Chapter 4 – Allez
Both Voyager and the Gettysburg had settled into their respective orbits around the small, as-yet nameless, planetoid whose presence in the binary system had escalated the hostilities between its two cultures into near-total war.
"Doesn't look like much from here," Harry mused as Asil pulled the rogue body up on the main view screen. "Just a hunk of rock."
"Contrary to its unassuming visual properties, Commander, it contains the ninth-largest cumulative depository of valuable ore and commercial-grade minerals ever discovered," the Chief Ops Officer informed her XO, and those present on the bridge in general. "The second-largest, were one to calculate exploitable minerals per cubic foot of planetary mass. The only comparable body found to have more …"
"Fascinating," Tom interrupted Asil's recital, politely but resolutely. "But I'm sure that Admiral Janeway is aware of the details from her briefing materials. What I would like to know, though, is whether or not our long-range sensors are affected by the subspace anomaly, and whether it could impede our ability to detect incoming traffic."
Janeway gave him an amused glance.
"Hiding behind me to escape another Vulcan lecture?" she whispered to Tom as she leaned over from the First Officer's chair, which she had happily made her own following Harry's generous offer. "Clever, Captain, very clever. We'll turn you into a diplomat yet."
"Negative, sir," Asil confirmed, oblivious to the amused interplay between her superior officers. "We are now sufficiently far removed from the anomaly that the effects we observed when we rendezvoused with the Gettysburg are no longer relevant."
"Good," Tom replied. "Glad to hear it. But do keep an eye on the thing and what it does to our instruments; Gallagher says it is expanding at an unpredictable rate."
Turning to Janeway, he said, "Ready, Admiral?"
"Whenever you are, Captain. I've been looking forward to being back on the one and only Delta Flyer."
…..
The Flyer's descent into the atmosphere of Denaros was as smooth as any other approach Janeway remembered, and she congratulated herself once more on her idea to ask Tom to pilot this, of all the shuttles onboard.
"I had forgotten how beautiful she is," she remarked, lightly patting the console before her. "And you've kept her in good shape."
"I happen to know a first-rate engineer," Tom retorted, albeit with little of his customary humour now. He was supremely conscious of the fact that Kathryn had used the prospect of a spot of flying to get him to agree to leave Voyager despite his misgivings, and was a bit resentful that she didn't seem to feel in the least guilty about it. Well, at least with Harry in charge and Asil to back him up, the ship would be in reasonably good hands for the next few hours.
He adjusted the instruments for atmospheric flight and entered the approach coordinates provided by the Denarian authorities for their landing site at the capital, Takana.
"Whoa. What by the song of the Pleiades is that?"
Arno Schmidt's voice at the secondary tactical station bore a mixture of awe and horror as the view screen filled with the sight Tom had been dreading: Kyven, the lost island continent of Denaros.
The place of ashes.
But what he and B'Elanna had seen on the small holoviewer in their quarters paled in comparison to the devastation that now stretched before them, filling the Flyer's view screen with a relentless onslaught of … nothing.
An entire horizon of nothing.
Endless stretches of brown or blackened earth, covered and uncovered by swirling clouds of grey dust. Geographical formations rendered barely distinguishable from one another in a monochromatic palette of death and destruction. Not even charred trees remained; an eerie flatness had come to this part of Denaros, unrelieved by even the occasional hill or mountain.
No evidence remained of humanoid habitation, or of the cities that had once graced the continent with their soaring spires, alight with the dreams and ambitions of their builders. No outlines remained even to indicate where they might have been. All that had been spared were the lakes and rivers that dotted and criss-crossed the wasteland, glinting with almost obscene blue cheer in the midday sun.
"That, Ensign, is the effect of the Scourge – the weapon the Talari created and used to bring the war to an end. The thing that finally convinced the Denarians that rape and mutilation were getting old, and that peace talks might be a good thing."
Tom's voice was grim and toneless, discouraging of further inquiries. He exchanged brief glances with his Chief Security Officer, Mike Ayala, whom he had brought to remain on the Flyer in the event the unthinkable happened to their little delegation on the ground. Ayala, a man of few words at the best of times, seemed to agree that this place required silence. He simply shook his head, lack of comprehension clearly written across his face.
If there was to be a sound here, Tom thought, it would be an elegiac tune or even just a few discordant notes, scratched out on a violin with broken strings, or the atonal wailing of a single voice. Something mournful, to echo from empty hills before being lost to the wind.
Janeway, too, sat mute and stricken in her seat for the long minutes the Flyer spent gliding over the ash-strewn remnants of Kyven. She found her voice when the greener shores of Denaros' main landmass appeared, but even clearing her throat failed to remove the hoarseness.
"I suppose that's why the Denarians dictated our entry point, and that flight path. They wanted us to see this."
"A picture can speak a thousand words," Tom agreed softly as he prepared the Flyer for landing at the small space port in the centre of Denaros' capital, Takana.
Janeway's resolve was returning into her voice now, underlaid by something else. Anger?
"Yes, and that same picture can also overwhelm you, influence the way you think, and close your mind to other possibilities. There was no objective reason or need for us to approach Takana from that direction. We were directed here for a purpose. There are two sides to this story, and I will not be so easily manipulated by one of them."
Tom shot her an undefinable look.
"If you can move past this, however you do it, you're stronger than I am, Admiral."
He refrained from adding what he felt so very tempted to say: But I suppose we always knew that.
…..
The Denarians were much like the many other humanoid races that seemed to dominate both the Alpha and the Delta Quadrants: a little shorter and stockier than most, hairless and with nasal ridges that gave them a hawk-like appearance.
The small group that had met them appeared to be dominated by one particular individual, a male, whose face was wreathed in what Tom supposed was a smile - although it could just as easily have been a baring of teeth, in a ritual challenge of some sort.
It was clear that the Denarians' contact with humans – or other races besides their enemies, the Talari - had been limited, and they stared openly at Janeway, Tom and Arno Schmidt, the burly security officer. Tom's height seemed to cause them some discomfort, and he found himself being given a wide berth.
The humans' hair in particular seemed a source of something akin to morbid fascination. Janeway's auburn bob drew special attention, and Schmidt felt compelled to step forward and clear his throat in a rather threatening manner when one of their hosts reached out to touch it. The man withdrew his hand quickly and dropped back a few steps, chastised if not embarrassed.
The Federation representatives were ushered inside a red-painted building with an ornate, blue-tiled roof; several of the tiles seemed damaged but it was clear from the proportions of the building that it was a ceremonial facility, designed to impress. The vestibule held a sculpture that looked like it might have been a fountain, although there was no evidence of it having recently had water in it.
The rooms and corridors were built on a Denarian scale; Tom had to duck repeatedly in order to avoid banging his head on various entranceways. As he looked around, he could not help but notice that what there was of attempted splendor was faded and old. There were cracks in two of the walls that no one had bothered to repair – earthquake? seismic shocks from the destruction of Kyven? - and what textiles were in evidence seemed threadbare and worn. After thirty years of war, Tom concluded, even the halls of power would take a beating.
The all-male Denarian delegation was headed by the Union's President, a middle-aged professorial-looking man who introduced himself as Karon. His hand formed a fist, which he placed over the part of his chest that in humans would contain the heart, and bowed slightly in what appeared to be the standard Denarian greeting. The men surrounding him gave off, in their carefully measured bows, that particular air of superior disdain Tom had often found in those closely associated with power - a look designed to project the bearer's importance onto a world inclined to perceive only the leader. He immediately decided to make a point of ignoring them to the extent possible, as he was certain they would him.
Only one other individual in the room struck Tom as worthy of attention, a man of clearly military bearing and an expression that struck him as vaguely sinister – cold eyes above a tightly clenched jaw. How much of this impression was the result of the unfamiliar constellation of the Denarian facial features was difficult to tell, though, and Tom resolved to keep an open mind despite his unease in the man's presence.
Until he was introduced: Sector Marshall Qorath, Supreme Commander of the Denarian Expeditionary Forces.
Tom tapped Janeway on the shoulder, and whispered in her ear, "I'm assuming that's the guy who'd be ordering those raids on the Talari colonies."
She nodded her acknowledgment, and whispered back, "Starfleet intel agrees with you. But unfortunately we have no choice as to who we talk to here."
Her attention went immediately into repeating the gestures of greeting they had just witnessed, with Tom and Schmidt following suit. Finally, the formalities dispensed with, she and Tom were seated in the middle of a large rectangular table, while Schmidt and Cameron took up position behind them, backs to the wall, looking very alert - hands on phasers, eyes continually and unobtrusively casting around the room. The game was on.
Three interminable hours later, and despite his earlier grief for Denaros' lost continent, Tom found himself overwhelmed by the desire to bash in the teeth of several of the Denarian politicians, who seemed to have polished and buffed the memory of the devastation into some form of empty, grandiose posturing for Janeway's benefit. If they had lost loved ones to the inferno, it did not show in their eyes, which reflected little emotion other than well-ingrained hatred for their enemy, the Talari.
But the bottom line – carefully and skillfully uncovered by Janeway as she peeled back one by one the layers of rehearsed rhetoric and rote talking points - was this: Denaros was willing to talk, but no Talari would be permitted to set foot on Denaros, on pain of death.
And there it stood, until Janeway slid the PADD, on which she had apparently been doodling, in Tom's direction, turning it ever so slightly so he could see the reading pane.
Time to offer that Starfleet vessel, it read.
Tom had remained silent throughout the previous hours, content – no, that wasn't right - resigned to watch the slow-motion dance of words, and to listen to the endless litany of Talari perfidy. Since he was well aware of Janeway's idea of where the negotiations would take place, he had been content to wait and see how she would make it happen.
Now he knew, and it took all of Will Riker's lectures about poker faces to keep him from snorting in appreciation of her tactics. Not a professional diplomat, my ass.
He leaned back casually and took a sip of water; even an amateur would know that it wouldn't do to take action immediately. Someone might have spotted him glancing at the PADD and deduce that he was receiving instructions. He made a show of listening to a few more repetitive and unconstructive interventions, a re-run of the theme how equally inappropriate it would be for a delegation of Denarians to go to Talar, as it would be for any living Talari to set foot on Denaros.
Finally, when he decided that enough time had passed and he couldn't stand the bullshit any longer, the Captain of Voyager put on his best blue-eyed, blonde pilot mien and, in an utterly disingenuous stage whisper, made the suggestion Janeway obviously felt could not come from her directly.
"Couldn't Voyager serve as neutral ground, Admiral?" He knew she wanted the Gettysburg, but leaving some room for additional negotiation didn't seem like a bad idea.
Janeway shot him a grateful look, and picked up the ball, all hesitant surprise.
"What an interesting suggestion, Captain! What about it, gentlemen? That could be the answer we have been looking for. And of course, I know Voyager well, from a previous mission. She would be perfect."
Now, Tom Paris considered himself a reluctant and mediocre diplomat, but he knew he was a pretty good gambling man – some of his friends, like a certain Talaxian former chef, might even have called him a promising con artist. On Voyager, he had rejoiced in a long and clandestine – not to mention lucrative – career of getting people to part with their rations, and once thing he had learned with absolute certainty: a sure thing inevitably arouses suspicion. The bauble most securely grabbed is always the one that seems to be about to be snatched away …
"On the other hand, Admiral, I'm not sure that either of our ships can accommodate two delegations of this size. "
He gestured vaguely around the room, and the two dozen or so functionaries.
"And besides, based on what I've heard here, the Talari will almost certainly refuse the idea. I'm sorry I even mentioned it."
Janeway opened her mouth for a fraction of a second, but whatever she was planning on saying was forestalled by the President, who glared at Tom and his audacity to speak out against what had already become a formal proposal of the Federation negotiator. His response made it clear that he was not responding to a mere minion.
"A wise solution, Admiral. I am sure we can make an acceptable proposal concerning the size of our delegation, despite your …. assistant's … misgivings. Of course, Voyager may not be the ideal ship. And as for our Talari enemies …"
And so it went, until Denaros sank below the horizon in a ball of blue fire and Tom was certain that his eyeballs would roll back into his head, where they would turn into one of Neelix's gelatinous, leola-infused specialties and melt his brain.
…..
The main difference between the Denarians and the Talari, to Tom's anthropologically untrained eye, was that the Talari skin tone tended a little more to the greenish, and their eyes seemed to come only in varying shades of grey. As far as he could tell, there was a bigger genetic difference between him and Harry Kim, not to mention between himself and his wife.
But maybe there was a point in that. Weren't the most vicious battles in human history fought between tribes and peoples that were virtually indistinguishable from one another, except in small manners of speech or slant of eye, noticeable only to themselves? Or people that looked entirely the same, but disagreed on which slightly nuanced version of some holy book or other was The One To Be Followed, to the exclusion of all else?
Of course, any differences, real or imagined, could be infinitely exploited and exaggerated when the stakes were made of latinum, and even the most familiar face could be made to look alien when the masks of battle where put in place.
Negotiations with the Talari, on a world just one day away at warp six, proved little different in terms of the obstinacy of protocol. With one remarkable exception: they wanted Janeway alone. No accompaniment. No security officers, no aide de camp.
"Just the envoy of the Federation. That's who we agreed to talk to. That is the only person who will be admitted into the presence of the Supreme Talon, Naldar."
The gaudily dressed protocol officer made his pronouncement without the slightest trace of an apology, not even bothering to put on the kind of supercilious smile one could hang personal resentment on. It was what it was: a statement of fact.
Janeway and Tom exchanged glances - hers carefully neutral, his barely banking a fire of suspicion and anger. She shook her head ever-so-slightly in warning, before he could give voice to his misgivings.
"If that is the only way to meet the Talon, I accept. But my men will stay here on Talar."
The representative of the Talon, the High Council of Talar, gave Tom, Schmidt and Cameron a measured look. Up and down Tom's tall figure the silvery eyes travelled, narrowing briefly at the sight of Tom's phaser and the fingers curled slightly around it. Schmidt's slightly pugilistic stance likewise did not go unnoticed.
"Two may stay. But they will be unarmed."
Janeway put her hand on Tom's arm to still him, and cast another warning glance, this time at Schmidt who had unconsciously dropped into a fighting stance. She barely glanced over her shoulders.
"Allow me a moment with the Captain."
The Talari official nodded curtly.
"Tom …" Janeway started to say.
"I don't like it, and I've been made responsible for your safety, Admiral. The only way I will agree to let you do this is if they let us have signals access. Comms and transporters, so we can get you out. No dampeners, no blackouts."
He stared at her unblinking, blue eyes boring into grey.
Kathryn Janeway knew very well that Tom Paris had a major stubborn streak to match her own; she had, in fact, encountered it far more often than the single demotion she had given him in the Delta Quadrant would suggest. But this time, she knew, he had both a point and the authority to make it stick. Nonetheless she tried to glare at him on principle, only to feel the resolve in her eyes weaken at the genuine concern she saw in his.
"Fine," she grated, and turned back to the Talari.
"I accept your terms, provided my ship is permitted to remain in direct contact with me at all times. We will send one of the men back." She nodded at Cameron, who tapped his comm badge and requested beam-out from Ayala on the Flyer.
The protocol officer inclined his head. "Acceptable. Understand that we mean you or your men no harm, Envoy. Our rules are the result of … unhappy experiences. Your men may visit our city while you hold council with the High Talon."
…..
And so, an hour later, with Ayala and Cameron keeping watch from orbit, Tom Paris and Arno Schmidt wandered the streets of the Talari capital, Takana. A small coterie of officials was trailing discreetly behind them, ostensibly to ensure that they would not get lost. Or, as Schmidt put it, "to make sure we don't poke our noses in stuff we ain't supposed to."
The city seemed functional, if painfully plain, with only the occasional grace note in the form of a small garden or a fountain to offer a momentary respite from the relentless, crumbling gray of the stone and the reddish, rusting metal buildings. Tom checked with Ayala every five minutes or so, to ensure the line to Janeway remained open and the transporter lock intact.
The further away from the state capitol they walked, the more run-down the streets and buildings appeared to get. And then, one more corner turned, a wall rounded, and a sight stretched before them that made Tom swallow. A sea of improvised dwellings, ranging from tents to metal structures barely held together by rivets and bad welds, dirt roads leaving a layer of greyish-brown dust everywhere. At one end sat what appeared to be a number of derelict shuttles, left to rust where they had come to rest and converted into makeshift homes.
"Those'll get awfully hot during the summer," Schmidt whispered, his voice hoarse at the memory of other metal walls, made furnaces in the Mokan sun.
Tom turned to one of the officials who were following them, and waved her to come closer.
"What is this place?" he asked softly, already knowing the answer.
"This is where those who were displaced by the Denarian raids on our colonies have come to be safe," the woman said, her voice a curious mixture of resignation and anger. But did he also detect a measure of contempt, at the weakness of those trapped here, in her eyes?
"How long have they been here? I thought those raids happened years ago. Shouldn't some effort be made to reintegrate them into your society?"
"Some of the children who came in the early days have grown up here," she replied, avoiding the second half of his question with shifting eyes. "But the raids did not end for many turns of our sun. New waves of refugees arrived, time after time."
"Until the Scourge," one of the other officials interjected fiercely. "Those bloody murderers needed to be shown a lesson before they would finally stop preying on our most vulnerable. Glory to Marshall Talith and her forces."
"Talith?"
The molten continent of Denaros came with a name. A name that tasted like ashes in Tom's mouth.
He swallowed in reflexive revulsion, but his attention was soon caught by the scene before him. The camp's inhabitants of the camp moved around as if in slow motion, looking for a purpose among the scraps of what they had lost. Many of the adult males Tom could see were missing limbs; the women's heads were bowed, their eyes dead to memories not spoken.
Dozens of children were sitting on the dirt roads, on crates or on boxes, staring listlessly at the large cooking instruments where their parents prepared what appeared to be communal meals. Itself a primitive ritual, the stirring of large kettles should have been out of place in a society capable of space flight, yet to Tom seemed oddly appropriate as testimony to the cost of war. Another decade or two, and once-proud Talar, like its crumbling sister world, would sink back into the middle ages – of that he had little doubt.
"Why is the camp so full, if some have been here for years? Can't you integrate them back into the Talari population?"
The younger of the female officials, whose name they had not been given, explained as she would to a child – although her words sounded carefully chosen, rehearsed.
"They wish to remain here until they can return to their homes. Moving back to the city would be to accept defeat."
Ah, there it was. The camp was a visible reminder of Denarian perfidy, designed to stoke enthusiasm for the war the Talari authorities still thought they could win. A recruitment poster for the Talari defence forces was prominently displayed on one of the larger walls, probably the only employment option available to the refugees from the colonies. Tom suppressed a shudder of distaste, and tried hard to swallow his anger.
But the children.
The lack of hope in their eyes, an emptiness beyond despair, moved him more than he would have thought possible even a few years ago. Tom could not help but compare what he saw here to the blue-eyed sparkle that greeted him every morning, when his own daughter flung herself on her parents' bed, squealing for them to start the day and let it reveal its new wonders to her. He doubted that any child here was ever eager to wake up. What was there to learn?
"What …" his voice failed him for a moment, and the woman looked up sharply. "What do they do all day?"
Their escorts shrugged in unison.
"They wait."
"For what?" Schmidt's voice was barely audible.
The female official turned to him, her voice schooled into a well-rehearsed enthusiasm. "For the day when our glorious forces bring us the victory Talar deserves, and they can return to their homes."
Tom rolled his eyes, and swore under his breath. She had practically recited the slogan off the recruitment posters.
"There are no schools for them here?"
The male frowned at him. "They learned what they needed to when they were driven from their homes. Their parents will teach them the necessary skills. The schools in the capital are full, and cannot absorb their numbers."
Tom shook his head in disbelief. So while they waited for some distant resolution to a conflict not of their making, the children sat - with nothing to do but learn the lessons of hate.
An incongruous thought came to Tom's mind. It might not offer any solutions, but …. He leaned down to Schmidt.
"You play soccer, Arno?"
The ensign stared up at this apparent non sequitur, not quite sure what to think of the sudden digression.
"I'm German," he shrugged, as if that offered a good enough explanation.
When he saw Tom's uncomprehending stare, he elaborated somewhat more helpfully, "It's in my DNA. Every four years, when the Federation Cup comes around, the people in my part of Earth go nuts. Like going home to spawn, or Vulcan pon farr. Me, I played on the street every night until dark. Sometimes beyond, and then my Mom would haul me inside by my ears."
Tom grinned in understanding, nodded, and tapped his comm badge.
"Paris to Ayala. Mike, can you do me a favour? Replicate a soccer ball, charge it to my account, and beam to my location?"
Long since used to odd requests coming from the man who was now his Captain, Ayala exchanged a quick glance with Cameron, shook his head only a token amount, and headed for the replicator.
"One soccer ball, please," he said to the machine, polite as always and managing to keep the question mark out of his voice. He had heard of the game, of course; apparently his ancestors used to be big on it decades ago. But on the colonies where Mike Ayala had grown up, fields were for plowing, and there had been no time for games. These days, on the holodeck, he preferred Parrissees Squares or Velocity, when he wasn't sparring with members of his security team.
The computer's voice shook him out of his brief reflections.
"Specify Adidas, Nike, Slazenger, ChomBurton…" Chomburton? Ayala spat on the Flyer's floor, certain its owner would forgive him. Did these bastards have their fingers in everything?
"Adidas, or whatever the first one you said was."
"Specify antique, modern, Pele, Jubal, World Cup edition, Olympic …"
Ayala rolled his eyes. He was beginning to understand why the Captain regularly punched the replicator when he was asking for something plain and simple.
"Adidas, antique. Circa …" Well, it was Tom Paris who was asking for this curio. "Circa 1996."
The sound the machine made when materializing the requested item was unlike anything Ayala had ever heard coming from it – a distinct plop, followed by a thud. No wait – that was the ball he'd ordered, rolling out of the replicator and falling on the floor, where it made a few intriguing little bounces before finally disappearing under the tactical console.
Ayala was beginning to see the appeal, even if he couldn't for the life of him figure out what his Captain could possibly want with the thing.
He got down on his knees and retrieved it, cursing slightly when his fingers inevitably became wedged between the top of the ball and the bottom of the metal console cover. Noting that five minutes had passed, he asked Cameron to check on Admiral Janeway's bio signs, comm badge and transporter lock before heading to the transporter platform. All clear, the response came.
Still shaking his head, a little more vigorously now, the big Lieutenant spent a couple of minutes trying to get the cursed object to refrain from rolling off the platform. How did the Captain manage to keep the Flyer so perfectly level? Or did he? Next time Tom Paris operated the helm, he'd surreptitiously place a round object on a flat surface for a private little test …. His task finally accomplished, Ayala practically lunged for the controls to commence dematerialization before the ball could change its mind again.
On the dusty outskirts of the Talari capital, the tingle of the transport offered little warning given the size of the object that was being materialized. And since it arrived at roughly the height of his comm badge, Tom didn't quite manage to catch the ball as it practically popped out of thin air, and started bouncing on the arid field.
Their Talari escorts gave a little gasp of scandalized surprise and dismay. Different sounds altogether emanated from among the small handful of children, whose eyes had been trained on the aliens for want of anything else to look. Things materializing out of thin air were new; things that bounced, apparently, were too. Together, what they had seen was a wonder.
The squeals of astonishment quickly turned into expressions of awe, as Schmidt nonchalantly stepped up to the ball and started kicking it into the air, keeping it aloft for a minute or two while alternating between his foot, his chest, his knee and his head. Finally he lobbed it to Tom, who did one or two fancy kicks himself before shooting it back to Schmidt.
It took less than a minute for the first child, a little girl with a fresh bruise across her cheek that her life on Talar included remnants of the violence the displaced had fled, to slide off the piece of old machinery she had been squatting on. As she drew closer, Tom casually kicked the ball over in her direction, and made a face as if in apology.
"Sorry – I missed. Can you kick that back to me, please?" he asked plaintively.
An hour later, their uniform jackets and turtlenecks long since discarded, sweat staining their tank tops, an incipient sunburn reddening their shoulders and grey dust caking everything, Tom and Schmidt disentangled themselves from the swarm of children now clamouring for their attention and for the ball. Immediately the shouts went up for the game to continue.
"Sorry, gang – we've got stuff to do. But you know what – you can keep this."
He handed the ball to the little girl who had received his first kick, with a solemn bow. Her face a study in stunned disbelief, she clutched the ball to her chest – a treasure beyond her wildest dreams. The other children looked on, a little enviously, but Tom was pleased to see that no one made a move to take the ball from her.
"Let's play some more!" one cried, and a grin split the little girl's face as she bounced the ball – her ball now – into the little crowd. She would share her joy, such as it was.
"You think they'll figure out how to play soccer without someone teaching them, sir?" Schmidt was huffing a little as he picked up his clothes and shook them, looking after the children who were ignoring them now in favour of the resurgent game.
"Nope. But if we're lucky, they'll figure out how to play. Something. Anything. And I'm sure eventually someone will come up with rules. Ideally something that doesn't include the offside trap."
Tom used his own jacket to wipe off his face and gave Schmidt a little glare, for trying to call him out when he had been in a perfect position to put the ball between the two crates that had served as goal posts. Offside, my ass.
"Never thought I'd be glad they made these things grey," he mused as he looked at the smears on his uniform sleeve.
"Tell you what, Arno. Get Ayala to send down some more balls, while I have a chat with our hosts. Hand them out among the kids as you see fit, but not just to the big ones. Learning how to share could be a useful thing in these parts, and the kids at least seem to be ready for it."
He turned to their escorts, who had taken up watch beside the improvised pitch, unsure of how to deal with the humans' apparent descent into madness. The male was watching the old fuel drums that had served as goal posts with distaste, while the older female stared at Tom's now sweat-stained uniform distastefully.
The younger of the two women, however, bore an expression of thoughtful respect as she informed Tom that discussions in the capitol appeared to be coming to a close and they should, in fact, head back to rejoin their Head of Delegation.
"That was a good thing you did," she whispered for Tom's ears only, holding his eyes with hers for the barest of moments.
As coincidence would have it, it was at that precise moment that both Tom's and Schmidt's comm badges chirped.
"Janeway to away team, please return to the meeting point. I believe we have a deal."
…..
Good to his word, Tom handed Kathryn a cup of coffee almost as soon as they had boarded the Flyer.
"I may only be a marginal success as an EA, especially when thwarted by higher forces, but a promise is a promise," he said, before turning to replicate for himself and Schmidt the drink Picard had offered him a few weeks earlier. "However late it may be fulfilled."
Kathryn inhaled the rich aroma reverently. "You kept my recipe!"
"Colombian Supremo, half dark, half medium roast," he nodded, before wrinkling his nose in distaste at the electrolyte-friendly concoction in his own hand. He took a dutiful, healthful drink, and then grinned with a little malicious satisfaction at Schmidt's mumbled comment about the natural relationship between soccer practice and beer.
"You're still on duty, Ensign. And I have it on the highest authority that this stuff is good for you. So bottoms up – that's an order."
He turned to Janeway.
"So, what's the deal?"
"The Talari will agree to meet with a delegation of four, the same as the Denarians. Two principals and two aides de camp for each side. And I think we are over the hump about both sides not possibly being able to agree to the same thing: I led the Talari to believe that the Denarians would kick up a fuss about limiting the delegation to such a small size."
She raised her coffee cup to Tom in silent salute.
"So who'll they be sending?"
Janeway could barely contain her enthusiasm. Her grey eyes sparkled.
"Highest level. The President, or Supreme Talon, himself - Naldar. The other is the commander-in-chief of their fleet. A woman, reminds me a bit of Nacheyev. Name of ... Oh damn, I forget."
She shook her head in frustration.
Tom's hand, still holding the bottle, froze for a moment. Slowly, deliberately, he raised it to his lips and took a careful sip before, with the barest ghost of a smile, speaking the name he had learned not so very long ago.
"Talith."
AN: The referees' command to "allez!" ("go!") signals the beginning of a match. This is usually followed by a period of time where the fencers suss each other out, play with their opponent to figure out what distance they are comfortable keeping, their reach and their instinctive reactions.