Star Trek: Pantheon (51 page)

His instincts told him to run—to get out of range of the Kelvan’s deadly tentacles. But he resisted the impulse and did something else entirely. He sought out his captor’s face—if it could indeed be called a face—and drove his fist into it as hard as he could.

The yellow eyes blinked and the pink maw let out a blood-chilling scream—not out of pain, Picard thought, as much as surprise. Apparently, the last thing Jomar had expected was a punch in the nose.

It threw the Kelvan off-balance and made him that much more vulnerable to what followed—an intense, red stream of directed energy that got through the mess of dark tentacles and hammered Jomar’s grotesque torso.

The Kelvan collapsed, his long, snakelike limbs flying in every direction. He looked disoriented, his maw opening and closing, his gray orbs half-lidded with dark flesh—but not yet out for the count.

Then yet another blast battered his slimy black head…and it lolled to the bottom of the tube, senseless.

Picard kicked away a tentacle that lay across his foot and turned to his rescuer. He was eager to thank his friend Ben Zoma for his dramatic and timely phaser assault.

Then he saw that it wasn’t his friend at all. It was Pug Joseph, staring wide-eyed at Jomar with his weapon still in his hand.

“Mr. Joseph?” said Picard.

The security officer looked as much in need of an explanation as the second officer. “Sir?” he responded.

Before Picard could clear up any of the confusion, he had the Kelvan’s other victims to think about. Locating Ben Zoma, he saw that his friend was trying to sit up—a good portent indeed.

Santana, on the other hand, was still stretched out on the bottom of the tube, a sweep of raven hair obscuring part of her face. Kneeling beside her, the second officer took her pulse.

Joseph knelt too, his brow knit at the sight of the stricken woman, his expression giving away his very genuine concern. “Is she…?”

“Her pulse is strong,” Picard assured the security officer. “I believe she will be all right.”

But she wouldn’t be participating in any battles anytime soon, he decided. And not just because of the beating she had taken.

Santana had never demonstrated the ability to create pink lightning bolts before—but Gary Mitchell had. Kirk reported that he had seen the man do it more than once. If the Magnian’s newfound ability was a side effect of the doctor’s psilosynine, the second officer was going to shut the experiment down as soon as possible.

Glancing at Jomar, he saw that the Kelvan was still unconscious. However, Picard was uncertain how long he would remain that way.

He tapped his combadge. “Picard to Lieutenant Ang. I need all the security officers you can spare, on the double.”

“Aye, sir,” said Ang. “Where shall I send them?”

“I’m in a Jefferies tube accessible from Deck Ten. Hurry, Lieutenant. I have injured to get to sickbay.”

“On our way,” Ang assured him.

“What happened?” asked Ben Zoma, holding the side of his mottled, swollen face as he staggered to his feet.

“We found our saboteur,” said Picard.

Gilaad Ben Zoma sat on a biobed in sickbay and allowed Greyhorse to inject him with a hypospray full of painkiller.

Eventually, he would need oral surgery as a result of the blow Jomar had dealt him. But for now, he couldn’t afford not to be up and about.

“How do you feel now?” asked the doctor.

“Much better,” said Ben Zoma.

“Then you agree?” asked Picard, who was standing beside Greyhorse.

Greyhorse nodded. “Absolutely. We can’t let the Magnians direct our tractor beam if even one of them is exhibiting unexpected side effects.”

Ben Zoma looked across the triage area at Santana, who was lying on the same biobed she had occupied during her coma. The woman was awake, but dazed—the result of a severe concussion.

Pug Joseph was standing beside her, theoretically to guard against her doing anything rash. But in truth, the security officer looked more concerned than watchful.

As Ben Zoma understood it, Santana had knocked Joseph out in an effort to reach Jomar before he could carry out his latest act of sabotage. When she found herself unequal to the task, she roused the security officer telepathically—something she couldn’t have done without the psilosynine amplifying her abilities—and summoned him to tip the balance.

Ben Zoma was glad she had. And he wasn’t the only one.

“For the time being,” said the doctor, “I’m going to get the other colonists down here and administer sedatives to them. But I can’t make any promises as to the drugs’ effectiveness—”

“So you’ll need security personnel,” Picard deduced. “I understand. Believe me, Doctor, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

The second officer had barely completed his statement when a handful of security officers, led by Lieutenant Ang, escorted Jomar into sickbay. The Kelvan had assumed human form again, Ben Zoma noticed, and didn’t appear to be offering the officers any resistance.

“Bring him over here,” Greyhorse instructed them, tilting his head to indicate an empty biobed.

Ang looked to Ben Zoma first.

“Do as the doctor says,” Ben Zoma told him.

“I am not in need of medical attention,” Jomar protested.

“I will be the judge of that,” said Greyhorse.

As the Kelvan was brought to the bed, Picard put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You
are
all right, aren’t you?” he asked.

Ben Zoma shrugged. “I’ve been better. Fortunately, my body doesn’t know that right now. How about you?”

“I’ll live,” the second officer told him. He glanced at Jomar. “If only long enough to find out our guest’s motivation for sabotage.”

“I’d be interested in that story myself,” said Ben Zoma. “And now that we’re not headed for the depot any longer, we’ll have plenty of time to hear him tell it.”

Picard looked at him questioningly. “Not headed for the depot…?”

“Our secret weapon is kaput, remember? Without the Magnians manning our tractor beam, we don’t stand a chance. And with our saboteur out in the open, there’s no reason to even pretend we’re going.”

His friend frowned. “Perhaps you’re r—”

“Commander Picard?” came a voice over the intercom, interrupting the second officer’s remark.

Ben Zoma recognized the voice as Gerda Asmund’s.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Picard responded.

“Sir,” said the navigator, “two of the Nuyyad ships have left the depot and are coming after us.”

In the wake of the announcement, the security officers exchanged glances. Greyhorse looked disturbed as well.

The muscles rippled in the second officer’s jaw. “Then again,” he said, “perhaps we’ll be having that battle after all.”

Ben Zoma acknowledged the grim truth of Picard’s statement. The depot was significantly closer to the galactic barrier than the
Stargazer
was. If they wanted to return to warn the Federation about the Nuyyad, they would at some point have to engage the enemy.

“We can’t resort to the Magnians,” Ben Zoma sighed. “But without them, we’ll be outgunned.”

His friend shook his head. “Two against one, Gilaad. It doesn’t sound very promising, does it?”

“We can still beat them,” someone said.

Tracing the comment to its source, Ben Zoma saw Jomar looking at them from his heavily guarded biobed. The Kelvan’s pale-blue eyes glistened in the light from the overheads.

“I beg your pardon?” Picard replied.

“I said we can beat them,” Jomar repeated without inflection. “That is, if you allow me to complete my work.”

“And what work is that?” asked Ben Zoma.

The Kelvan continued to stare at them. “The work I did in an attempt to minimize the effects of your plasma flow regulator and distribution manifold on your phaser system.”

Ang looked at him. “What…?”

But Ben Zoma understood. “I get it now. That secondary command line you were laying in…you were trying to streamline our plasma delivery system and beef up phaser power.”

“That is correct,” Jomar confirmed. “The incidents you no doubt attributed to sabotage were inadvertent and…unfortunate.”

Picard regarded the Kelvan with narrowed eyes. “You were expressly forbidden to tamper with the phaser system.”

Jomar looked unimpressed. “The Nuyyad must be stopped, Commander. And I had every confidence that the
Stargazer’
s plasma conduits could tolerate the modifications.”

The second officer turned ruddy with anger. “It wasn’t your choice to make, Jomar. It was Captain Ruhalter’s—and now it’s mine. But at no time was it ever
yours.”

“I stand corrected,” Jomar replied evenly, though it was clear he didn’t mean it in the least. “However, you now have an option that you would not have had otherwise.”

He was right, of course, Ben Zoma reflected. And with a couple of Nuyyad warships on a collision course with the
Stargazer,
they needed all the options they could get.

Picard must have been thinking the same thing. No doubt, he was leery about working alongside someone who had been trying to choke him a short while earlier—and the Kelvan’s scheme was still a dangerous one.

But the alternative was to take a chance on making Gary Mitchell–style monsters out of Santana’s contingent. And that, in the long run, might be infinitely
more
dangerous.

The second officer looked at Ben Zoma. What do
you
think? Picard seemed to be asking.

“Let’s do it,” his friend said.

The commander thought about it a moment longer. Then he turned to Jomar again. “Very well. How much time do you need?”

“Not much,” the Kelvan told him. “Twenty minutes, perhaps.”

Picard nodded. “You’ve got it.”

Once again, Ben Zoma thought, they were putting their trust in someone who had previously proven unworthy of it. In Santana’s case, they had been fortunate enough to make the right choice.

Now they were shooting for double or nothing.

In the dusky scarlet illumination of a red alert, Picard eyed the pair of Nuyyad vessels on his viewscreen.

“Range?” he asked.

“Twenty-two billion kilometers,” said Gerda, “and closing.”

At warp seven, the
Stargazer
would cover fifty percent of that distance in the next minute and meet the enemy halfway. It didn’t leave them much time to gird themselves for battle.

The second officer turned to Vigo. “Power up phasers and photon torpedoes,” he said.

“Aye, sir,” Vigo responded.

Picard looked to Gerda again. “Raise shields.”

“Raising shields,” she confirmed.

The commander took a deep breath and watched the Nuyyad ships loom larger on the screen. For the time being, they were content to fly parallel courses, though that would no doubt change in the next few seconds.

As if on cue, the enemy vessels peeled off in different directions, aiming to catch the Federation ship in a crossfire. Picard thought for a moment and turned to his helm officer.

“Go after the one to starboard,” he commanded.

“Aye, sir,” said Idun.

Abruptly, the
Stargazer
veered to the right, keeping one of the Nuyyad ships in sight while momentarily ignoring the other. It was the maneuver that had been recommended by all Picard’s tactics instructors at the Academy—but not as a long-term solution.

It would buy him a few seconds, at best. But if luck was on his side, that would be all the time he needed.

“Lock on target,” he told Vigo.

“Targeting,” came the reply.

“Phaser range,” said Gerda.

“Fire!” snapped Picard.

Twin phaser beams lanced through space and skewered the enemy ship. At normal strength, the commander would have expected them to weaken the diamond-shape’s shields, perhaps even shake up the Nuyyad inside.

The crimson beams didn’t do that. They did a lot
more.

Instead of softening the enemy’s defenses, they seared right through them and penetrated the Nuyyad’s hull. Before Picard could give Vigo the order to fire again, his adversary suffered a vicious, blinding explosion amidships. With the second officer looking on in morbid fascination, the Nuyyad succumbed to a second explosion and then a third, and finally came apart in a white-hot burst of debris.

“Enemy vessel to port,” Gerda reported.

“Bring us about,” Picard told Idun.

As they swung hard to port, the viewscreen found their other antagonist. But at the same time, a string of vidrion bundles came slicing from the vessel’s cannons, filling the screen with their fury.

The second officer braced himself, but the impact wasn’t as bad as he had expected. Their vidrion-reinforced shields were holding up well—he could tell even without asking Gerda for the details.

“Target and fire!” he told Vigo.

A moment later, their phaser banks erupted again—gutting the enemy ship as they had gutted the other one, and with much the same results. The Nuyyad was ripped to shreds in a chain of spectacular explosions, one right after the other. The last of them left nothing in its wake but a languidly expanding wave of space junk.

Suddenly, the
Stargazer
was alone in the void, registering nothing on her forward viewscreen but the light of distant stars. Picard expelled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

Ben Zoma appeared beside him. “Apparently,” he said, “Jomar knew what he was talking about.”

“Apparently so,” the second officer replied.

But there was still the question they had brought up when Captain Ruhalter was still alive—as to whether the plasma conduits could tolerate the kind of stress Jomar’s enhancement would place on them. With that in mind, Picard asked Vigo to run a diagnostic.

After a moment, the weapons officer made his report. “The stress appears to have been considerable, sir. But the conduits held. There’s no sign of damage to them.”

The commander nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Ben Zoma looked at him. “Now what?”

Picard frowned. There was really only one option, as far as he was concerned. “Now we go after the depot.”

His colleague smiled a halfhearted smile. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“If you were in my place,” asked the second officer, “would you be turning back now?”

“If I were in your place,” said Ben Zoma, “I wouldn’t have come this far in the first place.”

Picard shot him a disparaging look.

“You asked,” his friend reminded him.

By the commander’s estimate, they were still two hundred and fifty billion kilometers from their target—more than twenty minutes’ travel at warp seven. With their pursuers out of the way, there was still plenty of time to change course and head for the barrier instead.

But Picard had undertaken a mission, and he was determined to see it through. “Resume course,” he told Idun.

The helm officer seemed to approve of the decision. “Aye, sir,” she said, and made a small adjustment in their heading.

Soon, the commander reflected, their struggles would be over—one way or the other.

Pug Joseph looked down at Serenity Santana, whose dark eyes were closed in recuperative repose.