Tales from the Captain’s Table (20 page)

At first I believed that my eyes deceived me as they had many times in the weeks before. Not a day passed when I didn’t imagine that, from time to time, Reon watched me on the security sensorcams. I also believed, though without any logical reason, that he deliberately scheduled his time to avoid any unplanned encounters with me. Housekeeping wouldn’t have necessarily known this when they called me to fill in at the last minute. Narrowing my eyes, I studied him while forcibly tamping down on the agitated emotions his presence stirred up. I could hardly focus! I cursed my incompetence, believing that as an operative I obviously wasn’t worth a damn if I couldn’t keep my personal issues separate from the job. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted so desperately to see.

Then again…

The longer I scrutinized, the more I saw his resemblance to our mother, especially around the forehead, though he had our grandfather’s height. Like Plin’s, his clothes had an understated elegance that communicated his importance without being garish. Mesmerized, I watched, studying his gestures, the animated way he punctuated his words with his arms and hands. He had such an expressive face…. No one within an arm’s length could wrench their eyes away from him. Even I could feel his magnetism from across the room.

He didn’t even know I was there.

I looked away, tossing the shards of a broken goblet I’d been cleaning up into the recycler. How many weeks had I been here without so much as a word from him? Clenching my jaw, I bit back the impulse to challenge him to an out-and-out confrontation in front of everyone. I checked out my surroundings, trying to determine what my next task would be, but I found my gaze irresistibly drawn back to him. I had too many questions that wouldn’t wait any longer.

I scuttled my tools, save a crumb sweeper, inside a storage compartment built into the wall and began working my way through the crowd toward the
tongo
table, keeping my eyes averted from the revelers. A crumbled appetizer, then a glance over at Reon, the remains of a pastry…I moved around high-stakes game tables, neatly negotiated drink servers, eluding notice from all around me, until I stood within meters of the
tongo
table. Once again I thanked the Prophets that Plin had assigned me to housekeeping.

Reon continued his earnest discussion with the member when I watched him pause and hold up a hand to halt the member’s diatribe, his forehead wrinkled. Twisting his head slightly askance, he cupped a hand against his ear: I presumed he’d received a page on the communication unit he wore in his ear. He didn’t look happy. He motioned a drink server over to the member, removed a stack of high-value chips from inside his jacket, and placed them in the member’s hand. As the drink server slipped a large bottle of wine out of a chill sleeve and poured a glass for the member, Reon nodded toward each individual at the
tongo
table, then backed toward the service hallway.

My mouth opened with an unvoiced shout. He couldn’t disappear, not now, not before I knew him.

I chose in a split second.

At a discreet distance, I followed him through the service exit and into a maze of passageways. I quickly realized that he was heading toward the suites. Only a serious problem would warrant Reon’s direct intervention; in my time at the club, I had never heard or known of anyone more senior than a floor manager handling a conflict. Gut instinct told me that whatever was going down upstairs was something I needed to know about. Thankfully, the passageways hummed with activity relating to the forthcoming shift change, allowing me to tail Reon without raising suspicion. He eventually stopped at the back entrance of the club’s most luxurious suite, touched his palm to deactivate the security lock, and moved inside. I checked the grid. A red light showed the room in use by an anonymous guest and employee, with no names indicated on the schedule. Odd. Usually the computer listed the daily suite assignments. In a matter of minutes, I’d observed at least two serious deviations from protocol in a place that ran by tightly enforced rules.

What next?

I could wait, hoping that Reon exited through the back way, confront him if he did; or I could short-circuit the front door, forcing him out of the back exit.

Or…

I called up the suite’s floor plan on the grid terminal. A small antechamber preceded the door into the main room where a companion would entertain her Cardassian guest. Conceivably, I could enter through the same door Reon had, check out the situation, and then decide whether to pursue him further. I might even happen on intelligence that might prove useful to my own mission. If I got caught, I risked being sent back to Shakaar, mission aborted.

An unforgivable error.

What factors tipped my decision, I couldn’t say, but before I could fully think through the ramifications of my actions, I called up the computer’s command menu and changed the suite’s status light from red to yellow, providing myself an alibi, however flimsy, if circumstances required it. Within seconds, I’d used my housekeeping pass to admit myself to the suite.

I took cautious, quiet steps through the darkened antechamber, training my breath into a shallow, soundless rhythm. Voices murmured up ahead—definitely one female. A meter more and I risked exposure. I still couldn’t see! What was the point of coming this far only to fail when the objective was in reach? I took a cautious step forward—

A hand went around my mouth, yanking my head back; an arm hooked around my waist and forcibly dragged me into the suite before throwing me forward, sending me stumbling toward Reon.

“You were right,” Teara said behind me. “You were followed. Keep out of this, Nerys.” She released her grip on me and pushed me toward a settee, sending me stumbling.

My brother crouched down on the floor beside an unconscious Cardassian, holding a medical scanner in one had, a hypospray in the other. He glanced up at me briefly, his eyebrows arching in what might have been surprise, before returning his attention to his scanner’s readout. I assessed the room, noting a broken carafe bleeding its fermented contents onto the rug beside the half-dressed Cardassian. A neatly made bed. A serving cart piled with empty dishes, a vague remnant of sour brandy in the air.

“Well, Reon?” Teara stalked toward him, hands on hips, her expression tense with worry. “Will the overdose kill him?”

Reon shook his head. “To the contrary. His system is processing the antidote too quickly. He could regain consciousness any minute. We’ll have to move him.”

“Muss the bed,” Teara said to me.

I shifted my gaze to Teara. My confusion must have shown on my face, because she cursed my nosy intrusion before saying irritably, “Make the bed look like someone’s been in it, then get over here and help us.”

I did what I was told, though I still couldn’t figure out what was happening, making me feel exceptionally dense.

“Next, Nerys,” Reon said, “we need to move Gul Tulk over to the bed. He can’t wake before he’s had a memorable encounter with Teara.”

“At least I’m already undressed, thank the Prophets for small blessings,” Teara said. Wearing a loosely tied dressing gown, split open to the waist, she bent over and grabbed one of Tulk’s beefy arms. Reon cast aside his instruments and took a position opposite Teara.

I grabbed Tulk’s boot-clad feet and held them up while Teara and Reon dragged him toward the bed. The three of us hefted him off the floor and pushed him onto the fur coverlet.

“Undress him,” Teara ordered. She had started unfastening his breeches and pushing them down over his hips.

Repulsed by the sight of Tulk’s body, I recoiled, turning away from the bedside.

“Boots!” she hissed angrily.

I grabbed a boot and pulled, then the other. To avoid looking directly at Tulk’s cold, scaly flesh, I watched Reon push aside a holopainting to reveal a hidden cupboard. He removed a neurotransmitter headset and several sensors. The odd behavior was starting to make sense….

Tulk grunted unintelligibly and flopped over onto his side, his hand grasping at Teara’s robe and yanking her down onto the bed. Startled, I stepped backward, nearly tripping over the boots I’d dropped on the floor. “He’s waking up!”

Gingerly, Teara extracted Tulk’s hand from her hip and watched Reon expectantly. “Hurry,” she whispered.

I sensed her fear.

“My dear Gul Tulk, just give me a moment longer,” Reon said as he attached the sensors to the Cardassian’s chest. He then slipped the neurotransmitter headset onto Tulk’s forehead and pressed the activation button. A row of lights blinked to life as the headset beeped. Tulk breathed deeply, visibly relaxed, and emitted a sigh of pleasure.

“How long did you set it for?” Teara asked, examining the headset’s readout with a frown.

“Half an hour should be enough to get this place cleaned up and allow you to be in position so when he wakes up he’ll be extraordinarily happy that he visited his favorite lady Teara this morning.”

She rolled out of bed with a sigh. “I need a drink.”

Reon turned to me.

I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging them tight against my body.

The most ridiculous grin spread over his face.

“What could you possibly find amusing about this?” I shouted.

He shrugged, chuckled softly. “You. Always off on some damn fool nosy quest to save the world. You’ve hardly changed in ten years.”

“Wish that I could say similarly, but you’re pretty much a stranger to me at this point. Never mind that I’ve been around for weeks…” My voice cracked with emotion and I cursed quietly. I let him get to me; I hated my weaknesses.

“Plin sent me away on business—supplying the Club requires trips to a dozen worlds.”

“Lucky you.”

Our eyes held for a long moment.

Teara cleared her throat. “Ummm…maybe you all could have this family reunion another time?”

Reon dropped his eyes to the floor. “Since you insisted on being nosy, you might as well get your cleaning things and help Teara get that Saurian brandy out of the rug before he comes to. I have to keep an eye on his vitals.”

I obeyed without comment, though I had dozens more questions on the tip of my tongue. I located a spare housekeeping carryall out in the hallway and rushed back into the suite. Teara had retrieved the worst of the broken crystal and was tossing it into the recycler as I came in. I attended to the sopping mess on the carpets.

She sat on the edge of the bed, studying me with an indeterminate look; whether it was amusement or annoyance, I couldn’t say. “Reon said you had an impulsive hothead side. Seems like he was right. You could have blown this op, Nerys.”

I said nothing. She was right. I glanced over at Reon. He studiously ignored both of us, remaining engrossed in his scanner.

Teara continued. “Before my mother hands you your head on a platter, I might as well tell you what was going on here. I was supposed to get information from Tulk. That brandy you’re cleaning up is laced with something that helps loosen our Cardassian boyfriends’ tongues a bit. Unfortunately, someone added triple the usual quantity to that carafe, Tulk had a seizure, and that’s what brought Reon up here.” She paused, studying me intently. “I was trying to find out when Gundar was supposed to arrive.”

I tried not to look too interested by her revelation. “Hmmm. Who’s Gundar?” I said as I continued to erase the remainder of the stain from the carpet.

She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh please. You’ve been waiting for that information since the day you got here, and don’t bother with the innocent act because it’s the only thing worth risking an operative of your caliber for. There’ve been dozens of officials of higher rank and wielding more power than Gundar in and out of here since you showed up. He’s the only one that makes any sense. Mother just wanted to get a head start on you.”

Sitting back on my heels, I saw Teara, not as Plin’s daughter but as a fellow operative. “Why not use Gundar yourselves?”

“I asked Mother the same thing. She says she needs you to do a favor for her, so she’s letting you have Gundar in exchange. I can’t imagine what you’re qualified to do that one of us isn’t.”

I knew that “one of us” referred to Teara. Whatever Plin needed, she hid it from her child, who, from appearances, was one of her most skilled and trusted operatives.

Reon turned away from Tulk. “His vitals are changing. I think he’ll be coming out of the scenario sooner than I’d hoped. Teara, you’d better undress and be ready to welcome our friend Tulk back from happy land.”

“I’m sure we had a wonderful time,” Teara said, dropping her robe on the floor and crawling into the bed beside Tulk. “You need to find out who doctored that brandy, Reon. It almost killed him.”

Reon nodded, his sober expression conveying the seriousness of what had almost happened here.

The strangeness of the unfolding scene mesmerized me. Plin wasn’t kidding about the illusion of the Officers’ Club. Placing false memories in the minds of Cardassian members. Using the guise of pleasure to facilitate interrogations. The operation was pure genius.

“Later?” Teara said, her eyes soft. I heard a plea in her voice that told me a good deal about her connection to my brother.

“Page me,” Reon said, “I’ll come find you.” He hooked his hand to my elbow, pulled me through the antechamber and out into the service passageway. After he’d changed the suite’s status indicator back to red, he fixed an inscrutable gaze on me. “We’re going to Plin.” He gripped my forearm and tugged me a few steps away from the suite toward the exit.