crescent moon hung above a less occluded sibling. A monorail whooshed by on elevated tracks, so near and yet too far away to do the endangered landing party any good. The tumult below was practic
ally loud enough to be picked up from space. The shouts of the rioters combined into a roar worthy of some gigantic predatory beast, like the semi-mythical dragons of the Kraken Nebula. Number One might have preferred a dragon.
“Secure the door,” she ordered.
The verdant rooftop had less in the way of furnishings than the suite had, but Guisio and Jones hefted a solid wooden bench up against the door to the roof, then set to work sliding some heavy potted plants into place as well. It was a delaying tactic at best, but Number One took advantage of the time they’d bought to set her communicator to the prime minister’s personal frequency. The holographic communications device in the suite was lost to them, but she’d had the foresight to make sure she had the means to contact Flescu’s office directly if necessary.
In theory, at least.
“Envoy House to Prime Minister,” she said sharply. “We are in immediate distress. Please respond.”
To her dismay, her hail went unanswered.
“Envoy House to Prime Minister. Repeat: We are in immediate distress. Emergency assistance is required.”
She moved to the edge of the roof, where only a carved rail stood between her and a five-story drop to the mobbed streets below. Working her way along the perimeter, she located a metal fire escape leading to an alley below, only to discover that another pack of rioters were already scaling the steel steps and ladders toward the roof, eliminating the fire escape as an avenue of retreat. Worse yet, it appeared as though they were only minutes away from having another pack of hostile Cyprians to contend with.
Unless she acted promptly.
Hefting the fire extinguisher she’d commandeered earlier, she twisted the nozzle and let loose a stream of fire-retardant foam against the rioters climbing the fire escape. The pressurized contents of the apparatus sent the belligerent climbers tumbling back down the metal structure while rendering the upper rungs and steps too slick and sudsy to safely navigate. She emptied the extinguisher of its contents, then hurled the empty tank down at the lower landings to further discourage any attempts to scale the side of the building. For a moment, she felt like Victor Hugo’s famous hunchback defending Notre Dame, but, alas, there was no true “Sanctuary!” to be found here at Envoy House.
“No way down, sir?” Olson asked her.
“Not that I can determine.”
Scanning the scene, she searched in vain for some indication that Cyprian security forces were responding to the attack on the building. No emergency vehicles appeared to be converging on the site by ground or air. She heard no sirens or alarms. Dead air greeted her desperate hails. Nobody was picking up.
“Commander?” Olson asked. “What are they saying? Is help on the way?”
“I doubt it.” She lowered her communicator. “Looks like we’re on our own.”
Olson didn’t want to hear it. “But what about the Cyprian authorities? They can’t just abandon us to the mob, can they?”
Number One shrugged. Either the Cyprian police were in sympathy with the rioters or, more likely, nobody in authority, least of all the prime minister, wanted to be seen as siding with Starfleet against the righteous fury of the Cyprian people. Either way, the prospects for a timely rescue were not encouraging.
“I think they just did,” she said.
* * *
“I wondered when you would visit me.”
Soleste remained abed in the recovery ward, but appeared alert and well-rested as Merata entered the chamber, accompanied by Spock, who watched his charge’s every movement carefully. Only days had passed after all since Merata had attacked her sister in the transporter room immediately upon their arrival aboard the Enterprise. Merata had since managed another family reunion without violence; nevertheless, Spock remained on guard, even as he’d agreed to facilitate this meeting at Merata’s request.
As before, they had the recovery room to themselves. Rosha and Junah Mursh were presently recovering in their own guest quarters. After the near-altercation with Junah earlier, Spock had thought it best to limit this encounter to Soleste and Merata alone. Reuniting the two sisters was likely to be fraught enough without adding any additional variables.
“Does it surprise you that I delayed?” Merata replied icily. “When last we met, it ended badly for both of us.”
Spock pondered Merata’s motives. In truth, he was uncertain why the prisoner had finally consented to meet with Soleste. Perhaps her earlier encounter with her mother had somehow inspired this change of heart? He suspected that even Merata was not entirely clear on why had she had come to see Soleste or what she hoped to accomplish.
“Sorry about that,” Soleste said. “The kidnapping and all, I mean. At the time, it seemed smarter to grab you when I could and explain later.”
Merata’s expression darkened in a way that worried Spock. He quietly took a step forward.
“A poor excuse for treachery,” she snarled. “You betrayed my trust and stole my liberty.”
Soleste didn’t deny it. “But you understand now why I did it? Who I really am?”
Merata scrutinized the other woman from the foot of the bed. She frowned as she compared the injured tracker to whatever decade-old memories she retained of her elder sibling. “I recall a girl with two eyes.”
“Yeah. I remember her too,” Soleste said wryly. “Hang on. Let me show you something.” She reached up and unscrewed her ocular implant from its socket. She turned the crystalline device around so that its inner lens was pointed away from her. “Ordinarily, this pricy souvenir projects images directly to my optic nerve, but it has other uses.”
Merata tensed. “As a weapon?”
“More like a scrapbook,” Soleste explained. “To remind me why I kept hunting for you.”
She put the crystal eye in backward, then activated it by blinking her other eye rapidly. A lambent white glow lit up the implant as it projected a holographic recording into the empty air between the two women. Spock was impressed by the clarity of the three-dimensional image, which occupied a sphere approximately thirty-five centimeters in diameter. The Cyprians had clearly made great strides in holographic technology, putting many other civilizations to shame.
Inside the luminous sphere was what appeared to be a “home movie” of a sort. Images of a young girl, whom Spock assumed to be Elzura, playing happily with her family, including her mother, father, older sister, and baby brother, unfolded before his eyes. The girl, who bore scant resemblance to Merata, grinned and laughed and ran barefoot through a grassy field beneath a sunny sky while clutching a plush toy fashioned to resemble some manner of indigenous saurian. A split velvet tongue protruded from the toy’s jaws.
“Forko,” Merata whispered, visibly moved by the images. Unable to look away, she stood transfixed by the illuminated fragments of her lost childhood. Her fingers went involuntarily to her cropped left ear, as though comparing it to the scalloped lobes of the little girl in the hologram, while her other hand toyed once more with the Klingon pendant at her throat. Wide eyes misted noticeably.
“You loved that silly lizard,” Soleste said, one eye aglow. “We found it in the ruins . . . afterward.”
Her sister’s words broke the spell cast by the flickering images. Eyes wet, Merata glared angrily at Soleste. She jerked her hand away from her ear. “Why would you show me this? Those days are long gone. That girl is no more!”
Soleste’s face hardened. Spock could not help comparing the scarred, careworn Cyprian with the carefree older sister glimpsed in the recording. Soleste’s transformation was arguably less dramatic than Elzura’s, but it was striking in its own right. A decade tracking her lost sister across the quadrant had aged Soleste in ways beyond the merely chronological.
“You didn’t like that?” she said acerbically. “All right. Let me show you something else.”
She blinked and the idyllic family scene was replaced by a much more brutal glimpse into the past. Security camera footage captured the same little girl alone amidst a scene of fresh d
evastation. Soot and dust and tears streaked the face of the child, who was still recognizably Elzura. Surrounded by smoking rubble, she crouched warily behind a pile of charred debris. Smoke and flames flickered at the periphery of the image. A still and lifeless limb jutted out from beneath a collapsed wall or rooftop. More bodies could be glimpsed around the fringes of the scene. Small fingers clutched a jagged piece of torn metal as Elzy stared wide-eyed at an approaching menace. Her whole body shook with fear or anger or some combination thereof.
The attack on the mining complex, Spock realized. Obviously.
Long shadows preceded the arrival of a squadron of Klingon soldiers. The raiders sported no insignias and wore civilian garb rather than uniforms, but their military bearing and gleaming disruptor rifles betrayed their true affiliation. The soldiers advanced confidently through the ruins, no doubt conducting a cleanup operation, until they spotted the small survivor crouching in the wreckage. Elzura did not wait for the Klingons to threaten her before going on the offensive. Grabbing a fist-sized chunk of rubble with her free hand, she hurled it at the enemy.
The crude missile smacked against the chest of the lead Klingon, whom Spock now recognized as Krunn, albeit ten years younger than the grizzled commander of the Fek’lhr. The blow had little impact on Krunn, but provoked an angry snarl from another soldier who turned his rifle toward Elzy and took aim. Just as he fired, however, Krunn turned and knocked the barrel of the rifle aside so that the other Klingon’s shot missed its target. An emerald pulse vaporized a piece of mangled equipment while leaving Elzy unharmed for the moment.
The foiled shooter protested angrily, but Krunn barked back at him. Brushing off the dust from the thrown fragment, Krunn thrust his own rifle into the arms of a subordinate and drew nearer to the cornered child. Grinning wolfishly, he held out his hand as though trying to entice a feral sehlat from hiding, while the other Klingons looked on with varying degrees of impatience and amusement. Backed up against a collapsed wall, Elzy had nowhere to run.