Chapter 9
Batra pressed close to Halak as they slipped in and out of shadows inked along Tajora Street by large, blocky warehouses. Tajora Street was a curling boulevard that ran around the northeast corner of Maltabra City and along the Galldean Sea for nearly three kilometers. She glanced at the illuminated dial of her chronometer: an hour shy of midnight. They’d left Dalal’s two hours before, slipping down a rear stairwell and out into a back alley. The alley ran diagonally northwest, and when they finally reached the end, they’d had to circle back, heading for the north end of Tajora Street. Halak said that Arava’s apartment, like Tajora Street, was in Qatala territory, almost dead center.
Batra’s nerves were a jangle of exhaustion and adrenaline-pumped fear. So far they’d been lucky. They hadn’t run into any of Qadir’s men, not that Batra had the faintest idea what those men might look like anyway. Knowing what she did now, she suspected that their three attackers had been Qatala, though she couldn’t be sure and she wasn’t going to ask Halak now. There’d be plenty of time for questions if they got to Betazed.
Batra’s grip tightened around Halak’s hand as he limped, splinting his right side. No.When we get to Betazed. Stay positive.
They headed south, keeping the sea on their left. Now and then the alleys and streets echoed with the low growl of a ship taking off from the spaceport to the north. Farius Prime had two moons, though neither was up, and so the sea was just a black wavering expanse: a sense of movement punctuated by the slap of water against concrete and metal posts, and the single solitary moan of a foghorn a kilometer from shore, perched on the end of a rocky quay. The smell was all wrong, though. Not salty: Batra sniffed a sea breeze whistling down the canyons formed by the warehouses that ran east to west, and recoiled. The sea had a nasty, sour, metallic odor, like old clotted blood and boiled fish.
The street was so quiet, the sounds of their footsteps scraping concrete sounded like rocks over sandpaper. The day’s heat had gone, though Batra felt residual warmth leaking through the soles of the slippers Dalal had given her. Squares of light speckled the monoliths of apartment buildings to her right; to her left, lining the piers were warehouses, their fronts bathed in fans of reddish-orange light from floodlights that perched above large cargo doors. When Batra raised her eyes to look overhead, the night sky wasn’t black but glowed a burnt orange color: reflected glare from the lights clustered at the city’s center and diffused by smog and mist rising from the chill sea.
Dark, and yet not dark at all. Batra shivered. Either way, a lot of things could happen, even in a darkness that wasn’t.
Halak must have thought she was cold because his right arm slipped around her shoulders. “Not too much farther.”
“It’s not that,” murmured Batra. “It’s just…I wish this was over with already.”
He tightened his grip. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Ani. I didn’t know…”
“No.” Abruptly, Batra stepped out of his embrace but kept her voice low. “No, that’s just it, Samir. You didknow. A man doesn’t bring an unregistered phaser along, slink off a ship…you knew there’d be trouble, and you knew what type of people you were dealing with. And don’t tell me otherwise, please. I may be naïve, I may have lived in more luxury than you…”
“Dalal didn’t mean…”
“This isn’t about Dalal!” Batra paused then resumed in a tense whisper. “It’s not even about Farius Prime. It’s about us, Samir; it’s about a man I’m in love with and thoughtI knew.”
They faced one another. The light from a nearby warehouse was behind Halak, and his face was in shadow. Batra couldn’t read his expression, though she caught the glint of his eyes. His voice came out of the darkness. “What do you want to know, Ani?”
Such simple words: yet behind them were volumes left unspoken. And what didshe want? For him to clear up all the discrepancies she’d caught at Dalal’s? To tell her why the hell people were trying to kill them? To explain how he could know, in such detail, a place as awful as this? Batra was so close she heard Halak’s quiet breathing, and she knew that if she put out a hand, she would feel the strong beat of his heart. Yes, here was the man she loved and was willing to sacrifice her career for, and what did she want?
“I don’t know,” she said, finally. “Everything. And nothing. Because I’m afraid, Samir, I’m afraidto know.”
Now Batra let Halak pull her close with his good arm. Sighing, she rested her left cheek against his breast. She heard the thud of his heart; the feel of his arm and his familiar scent comforted her. “But even though I’m afraid, I needto know. Whatever you’ve done, I can handle it.”
“You can’t know that, Ani. That sounds good, but you can’t predict something like that. Sometimes love isn’t enough.”
“Enough for what, Samir? Forgiveness?”
“No, acceptance. There’s a big difference between acceptance and forgiveness.”
“Samir, I can accept a lot. I can forgive you almost anything.”
“There are conditions to everything, Ani, even love.”
“Samir,” she said. She slid her arms about his waist, felt the bulky roll of his bandage beneath his tunic. “Samir, please, what’s going on? Are you in trouble? Haveyou been?”
He laughed: a hopeless sound. “Trouble’s what I’m trying to avoid. Ani, if I thought it would help…”
His voice cut off. Puzzled, she pulled away and opened her mouth, but Halak put up a warning finger. Batra concentrated. Because she had turned back to Halak, the sea was off to her right, and she was conscious of the water lapping against stone, and then the call of the foghorn, a long lowing like an animal. Then, as the foghorn’s groan sighed away, she heard it: the clap of shoes upon stone.
From her left. Batra jerked her head around to scan the walk directly across Tajora Street. She spotted two figures: one tall and broad, the other in what looked like a hooded cloak, and much shorter. Coming straight for them.
Halak eased her to one side—out of the line of fire, she realized—and then she saw his hand hover at the small of his back, over his phaser. He said nothing, and his face was still in shadow, but Batra could feel how alert he’d become. How focused.
“If I tell you to run,” he said then, his voice very soft, “don’t argue and don’t stop to help. Just do what I say.”
Batra never did get a chance to ask Halak just exactly whereshe was supposed to run because the two figures crossed into a slant of light, their faces flickering briefly, and Batra heard Halak’s breath catch.
“Arava?” he whispered, starting forward. “Arava?”
Endangering Batra had been the last thing Halak wanted. Even when the knife had ripped into his side and pain shot through every fiber, what he’d thought about was keeping Batra safe. When he folded her into his arms, he marveled at how tiny she really was, how fragile her bones: like a bird. And then she’d shivered—perhaps from cold but maybe from fear, too—and he felt his resolve harden. No matter what the cost, or how things fell with Arava, he’d keep her safe.
Now, he watched as two figures melted out of the darkness and hurried across Tajora Street. On the alert, he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. His eyes darted into the shadows. No one else there. Still, if Arava was working for Qadir, he didn’t know how much she could be trusted.
He stood his ground as she approached on the run, her cloak snapping, her footfalls crisp, staccato counterpoints to the loping, heavier strides of the larger figure which Halak saw now was a huge, blue-skinned Bolian male.
“Are you out of your mind?”Arava kept her hood up so her features were in total darkness, and Halak got more of an impression of her face than a good look. “What in God’s name are you doing?”