by Dayton Ward
No, Reyes decided, this is definitely different.
“And wandering around all alone,” Nakaal said, his voice low and carrying more than a hint of menace. “It’s dangerous down here. A person could get hurt if they’re not careful.”
“Your concern is touching,” Reyes replied, working to keep his own tone neutral, even casual. “That’s what I like about everybody on this ship. Always looking out for everybody’s welfare. Somebody should tell Ganz how conscientious you are. That’s the sort of thing that looks good on personnel reviews when the time for pay raises comes around.”
“Mister Reyes?” T’Prynn prompted, though Reyes did not acknowledge her.
Predictably, neither Nakaal nor the Tellarite seemed amused by his observations. “You need to come with us,” the Orion said, his expression turning to one of irritation as he reached for his belt and retrieved a long, sharp knife from a scabbard on his left hip.
“Where are we going?” Reyes asked, unable to keep his eyes from watching the knife as light from the overhead fixtures reflected off the blade’s polished surface.
Stepping forward, the Tellarite reached toward him with one beefy arm. “We don’t want to spoil the surprise.” At the same time, his other hand was moving to a knife on his own belt. Reyes figured that meant the goons were trying not to attract too much attention, even down here and well away from the ship’s more populated areas. No doubt their plan was to hustle him away to a more private chamber and carry out whatever plan they had in mind.
Well, screw that.
In the close quarters, Reyes decided he had the advantage over the burly Tellarite, who now blocked Nakaal as he moved closer. Without pausing to consider what might happen next, he lashed out with one leg, his foot connecting with the Tellarite’s right knee. The thug grunted in pain and staggered, trying to keep his balance. Behind him, Nakaal was already moving, but Reyes kept his focus on the Tellarite. Closing the distance, Reyes struck with his right fist, catching the guard along his left temple. He heard the knife fall from the Tellarite’s hand and clatter to the deck, and instinct guided his foot as he kicked the weapon out of reach. He shoved the goon backward, blocking Nakaal’s advance and clogging the narrow passageway so neither guard could maneuver. This gave him the opportunity he needed to reach for the Tellarite’s holstered disruptor.
In response, the Tellarite twisted his considerable bulk in a bid to block him, and Reyes responded by punching him a second time, this blow landing on the guard’s sizable nose. The reaction to the attack was immediate: the Tellarite howled, reaching for his face with both hands and providing Reyes the opening he needed to land another strike, this time driving his fist into the thug’s groin. The Tellarite responded by sagging forward, offering his defenseless chin to Reyes, who promptly grabbed the guard’s head while driving his knee into his face. He felt the cartilage of the Tellarite’s nose breaking, and the goon fell back, unconscious before his limp body dropped in a heap to the deck.
“Damn you, Reyes!”
Hearing the words at the same instant light glinted off something metal and shiny in his peripheral vision, Reyes pulled back his head just as Nakaal’s arm slashed forward, the knife in his hand slicing the air between them. Reyes jerked to one side, struggling for maneuvering room in the cramped hallway and almost tripping over the Tellarite’s body. Nakaal kept coming, stepping over his companion and waving his knife before him as he advanced. Backpedaling, Reyes tried to avoid getting forced into the corner he knew was behind him as the passageway made a turn to his left. He watched the Orion’s hand as it waved the blade before him, trying to determine from the movements if Nakaal was really all that skilled with the weapon. Reyes decided he was good enough.
Nakaal, perhaps sensing his opponent’s hesitation, seemed to decide he had the advantage and was looking to press it. His knife held before him, he stepped forward, and Reyes noted the look of satisfaction that seemed to brighten the Orion’s face.
Then, his expression went blank and his eyes widened before his entire body went slack and he sank forward, dropping to the deck in a disjointed heap.
Standing behind Nakaal, her arm extended to where she had applied a nerve pinch at the junction of the Orion’s neck and shoulder, was T’Prynn, dressed from neck to feet in a black, nondescript, and very form-fitting jumpsuit, over which she wore a black belt with several small pouches. Unlike Nakaal’s, her expression was all but unreadable as she beheld Reyes.
“Son of a bitch,” Reyes hissed, blowing out his breath in a relieved sigh.
T’Prynn’s right eyebrow arched. “It is agreeable to see you again, as well, Mister Reyes.”
Sparing a glance to the fallen Nakaal, Reyes checked the corridor in both directions, searching for more of Ganz’s men. “Not that I’m ungrateful, Lieutenant, but what the hell are you doing here?”
As she turned and set about searching the fallen guards, T’Prynn replied, “Ganz has ordered your assassination. These two were sent to carry out that directive.” Moving the unconscious Nakaal’s right arm, she retrieved the disruptor from its holster on the Orion’s hip.
“He ordered the hit on me for tonight?” Reyes asked, holding out his hand as the Vulcan passed the purloined weapon to him. “That sounds a bit too coincidental.” He tried to backtrack his movements during the evening, searching for whatever it was he had said or done to arouse Ganz’s suspicion about his activities and push the Orion toward ordering his men to take action.
“Not at all,” T’Prynn said as she moved to the fallen Tellarite still lying like a lump in the corridor. “As I told you, I’ve been monitoring Ganz’s communications. When I learned he had put the assassination order into motion, I moved up my own timetable so that you could make another attempt to access the ship’s navigational logs tonight, rather than two days from now.”
His eyes narrowing as he parsed her comments and realization hit him, Reyes glared at his former intelligence officer. “Wait, so you knew they were coming after me tonight, and didn’t tell me? What the hell is that about?”
“I did not wish to alarm you,” T’Prynn replied. Her search of the Tellarite completed, she now held his disruptor pistol in her right hand. “At least, not while you needed to focus on your task. Once that was accomplished, it was my intention to update you on the current situation and guide you to a safe haven. What I failed to anticipate was that any of Ganz’s men would find you so quickly. I therefore employed an impromptu deviation to my strategy for your extraction.”
Reyes shook his head, giving up on translating any of that. “And your big backup plan was to come and get me? Basically, you’re just making this up as you go along, right?”
“That is essentially correct,” the Vulcan said.
Noting the weapons they each carried, Reyes asked, “You didn’t bring any weapons?”
T’Prynn nodded. “I have a type-1 phaser in my belt, but I think it prudent to limit the use of Starfleet-issue weapons until no other options remain available.” She held up her disruptor. “These should prove sufficient for our needs.”
The observation was enough to make Reyes check the power gauge on the disruptor she had given him. It offered no stun option, and even the lowest setting would still be sufficient to inflict serious injury on his intended target. He resigned himself to what that might mean should he and T’Prynn encounter further resistance while attempting to escape the ship.
Them or you, ace.
“Okay,” he said, “what’s your plan?”
Moving to step over the Tellarite, T’Prynn replied, “We will proceed to my designated extraction point and request an emergency transport to the station. Lieutenant Jackson is standing by, awaiting our signal.” She then said, “Lieutenant Jackson, do you read?”
Reyes was startled by the sound of the security chief’s voice inside his head as Jackson answered, “Right here, Lieutenant, and it’s good to be hearing your voice again, Commodore.”
“Didn’t anybody get
the memo about my court-martial?” Reyes asked, scowling, though it was good to know that T’Prynn also carried a subcutaneous transceiver within her own body. It would make communication that much easier should they become separated during the escape attempt. “And what about Ganz? You can bet he’s looking for us.”
T’Prynn shook her head. “The ship’s internal sensors are offline. I was able to effect that while you were logged into its computer network. They won’t be able to track us except for handheld scanners, and such devices are already blocked by the ship’s internal security measures. I simply executed an instruction which will prevent the protocol from being terminated.”
“I’m not even going to pretend I understood any of that,” Reyes said. “Whatever. With sensors offline, that just means Ganz will send more goons out to find us. So, what do you say we get the hell out of here?”
“Hang on,” Jackson said. We’ve got a problem. It looks like somebody just activated a transport inhibitor shield around the Omari-Ekon.”
Reyes replied, “That means he knows somebody’s here, trying to help me.”
“A logical conclusion,” T’Prynn said, “though it’s also possible Ganz is simply anticipating a transporter as our means of escape. Either way, it does not appear that we’ll be beaming off this ship.”
Reyes took another look at the disruptor in his hand. “You said internal sensors were offline? I’m thinking that means we might have another card to play.”
25
Ganz was more than ready to kill someone. Diego Reyes was his preferred target of choice, but at the moment, anyone would do.
“Where is he?” Turning from the railing of his balcony, which overlooked the Omari-Ekon’s gaming deck, Ganz moved back into his office and regarded Tonzak. To his credit, the head of security seemed appropriately terrified, which did little to alleviate Ganz’s increasingly foul mood.
Clearing his throat, Tonzak replied, “I don’t know. I had three teams following his movements. The last time I heard from Nakaal and Drev, they had spotted Reyes heading away from the gaming deck and into the service passageways. They tracked him to a maintenance compartment in section six, but they don’t know what he was doing.”
Ganz knew what Reyes had been doing, though it alarmed him that he had acquired this knowledge only after the troublesome human had completed whatever task had taken him to the maintenance section. “He was accessing the ship’s computer,” he said, feeling his jaw clench.
“How could he do that?” Tonzak asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“He had help, obviously.” Moving to his desk, Ganz settled his muscled physique into his oversized padded chair. “He would have needed it to get past our security safeguards.” Though he held no doubts that Diego Reyes possessed no small number of skills in his own right, the security measures implemented to protect the Omari-Ekon’s computer system were such that the human would not have been able to bypass them all from the intetface terminal he had utilized in the maintenance office. Navigating through the maze of protocols and oversight subroutines required a level of knowledge about the system Reyes could not have acquired on his own. At least, that should have been the case, unless Ganz’s security staff was even more incompetent than this latest failure would seem to indicate. What concerned Ganz now was what information Reyes might have accessed or taken from the computer once he found a pathway into the system, as the human had done a remarkable job covering his tracks.
I’ll just have to ask him myself, then.
Finding some momentary satisfaction at the thought of how such a discussion might proceed once Reyes was brought before him, Ganz asked, “Where are Nakaal and Drev now?”
Tonzak said, “In the infirmary. Neither of them was injured that severely, though Drev took the worst of it.”
“Make sure I never see either of them again. Anywhere.” Ganz chose not to elaborate, leaving it to his subordinate to exercise whatever initiative and action he thought best. “And no one else has seen Reyes?”
Shaking his head, Tonzak replied, “No. He has to be hiding somewhere on one of the maintenance levels or in the service crawlways. With sensors offline, we’re having to conduct a section-by-section search with handheld scanners.”
Ganz released an irritated grunt. Disabling the ship’s internal sensors was a shrewd play on the part of Reyes or whoever had helped him. The hand-carried units Tonzak’s people would be using to conduct their search would be helpful, but it would still take time, perhaps long enough for Reyes to find a way off the ship. Whoever was assisting him had to have a plan for extracting him, which Ganz hoped had at least been disrupted by his decision to activate transporter inhibitor fields throughout the vessel.
“Have security round up every human and send them to the exit,” he said. “I don’t care who they’re with or what they’re doing. I want them off the ship, now.” That, he decided, would at least simplify trying to find one lone human among a ship full of Orions and representatives of the other nonhuman species currently on board.
“That will take time,” Tonzak said.
“Then the faster you get started,” Ganz snapped, “the happier I’ll be.” Walking back to the balcony, he looked down at the gaming deck and let his eyes wander over the mass of patrons standing around the gambling kiosks and tables or the bar, or occupying tables or booths in the restaurant and the smaller, satellite bars situated around the casino’s perimeter. There were more humans among the crowd than he could count, and he also saw more than a few Starfleet uniforms.
“We’ll have to notify the station that we’re doing this,” Tonzak said.
“You can notify them after they’re off the ship,” Ganz replied. “Make up a story. Something about a contaminant that’s dangerous to humans, but get it done. Now.” He knew that such a deception would not hold up under scrutiny, and without question would bring with it Admiral Nogura’s unwanted attention. There would be time to deal with that later, he decided. For now, the priority was capturing Reyes and finding out what information he had retrieved from the ship’s computer.
From behind him, he heard Neera’s soft yet still questioning voice. “Ganz? What are you doing?”
“Trying to find Reyes,” Ganz answered, turning from the railing to see Neera regarding him with an expression of questioning disapproval. “He got into the computer and probably took something, though I have no idea what that might be. If he’s managed to copy something, then he’s probably looking for a way off the ship.”
Neera gestured toward the balcony. “And your response is to eject every human? Do you honestly think Nogura will let that pass unchallenged?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Ganz replied, feeling his mounting anger beginning to seep around the edges of his self-control. “If Reyes gets off the ship with whatever he’s stolen, Nogura won’t have any reason to let us stay here.” Indeed, he expected the admiral’s order for the Omari-Ekon to disembark from the station would come within minutes after Reyes’s successful escape.
“He can’t beam off the ship,” Neera said, sounding now like a mother attempting to lecture a recalcitrant child, “and your people are working to restore the internal sensors. Once that’s done, finding him will be much simpler. There’s no need to rush headlong through this situation. Patience is our best ally now.”
Ganz’s response was interrupted by the sounds of disruptor fire, accompanied by shouts of alarm and shock from the gaming deck, drifting over the balcony and into his office.
“What’s going on?” Neera asked, moving toward the balcony, but Ganz stepped in front of her as he caught sight of disruptor bolts flashing upward toward the ceiling above the gaming floor. Moving to where he could look out from his office without exposing himself, he realized he also could hear the intermittent yet unmistakable whine of a Starfleet phaser in between the more frequent reports from disruptors. He peered over the balcony railing and saw people running in all directions for the gaming area’s various exit
s. Several of his security staff—some with disruptor pistols drawn—were scrambling to move in and around the scattering patrons. A few had taken up positions behind the bar or various gaming tables, aiming their weapons and searching for something at which to shoot. Ganz followed their gaze into the mob of people moving toward one of the casino exits, and his eyes widened in surprise and anger as he recognized two people in the crowd: Diego Reyes and the Vulcan who at one time had been the former commodore’s intelligence officer, T’Prynn.
“Reyes!” Ganz shouted, incredulous. Reyes, hearing him, looked up from where he was seeking cover amid the gaggle of patrons. The two men made eye contact, and each saw the hatred in the other’s eyes.
Then Reyes lifted his arm, aimed the disruptor in his hand at Ganz, and fired.
26
“Damn it!”
Reyes saw his shot miss its mark, but only by a small measure as Ganz ducked back from the balcony at the last possible instant. Stick that big head of yours out there again, he thought. I dare you.
“I’m thinking they’re on to us,” he said, raising his voice so that T’Prynn could hear him over the chaos of patrons fleeing in all directions from the gaming deck. The strategy had been a simple one, calling for Reyes and T’Prynn—after donning dingy gray coveralls of the sort worn by members of the Omari-Ekon’s maintenance staff—to make an attempt at blending with the mass of civilians and Starfleet officers crowding the ship’s more populated areas. Reyes had banked on Ganz thinking he might try to hide somewhere in the vessel’s bowels after thwarting the attempt on his life by Nakaal and the Tellarite. If the tactic bought them enough time to make it to the passageway leading to the station, both Reyes and T’Prynn had decided that would be close enough, and the weapons in their hands would help them get the rest of the way. They had briefed Haniff Jackson on the plan via their subcutaneous transceivers, and the lieutenant had assured them that security teams would be standing by at the docking area.
