Lieutenant Iskander al-Kwaritzmi’s personal log, supplemental. For the first time I lead a team on an away mission — although, far from being in an unexplored planet, it is on the old Tellarite colony of Rellite. I am slightly nervous. Councilor Grinz has requested directly to the Captain that the away teams get reorganized. The assignment of Lieutenant JG Sornia and Nurse Ghoshal is very rational and I can’t complain. I am however puzzled by the addition of Z’Xak. The addition of a large non-verbal spider with absolutely no social grace whatsoever seems a bit odd in the context on a Tellarite planet. That said, I am sure that they will work smoothly and the mission will be a success.

Iskander and his team — Sornia, Ghoshal, and Z’Xak — beamed down to a monumental square in the outskirt of the large city of Brarvar, on Rellite.

He looked around and for a moment contemplated the square. It was dominated by massive pilons in brutalist limestone, some more than 20 meters tall, cut in uncompromising shapes and arranged somewhat in an irregular circle; in their middle was a small garden of desert trees. The rest of the pavement was white alabaster, blinding in the sunlight of the desert planet.

The temperature was impressive, but nevertheless a number of Tellarites were walking around the square, going about their business.

Sornia sighed.

“This is warmer than I expected. Is the place far?” she asked.

Iskander peeled his eyes as soon as they had adapted to the brightness of the light. At the side of the square there were buildings in all directions — great and noble things like the square, built in a style that he knew was called late-Rellite celebrator, and their destination wasn’t hard to guess: the tallest and most decorated of all of them.

“It’s there” he said.

“It’s a shame they don’t allow us to use transporters into it” added Sornia.

“They made a request and we honor it” remarked Ghoshal, always positive.

Z’Xak, the large spider, had said nothing yet — which was perfectly normal. They looked around the square with their composite eyes, inscrutable, mysterious. Nobody could really know what they thought, and how they evaluated anything they saw. Yet Iskander knew that their home planet was almost completely devoid of cities — their species was almost entirely not sociable, and any building was purely functional and perfectly independent. This must have been completely alien to Z’Xak, and while they had spent a long time on Earth, one couldn’t know if they had in any way gotten used to the idea of erecting two houses next to each other.

“The request is unmotivated. Why shouldn’t we beam inside of their building?” insisted Sornia.

Iskander smiled tersely in her direction and motioned the group to start moving in the direction of the tall, decorated building.

“You may want to ask them” he said, hoping that this would cut the discussion short.

They traveled light — a number of engineering kits for the engineers, a medkit for the nurse, absolutely no weaponry of any sort (unless one remembered that a good engineer could easily repurpose any number of tools into devices capable of, say, removing eyes or heads).

As they approached, the decorations came better into view: the building was rich in tall windows, balconies, alcoves, punctuated by all sort of plinths and brutalist statues of Tellarites and of animals — probably the fauna of Tellar. A recurring motif seemed to be the figure of a larger Tellarite wearing some sort of fancy, and slightly ridiculous, hat.

At the door, they announced themselves. The door opened almost immediately — and, to Iskander’s surprise, manually. There was a Tellarite on the other side of that wooden frame, and he had pulled on it.

“Yes?” he asked, without making any gesture into letting them in.

“I am Lieutenant al-Kwaritzmi of the USS Redding. These are Lieutenant JG Sornia and Z’Xak, and Ensign Ghoshal. I believe we are expected.”

The door-Tellarite produced some sort of noise, probably of approval, and let them in. The inside of the building was as magnificent as the outside: a huge entrance room, completely covered in carpeting, with sparse furniture in dark wood, numerous glass doors leading in all directions, and a set of curved stairs in obsidian leading to the first floor.

Soon they were met by two Tellarites: an old woman, decadent in her attire of rich tissues and with a couple of gems affixed to the skin on her face; and a man who looked like a functionary, dressed in functional black.

They could be overheard while they came down the black stairs.

“I told you we should have let them use the back entrance, Scronk,” was mumbling the old woman to the man. “Starfleet personnel using the front door — it is unheard of.”

“Some debates require a fallacy, my lady” replied mellifluously the man, and he raised his voice. “Welcome, welcome, my Starfleet friends.”

The old woman laid her eyes on the Starfleet team and immediately say Z’Xak.

“WHAT ON VULCAN IS THAT?” she screamed, pointing the finger. “Remove your pet AT ONCE from my premise!”

Z’Xak didn’t seem to have heard her. They were busy studying the carpet.

The man laughed nervously and spoke before anyone else could.

“My lady, you must know that Lieutenant Z’Xak is a respected member of the crew of the Redding. He is described as a genius of warp theory –“

“That’s doesn’t justify bringing an ANIMAL in the palace! The ARROGANCE of thinking that being a genius of warp theory allows you to bring a spider in my house — what has Rellite come to?”

The man again laughed — still as nervous, still as fake as earlier.

“My lady, my lady, very funny indeed. But I am afraid that the big spider, who is the warp theory genius, as you know from reading the short dossier I gave you, doesn’t share our sense of humor, and doesn’t seem entertained.”

The old lady opened her mouth and closed it back a couple of times, looking indignant.

“Well, of COURSE I know that, Scronk!” she said, finally retrieving some decorum. “Do NOT patronize me, you feckless swine!”

“Apology, my lady. May I relieve you of the burden of talking with the aliens?”

Iskander found himself marveling at the deference shown by Scronk towards this cranky, unfunny old lady. The Redding had received virtually no briefing on the people they were to help: so he was in the dark about their relationship. Was she an important symbol, a popular political operator, a resourceful fundraiser?

“Right” said the Tellarite when the old lady had given her assent. “I am Mister Frunk, and the highly esteemed classy lady you are in the presence of is Countess Frulenk. You are not to talk to her unless answering. Actually, you are not to talk, but just to do your job. You will now follow us to the Chamber Room.”

Iskander, Ghoshal and Sorna exchanged a quick look.

“Of course” said Iskander with a large smile. “Bring us to the Chamber. Try to keep a good pace, Mister Scronk — our legs are much longer than yours.”

“Did I say something about not talking?” he said with some dismay.

“I am not aware of anything you said that applies to us, or has authority on us, as a Starfleet squad. I find your orders to be wholly… underdimensioned.”

Scronk Frunk considered Iskander with a long look.

“Did you perchance grow up in the proximity of a Tellarite?”

“Why, my neighbors.”

“Either they were low-class, or you learned the wrong lessons from them. But fine — talk if you must.”

The Countess, quite snobbishly, turned and started walking.

“Let’s go, Scronk” said Countess Frulenk. “Stop wasting breath on the rabble.”

“Follow” said Scronk Frunk.

Finally headed somewhere, the Starfleet squad followed.

___________________________________________________________

The large building was almost labyrinthine. The old unfunny woman who led them seemed to know it by heart, but to Iskander it felt like an eclectic succession of disparate rooms: from dark corridors to large inner courts, decorated salons, monumental porticos, then luxurious chambers, perlaceous bauduoirs, until they silently reached the Chamber Room.

Iskander wasn’t particularly impressed by the sequence of superfluous rooms they had walked through. It gave him the same feeling that he had had when, during his Academy years, he had visited the museums at Versailles or at the Alhambra: it was supposed to look imposing and majestic, but it didn’t speak the same language that Iskander understood. He found them suspicious. He didn’t like the cut of their jibe.

But the Chamber Room was something else: it contained a feat of engineering and not of suspicious taste.

In the middle of a large half-dark room, lit only by actual candles, stood the stasis chamber (hence the name). Build on a roughly square basis of side two meters, high at least three, its finishing in red copper, it was dominated by a large black glass casket inside which was, presumably, a sleeping person. Iskander had become quite acquainted with that sort of Tellarite ancient technology: he could see where all components were supposed to be.

It would have been perfect if, during the years, it hadn’t been absolutely bombarded with all sorts of presumed embellishments: gold and crystal encrustments overlaid on top of the cabling, silver and pearl refurbishments to hide the monitors and the panels, oil paintings sitting in overgrown alcoves over the hydraulics, heraldic tapestries covering its mechanisms.

The stasis chamber had probably grown one meter in size in all directions over all of this extravagant and opulent redecorating.

“What has happened to it!?” murmured Lieutenant Sornia.

“We tried operating it two weeks ago to reawaken our promised prince” said Scronk Frunk, approaching the machine. “Its command panel is there, under the Silgonkrian heraldry. The instructions that we had were very simple: press three buttons, and the machine would interrupt the stasis autonomously. Yet the panel started flashing red — the procedure stopped.”

“My noble ancestor is still alive, we know as much” said the Countess. “In his suspended state, he is alive. Your task, Starfleet, is to extract him alive from this life-giving contraption that has passed his use.”

Iskander nodded and folded the information in his brain. The Tellarite to be extracted was supposedly a prince, and an ancestor of the countess. How that squared with the fact that nobility, on Rellite as on Tellar as on Earth, had been abolished centuries beforehand, he didn’t quite know. But that was a secondary problem: the engineering was definitely more interesting.

“Have you had it looked at by someone?” he asked Frunk.

“No. Our prince and our political movement have enemies on Rellite. We couldn’t be certain. That is, accidentally, why you are here, why we requested an impartial Starfleet assistance: not because you are special in any way, but rather because we trust you not to grasp the complexities of our political system and therefore not to want to hinder us.”

“Being essential and concise is a blessing, Scronk” said Iskander. “Everything but the first word was a waste of breath. We will fix your machine and extract the person from the stasis.”

Scronk Funk smiled unpleasantly.

“How long will you need, oh-hero-of-conciseness?”

“At least three hours just for the diagnostic. You will come here in three hours, Scronk, and be told how much we need for the repairs and the operation — as well as any parts or assistance we may need.”

“Are you always this grating?” asked Scronk. “It’s very unappealing for a human.”

“You bring out the best of me.”

And then, with great relief, the engineering began.