Claws 14

Tylha

There's a small office adjoining the long dormitory in the guest house, and T'Shomep has set up the control station on the desk there. The Vulcan is surrounded by glowing holo-displays, live data feeds from the drones we've placed around the Steadholding. I look out of the window at the darkening sky, and I tap my combadge.
  
"Shohl to all away teams. Night is falling. Return to the guest house and check in with your supervisors." I don't want any of my people outside when the sun goes down.

Rrueo and her people - all three of them - are already inside. The Ferasan's tail is switching nervously again. Rrueo has been acting skittish since we landed - come to think of it, she has been on edge from the first, before we beamed down to the ruins at Duselva WX, even. Something is preying on her mind... but what?

I pick up the book of prophecy again, as Rrueo stalks over towards me. "Your people are coming in?" she asks.

"We don't want to antagonize anyone."

"Very wise." She points to the book. "Have you found anything in that?"

I sigh. "It's... much the sort of stuff you might expect. I've been cross-referencing it with the Steadholder's more mundane records - the incidents I can verify seem to be pretty accurate."

Rrueo nods. "The stuff you might expect," she repeats in pensive tones.

"In a way," I say, "that bothers me. It's the sort of quasi-religious tome you'd find in many mediaeval societies... but this isn't a mediaeval society, despite some appearances. It's a colony - and one founded by one of the most significant interstellar nations in the quadrant." Whatever I might think of the Klingon Empire, there's no doubting its importance.

"Klingons, whatever else they may be, are pragmatists," says Rrueo. "They are not given to religiosity.... The only way Rrueo can see Klingons trusting to a book of prophecy -"

"- is if it worked," I finish for her.

"Exactly. Which suggests to Rrueo that the sleeping giant, here, has power either to foretell the future, or to make a foretelling and then arrange for it to come true." She combs her whiskers with one claw. "Rrueo inclines to the latter explanation. The sleeping giant has power to destroy ships in space - or to deform molecular structures here on the ground. Your human idiot has helped Rrueo to establish that, at least."

"Human idiot?"

"He calls himself Harley Haught. Call him that, if you disagree with Rrueo's characterization."

I'm not entirely sure I do disagree, but I give a disapproving grunt. If my officers need insulting, I will do it myself, not leave it to the KDF. "You've been working with Dr. Haught?"

"On these khala plants. Thirty per cent of their arable land is devoted to these plants, and they do nothing except fix some complex tellurium compounds. There is a mystery here, and Rrueo does not believe in multiple coincidental mysteries. It is all of a piece."

"According to the records, these khala plants were brought by the overlord -" I break off as Zazaru appears in the door of the office.

"All teams have reported in, sir," she says. "Everyone is indoors and accounted for."

"Thank you." I glance at the window. "Everyone is to stay indoors until dawn."

"Yes, sir."

I turn back to Rrueo. "And your crew?"

"They have similar orders. Rrueo is not a fool."

I go to the window and look out at the deepening purple of the sunset. "I can't see any movement out there," I mutter.

"Rrueo suspects it is best not to look," says Rrueo.

"Nothing new on the drones, sir," T'Shomep reports.

"If we knew where these... servitors... were coming from...." I'm muttering, mostly to myself.

"They may beam in," says Rrueo. "R'j detected no transporter signatures, but that means nothing." She yawns, displaying acres of pink tongue... and needle-pointed fangs. "Or it may be that the servitors are the Tiazans themselves - operating under some hypnotic compulsion, or as a gestalt entity."

"An interesting theory," I concede.

"Rrueo would not dignify it with the name of theory. Barely even a hypothesis... an idle speculation, no more. We do not know."

"Maybe the drones will tell us more," I say.

"Rrueo thinks the drones are unwise. But as you will."

"You're genuinely worried about this - sleeping giant, then."

"Naturally. Dahar Master Juregh's forces did not anticipate significant resistance, but they were alert, combat-ready, and armed. They were destroyed, to the last man, within minutes of sunset. Rrueo has no ambition to share their fate."

"Neither do I." I check my tricorder. "Local sunset... just about now. The actual solar disc will already be occluded behind those hills...."

"You expect these creatures to be punctual?" Rrueo asks. She sounds breezily cynical, now, but I notice she has a Klingon tricorder in one hand.

"Sensor contacts," says T'Shomep. "Reading...." She quirks her eyebrow at the displays. "I have no more than an atmospheric disturbance... a change of air pressure -"

Then her eyes widen. "Sensor drones have ceased to register," she says - unnecessarily, for I can see the data feeds winking out, myself. We deployed some twenty drones in a pattern around the Steadholding - and all of them have gone dead, simultaneously.

I glance at Rrueo. "What about your drones?" I ask.

"Rrueo did not deploy drones, considering them unwise." She looks ruefully at her tricorder. "Rrueo did deploy some discreet passive sensors devised by Klingon Intelligence. They, too, have been rendered inoperative."

I pull my own tricorder from my belt. "Maybe I can get some sort of scan through the walls of this place...."

"Rrueo would not advise it."

I switch on the scan and turn towards the window. The display panel shows the scanner establishing a baseline - and then, suddenly, it glimmers in a riot of colours before going blank. The tricorder grows suddenly warm, then hot, in my hand. I drop it with a yelp, and it sparks and smokes as it hits the floor.

"Rrueo will resist the temptation to point out that Rrueo told you so."

I glare at the Ferasan. "We'll wait, and watch. Maybe one of these things will pass by a window -"

As if on cue, there comes a clacking sound from the window. Every one of the mullioned windowframes is fitted with a heavy wooden louvre, and the louvre on this one has just been closed, gently but firmly, from the outside. As I stare at it, there comes the sound of another one being closed, and another, and another.... Someone, or something, is walking along the wall of the guest house, closing each shutter as it goes.

I swallow hard, and fight down the feeling of atavistic dread that rises within me.

"All right," I say softly, to whatever is outside. "All right. You want your privacy. We will respect that."

We stand there, by the dead tricorder and the inactive displays, and we wonder who, or what, is moving through the night outside.