The site was green and idyllic, with a rich loam smell that wound around them, buoying the senses of those who had been ship-bound too long. It wasn’t altogether secure in that the circle of concrete they found themselves standing on was open to the elements, but certainly pretty.
They found themselves facing Liaison Katanish Laria, whom they recognized from their briefing files - a small neat woman dressed in black trousers and shirt. She clasped her digits and smiled at them.
"Welcome to Gorin." she said as the security team spread out to cover their flanks. Her voice was soft with a peculiar buzzing resonance, though apart from that, her colouring and her tentacled hands, she seemed almost human. "I am Katanish Laria, and I am here to take you to the meeting place."
"Greetings, Liaison." Grieg said, offering his hand palm down in the manner a visitor to Gorin was expected to. The woman smiled and wrapped her tentacles around his wrist. "On behalf of the Federation I bid you time enough to do all you deem needful."
"Well met, Commander." She beamed. "If only you had tentacles… I can see you’ve come prepared for anything." Her silver eyes fixed the trail Elek was making as she did her sweep.
"And you wouldn’t?" he replied.
"In these times, I prepare my preparations." she countered. "However, your arrival here marks a chance of hope for us. But this is not the place for discussion. We must go, as our forces can only keep it clear for a short while. Follow me."
With a quick movement she leapt off the circle and down into what proved to be thick long grass. Grieg turned to Elek.
"Anything?"
She shook her head.
"I am detecting no power signatures, no chemical compounds, no toxins other than what is naturally occurring in the plants and no dangers other than a distant trace of disrupter fire. However I will keep you apprised."
"All right." he said, drawing his own tricorder before jumping down into the grass.
The resulting squelch he heard made his heart sink.
There goes the image of the perfect Starfleet officer! he thought as he felt the mud spatter up his legs. Then he struck out across the field after the liaison.
"We’re being hailed from the planet, Captain." Viana reported over the comm. "It’s the Council demanding to know what’s happened to the team."
"Not Liaison Katanish?" she asked curiously.
"No, Ma’am. Representative Coultan."
The Captain frowned.
"Tell them there’s been some sort of accident we are attempting to trace the origin of." Randall replied as she surveyed her latest readouts. "And tell them that we won’t be breaking orbit until we find out what happened to our people."
"Aye, Captain."
"Out."
"This," Daniels declared to all who were in earshot, "is disgusting. Truly disgusting." By this time most of them were covered in slick grey mud, except the Liaison, who apparently was accustomed to navigating this stretch of field. Even Elek had managed to fall over a number of times, her physiology better suited to deserts than swampy boles. "And I don’t like this. Not one bit."
"No one does, Lieutenant." Grieg countered, keeping his eyes to his tricorder as he dodged his way around a particularly nasty looking pool.
"But it’s not just that." Daniels continued, hoisting his phaser rifle. "Just look at where we are! Does this look like a governmental meeting place to you? I haven’t seen any signs of civilization since we left that concrete. This just doesn’t ring true, Commander."
"To me either, believe me." Grieg replied in an undertone. "But at this stage I can’t see any other way than to follow her, as sometimes one needs to keep neutral ground a secret from your own forces as well as the enemy. Keep your people alert; quietly spread the word to the others."
"Consider it done." With a little jig, the Security Chief was hiking back towards his team, pausing only to help Elek back to her feet. Grieg could see his smile from there.
"I agree with Daniels." The feminine voice came from his other side, and he turned to see that the Klingon officer was catching him up. "The Liaison isn’t quite telling us all she should be. She’s hustled us away from the beam-in site with little more than a by-your-leave, and now refuses to elaborate on where she’s taking us. I trust her even less than our initial briefing instructed."
"That was my impression as well." Grieg shook his head. "So, what do you recommend?"
"Just as you’ve been doing - follow her until it’s revealed one way or another, and keep our options open enough for us to make a charge back to the beam-in site if need be."
"Have I been that obvious?"
"Only to one who knows tracking techniques. You don’t needlessly squash down grasses unless you’re making a trail for yourself to follow later. And your path has been all over the place, if I may say, Commander."
He laughed.
"It wasn’t all deliberate, Counsellor."
"I know, but we’ll keep that our secret, shall we? By the way, have you tried contacting the ship?"
"I got a confirmation message from the Captain we were to proceed." he replied, frowning curiously at her. "Why?"
"I can’t get through to anyone but the Captain." she replied. "Someone is diverting our signals."
Immediately he tapped his communicator.
"Grieg to Pendehar."
The communicator gave a flat chirrup, then nothing.
"Grieg to Rell."
Nothing.
"Grieg to Captain."
"Yes Commander; what is it now?"
"Could you have us put through to Doctor Pendehar? We’ve encountered an interesting…"
Dead silence filtered out of his pin - not even the usual background bridge noises that meant the Captain was listening to what he was saying. Grieg looked at K’Teira, who nodded once.
"I’m sorry Commander, but I can’t do that right now. Apparently the rebels are jamming our systems and it’s all Rell can do to keep this line open to you. Also, the jammers are affecting our transporters; we won’t be able to beam you out, so be careful down there."
"Aye, Captain, we will. Grieg out."
Shaking his head, he turned to the Counsellor.
"Nice of them to let us know. Strange how I had to specifically contact them to be told that."
"Very." K’Teira agreed.
James hit his communicator again.
"Grieg to K’Teira."
Her communicator chirrupped and duplicated his words in a curious echo.
"Well, at least we know that still works." he sighed, tapping off the connection. "It looks as though we’re essentially on our own. And as I think our communication system has been compromised, I think we should go and let the others know ourselves."
"Let me do that, sir." she replied. "If you break off from following the Liaison now it’ll let her know we’ve discovered something isn’t right. However if I do it, the illusion is maintained, at least for now."
"Agreed. Go to it, K’Teira."
With a nod, she let her pace slacken so Elek might catch up to her. James watched her for a few moments, then continued his trudge after the liaison.
"Look, I need answers and I need them now!" Susan spat into the monitor on her desk. She’d come back to her ready room for these talks with the Gorin government because she knew they were going to get ugly. So far she’d been right. However, though it’d started out with the usual thinly veiled threats and accusations of duplicity from the Representative, she’d managed to turn it all around until it was plain to all involved - both official parties as well as all the Gorinni ‘listeners’ - that it had been the Fairburn and the Federation that had been harmed by this, not Gorin. And now she had the Representative on the back foot, she was going to press home the advantage. "It’s my people are missing, Coultan!" she told him. "And time is of the essence! While we’re arguing about this, anything could be happening…"
The doorchime sounded, and she tapped a key on the monitor without looking up. The doors opened and Ensign Jancris came into the room. Again without looking up, Susan waved her silent and to stay out of sight.
"…So I’m giving you this ultimatum." she continued to the Gorinni male. "Either you give me access to all of your data on this and the rebels’ systems, or I call in the rest of the Fleet to start a full-scale investigation here. Am I understood?"
"Perfectly, Captain. I shall make arrangements immediately. Coultan out."
The connection severed, Susan could again look up, and managed a near smile at the young Trill.
"What do you have for us, Viana?" she asked, beckoning the woman forward and to take a seat at the other side of the desk.
Viana handed her a PADD as she sat as directed.
"We’ve finished our sweeps of the area." she began. "And everything was typical of a major transporter accident, except that there was no debris. Not a single mote of anything resembling their DNA. That was weird. So we traced the beam right along its length, and found this." Tapping a key on the PADD for the Captain, she highlighted a strange pulse in the beam variance.
"A second transporter beam!" Susan laughed with a kind of relief, singling out a set of numbers to study them more closely. "But no…" She held up a hand as Viana opened her mouth to correct her. Then she looked up confoundedly. "Is that possible without some kind of mechanism placed on them?"
"I know - the numbers all match our phase variance." Viana said firmly. "They shouldn’t be able to reflect them like this, but it seems like it to me, from the data we have. And it’s not beyond the capabilities of either side."
Snorting in disgust, the Captain tossed the PADD back across the desk.
"And of course there’s so much radiation in the atmosphere that there’s no way we can trace the reflected beam without having a direction to follow." She laughed darkly. "Do you…?" As though she remembered who she was talking to, she finished the thought with, "Never mind. Good work, Ensign. I want us to start up with a series of low orbits - all sensors priority. We’re looking for any sign of Klingon, Terran or Vulcan life on the planet’s surface, understood?"
Viana got to her feet again.
"Yes, Captain." she replied. "Will that be all?"
"For now, Ensign. You’re dismissed - I have some more people to yell at now."
Viana nodded, turned sharply, and left as Susan slapped on the monitor once more.
"Get me Liaison Katanish now!" she ordered the Gorinni female that appeared on the screen. "No excuses, no weaselings. I want to know why she wasn’t there to meet my team as we agreed!"
"I’m sorry Captain, but as I explained before…"
"I remember what you told me, but for some reason that excuse just isn’t ringing true. As far as I’m aware, no family emergency would ever keep a professional Gorinni bureaucrat from an important meeting like this! So either you tell me the reason why she wasn’t there, or I hold you personally responsible for what’s going on."
The woman’s facial colour darkened, and she stammered,
"A…alright C..captain! I was o..ord..dered not to, but I have to tell you, I g..guess…"
"Yes? What?" Annoyance hardened her tone even more.
"Representative Coultan… He told me not to… ruin our standing with the Federation…" The woman was panicking now, looking over her shoulder to some unseen point in the distance. Susan found herself wondering just what was going on.
"Yes?" she urged.
"He … he said not to… We must be strong… but… but… the rebels! They took her! Three days ago! They took her! What are we going to do?"
"I don’t know." the Captain said dangerously. "But someone will pay for this lack of information. Thank-you." And she clicked off the connection.
The smell was getting progressively damper the further they went. Originally it had smelled pleasant, rather like cut grass on a moist day. However as time had worn on and the kilometers had squashed under their booted feet, the scent had become cloying, nearly sickening in its intensity to all of them. K’Teira had taken a fold from her cloak and wrapped it around her face in an attempt to keep it from her. Daniels had tears streaming from his eyes. Even Elek managed to look more miserable than usual - her dignity having been clouded by the thick mud that caked most of her lower part and liberally spattered her top, her face had become more pinched.
The shadows were beginning to lengthen now, and it was becoming increasingly hard to see. Grieg didn’t like it any more than the vocal Daniels. From what he could see, the area they were heading into was becoming increasingly forested as well as getting steeper - he’d already slid for about a meter on his last fall. How K’Teira had managed to stay on her feet for so long was a source of interest to him; he wondered if it had anything to do with the heels females were allowed to have on their uniform boots. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw Elek go down once more and reconsidered.
He knew that the further they went down into the trees, the harder it was going to be to defend themselves against whatever might be lying in wait. So, letting the Liaison go on ahead, he held up a hand to attract the attention of his group, who quickly caught him up.
"Right. We’re turning back." he told them. "There’s no way I’m going to let us go in there blind."
"Good." Daniels hoisted his rifle. "There’s no way we could defend in there. So - you know the way back?"
"We’ve marked a trail." Grieg said, pointing behind them. "As well as having the readings from our tricorders. So, now all we need to do is to let the Liai…"
Ahead of them, the Gorinni woman had turned and was frowning at their group.
"What is it?" she shouted at them, stepping towards them.
"We’re turning back." Grieg replied as the group as one started back.
"But Commander!" the Liaison called, running up the slope now, waving to attract their attention. Grieg looked at her. "It’s just in that clearing over there!"
His eyes followed the path her hand showed, and sure enough, there was a clearing just visible through the trees.
He sighed.
"Change of plans." he announced to the others. "We’re here."
