Reoh returned to the dancing bar that night with a tricorder covertly tucked in his jacket. He was going to submit the most thorough report Commander Keethzarn had ever seen.
He quickly found Meesa again, as if she had been waiting for him to come. She showed him to an upper ledge where the music didn’t penetrate his bones so deeply, where he could talk to her if he wanted.
There wasn’t much to find out about Meesa’s scant two decades of life. She had been raised in a creche, working her natural trade since she could remember, dancing even as a tiny girl with a host of other Orion animal‑girls, trained in the most seductive maneuvers. She had succeeded in a manner of speaking, and was purchased by “master” after “master,” and was finally brought to Station 14 to dance.
It almost broke his heart to hear her simple voice. “Maybe,” she whispered, rising up to breathe right into his ear. “Maybe you can be my master now.”
He swallowed, patting her arm without saying a word.
Reoh performed his other scheduled investigation for a Pa’a transport the next day. He had also left several messages for Captain Jord, but he hadn’t heard from her. So he was on his way into the dancing bar again, tricorder cleverly concealed on his person, when a rough voice accosted him from down the corridor, “Ensign Nev!”
A Pa’a woman in her middle years stood there, with hair shorn so short there was only a faint silver fuzz across her skull. “Is that you?”
“Captain Jord?” he asked, stopping uncertainly at the doorway.
“I’m in a hurry,” she said, turning on her heel. “Let’s get on with the inspection.”
Reoh looked longingly back at the dancing bar, wishing he could have at least said hello to Meesa. He kept worrying about her.
Captain Jord led the way through the freight gate to one of the upper levels. The Belle Starwas a transport ship, but Jord was obviously one of the midlevel Pa’a, trusted with the delicate cargo and the enticing run to Federation planets. Pa’a had been known to jump their route before, with the captain and two‑man crew turning pirate for a chance of freedom.
Reoh accepted the manifest from Captain Jord, who curtly gestured belowdecks saying, “Come to ops when you’re done.”
“Here’s your encryption pass, Captain Jord.” Reoh handed over the approved departure notice.
Jord examined it carefully. “I hope you haven’t made me late with this shipment, Ensign Nev. Where were you yesterday?”
Reoh shook his head. “I was waiting at the bar.”
“Well, you must have been having a good time because I didn’t see you.”
Wondering if he should be insulted, Reoh straightened his shoulders. “I was waiting for you at the time you requested.”
“Sure, I get it.” Jord’s smile twisted in a knowing grin. “I have a few slaves in that bar myself.”
He looked at her with distaste. “Does Meesa belong to you?”
“I don’t know their names.” Jord shrugged, checking off the approval marks for each storage bin on her tricorder to confirm the manifest was complete. “I only cash out their dance totals.”
Reoh felt like he was choking in the foul air as he clutched his spectro‑analyzer to his chest. “You’re horrible people, you Pa’a! Enslaving those poor Orion women, using them to make money for yourselves.”
“Since whendoes the Federation care, as long as they get their dicosilium?” Jord drawled.
“There are more important things than rocks!” Reoh cried out irrationally.
“Calm down, Starfleet.” Captain Jord seemed amused. “We’re all slaves in one way or another. The Pa’a expect me to work harder than I can, and I expect my girls to work hard. There’s no room for deadwood in Beltos.”
“That’s so . . . so . . .” he said inarticulately.
“So practical?” Jord asked. “Listen, the only people I ever hear talking about freedom are in Starfleet, and you don’t look all that free to me, or what are you doing here? Everyone I know is trying to get out of here before the whole thing blows up in our faces. Why are you snooping through other people’s ships when you could be anywhere in the galaxy?”
“This is my duty–”
“Good, you do your duty.” Captain Jord put her print on one of the encryption passes and handed it back to him to file with the border patrol. “My duty is to stomp on anyone who gets in my way. I don’t care if they’re a slave or a Starfleet ensign.”
He backed up, actually frightened by the malevolence in her flat, silver eyes.
“Now get off my ship,” she ordered.
Reoh stumbled as he turned and tried not to walk too fast as he left the room. But his spine crawled with the thought of her looking at his defenseless back. He really thought she could do anything, even shoot him, because he had irritated her.
He went straight to the dancing bar and tracked down Meesa. He had to wait while one obsessed supernumerary insisted she dance number after number for him.
Finally Reoh got Meesa to himself, up on their private ledge out of the main pathways of activity. She was so pleased to see him, like a kitten starving for simple affection.
Reoh stayed for quite a while, and before he left he gave her a tiny spindle communicator. “That’s in case you need to get hold of me. I’ll be in range whenever I’m in this system.”
She looked down at the spindle, then up at him. “You leave here?”
“Tomorrow.”
Her lips pursed together. “When will you come back?”
Slowly he shook his head. “I don’t know. Sometime next month, I’m sure.”
Her indrawn breath revealed her horror. Reoh felt like he was deserting her. He had started out only trying to help her, but now it felt like he had incurred some sort of obligation.
He showed her how to operate the spindle communicator, and repeated that she was to call him if she was ever in danger. If he wasn’t in range, a message would be sent, and he promised to locate her though the transponder in the spindle.
She didn’t seem reassured. She followed him all the way to the door of the bar, her eyes pleading with him to stay. But he had no choice but to leave.
Nev Reoh wrote a ten‑page report to Commander Keethzarn, ending with another four pages pleading to be allowed to bring Meesa with him to Starbase 3. Reoh worked for hours on the communique, and was fairly pleased with his persuasiveness. He was even prepared to delay his departure another day and lose one of his R&R days on Starbase 3, in order to give the commander time to reply to his request.
Getting ready for bed, the communicator beeped at him. He didn’t know what it was at first, then it beeped again. He leaped for his jacket and the companion to Meesa’s communicator.
Opening the spindle, he said carefully, “Hello?”
In the silence, he wondered if Meesa’s “master” had taken the communicator from her, or if she had lost it somehow. Then her tinny voice came through, “Help me.”
“Meesa, is that you?” he asked, straining to hear.
“I’m Meesa,” she agreed.
“Are you in the bar?” There was such a long silence that Reoh thought she was gone. “Meesa, where are you? Answer me!”
“Master took me from the bar,” she said.
“Where are you now?” Reoh asked, frantic.
“Hmm . . . inside a box.”
Reoh realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere like this. Meesa was probably fairly street‑smart on her own turf, but Orion animal‑women were taught to communicate in other ways than with words.
“You hang on to that communicator,” he told her. “I’ll track you down.”
Reoh left through the passenger gate and made his way down to the lower levels, following the transponder signal of Meesa’s spindle. These levels housed warehouses and holding cells for import/export merchandise for the planet Beltos. He kept his eyes on his tricorder for lifesigns, aware that he could be walking into a trap. But all he found was room after room filled with stacks of every size of storage container imaginable.