Star Trek: Pantheon (50 page)

More satisfying was his work with the colonists. His efforts there would give Picard and his tactical people an advantage—the edge they needed to achieve a victory, perhaps.

I should be pleased, the doctor thought.

Unfortunately, his accomplishment hadn’t obtained the thing he wanted most—Gerda Asmund’s attention. He had seen her on two occasions over the last couple of days, once in a corridor and once in the lounge, and she hadn’t even acknowledged his presence.

She must have known about his work. It had to be the talk of everyone on the ship. But it hadn’t fazed her.

In that respect, at least, Greyhorse’s victory seemed a hollow one.

Lieutenant Vigo was sitting at the computer terminal in his quarters, running yet another time-consuming scan of the ship’s myriad command junctions, when he heard his name called over the intercom system.

The voice was Commander Picard’s. Having heard it every few hours for the last couple of days, the Pandrilite would quite likely have recognized it in his sleep.

“Aye, sir?” said Vigo.

“Anything?” asked Picard.

“Nothing at all,” the weapons officer told him. “I haven’t seen even a hint of impropriety.”

The commander sighed audibly. “I wish I could say that no news is good news, Lieutenant. But in this instance, that is not the case.”

“I’ll keep at it, sir,” Vigo promised. What else could he say?

“I have no doubt of it,” said Picard. “And, of course, if anything
does
come up—”

“I’ll contact you immediately,” the Pandrilite told him.

There was a pause. “Someday,” the commander said, “you and I will have more pleasant matters to talk about. But if it’s all right with you, Lieutenant, we won’t talk quite as often.”

Vigo smiled. “I’ll be sure to remind you, sir.”

*   *   *

For the second time in seventy-two hours, Jean-Luc Picard found himself approaching the ship’s brig.

This time, it was Lieutenant Garner who was standing inside the open doorway, keeping an eye on the mutineers. And she wasn’t the least bit surprised by the second officer’s appearance, because it was she who had communicated with him at Hans Werber’s request.

As before, the weapons chief was sitting on his cot. When he saw that Picard had arrived, he stood up. His expression was more thoughtful than belligerent for a change.

“Leave us, please,” said the second officer.

Garner did as she was instructed. Then Picard touched the bulkhead controls and saw to it that he and Werber had some privacy.

“Here I am,” said the commander. “Have you thought of something?”

Werber nodded. “I think so.”

Picard expected him to say Santana was the guilty party, and attempt to lay out some proof of it. But he didn’t. In fact, the weapons officer was no longer quite so sure that the colonist was involved.

“Then who’s the saboteur?” asked the commander.

“I don’t know,” said the prisoner. “But I know how to find him.” And he went on to elaborate.

Picard considered the information. “I appreciate your help,” he said at last. “If it leads us to the saboteur—”

The mutineer preempted him with a gesture. “Don’t make me any promises, Commander. Just get the sonuvabitch.”

Picard nodded. “I will certainly try.”

Greyhorse pressed the hypospray against Armor Brentano’s arm and released a full dose of psilosynine into the man’s system.

The Magnian looked at him. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” the medical officer confirmed.

“When will I start feeling different?” Brentano asked.

“In the next two to three hours,” said Greyhorse. “And you will continue to feel that way for anywhere from four to five hours.”

“So we’re not far from the depot?” the colonist concluded.

“So I’ve been told.”

Reaching into the pocket of his lab coat, Greyhorse removed a metal disk about the size of his fingernail. Positioning it between thumb and forefinger, he placed it against Brentano’s temple—where it remained.

“What’s this?” his patient wanted to know.

“A monitoring device,” he said. “If your brain waves start to change, I want to know about it.”

“So you can shut me down?” asked Brentano.

“Exactly right,” said the medical officer. “For the sake of everyone on this ship—you included.”

“What if I snap and rip it off?” he asked, smiling.

Greyhorse didn’t feel compelled to smile back. “Then I’ll know it and the result will be the same.”

“I’ll remember that,” Brentano promised him.

I assure you, the doctor added silently, at least one of us will.

Gerda Asmund had hoped that her mood would improve. However, it had gotten worse with each passing day.

Finally, as the
Stargazer
came within sensor range of her target, the navigator found herself looking forward to the battle ahead. However, the prospect wasn’t the blood-roiling elixir it should have been.

What’s more, her sister knew it. Idun had been watching her like a mother
s’tarahk
ever since their talk in the turbolift, trying her best to gain some insight into Gerda’s feelings.

But how could Idun understand her lack of enthusiasm when Gerda herself didn’t understand it?

Abruptly, she was drawn out of her reverie by a beeping sound—a sensor alarm she had set earlier. Looking down at her monitor, she saw that visual information was available on the depot.

Her sister, who had heard the alarm as well, turned to her. Idun, at least, was eager to engage the enemy, and had been for some time. Gerda could see it in her eyes.

The navigator glanced back over her shoulder at Commander Picard, who was discussing something with Lieutenant Ben Zoma in front of the captain’s chair. “We’re in visual range of the depot,” she announced.

Picard regarded her. “On screen,” he said.

Working at her controls, Gerda complied.

Pug Joseph was standing just inside the entrance to the engineering support room on Deck 26, watching Serenity Santana and her fellow colonists gather in an approximate semicircle and exert their influence on the
Stargazer’
s dorsal tractor node.

Not that the security officer could actually see the Magnians
doing
anything. After all, they were working solely with the power of their minds, their collective energy amplified by the neurotransmitter Dr. Greyhorse had concocted for them.

The only visible evidence of the colonists’ efforts was the flock of triangular, palm-sized devices they had attached to the tractor node days earlier. The things were humming softly to themselves and throbbing with a bright yellow light.

They had hummed and throbbed the same way during the second battle for Magnia. At least, that was how Joseph remembered it. It frustrated him that the Magnians’ activities were so foreign to him, so alien, and therefore so difficult to monitor.

How was he supposed to keep an eye on Santana if he couldn’t tell what she was really doing? How did he know she was gearing up for the battle ahead and not plotting with her friends to cripple the ship?

The answer, of course, was he
didn’t.

Suddenly, Santana turned away from the tractor node and looked back over her shoulder at him. The expression on her face—one of anxiety—made the security officer wonder what the woman was up to.

Pug,
he heard in his head,
something’s wrong. We can sense someone tampering with a command junction.

Joseph looked at her, wary of a trick. “Who’s doing it?” he asked.

Santana didn’t answer right away. Then she made a single word materialize in his brain:
Jomar.

The security officer walked over to the nearest console and tapped into the
Stargazer’
s internal sensor net. However, there was no indication of any tampering. There wasn’t anyone in the Jefferies tubes at all. And Jomar, apparently, was in his quarters.

He turned back to Santana, wondering what she was trying to pull
this
time. “No one is anywhere near a command junction.”

She left the semicircle and came over to him. Gazing at the monitor, she saw what he had seen—in other words, nothing.

“He’s there,” Santana insisted. She looked up at Joseph. “Dammit, I can
feel
him.”

Reacting to the woman’s display of emotion, he put his hand on the phaser pistol dangling at his hip. “I’ll have someone check Jomar’s quarters. In the meantime, you can—”

“No!” she snapped, her dark eyes filled with dread—or so it seemed. “By then, it’ll be too late!”

The security officer drew his phaser, leery of what Santana could do with the doctor’s neurotransmitter flowing in her veins. “Move back,” he told her. “Do it.”

She looked at his weapon, then at him again. “You don’t understand,” she told him.

“Don’t I?” he asked.

Then something happened—Joseph wasn’t sure what. He seemed to lose control of his limbs, his body becoming a heavy and unresponsive mass of flesh. The phaser fell from his limp, paralyzed hand and hit the deck.

And a moment later, the security officer joined it, his mind spiraling down into darkness.

As Picard watched, Gerda Asmund manipulated her controls. A moment later, the viewscreen filled with the image he had been waiting for.

And what an image it was.

In the second officer’s imagination, the depot had been an impressive thing—a large, sprawling facility surrounded by powerful-looking, diamond-shaped warships. It had been equipped with a multitude of cargo hatches and docking ports, everything it needed to facilitate the transfer of food and material goods.

Its reality was even more impressive—and a good deal more daunting. The depot looked more like a fortress than a supply facility, and more like the crown of an ancient king than either, with its circular configuration of diamond-shaped towers and its circlet of weapons ports and its flawless, almost luminescent surfaces.

As prodigious as the enemy’s fighting ships were, the depot was bigger and better-armed by a factor of at least ten. It was perhaps the truest symbol of Nuyyad pride they had seen yet.

“Looks like this is the place,” breathed Ben Zoma.

“You know what they say,” Picard told him. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

“An interesting observation,” the other man noted. “But given a choice, I’ll take big anyday.”

Picard shot him a disparaging glance.

“Except this one, of course,” Ben Zoma added cheerfully.

“Of course,” the second officer responded. He scanned for the number of Nuyyad vessels. “I’m reading four ships. Can you confirm that, Lieutenant Asmund?”

“I show four as well, sir.”

“It could have been worse,” Picard allowed.

Suddenly, an alert light on the captain’s armrest began blinking red. Noticing it, Picard touched the padd beside it.

“Mr. Vigo?” he asked, feeling an adrenaline rush as he anticipated the weapons chief’s response.

“Aye, sir. I’ve got a problem in the phaser line. Command junction twenty-eight, accessible from Deck Ten.”

“Acknowledged,” said the second officer. He straightened and glanced at his friend. “Let’s go.”

“I’m right behind you,” Ben Zoma assured him.

Together, they entered the turbolift and punched in a destination. Then they removed the phasers they had hidden in their tunics.

When the turbolift stopped at Deck Ten, they got out and pelted down the corridor. Before long, they came to a ladder and a round door that would give them access to the network of Jefferies tubes that permeated the ship.

Picard went up the ladder first, pulled open the door and crawled into the tube. As Ben Zoma had promised, he wasn’t far behind.

It wasn’t easy making progress through the tube’s cylindrical, circuit-studded confines, which forced the Starfleet officers to hunch over as they ran. However, they reached the first intersection more quickly than Picard would have believed possible.

It was then that they heard the clatter of a violent confrontation. Looking in every direction, Ben Zoma finally spotted it.

“There,” he said, pointing.

Following his friend’s gesture, the second officer saw two combatants. One appeared to be Santana. The other was a dark, many-tentacled thing that could only have been Jomar in his natural state.

The colonist was trying to hold the Kelvan off with her arms—the way any human might try to hold off something big and monstrous—and not having much luck. But to Picard’s surprise and dismay, she was also launching a series of tiny, pink lightning bolts at her adversary.

The Kelvan recoiled wherever the tiny lightnings struck, but the rest of him remained unaffected. Flinging one slimy limb after another at his target, he tried to envelop her, to crush her in his powerful embrace. And no doubt, he would have, had it not been for the energy bolts Santana was able to marshal against him.

As Picard and Ben Zoma moved closer, neither Santana nor Jomar seemed able to gain an advantage. In short, their struggle was a standoff—an impassioned and violent one, certainly, but a standoff all the same.

Ben Zoma swore beneath his breath. “For heaven sakes, Jean-Luc, we’ve got to do something.”

Picard nodded. “But to whom?”

Clearly, one of the combatants was the saboteur they had been looking for. But the other was an innocent bystander at worst, and at best a hero who had risked life and limb.

“We’ll stun them both,” Picard decided.

“Done,” said his companion.

As Picard took aim at Santana, he saw her glance in his direction. Her eyes seemed to reach out to him, pleading for understanding.

It was all the distraction that Jomar needed. Lashing out at Santana, he snapped her head back. The colonist went limp. But before she could slump to the bottom of the tube, the Kelvan caught her up in his tentacles.

Picard still didn’t know which of the two was the saboteur. However, he didn’t want to see Santana hurt any worse than she was already.

“Let her go!” he barked at Jomar, his voice echoing raucously along the length of the Jefferies tube.

The Kelvan turned to him and underwent a transformation. He seemed to reshape himself before Picard’s eyes, his tentacles shrinking and consolidating and giving way to arms and legs. In a matter of seconds, Jomar had assumed his human form again.

With an unconscious Santana in his arms, he approached the Starfleet officer. “I have apprehended the saboteur,” he said, his blue eyes steady and unblinking, his voice as flat as ever.

Picard didn’t lower his weapon. After all, there was still a lot that had to be cleared up. “That’s far enough,” he told the Kelvan.

Jomar stopped in his tracks. “Is something wrong?”

Picard declined to answer the question. “Put Santana down and back away,” he said.

The Kelvan hesitated for just a moment. Then he knelt, placed the colonist on the curved surface and retreated from the spot.

Picard pointed to Santana with his phaser. “Gilaad,” he said, “make sure she’s still alive.”

Ben Zoma tucked his weapon away and moved to the woman’s side. Then he felt her neck for a pulse and looked back at his friend.

“She’s still with us, all right. I—”

Before he could get another word out, the tube filled with a hideous, high-pitched scream and Jomar began to change again. Faster than Picard would have thought possible, his human attributes melted away and a swarm of long, dark tentacles took their place.

Picard raised his phaser and aimed it at the center of the monstrosity. But before he could press the trigger, he felt something clammy close around his hand. With a twisting motion that nearly broke his wrist, it wrenched the weapon out of his grasp.

By then, Ben Zoma had drawn his phaser—but he wasn’t quick enough either. As Picard watched helplessly, Jomar snatched the man’s phaser away with one tentacle and lashed him across the face with another.

Ben Zoma crumpled, stunned or worse. Picard started forward to help his friend, but a moist, black tentacle grabbed hold of his ankle and a half-dozen others knocked him off his feet.

Looking up, he saw a pair of tiny, gray orbs glaring at him above an obscenely pink maw. He tried to crawl away, but he was still held fast by the ankle. Unable to escape, he watched helplessly as a swarm of tentacles slithered toward his throat.

Picard fought some of them away, but he couldn’t fight all of them. He felt a tentacle snare one of his wrists, then the other. And finally, as he growled out loud with the effort to free himself, he felt a third tentacle begin to close around his throat.

The Kelvan’s grip tightened and Picard’s breath was cut off. He tried to claw at the muscular piece of flesh around his windpipe, but his wrists were too well constrained. Deprived of oxygen while his exertions made his need for it even more urgent, he saw darkness closing in on him.

Ben Zoma, the second officer thought. His friend was his only chance now—if he was still alive.

Suddenly, there was a flash of red light.
Phaser light
—Picard was certain of it. But Jomar’s tentacle didn’t let go.

Then he saw the flash again, even brighter than before—and this time, it had some effect. The Kelvan seemed to stagger under the impact and lose his grip on his victim’s wrists and ankle.

A third flash, and Jomar lost his stranglehold as well. Picard slumped to the floor and drew in a deep, rasping breath.