“Doesn’t matter,” snarled the gul, “you have a bigger problem, no documents.”
Ro offered him a smile of regret. “As I have told you, we have just entered this sector, and we were about to make our first stop, where we could apply for permission. We welcome your visit.”
The gul scowled, as if he much preferred Bajorans who made trouble. “Is this what your proud people are reduced to, slinking around with trinkets, like a tribe of Ferengi?”
Ro lowered her voice. “To be frank, we are curious to get to know the Dominion better. We are neutral in this war, you know, and it’s fairly clear how it’s going to end.”
The gul laughed. “Ah. So now you’re cowards, but at least smart cowards.”
A young glinn hovering nearby whispered something in the ear of the gul, and he glowered at them. “I’m reminded that your flight pattern shows you came from Federation space, or what’s left of it. How do you explain that?”
“We did come from Federation space,” answered Ro. “We were trading there first. In fact, that’s where we obtained the tetralubisol. It’s the finest space-rated lubricant you can buy.”
“I know what it is,” muttered the Cardassian.
One of the young pseudo-Bajorans approached the gul with a pamphlet in her hand. “Would you like something to read? It’s very inspiring.”
He slapped the padd out of her hand. “Get away from me! You’re all sheep, the lot of you. Bajorans!” He spat on the deck.
Despite the burning bile surging up her throat, Ro stuck to her plan. “We honestly come in peace. With the Dominion rolling over two quadrants, we haven’t got anything to gain by remaining loyal to the Federation. The Federation did nothing but interfere, anyway.”
“There’s a grain of truth,” said the Cardassian. “Have you got any more truth in you?”
“Only that you once fought against the Dominion, and now you regard them as allies. Can’t you do the same with us?”
For a moment, it looked as if the old warrior would accept her entreaty of peace; then he burst out laughing. “Bajorans, my dear, are hardly the Dominion.”
His sunken eyes ran down her lean body. “You personally are quite attractive, Captain, and perhaps you do offer something of worth. We must have a private conference later to discuss it.”
Ro gritted her teeth and tried not to vomit. “Then I could offer you some wine.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said with a sympathetic smile. “We have to confiscate all of the wine. Contraband, you know.”
“What? What!” sputtered Ro, although she had expected this turn of events. “You can’t take our whole cargo … I mean, we need to make a profit!”
“Experience is always a great profit.” Gul Ditok snapped his fingers, and his soldiers roughly herded the Bajoran crew away from the cases of wine. Within seconds, they had transported every bottle from the cargo bay to their warship.
Ro tried to feign a mixture of indignation and horror at this outrage, while she was secretly relieved that they had accepted the bribe. Could she possibly hope they would leave it at that?
“Now are you satisfied? Can you let us go?” she demanded.
“Not yet. I want to see your bridge and your weaponry. Our scan suggests that you have photon torpedoes.”
“Only six,” said Ro. “You never know when you’ll confront an asteroid belt, pirates, or some other obstacle that requires intervention.”
“We don’t have pirates in the Cardassian Union,” said the gul testily.
“Ah, but we were just in Federation space, where they have no respect for law and order.”
Once again, the gul looked disappointed that his prey was so amenable. “Take us to your bridge.”
Gritting her teeth, Ro led the way to the bridge, which was only up one level via a spiral staircase. When she entered the control room, she was glad to see that the lights were dimmed to a soothing level. Captain Picard and two other duty officers were the only ones present.
The Cardassian gul and his entourage muscled their way into the cramped room and began peering at everything and everyone. Captain Picard stood immediately and smiled at the visitors.
The gul looked at his conn screen. “What is your maximum speed?”
“Warp three,” answered Picard.
The Cardassian laughed. “Aren’t you embarrassed to be flying this thing?”
“It’s preferable to fighting in the war,” said Picard with a shrug. “We have a message of peace to bring to the Dominion.”
“We shall see about that.” The gul gave a sidelong glance at his retinue, and they grinned knowingly.
“Gul Ditok!” snapped a voice. “Look what I have found.”
They all turned to see a female glinn standing beside an open cabinet, holding a Starfleet hand phaser. It was a shock to Ro and everyone else in the crew, as they had been careful not to bring any obvious Starfleet equipment on board. All of their phasers were Bajoran or Ferengi.
“Aha!” declared the Cardassian. He was so melodramatic about it that Ro instantly knew what had happened—the phaser had been planted!
“You are enemies of the Dominion, in league with the Federation,” proclaimed the gul. “We are seizing this vessel and taking you prisoner.”
Picard shot her a glance, then immediately turned to his console. His fingers pressed several membrane panels before the gul slapped him in the head and knocked him out of his chair. The captain tumbled to the floor, but he gazed up with a satisfied look on his face.
“What have you done?” bellowed the gul.
“We have eight seconds to live.”
Chapter Six
RO HAD NEVER SEEN a Cardassian’s eyes widen, because of the thick bones which encircled their eye sockets. But Gul Ditok’s eyes grew very wide when Picard told him that he had seconds to live. Every person on the bridge of the Orb of Peace looked terrified, and Ro’s eyes went instinctively to the platitudes framing the viewscreen. “Place yourself in the hands of the Prophets,” suggested one phrase, which was a proper sentiment under the circumstances.
Gul Ditok barked into his communicator, “Beam us up! Immediately!”
As their sparkling shapes vanished from the bridge, Picard leaped into his chair and punched his instrument panel. Ro flinched, certain that the next instant would be their last.
When they weren’t blasted to bits, she opened her eyes and looked around. “I counted more than ten seconds.”
“I changed my mind and set it for thirty,” admitted Picard. “I put the shields up, so they can’t transport us off. You’d better start talking to them.”
Ro motioned to Tactical. “Open a channel to the Jem’Hadar ship. Put me on screen, whether they acknowledge or not.”
She strode in front of the viewscreen and pouted angrily. “This is Captain Ro Laren of the Orb of Peace. Is this how the Dominion treats its neutral trading partners? We come here in peace, and you steal our shipment of zajerberry wine, you threaten my crew, and you plant a weapon on our ship so that you can illegally seize us!”
She closed her eyes again, expecting quantum torpedoes to slam into them. When that didn’t happen, Ro went on. “We know there’s a war, but our work goes on. We are a religious people, and we just want a chance to trade goods and ideas. In this modest vessel, we couldn’t do you any harm.”
Ro tried not to think what a huge lie she had just delivered, but she was doing the best she could in this one-way conversation. Ro glanced down at Picard and saw that he had only paused the self-destruct sequence. There were fifteen seconds left, and his fingers were poised to resume the fatal countdown.
The viewscreen was filled with two imposing warships—the mustard-colored Galor-class warship and the Jem’Hadar battle cruiser, its hull pulsing with a vibrant blue light. Ro looked at tactical. “End transmission.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are they arming weapons?”
“No,” said the officer on tactical. “They’re sending coded mes
sages back and forth to each other.”
Ro looked at Picard, and he gave her an encouraging smile. “You’re doing fine.”
She nodded and swallowed. It felt good to yell at them, even if every word was a lie.
The tactical officer gasped with surprise. “They are … they are sending us documents! One set allows us passage in this sector, and the other is an order to appear on Cardassia Prime in seventy-two hours to discuss a fine for our offenses.”
“They gave us a ticket,” commented Picard with a touch of amusement in his voice.
Ro looked puzzledly at the human. “A ticket?”
“It’s an old Terran phrase,” said Picard. “It means that we received a summons to appear later, so trial and punishment is put off. Acknowledge it and thank them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ro didn’t breathe calmly until the two great warships glided into graceful turns and disappeared into space. For several seconds, the bridge crew stared at the glittering starscape, scarcely believing that the threat was gone.
“Keep them on sensors,” ordered Ro, “for as long as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the ops officer.
“Resume course for the farming colony until we’re sure they’re gone,” said Ro, her mouth feeling parched.
“Aye, sir,” replied Picard as he carried out the order. “We’ll have to make a run for the Badlands sooner or later.”
“I know,” answered Ro grimly. “Let’s calculate exactly how much time we’ll need to make it. When we get a window, we’ll go.”
“Let’s hope for a large window,” added the captain.
While buffeted by swirling winds and heavy methane snow, Data set up a portable scanner on the rugged outcropping and tried to take readings. Although the electromagnetic interference and radiation levels were high, they weren’t disruptive enough to hide his shuttlecraft, which was still sitting out there, an alien artifact on an icy plain. At least it hadn’t been totally destroyed.
He couldn’t detect any other machines, vessels, probes, or life signs near the shuttlecraft, but that didn’t mean the area was safe. The range of his portable instruments didn’t allow him to tell if the Jem’Hadar ship was still in orbit around Kreel VI.
Data was neither impatient nor imprudent, and he could have sat there for weeks, waiting until it was absolutely safe to venture forth. But every moment he delayed reduced the likelihood of finding the Orb of Peace with the shuttlecraft’s sensors. His own safety was not an issue, except that if he was captured or destroyed, his mission couldn’t possibly succeed.
Overriding these concerns was the necessity of finding out if the shuttlecraft itself was still intact. In the pelting blizzard, he repacked his cases and began his descent from the tor. Not only was the storm worse than ever, but the daylight was beginning to fade. By the time Data covered the three kilometers to his shuttlecraft, the visibility was terrible, and he was forced to plug directly into his tricorder to scan the area.
Thirty meters from the shuttlecraft, he discovered a dark crater brimming with radiation, and he set down his cases and crouched between them. He assumed the crater was the remains of the blast he had felt earlier, which meant that the Jem’Hadar had missed his shuttlecraft. Or perhaps it had been a warning shot, intended to flush him out of hiding. Data grabbed a phaser, a tricorder, and a bandolier loaded with photon grenades, which he slung over his shoulder.
Despite all indications that the Jem’Hadar had left the planet without finding him or his ship, Data hesitated and continued to take readings, both with his tricorder and his internal sensors. His friend, Geordi, had an expression: “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.” In this case, it looked too good to be true.
As he searched for esoteric pulses and energy readings, Data detected the low-resonance hum of a light source which shouldn’t be there in the foggy darkness. It wasn’t a strong light source, more like a photo cell or a photoreceptor.
A motion detector. On a planet with no life, it was a simple but effective warning device.
He concentrated his search on the few meters in front of the shuttlecraft and pinpointed the location of the motion detector—directly in front of the hatch. Was the alarm intended to alert the Jem’Hadar that he had returned? Or was it even more basic—a bomb intended to turn both him and the shuttlecraft into scrap? If he took another step closer, he would probably find out.
The trick was to get closer without getting closer. The android did a careful calculation and determined that he was seventeen meters away from the device, and it was at ground level. He stepped backward several paces, ran forward, and leaped twenty meters into the air.
In a high arc, Data soared through the methane atmosphere and landed with a thud on the roof of the shuttlecraft. He paused, waiting to see if he had activated the alarm, but the device continued to emit a low-resonance hum. Because it was on the ground, its range apparently didn’t extend to the roof, and the shuttlecraft itself hid his movements.
Because a bomb was a more immediate concern than an alarm, he had to deactivate it. But getting too close would have just the opposite effect. Despite all of his precautions, Data realized that direct and swift action was required.
He looked around the roof of the shuttlecraft and spotted a deflector dish, which had to weigh at least two hundred kilograms. He grabbed the dish with both hands and yanked it from its mounts, snapping the metal as if it were plywood. Calculating the exact location of the motion detector on the ground below him, Data leaned over the edge of the roof and dropped the dish on top of it.
With a satisfying crunch, the humming stopped.
Data noted that both he and the shuttlecraft were still intact, but he crouched down and drew his phaser, making sure it was set on heavy stun.
They came quickly. Four figures in gray space suits materialized on the ground below him, and Data didn’t wait for them to react. He fired two bursts from his phaser, felling two of them; then he leaped off the shuttlecraft as they returned fire.
Data dropped into a crouch and fired twice more. The space-suited figures twisted from the impact of his phaser beams and slumped to the ground. Figuring the casualties would be retrieved quickly, the android grabbed a plasma grenade, armed it, ripped off the adhesive, and stuck it to the chest of the closest Jem’Hadar in less than a second. With movements so swift that no one could have followed them, Data planted a live grenade on each enemy body and leaped back. It was a particularly brutal way to dispatch with a foe, Data knew. But he also knew that brutality was unavoidable in war.
In the dark, swirling fog, the fallen Jem’Hadar soldiers sparkled brightly as their molecules were swept off the planet. Data calculated the horrible chaos that would erupt on the Jem’Hadar ship when the four plasma grenades exploded in their transporter room—in point-five seconds. With any luck, the rupture would be bad enough to cause a breach in the hull, occupying his pursuers until he could get away.
Data fetched his equipment and opened the hatch of the shuttlecraft, dragging his reflector shield and supplies after him. His movements a blur, the android powered up the small craft, fired thrusters, and zoomed away from the surface of the planet. The fact that he was still alive a few moments later assured him that his diversion had been a success.
Reaching full-impulse speed in seconds, Data piloted the craft in an elliptical arc which put him on the other side of the planet, away from their sensors. He ran a brief scan before he vanished over the dark horizon and noted with satisfaction that the Jem’Hadar battle cruiser was in low orbit and descending quickly. He doubted whether the massive ship was capable of atmospheric reentry, which meant they were in serious trouble.
There was no time to appreciate his unexpected victory over the much larger ship, because Data had a Bajoran transport to find. He zoomed out of orbit and entered warp drive, missing the spectacular explosion that sundered the ivory clouds of Kreel VI.
Will Riker gripped the arms of the command cha
ir and held on as the Enterprise was jolted by a Jem’Hadar torpedo. An ominous rumbling sound surged along the length of the vessel.
“Shields down to thirty percent!” shouted Ensign Craycroft on tactical.
Riker checked his readouts. “If we can hold on just a little bit longer … Where the devil is the fleet?”
It was a rhetorical question, because he didn’t expect an answer. Apparently, the Dominion had launched a massive offensive all along the Cardassian border, and the ships chasing the Enterprise were just two of many. The fact that there were only two was also troubling, because it meant that one of them had broken off to pursue either Data or the Orb of Peace.
He couldn’t worry about them now. The Enterprise shuddered again from the impact of another torpedo against her weakening shields. Riker glanced at Craycroft, and the ashen expression on her face told him everything he needed to know.
“All residual power to shields,” ordered Riker through clenched teeth. It was tempting to come about and make a stand against the enemy, but Riker knew it would be the last stand. He wasn’t prepared to lose the Enterprise until he could run no farther. The fleet had to be out there … somewhere.
“Sir!” gasped Ensign Craycroft. “The Carla Romney and the Sharansky have responded to our hails! They’ll intercept in two minutes.”
Riker allowed himself a grateful sigh. “All right, hail the Jem’Hadar and tell them we want to surrender. Conn, come out of warp to full impulse.”
“Verifying that order to surrender,” said Craycroft.
“Yes, because we know they like to take prisoners. Don’t lower shields, but ready phasers. Conn, be ready to go to warp on a moment’s notice.” Riker settled back in his chair and straightened his rumpled uniform. He had lost about ten kilos since the war began, and the tunic hung on him. Too bad there was no time for anyone to appreciate his thinner physique.
Craycroft listened intently to her earpiece, then reported, “They say to lower shields.”
“On screen,” ordered Riker, sitting upright in the command chair.
Behind Enemy Lines Page 9
