Worlds in Collision Read Free

Starfleet jumpsuit that matched her skin color, and she suffered from an atrophied antenna. Even the smallest and poorest of her people’s families would have sacrificed everything to treat that twisted hearing stalk. The girl was something no Andorian should ever have been forced to be: alone.
    Starn greeted her in flawless Federation Standard, again no accent to suggest it was not his first tongue.
    The girl looked nervously from side to side. “Wass it a present brought you here, trader?” she asked in a sibilant whisper.
    Starn nodded yes. He couldn’t detect anyone nearby trying to eavesdrop, but noticed that the girl stood so that as he turned to speak with her, he looked straight across the serving area into the sensors hidden behind the fire. He didn’t try to block them.
    â€œAnd where was that present from?” the Andorian asked, shuffling and looking over her shoulder. Her withered antenna twitched and she winced in pain.
    â€œIopene,” Starn answered. Another dead world whose now-extinct indigenous life had proven to be too competent in building lethal weapons. Even the empire banned Iopene relics from all but the noblest houses. The cutter that Starn carried had been the “present” that had convinced him to take the invitation to come to TNC 50 seriously.
    â€œThiss way,” the girl said, and headed for the back of the tavern. Starn followed. Behind him, he could hear the mercenaries begin to laugh again.
    The girl slipped quickly through a series of dark corridors. Starn kept up with her, ducking his head beneath the low Tellarite ceilings. They passed an entrance to a smaller serving area where Starn could hear Orion dancing music pulse in time to the cries from an unseen audience. He detected the scent of drugs outlawed on a hundred worlds, heard screams of pain and pleasure above the hum of cranial inducers, and committed to memory every twist and turn, every dark stairwell, for the long run back.
    At last the girl stopped by an unmarked door. She gripped a gleaming gold handle on the doorframe and trembled as the embedded sensors read her palm prints and analyzed her sweat. The door clicked, then slipped open. The girl entered and motioned for Starn to follow.
    A young Klingon waited behind a simple desk. A single glowpatch lit the room from directly above him and his eyes were deeply shadowed beneath his prominent crest. The Andorian scuttled to a corner. The Klingon rose gracefully and waved toward a chair across from his desk.
    â€œGood of you to come, Trader Starn,” the Klingon said in Standard. “I am Karth.”
    Starn took the offered chair, comfortably proportioned and padded for humanoids, and studied his host. Even for a Klingon, the being was large. The taut fabric of his tunic stretched across an impressively muscled physique. Starn compared the tunic with hundreds of military designs he had memorized in order to place his host within the Klingon hierarchy. With something close to amazement, he finally realized that what Karth wore was that rarest of Klingon garb—a civilian outfit.
    â€œDo you want something?” Karth gestured to a serving unit on the wall. “Perhaps…water?” The Klingon smiled, respectfully keeping his teeth unbared.
    â€œSensors in the fire pit?” the trader asked.
    â€œOf course. The crime rate in Town is one of the lowest in the Federation.”
    â€œAnd in the empire?”
    â€œTrader Starn,” Karth began seriously, “all beings know there is no crime in the empire.” Then he smiled again. “Though if you had touched that server’s spittle to your head and become betrothed to him before all those witnesses, that would have qualified him for criminal proceedings. A very clever way out of a potentially disastrous situation. Kai the trader.”
    â€œKai the Karth who gives such generous presents.”
    The Klingon settled back in his chair. The chair was