Omake: The Unforgivable Insult
"♪ So I said
Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish!
That's the way we do things lad, we're making shit up as we wish!
The Klingons and the Romulans, they pose no threat to us'
Cause if we find we're in a bind
We'll just make some shit up! ♪♪"
As Lieutenant Ismail Ansari finished the final verse and brought his hands together - the local sign for having finished one's performance - the courtyard erupted into high pitched whistles and shrieks. He was alarmed, at first, but in a moment his universal translator kicked in and informed him that the chorus of angry-sounding screams and whistles were this world's equivalent of applause. Sighing in relief, he parted his hands and made a low bow as Ensign Rr'dra put down her guitar on the stage beside him.
"Thank you," said Lieutenant Ansari, "thank you ladies and gentlemen very much. We'll be here all night...hopefully."
"You have little choice in the matter!" shrieked an especially tall, long-fanged Sydraxian in a coat of many-colored straws and feathers as she leaped onto the stage. "On behalf of the Commanderate of Kar-Akar, you must stay the night in our finest accommodations, and hear the songs of this world's own glory in return upon sunrise!"
Rr'dra looked up at him with a stunned smile. "Wow." Ismail could do little but echo the Caitian's sentiment. "Yeah, wow. We were just hoping to get access to the grounds." He bowed politely again to the Sydraxian official. "But we are both most honored to be your guests. I suppose we'll need to get our things from the inn."
"That won't be necessary, warriors of the great Star Fleet. I have already seen to it that your possessions are brought to the palace."
"Damn. Well, I must say we're humbled."
The long-necked humanoid grinned a toothy grin. "Save your humility for the morrow, upon which you must answer or songs with another of your own. It will not be easy, but a defeat accepted with humility is no true dishonor."
"Oh, defeat, huh?" Ensign Rr'dra gave Ismail a coy, feline smile.
He just shook his head. "Hey, lets not get cocky." He looked back at their apparent hostess. "Just a moment, Dignitary." As the Caitian folded up her guitar and the Sydraxian waited, Ismail walked over to the small enclosure that had been set up on the green moss beside the stage and knelt down. "Here boy! Time to go for another walk."
On the other side of the enclosure, a tiny pink pig raised its snout from the nest of earthworm-analogues it had been investigating and ran toward him with a series of excited little snorts. Ismail lifted the pig in both hands and clutched it against his chest before attaching the leash to its color. "Good boy, Haram."
Rr'dra rolled her eyes. "Did you really have to bring Haram with you from the
Miracht?"
"I've told you a million times, I can barely even go on an extended away mission without him getting lonely."
She shook her head. "You humans with your pets."
"You Caitians with your hairballs."
"Hey!"
This cultured repartee was interrupted when Dignitary swooped down in front of Ismail, surveying the little animal in his arms with something like amusement in her sharp, glittering eyes. "Shall I order another set of chambers made ready for your non-sentient companion, Lieutenant?"
"Nah. Just as long as there's a yard he can root around in, or at least a balcony."
"Your chambers come with a sun-garden, filled with flowers and ferns and fungi. I'm certain your" she paused a moment for her own universal translator to dig up the name "...
teacup...
pig...will want for nothing." She crouched down again and raised her talons, leading them through the open bronze gates and into the inner courtyard of the World Palace of Kar-Akar. The moss and algae lawn rose up into mounds, covered in huge red blossoms and each topped with an umbrella-shaped tree laden with purple leaves and heavy crimson fruits. Beyond the sparkling, crystal-blue brook in which small pterodactyl-like creatures sang and splashed, the many-columned Palace rose like a gold and glass mountain, and beside it - surrounded by a force field-reinforced fence - was a grove of the tallest, wildest trees Ismail had ever seen. Their charcoal-black trunks snaked and twisted around one another like strands of DNA, only dozens of meters across and hundreds tall. Each branch and trunk extending tendrils of glimmering black wood that fed into and through each other into a living knot. Sunlight reflected off a trillion glassy leaves, refracting in every color of the rainbow.
"Nice arbor," Ismail commented as he craned his head back to look at the tops of the enclosed groves.
"That," said the Sydraxian, extending her long, flexible neck to raise her head high above the starfleet officers, "is the Sacred Sprout of Ichicha-Kowathli. The greatest cultural treasure of this world."
"Ichicha-Kowathli?" Rr'dra raised her bristly eyebrows. "I thought that was on your homeworld."
"It is, honored guest, but when our people planted the first colony beyond the watchful care of our twin stars, a cutting of the Great Tree was planted, and when it grew and multiplied beyond any scientist's predictions, the people saw it for an omen. And lo, Kar-Akar has grown and prospered like the jeweled tree, and planted colonies of its own as it spread its clones and seedlings."
She pointed her toothy head skyward, letting her long curtain of shining black hair flow down into her coat of straws and feathers.
"♪ A single sun
Burning bright
As both the caring eyes we left
From planets, moons, and hollow shells
Come one, come all
To gaze upon
The wood that waxes
Beneath the sun. ♪"
Ismail smiled, pulling Haram back toward him by the leash.
"I don't think I will ever see, something as lovely as the tree."
The Dignitary lowered her head back to eye level and gave him a smile he wasn't entirely comfortable with. "Well spoken."
"Any chance we can have a closer look at it?" Rr'dra asked.
Their hostess pulled back her lips to show her teeth, an expression equivalent to shaking one's head no. "I'm afraid not. The Sacred Sprout may be touched only by the priesthood. To even enter the enclosure without their permission is a grave offense."
"Oh. Its still pretty impressive from here, though. I don't think my homeworld even has a tree that tall."
"Mine
might, on our northwestern continent," Ismail said, "but those took thousands of years to reach that size. These couldn't be older than, what?"
"Two hundred rotations round the single sun."
Ismail did a quick calculation. One hundred and fifty or so Earth years. Damn, maybe the gods really did bless that plant.
"Come now, honored guests. There are other sites you doubtless wish to see."
...
Nightfall. As they so often did in the late winter, a mass of clouds had rolled across the horizon as the sun went down and now blotted out the moons and stars. The palace grounds were shrouded in a thick, heavy darkness.
Oul felt himself grow dizzy as he bounced his way across the lawn, raising an akward, taloned leg high with each step. His head wasn't meant for the kind of bouncing and wobbling that Sydraxian locomotion produced, especially without his ear-hackles to counterbalance. He was on three times as many drugs and painkillers as usual for this mission, and even that was just barely enough. After all, it wasn't every species that required the amputation of one's head and reattachment to a synthetic neck to impersonate.
In his prosthetic claws, the little animal squealed and struggled, forcing him to pinch its snout shut to avoid being heard. He had spent the better part of an hour, after stunning the sleeping Human to keep him out, carefully assessing the little "teacup pig" to search for hidden traps. The animal was just too harmless, too vulnerable to be trusted. Perhaps the Federation used them as bait for enemies? No matter, Oul didn't have time to speculate. If the Lecurre Commonwealth was to prove itself a worthy asset to the Cardassians, this mission had to go off perfectly.
At the edge of the enclosure, he bent down and produced the bottle, letting the animal open its mouth just long enough to force the nozzle down its throat. It struggled and choked, but he kept it clutched tight as he squeezed the bottle, forcing the salty water down its throat, forcing it to drink until it was in danger of vomiting. At the last moment, he hit the button hidden beneath his cloak, releasing a magnetic pulse that shorted out the forcefield-fence for just long enough to hurl the squealing, struggling animal inside.
The pig stumbled, still mewling and squealing in pain and fear, into the cover of the sacred grove. Through the darkness, Oul's HUD-enhanced vision could already see the trail of foul urine puddles being left behind it on the hallowed ground.
He raised his other wrist and activated the Cardassian communicator he had been given, opening an encrypted line to the Jaldun hidden at the edge of the system.
"Mission complete. Requesting covert extraction."
