Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic (29 page)

“Hull breach in cargo bay seven, no casualties, no damage to systems.” Grak slumped back, relieved.

“Targeting
Intrepid.”

“No! Bok is still aboard. We daren’t risk it.”

The other Ferengi all looked at him in shock. “The Starfleeters must be in control of the ship,” one said.

“Starfleeters don’t kill prisoners, which means Bok is still aboard. We’ll need to concentrate on making sure he is safe.”

Tyler Hunt huddled over the tactical station with Nog. “What can we expect from the captain of a marauder? Aggression, caution, deviousness . . . ?”

“Ferengi tend to treat everything as business. Even combat. They’ll want to maximize their return on investment.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means they’ll be thinking of the profit they want to make.”

“They’d want to take this ship as a prize?”

“I doubt they’ll expect that to be possible,” Nog admitted. “They’re not pirates, they’re businessmen. They’ll want to encourage us to stop trying to interfere with the
Intrepid,
so they’ll probably concentrate on diverting us away from the Split Infinite, rather than trying to destroy us outright.” Nog looked away for a moment. “Really, they should have laid mines.”

“Area denial.” Hunt understood and nodded. “So we’ll
want to keep as close to the Infinite as possible, and maybe even try to keep the
Intrepid
between us and them.”

“They definitely won’t dare fire on the source of their profit, sir,” Nog agreed. “They’re not Romulans, who’ll destroy their own forces when their mission fails.”

“Right. Start programming attack patterns. We’re going to need them.”

Leah, not for the first time, wished that she could simply solve the problem by some technological means. She thought about that for a moment. It wasn’t just power that was distributed by engineering systems. Food, morale, tasks, the right people were all things that needed to be distributed correctly for a ship to function at its best.

She turned from the ops console. “Scotty, I’ve been thinking. If we bring some of the beta shift personnel on duty, we can staff the battle bridge and auxiliary control right now. If they’re all properly briefed, it should quicken our response times when the marauder attacks.”

“Ye’ve been thinking about duty rosters?” Scotty could conceal neither his amazement nor his appreciation.

“The crew are parts of the starship just like the engine components. They need to be tuned . . .”

Scotty laughed. “It’s a valuable lesson that we all learn at the Academy. If ye’re not careful, you’ll make a decent officer someday.” He smiled slyly. “That would even things up between you and Geordi, now, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ll stay civilian, if it’s all the same, Scotty.” Leah blushed red, and went to call people to duty.

I
ntrepid
banked away as the marauder’s shields contracted around the Ferengi ship. The marauder then rotated to keep her scoop-like nose on an orientation that could face both
Intrepid
and the oncoming
Challenger
.

On the bridge, La Forge sat in the center seat. He felt tense, but didn’t show it. “Hail the marauder.”

Grak’s voice responded instantly.
“Go ahead.”

“Grak, this is Commander Geordi La Forge. The
Intrepid
is Starfleet property. Cease your attack and withdraw.”

“Where is Bok?”

“Bok and his crew are disarmed and in our brig.”

“Alive?”

“So long as you do what I tell you. If you press your attack, Bok will die.”

“Starfleeters don’t kill prisoners,”
Grak said stubbornly.

Rasmussen cleared his throat as he stepped beside Geordi. “Erm, that’s true, Grak, but, as you know, I’m not Starfleet, and I’ve served my time in prison, just like you and Bok. Commander La Forge is somewhat preoccupied running the ship, and so are the other Starfleet technicians, but I find myself as something of a fifth wheel around here, and well . . . I think if I were to go down to the brig with a disruptor and have some target practice with Bok, none of them would really have the free time to come and stop me. You do see where I’m going with this, don’t you, Grak?”

“Yes, I see where you’re going.”
There was a long pause.
“This isn’t over, welcher.”
The comm went dead. La Forge got
up and moved to stand with Balis at tactical, where he could see that the marauder was backing off, but only slightly. Their weapons were still armed, but on a standby cycle.

“Looks like we’ve bought ourselves some time.”

On the larger and better-lit bridge of the
Challenger,
smiles of relief rippled around the senior staff. They had all heard the exchange between La Forge and Grak. Scotty slapped the arm of his chair in a little moment of triumph. “Can we contact Geordi directly?”

“We’re still being jammed,” Nog informed him. “And I’m having trouble filtering out the random interference coming out of the Infinite.”

“EM interference is only to be expected—”

“No, sir, it’s not just radiation and EM interference. There are actual signals, snatches of conversations . . . I think they’re signals passing through the system, which have been deflected through the Infinite.”

Leah’s eyes widened, and her tone grew hushed and reverent. “Messages from the past and the future . . .” Scotty understood how intrigued she was, because he was equally interested. “I’ll record them. We might learn some things about both history and future technological developments.”

Nog had lowered his ear to the tactical console, listening closely to the signals. “I don’t think we’ll learn much. It’s all just single words and sounds, out of context. Not complete sentences.”

“There’s no harm in saving everything we can,” Leah said firmly.

A similar conversation was taking place on
Intrepid,
where Barclay was also recording the signals. “Wow . . . Commander, look at this.”

“Sensor readings, Reg?”

“More than that. Fragments of signals passing through this system have been caught in the Infinite. Some of them are
really
old, I mean decades, or even centuries. A couple are even from the future.”

“The future?”

“Listen.”

“. . . Stardate 72238.5 en route . . .
Qap’la!
. . . birthday greetings . . .”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be listening to that, Reg.”

“Yes we should!” Rasmussen piped up.

“Shut up,” Barclay and La Forge both snapped, as one.

La Forge suddenly caught something. “Wait, stop!”

“What is it?”

“I know it’s impossible, but I thought . . . I thought I just heard the IFF transponder code of the
Hera.”

“It’s not totally impossible, Commander. These
are
sensor returns that have traveled through time.”

“That’s not the impossible part.” Geordi spooled back the transcript of recorded signals. “Look, I found it.”

Barclay looked. “You’re right, that’s the
Hera,
but I don’t see what’s so impossible about it.”

“Look at the date stamp,” Geordi urged. “Stardate 47221.3.”

“So?”

La Forge looked stunned. “So, the
Hera
’s last known transmission was on Stardate 47215.5. This signal dates from
after
she was reported lost.”

In the brig, the now unarmed mercenaries were beginning to wake up. The Breen seemed to have been the most affected by the sonic field, and Bok thought that at least one of them was actually dead.

When Bok first woke, his head was filled with an agonizing pain that quickly refocused itself into a raging fury. So now this La Forge, Picard’s lackey, would condemn Bok’s son! He should have killed the hew-mon in the first place. He should have killed all of them, including Rasmussen.

“Bok . . .” It was Sloe. A hew-mon just like all the other child-killers. Bok turned on him, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the metal bunk.

“We can re-take the bridge—” Sloe managed to gasp.

Bok fought to control his anger, and eventually let his grip loosen. He released Sloe with a derisory shove.
Remember your son,
he told himself.
Your son is all that matters, and his fate isn’t sealed yet.

“Why bother?” Bok took a small electronic device from his pocket. “I took the liberty of preprogramming our course.” He pressed a control on the device. “Which is now locked in.”

“We’re changing course,” the ensign at
Intrepid
’s helm said. He seemed to be struggling with the controls.

“Change it back,” La Forge ordered.

The ensign’s hands swept across the controls, and then he shrugged helplessly.

“I tried. Helm isn’t responding.”

Barclay hurried past. “Let me look at the navigational computer.”

“Be my guest.”

“We’re going to a preprogrammed course,” Barclay said after a moment.

La Forge stood, looking over Barclay’s shoulder at the navigational computer. “Can you override the program?”

Barclay’s hands were a blur across the console. “Yes . . . No. Every override I try looks like its going to work, but
then . . . nothing,” he finished, his voice blending apology, anger, and frustration.

“It must be locked in . . . Encrypted. Can you find a workaround?”

“No, all the executables are being triggered from a secure separate unit. Most likely it’s hardwired into the main engine panel and activated remotely. Maybe even by a tricorder or communicator.”

“Then . . .”

“We’re programmed to follow the same course as that probe they sent through the Infinite. Whatever happens we’re on a one-way trip to 2162.”

La Forge accepted the news with a fatalistic expression. “We need to rig the dilithium matrix to destabilize.”

“Will you be making sure we’ve got time to get away?”

“If it’s possible, Reg.”

Barclay nodded somberly, then frowned in concentration. “What if we link the antimatter containment field to the gravimetric ambience. We could arrange for the engine to overload only under a specific gravitational condition, like entering the Infinite.”

“Not a bad idea, but I think we can tweak it to make it even better. We’ll balance the containment field to collapse when the gravitational shear drops below a certain point.”

“Below?”

“When the ship tries to come out of the Infinite, if it ever goes in there.” He disappeared through the doors.

Bok patted his pockets for his communicator, and used it. There was no barrier on
Intrepid
to signaling his ship. “Grak, are you there?”

“Yes, Daimon.”

“The Starfleet ship will try to prevent us from entering
the Infinite. You must keep them occupied until we are gone.”

“Their ship is powerful. I can’t guarantee that we can destroy it.”

“That’s not as important as keeping it away from us.” Bok paused. “But first, can you beam us directly to the bridge of
Intrepid?”

“Which ‘us’?”

“Sloe and myself. You can beam the rest of the men back to your ship.”

“Yes, Daimon.”

As the harsh red transporter beam coalesced into Bok and Sloe in the center of
Intrepid
’s bridge, the bridge crew looked up, tensing, ready to defend themselves. “You may as well stand down,” Bok said. “It was a brave effort, La Forge, but doesn’t make a difference now. Whatever happens, we’re on our way to 2162.”

La Forge returned to the bridge and raised a disruptor to cover Bok and Sloe. “Deactivate whatever you’ve done.”

Bok pursed his lips as if thinking, then gave a curt shake of the head. “I can’t do that.”

“I mean it, Bok—”

“When I say I can’t do that, I mean it physically cannot be done.” He tossed the remote control to La Forge. “See for yourself.” Geordi took it suspiciously, and saw that it was dead. “Once activated, the course is hardwired into the engines. You’d have to destroy them to stop our journey, and we made sure to disable the autodestruct systems when we boarded.”

“What happens to us then?”

“I don’t care. Ras-mew-son might have some ideas about what to do with you.” Bok gave a smile filled with false apology. “I’m afraid you missed your window to escape.”

P
ursued by the marauder,
Challenger
swept up and around
Intrepid,
keeping the precious relic between themselves and Grak’s vessel as much as possible. Grak’s helmsman was pretty good, and they never quite snookered it for more than a few seconds at a time.

“Captain,” Nog said, “I was thinking about how we dealt with the first ship, that
Vor’cha?
”

“Odo’s favorite trick?” Scotty said. “Aye, that was a good one.”

“The
Intrepid
doesn’t have shields,” Nog reminded him.

“The hull can be polarized to scatter coherent energy transmissions,” Scotty pointed out. “It was intended to protect the ship from energy weapons, radiation storms, and so on, but it plays absolute hell with a transporter’s annular confinement beam. They wouldn’t even have to depolarize to operate the cloak, the way a shielded ship would have to drop their shields.”

“They’ll have to polarize the hull plating to survive the radiation in the Infinite,” Nog said urgently, “but they haven’t yet.”

Scotty looked up, a moment of hope frozen on his usually dour features. “If we can separate out our people from theirs . . .”

“We can either beam our team home, or take a security detail over to retake the
Intrepid.”

“I don’t fancy the idea of trying to beam anyone through that mess. But of the two options, beaming our people home is the least dangerous.” Scotty rose. “I’m going
to transporter room one. Let me know when you think you’ve got a fix on our people.

Rasmussen wouldn’t have moved if he’d had time to think about it, but a lurch of the ship had sent him lunging in Bok’s direction anyway, and it was easier to go with the flow than try to back off and do something else. He swung wildly at Bok as he all but fell into the Ferengi. The blow didn’t connect as such, but it surprised Bok, and then the impact of the larger man’s stumble forced him back.