“Good idea, Grof.” Sam patted the Trill on the back and steered him toward the ladder. “We might as well get along, because we’re all going to hang together.”
Chapter Fourteen
SAM COLLAPSED INTO HIS BUNK in the alcove off the bridge of the Tag Garwal. He was vaguely aware of the lowered voices of Taurik and Woil as they held down the bridge and monitored shipwide systems. It was downtime on the tanker while they licked their wounds after the near-fatal accident. Apart from the shaken nerves, the major effect was obvious: they were down to one probe with only about a fourth of their projected cargo in the hold.
Unfortunately, this meant that Sam would have to put his plans into effect before they accidentally destroyed the third and last probe. He had no doubt that they would head back to base with half a load rather than none, and he knew he might never get another opportunity to escape like this one, with a ship.
Sam struggled to push all these conflicting concerns and details out of his mind. He had always been a worrier, even when he was a little kid. In the last couple of years, he had learned not to let it show so much, but it hadn’t gone away entirely. Since developing more faith in himself, Sam now made quicker decisions and backed them up more forcefully. He guessed he was learning to command, although most of the time he felt helpless and frustrated.
Of all the commands in the galaxy, this had to be the worst: in charge of both the ship and the mutineers, perched on the edge of a black hole with phasers breathing down his neck. That realization didn’t console Sam as he struggled to clear his mind and fall asleep.
Finally the lieutenant succumbed to exhaustion and slipped into an agreeable dream. In this dream, he was a lowly ensign back on the Enterprise with Ogawa, Sito, Taurik, and those veteran officers like Riker and Worf, who seemed so wise and calm. Now he knew they must have been sweating out every crisis along with the rest of the crew, but it was their job not to show it.
Even Riker was nice to him in this dream, which was like an endless party in the Ten-Forward lounge. Promotions, recommendations, congratulations, and salutations all around! It was like graduation from high school. In fact, some of his old high-school chums were there, too, which struck Sam as odd for a few seconds, until he remembered that this was the Enterprise. Anything was possible on the Enterprise!
He danced with Jenny, his high-school flame, on the dance floor of the Ten-Forward lounge in his dress uniform. Hot dog! Does it get any better than this? After they danced, they walked off to a dark corner where they could study the serene starscape together and hold hands, while listening to the soft jazz of Riker’s quartet. He could feel her hands in his, caressing his chest, stroking his face—
Real hands shook him forcefully. “Captain, wake up!” insisted the Antosian, Jozarnay Woil.
Sam bolted upright, disappointed to find his dream replaced by stark reality. “What now?”
“Another ship has just arrived.”
Sam rolled off the bed and pulled his shoes on. He dashed out to the bridge and gazed at the viewscreen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Sure enough, another ship had approached the Jem’Hadar craft at a respectful distance, and the two seemed to be parlaying. He didn’t recognize the ship or its origins; it was an inelegant craft, possibly even uglier than the Tag Garwal.
“Is that another tanker?” he asked Taurik on the conn.
“Negative,” answered the Vulcan. “The warp signature identifies it as Bajoran. I would say it is a transport, perhaps a scientific vessel.”
“Bajoran?” muttered Woil, shaking his head. “This war just gets weirder and weirder.”
Sam’s sleepy vision and foggy mind cleared as he studied the strange craft, wondering if he dared to hail them. That would depend, he supposed, on how the Jem’Hadar treated the new arrivals. Unless they were part of the club, he sincerely doubted that their guard would let them hang around the prison work party. Still there might be some way to use their presence to his advantage, and this could be an opportunity waiting to be snatched.
“Should we tell the others?” asked Taurik.
“No,” answered Sam. “Look, they’re leaving. Track them, Taurik.”
“Yes, sir.”
The bridge crew watched silently as the boxy ship made an awkward turn and retreated. “Maintain long-range view,” ordered Sam.
Observing the Bajoran vessel proved worthwhile. She hadn’t gone very far before she stopped and turned around to watch them. Sam wondered if the strangers could provoke the Jem’Hadar enough to chase them and desert the tanker, even for a few seconds.
“They have moved outside weapons range,” reported Taurik. “Although I can hardly believe they would be any match for the Jem’Hadar craft.”
“Maybe it’s the Eye of Talek they’re interested in,” said Woil. “You know, tourists.”
“Or a scientific team,” suggested Taurik.
Whatever the ship was doing here, Sam didn’t want to lose an opportunity. If the Bajorans could be coerced into playing a role in their escape, he had to find a way to do it.
“How close are we to first shift?” asked Sam.
“Twenty-nine,” answered Taurik.
“I think we should get everyone up and get an early start on the day’s work,” declared Sam, rubbing his hands together as if he were Grof. “Let’s put that probe out there and grab some more Corzanium.”
Taurik gave him a raised eyebrow, but he still rose from his seat and headed for the ladder, ready to carry out the orders.
Woil looked at him point-blank and smiled. “You’ve got something planned, don’t you?”
“Just don’t get too attached to your job,” cautioned Sam.
Ro Laren stood on the bridge of the Orb of Peace, flanked by Captain Picard and Commander La Forge, who was seated at the conn. According to their shorthanded work regimen, one of them should have been in Engineering and the other one asleep in his bunk, but all three had come to the bridge to survey their target:
The Cardassian mining vessel floated in space, looking like a glint in the Eye of Talek. To Ro, it seemed incredible that they could deal a crippling blow to the Dominion’s plans merely by destroying this insignificant craft. Thus far, all of the Ferengi’s intelligence had been correct, even though they had paid a high price for it. The mining ship had to be destroyed.
As with most of the objectives on this foolhardy mission, this one wasn’t going to come easily, because sitting between them and their target was a Jem’Hadar attack ship. They had seen enough of these craft in the last few days to know exactly her capabilities and strengths. Making a frontal attack on the mining ship would be suicide, especially with two torpedoes.
They had already tried stealth and guile, by telling the Jem’Hadar that they were a Bajoran scientific mission sent to study the Eye of Talek. The Jem’Hadar had told them to go away. Now they were just outside weapons range, knowing that the Jem’Hadar had undoubtedly meant for them to go farther away than this. Would the watchdogs feel threatened by the small transport, or would they leave them alone?
Picard frowned at the enemy ships on the viewscreen. “We have to act quickly. Mr. La Forge, can we shoot a torpedo from this range and know that it will eventually make it to the black hole?”
“We could,” answered the engineer, “but it would have to be sublight speed, and they would have time to take evasive maneuvers. Then the black hole’s gravity would throw off the torpedo’s guidance system.”
“And we’d be dead thirty seconds later,” added Ro.
“Is there something we could do which would be undetectable?” the captain asked hopefully. “Can we make use of the black hole and its side effects?”
With his ocular implants, La Forge scanned quickly between the screen and his readouts. “Maybe there is something we could do. What if we caused a rock slide?”
“A rock slide?” asked Picard.
“Yes. We passed an asteroid belt about three hundred thousand kilometers back. In a bunch of years
, those asteroids will find their way into the black hole, anyway, but we could speed up the process.”
Ro leaned over him. “How?”
“Collect as many as we can in a tractor beam,” answered La Forge, “then take off at low warp speed. We cut the tractor beam and come out of warp, leaving the rocks to go on their way. Sort of like a giant slingshot. At near-warp speed, they won’t know what hit them.”
“I used to throw rocks at Cardassians as a kid,” said Ro. “Sometimes they can be very effective.”
“It’s the shotgun approach,” admitted La Forge with a shrug. “We might miss, but we won’t have to use any of our torpedoes. There’s nothing that will divert those rocks from that black hole—no shields, no phasers. You can blast them into smaller bits, but they’ll just keep coming.”
Picard tugged thoughtfully on his earring, then he nodded. “Make it so.”
Leni Shonsui was probably the oldest member of the Tag Garwal crew, and the Terran had a tough, no-nonsense attitude about life. She had taken the accident with the first probe personally and had withdrawn from the rest of the crew. She was of Asian extraction, thought Sam, and she might have been very beautiful in her youth. Now she was attractive but much embittered by captivity. Nevertheless, what she had managed to do with the Cardassian technology was quite impressive, despite her one lapse.
Sam didn’t want to leave seeing her alone to chance, so he purposely called a shipwide meeting in the mess hall for everyone to discuss the probe situation, only he summoned Shonsui to the bridge one minute beforehand.
After the small woman had climbed out of the hatch, he quickly locked it shut behind her. “Leni,” he said, “I won’t waste time. You know what we have to do—we have to escape. Now we know that the Jem’Hadar will come into transporter range and lower their shields to save us, and you have to disable them so that we can get away. Any ideas.”
The woman took a sharp breath. “What about Grof?”
“We’ll get somebody to neutralize him.”
“Okay.” She lowered her voice and stood on tiptoes to reach his ear. Her trembling hands gripped his forearm. “Let me beam some of that Corzanium into their warp coil. I grabbed a chunk for myself. Anywhere I put it is bound to cause a problem, even if I miss a bit. We must have schematics of an attack ship on board.”
“Yes, I’ve already located them,” answered Sam, pointing to his console. “You take over here on the bridge while I go to the meeting. We’ll use the notification icon on your readouts. When I give you the signal, that means we’re within transporter range. You have about a minute to do your part. Don’t worry about how I get them within range.”
“But we won’t go into the hole?” asked Shonsui with concern.
“No. Leave that to me. I’m counting on you, Leni, and not a word to anybody. Basically, you and I can make this happen.”
“Okay, Captain,” she answered with a grin. “And we get to kill a lot of the enemy in the bargain.”
“Yeah,” answered Sam with somewhat less enthusiasm. Sometimes when he looked at his fellow prisoners, he forgot that they were damaged goods, driven beyond endurance by their captors. He tried to remember all the details he had to attend to.
“We’ll fix them,” promised Leni, sitting at the conn. “I’ll be ready when I get your signal.”
“Thank you,” breathed Sam as he backed toward the hatch. Now he was certain that he would really have to go through with it. The one person who might have talked him out of it had embraced his foolish plan wholeheartedly.
Sam stepped down the ladder with a feeling of dread. In a short while, he was either going to escape this hell, or he was going to commit suicide and take his fellow prisoners with him.
Will Riker was jolted out of a deep, contented sleep by a piercing, frightened scream. He rolled out of bed, momentarily uncertain where he was.
Turning, he saw Shana Winslow thrashing her fists in the air, sobbing pitifully. With her eyes screwed shut, she still seemed to be asleep, but she was also in some kind of torment. Riker felt he had to wake her up.
“Shana! Shana,” he said, gently shaking her. “Wake up.”
With a gasp she opened her dark eyes and stared at him. For a moment, she didn’t seem to know where she was either. Finally she focused on Riker’s face; then she gave him a desperate hug, gripping him as if he were the only real thing in her life.
“Oh, Will! Am I crazy? I see my death every night—the one that didn’t happen. I was supposed to die on the Budapest—I know it—but they pulled me back from death.”
Her fingernails dug into the flesh of Riker’s back, and she stared past him. “I see them all—the ones who did die! My husband, the captain, the first officer—”
“Hey, it’s all right to see them,” said Riker soothingly. “It’s just survivor’s guilt. Your dreams may take you back to the past, but you’re really here in the present—with me. We’re alive. I don’t know for how much longer, but we’re alive now … and we’re together.”
“That’s right,” she breathed. “We’re alive, and they’re dead. Don’t know how long—”
In the darkness of a modest cabin on Starbase 209, surrounded by war, refugees, damaged ships, and cold space, the acting captain held the grieving woman in his arms. Riker knew all about survivor’s guilt; he was feeling it himself, certain that the captain, La Forge, Data, Ro, and all the rest were dead. He gripped Winslow’s fragile body until her shaking stopped.
“Let’s do it!” said Sam over the ship’s comm. “Prepare to launch the probe.”
“That’s the spirit,” bellowed Grof, standing behind him. He looked uncertainly at Taurik, who was now on tactical. They had gotten used to having the Vulcan belowdeck, filling in where needed, but Sam wanted him here—for this run.
“Whatever happened to that other ship?” asked Grof, sounding as if he were making nervous small talk.
“They left,” replied Taurik, “approximately one hour ago.”
“Probe ready,” announced Woil from below.
“You’re on ops, Grof,” ordered Sam, slipping casually into his seat at the conn.
“No, wait a minute,” blustered the Trill. “With Taurik up here, I’m needed below—we’re shorthanded.”
“Nonsense,” answered Sam. “Lately the problems have been up here, not in the hold. I’ll let you shoot the tachyons. Please, I want the crack team on the bridge, just for a while.”
He thought that appealing to Grof’s ego would win him over. The large Trill sunk into the seat at ops and mustered a put-upon smile. Sam nodded gratefully.
“Captain to crew,” he announced. “Launch probe when ready. Stand by on tractor beam.”
Despite the disaster of the last probe and the bizarre circumstances, they knew the routine after a dozen successful runs. They were professionals, doing the jobs for which they had trained and lived. The probes may have taken a beating, but the tanker and her crew were still in prime condition, a fact which Sam was counting on. This ignoble craft had to make due as their escape pod back to the Federation.
Without incident, they captured the probe with the tractor beam and lowered it to the brink of the black hole. With a halo of dust flowing into its unquenchable emptiness, the Eye of Talek looked aptly named—a window into the soul of a monster. Its primitive force made the war, the Dominion, and a handful of prisoners seem like plankton to a whale. Worst of all, the hole still looked hungry.
“Beginning tachyon bombardment,” said Grof softly, as if taken by the solemnity of the occasion. They were very close to the moment when they had been ambushed by fate the last time.
“Extending tractor beam,” reported Taurik.
“Extracting Corzanium,” came Tamla Horik’s voice from below.
With his heart beginning to race, Sam turned slightly in his seat so that Grof couldn’t see his movements. The Trill appeared to be fixated on his own console, as did Taurik, although he would need the Vulcan’s attention very soon. After yes
terday, Sam knew enough not to cause a problem while the tractor beam was still extended into the hole. But afterward, when they began to withdraw the probe back to a place where it could be safely transported—that was the time to strike. Now it was time to plant the seeds.
“Grof,” cut in Sam, “I’m still having to compensate for slight shifts in our trajectory. That anomaly has never been corrected.” He leaned back and pointed to his display.
“Just compensate,” growled Grof. “I believe you. There must be spikes in the gravity or something. Someday you can come back and figure it out. For now, just keep us on course.”
“If you say so,” replied Sam pleasantly, doing as he was told.
Taurik cocked his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps this effect is caused by minute differences in the probes themselves. They may look identical, but they are not.”
“Could be,” allowed Sam, silently thanking his friend for buttressing his claim. “Like the professor says, nothing to get upset about.”
After a few seconds more, Tomla Horik announced, “You were shaking things up in the cockpit, but it’s full now. Reel her in.”
“Retracting tractor beam,” said Taurik. “Stand by to—”
Without warning, the Tag Garwal was slammed by a series of sudden jolts, like machine-gun bullets raking their hull. Luckily, Sam’s eyes were on his controls, because he immediately fired thrusters to get them away from the black hole.
Sparks and acrid smoke spewed from a wall panel to his left, and Grof was shouting, “What’s going on? We’ve lost the probe!”
“Damage on level two,” reported Taurik evenly. “Hull breach, losing atmosphere—”
Sam tuned out the noise, the voices, and the panic as he struggled with the helm, visions of yesterday’s disaster swimming in his head. He had a slight jump, more distance, and no tractor beam to contend with, and his reflexes were poised for action. Sam stopped their descent at a safe distance from the event horizon, but he tried not to make it appear too safe. Maybe this was the chance he had been waiting for.
Behind Enemy Lines Page 21
