The rally is about to start.
It's been a good couple of days, almost like shore leave all over again. Now they haven't had to go through all the boring rigmarole of preparing the explosives and scouting out the entrances and making plans for a getaway, it's been so much more fun. Stripes has gone up to the repair yards and come back down raving about the upgrades to the engine. The engineers hadn't been content with just repairing the so-called 'fault'; they'd thrown in a whole cache of new pieces, and the engine had just sat there and purred like a cat in the sunshine. 'Top-hole job, old boy! Absolutely top-hole!'
They've done the whole tourist thing, staying together for safety of course, and Traan has some bloody gorgeous beaches; white sand, great food, cold drinks in icy glasses, and the weather – bloody hell, the weather has been fabulous. Likewise the Sashwe, especially once he'd got clued up about their gender; though there'd been one memorable all-night party when the lines had blurred along with everything else, and even wide awake he'd forgotten the agony of existence for a few precious, fleeting hours.
They haven't forgotten the necessity for vigilance, but so far there has only been one moment to give him concern: in a crowded bazaar both he and Paw thought they caught a glimpse of a tall figure with unkempt black hair around distinctive, bony features. Leaving the others secure and alert, the two of them had gone hunting, slipping through the crowds with silent, deadly purpose, ready and eager to kill if they could corner their prey in some quiet location. The trail had finally gone cold, however, and they didn't dare leave the rest of the team alone and unprotected for long, even in such a public place. By way of consolation they'd bought a piece of sticky cake from a nearby market-trader and shared bites of it, licking and nipping each other's sticky fingers as they trotted back to the others. They might not have been able to find the bugger, but they'd bloody well given him a right royal scare, as well as garnering more proof for the Section that the Nausicaans are indeed present and probably involved in this somehow – whether on their own account, or as cat's-paws in some more sinister game, remains to be discovered. Maybe that's something the team will be able to look into afterwards. For once the job's done, they won't leave immediately; only the guilty flee the scene of the crime.
Not a bad line to end on, all told, though he acknowledges a little regretfully that it would have been nice to have been on the 'twisting' end of a garrotte. Just by way of letting someone know what it had felt like from the 'strangling' end.
Now, at last, he's alone, just one among the cheerful crowds jostling for entrance into the hall. With a fleeting grin he'd picked out a flowery orange shirt from a market stall that morning; its almost fluorescent decoration stood out, even among the clothing of a people who believed that colour was there to be made the most of. Hell, it was so gaudy even Trip might have thought it was too much, but the seller had kissed him, and given it to him for half the marked price – because of his smile, she said. (She'd even thrown in a matching scarf, so that he's been able to return the one he borrowed back from Paw, which – despite Stripes's claims – is really not his style.)
Her perfume had been nice. Familiar, too, which was why he'd smiled, and maybe why she gave him the bargain price on the shirt. It had reminded him of vanilla and musk, and more recently of his mouth slipping across smooth naked iridescent skin; maybe in his dreams, though the world now is little more than a dream in which he moves with the quiet and absolute certainty of success.
The hall is already crowded, and the air conditioning is struggling to cope. Chairs are not provided; the audience seat themselves on terraces of cool marble arranged in a semi-circle in front of the stage, laughing and chattering in the anticipation of a good debate to come. The temperature is gradually rising, but the cheerful Sashwe joke about it and fan themselves with printed programmes and any loose items of clothing. Free drinks are distributed, clinking with ice; his has a slice of that sour fruit in it, but he downs it anyway and bites into the fruit last of all, feeling the juice of it run down his chin onto his bare chest. He is glad, more glad than he could possibly have expressed, that he is not, after all, to unleash hell on these good people.
You don't get rid of us that easily, Loo-tenant.
He laughs aloud, and the people around him laugh too, even though they have no idea what he finds so amusing. A little girl two rows in front of him looks up and giggles. Maybe her hair is platinum-fair in the sunlight; he no longer notices the owlish look of astonishment or the dappled, iridescent skin. Maybe in a moment he'll look across the auditorium and see Pard. The lightness in his head says it isn't impossible.
His idea had to be run past the team, of course, and for all that there had been some resistance, he knew they'd accept it in the end. The parting from them a while earlier had been carefully nonchalant. Judging by the prickle of awareness at the back of his neck, Paw had shadowed him for a while, making sure that nobody else was doing the same, but there had been no trouble. A sense of peace still hangs around him from his confession; there can be no absolution, he's not simple enough to believe that possible, but maybe acceptance is close enough. No, more than acceptance: the tale of his pain has been stored away in a brain that never forgets and never forgives, and if ever Harris grows careless, Leo will be there to ensure that Jag is avenged.
As for the marks which both he and Paw had borne after their little settling of accounts, those had been accepted with hardly more than one or two raised eyebrows. It seems that it had been expected that some such altercation would take place eventually, and since both combatants survived with their full complement of limbs and organs, and have evidently come to some understanding, nothing more needs to be said. A contrast to Captain Archer's attitude on the occasion of a similar dispute between a certain Major Hayes and Lieutenant Reed, but then the difference between Leo's style of command and Jonathan Archer's has always been marked.
The event starts forty minutes late. Among all their other virtues, the Sashwe don't sweat it about minor matters like punctuality. Jag doesn't care. Invited to sing an Earth song, he regales the company with a raucous rendition of the tale of the 'four-and-twenty virgins who came down from Inverness', and it goes down a storm; in vague deference to the presence of children he uses the slightly politer version and switches the UT off fairly frequently, and nobody here has the faintest idea of where or indeed what Inverness might be, even if they'd been able to understand the words. Which it's probably just as well they can't, even if they are incredibly broad-minded. The more gifted mimics among them quickly pick up the words of the chorus and sing it with him, and after a couple of verses almost half the hall is bawling, 'If you don't get shagged on a Saturday night, You'll never get shagged at all...' He suspects from the grins around him that even if they don't speak English vernacular, at least some of them have more than an idea what he's singing about.
Good job he never did find that Malcolm Reed, actually. Stuffy git would have thrown a fit.
But the applause for his impromptu performance is interrupted by the arrival of the compère for the evening's entertainment, who welcomes everybody and hopes that they will all have a wonderful time. Now they have to welcome their guest speaker, Isahd Bheval, and please, everybody, listen to what he has to say and there'll be plenty of time afterwards to ask questions.
The violently pink curtains are drawn back with a swish. Bheval is seated alone in a chair on the stage. He's younger than Jag had expected, and has none of the air of a megalomaniacal xenophobe. He's grinning in anticipation, like most of the audience, and stands up to step forward to the microphone. He has no notes; presumably he has his arguments off by heart, and trusts to his own wit to carry him through the noisy debate sure to follow. All in all, he doesn't look like an unpleasant sort of bloke at all, and as for his distrust of Starfleet, well, that isn't all that unreasonable, is it? After all, look who's been sent to sit right opposite him, with orders to kill.
So it's a pity.
Still.
Jag sits back and picks up one of the printed sheets, fanning himself with it as though overcome by the heat, which by now is considerable. He takes off his scarf, and opens the last remaining button of the gaudy floral shirt, so that the long silken panels of it fall loose around his thighs. Under its slithering softness his hand slides into his trouser pocket, and his fingers close around the familiar shape of an EM-33 – another of the collection of weapons that he kept as trophies around the freighter.
You don't have to compensate for particle drift, Hoshi.
Something is wrong on stage. People are rushing in from the sides, converging on Bheval; talking, gesticulating. He looks bewildered. A tall Human with ebony skin and massive presence is speaking to him rapidly.
The audience are taken aback. First puzzlement and then apprehension rush across the auditorium like a chilly wind; people are looking around them, pulling their children close.
He can't see Pard yet. Maybe in a minute.
They are surrounding Bheval, turning him away.
With a swift, fluid movement Jag rises to his feet. His arm is levelled, as steady as it had ever been during phase pistol practice on board Enterprise, the pistol aimed unerringly.
– allow for particle drift, like the old EM-33's –
There's a tumble of chestnut hair in the crowd on stage. At this distance he can't see the colour of her eyes, green and brown-flecked like pebbles in a stream-bed, but he can feel them on the gaudy shirt and the bared chest in the middle of it. She's good. Bloody good. Maybe better than he is himself, and Leo must understand just how good she is, or he'd never have agreed to this.
Pure adrenaline is thundering through his veins. Every breath is more precious than the one before it. He loves the feel of the pistol in his hands, the lingering tartness of the fruit in his mouth, the brightness and colour of the hall. Being alive is the most wonderful feeling in the world.
Squeeze, don't snatch, but she'd already know that–
His shot and hers are virtually simultaneous. He hasn't allowed for particle drift. His shot misses, and maybe it's just coincidence that it passes just above the little crowd on stage and hits the boarding at the back, bursting it into flame.
Her shot doesn't.
The impact is shocking. It hurls him backwards. He lands among a parcel of screaming Sashwe, and sprawls there, watching the pinpoint of darkness at the very apex of the ceiling sweep down towards him, growing huge and all-enveloping. He wants to breathe, but the pain won't let him. He's done with breathing, anyway.
Pard?
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