Star Trek: Pantheon (47 page)

“Send her up,” he told the Magnian.

But even as he extended the invitation, he could feel himself inching further out on the limb he had chosen.

Pug Joseph entered the tiny engineering support room on Deck 26 and spotted Serenity Santana among her colleagues.

The dark-haired woman was shoulder to shoulder with them on her knees, fitting the forward dorsal tractor control node with devices capable of marrying telekinetic energy to the attractive and repellant forces in a directed graviton stream. Every so often she would glance at one of her fellow colonists and receive a glance in return, then go back to work.

None of the Magnians said a word. However, they all seemed to know what to do with the equipment they had brought with them.

Ensign Montenegro, an engineer, was standing in the corner of the room, his arms folded across his chest. Like Joseph, Montenegro was just a spectator. Their guests were the ones applying all the elbow grease.

The security officer felt uncomfortable being in the same room as Santana. If it had been up to him, he would have left. But he was under orders, so he stayed and kept an eye on the woman.

After a few minutes, she seemed to sense his scrutiny and looked back over her shoulder at him. He didn’t look away, but he didn’t acknowledge her either. He just stood there and did his job.

Santana worked for another ten minutes or so. Then she got up, stretched her muscles and walked over to Joseph. He felt his jaw clench.

“Long time no see,” said the colonist.

The security officer didn’t utter a word in response. He just stood there, returning her scrutiny.

“I’m sorry for pulling the wool over your eyes,” she said.

Joseph didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.

“I mean it,” Santana added. “I’ve already told Commander Picard, but I want to tell you as well.”

Still, he remained silent.

“You’ve got to want to say
something
to me,” the woman told him.

He did. But he didn’t say it.

Santana looked at him a moment longer, her dark eyes full of what appeared to be pain. Then she returned to her work.

Joseph didn’t like the idea of hurting her. However, as he had said to himself often enough, he was determined not to give the colonist an opportunity to fool him again.

Carter Greyhorse had been busy over the last few days, to say the least—busy with Santana and Leach and the less severely injured survivors of their encounter with the Nuyyad.

And with the exception of a few helpless moments, he hadn’t spent any of that time thinking about Gerda Asmund.

But when the medical officer returned from Magnia, he hadn’t had the option of burying himself in patient care any longer—and his preoccupation with the navigator had threatened to paralyze him in a duranium straitjacket of despair.

Despair, because he had no chance with her. He had come to accept that, at least on an intellectual level. They were too different. She was vibrant, vigorous, full of life. And he was…
not.

So, in the absence of an urgent need for his medical skills, Greyhorse had come up with another project in which to immerse himself—a project he had begun even before he saw Gerda in the gym. He had renewed his interest in the creation of synthetic psilosynine.

The doctor had even gone so far as to replicate a batch of the neurotransmitter himself, following the guidelines of the Betazoid scientist who had pioneered the process. And now, having brought the stuff back to sickbay, he was testing its integrity at his office computer.

It was turning out to be a success, too. Not just the psilosynine itself, but its ability to take his mind off Gerda.

Just as Greyhorse acknowledged that, he caught a glimpse of someone walking into sickbay.

Turning away from his screen, he saw that it was Joseph from security. Under normal circumstances, the doctor would have completed his tests, then gone to see what Joseph wanted from him. However, their circumstances were anything but normal these days.

Getting up from his computer terminal, Greyhorse exited his office and emerged into the central triage area. “Something I can do for you?” he asked the security officer.

“I hope so,” said Joseph. He looked around. “And I hope you’ll keep this conversation confidential—as a matter of ship’s security.”

Ship’s security? “All right,” Greyhorse responded, wondering what the problem might be.

“You treated Serenity Santana while she was comatose?”

“I did,” Greyhorse confirmed.

“And you told Commander Picard that you saw her brain waves spike when we were approaching her world?”

“That’s correct,” said the medical officer. Suddenly, it occurred to him where Joseph might be going with this. “Santana’s all right, isn’t she?”

The other man looked up at him, jolted from his line of questioning. “She’s fine, as far as I can tell.”

“Then this isn’t about her health?” asked Greyhorse.

“No,” Joseph assured him. “It’s about an act of sabotage.” And he went on to describe the way one of their command junctions had been tampered with.

“But what does this have to do with Ms. Santana?” asked the doctor.

“Obviously, she couldn’t have sabotaged the shuttle herself. But Commander Picard and Lieutenant Ben Zoma think she might have manipulated someone else into doing it.”

“Someone else?” Greyhorse echoed, considering the possibility for the first time. “You mean…”

“You,” said Joseph. He looked disturbed by what he was saying. “Or me. Or anyone on the ship.”

The doctor sat down on the edge of a biobed and thought about it. It was an eerie proposition at best. Unfortunately, he didn’t know enough about Santana’s abilities to confirm the theory or deny it.

“It’s possible,” he said at last. “But I can’t say for certain.”

The security officer looked disappointed. “Commander Picard thought you might say that.”

Greyhorse had an idea. “Have you checked the internal sensor logs? They would tell you who might have approached that command junction.”

Joseph smiled a tolerant smile. “That was the first thing we tried. But internal sensors aren’t very dependable in the vicinity of the warp engines, which is where the junction was located. And whoever did the tampering was smart enough to take off his or her combadge so we wouldn’t be able to track them that way either.”

The doctor shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

“Thanks anyway,” said the security officer.

But he didn’t leave. He just stood there, his eyes glazing over, as if he had fallen deep into thought.

“Lieutenant?” said Greyhorse.

Joseph looked at him as if he had woken from a dream. “Hmm?”

“Are you feeling all right?” the physician inquired.

“I’m okay. Just a little…preoccupied is all.” The security officer hesitated. Then he said, “Can I level with you?”

Greyhorse nodded. “Certainly.”

Joseph smiled again—a little sheepishly, this time. “To be honest, I don’t have a whole lot of friends on the ship. It’s always been that way for me, I don’t know why. But when I was guarding Ms. Santana, I…well, I sort of came to like her.”

“As a friend?” the doctor asked.

“That,” said the security officer, “and maybe a little more. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I think I fell for her the first time I saw her—when she was sitting on her cot in the brig.”

Even Greyhorse had to chuckle at that. “Quite an image,” he conceded.

“I thought she liked me too,” Joseph confided. “Maybe not the way I liked
her,
but at least a little. Then I found out that she was playing me for a chump, right from the start.”

“Playing
all
of us,” the doctor interjected.

“But me most of all,” the security officer insisted. “I mean, I trusted her. I let a pretty face make me forget my training.” He looked embarrassed. “I’ll bet that never happened to
you.”

Greyhorse was about to agree with the man, at least inwardly—when a sequence of images flashed through his mind, coming one after the other with jolting familiarity.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone carrying a wounded Gerda into sickbay. Then he took another look and realized that it was Gerda who was doing the carrying, and that it was Leach who had been hurt.

The doctor’s heart began to pound as it had pounded then. Even if he managed to forget everything else about Gerda, he would never forget that sight as long as he lived.

Greyhorse regained his composure. “Never,” he agreed, lying through his teeth. “But that doesn’t mean you should be beating yourself up over it. We’re people, Lieutenant, not machines. We have feelings. And sometimes, like it or not, those feelings get in the way of our jobs.”

Joseph considered the advice. “Maybe you’re right.”

But Greyhorse knew the security officer didn’t mean it. He would continue to berate himself, advice or no advice.

Well, he told himself, at least I tried.

“If you think of anything that might shed some light,” said Joseph, “let me know, all right?”

“I will,” the doctor promised him.

But as the security officer left, Greyhorse wasn’t thinking about Joseph’s problem. He wasn’t thinking about psilosynine either. He was thinking about Gerda Asmund again.

Phigus Simenon looked up at the wedge of blue sky caught between the spires of Magnia’s tallest towers.

He couldn’t see the
Stargazer.
But then, he hadn’t expected to. The ship was too far away even to be spotted at night, when the atmosphere of this world wasn’t suffused with its sun’s light.

Abruptly, the engineer heard his communicator beep. It was what he had been waiting for. Tapping it, he said, “Simenon here.”

“This is Commander Picard. I’m taking us out of orbit.”

“Acknowledged,” said the engineer.

“Good luck,” Picard told him.

“To you, too,” Simenon replied.

“Picard out.”

The Gnalish stared at the sky a little longer. Then he turned to Armor Brentano, who had been attending him patiently.

“Ready?” asked the colonist.

“Ready,” said Simenon.

Then he followed Brentano across the plaza to the elegant pink building that housed the shield control center, where they would bide their time until the enemy arrived.

*   *   *

Less than seventeen hours after Picard removed the
Stargazer
from Magnia’s sensor range, he heard Gerda Asmund announce the approach of two vessels she had spotted on her monitor.

The second officer had been leaning over Vigo’s weapons panel, supervising some last-minute diagnostics. Moving to a position just in front of the captain’s center seat, he gazed at the viewscreen.

“Can you give me a visual?” he asked.

Gerda worked for a moment. Then the screen filled with the sight of not one Nuyyad vessel but two, both of them as big and powerful-looking as the ones Picard had seen earlier. Obviously, the enemy believed that would be more than enough to put down the
Stargazer.

We will have to show them the error of their ways, thought the second officer. “Red alert,” he said. “All hands to battle stations. Raise shields and power up phasers.”

“Raising shields,” Gerda confirmed.

“Diverting power to phasers,” said Vigo.

“Their speed?” asked Picard.

“Full impulse,” Idun reported.

This was it, the second officer told himself, glaring at the enemy. This was the test of all their hard work. They would either turn the Nuyyad back or be destroyed in the attempt.

“Any sign that they see us?” he asked his navigator.

“None, sir,” said Gerda, her hands darting over her control panel. “They’re heading straight for the colony.”

As we expected, thought Picard. But he couldn’t help thinking of Simenon, whom he had left to help defend Magnia.

He hoped that he and the engineer would both be around to congratulate each other when the battle was over.

“Here they come,” said Simenon, tracking the two yellow blips on his black sensor screen.

Brentano, who was seated to the engineer’s left, cast a thought:
Shields are at full strength.

Phasers powered and ready,
replied Hilton-Smith, the blond woman to Simenon’s right.

“Target phasers,” intoned Shield Williamson, who had taken up a position behind the Gnalish.

Targeting,
Hilton-Smith responded.

Range in thirty seconds,
Brentano informed them.

On Simenon’s screen, one of the yellow blips unleashed a series of green energy bursts. A moment later, the other blip followed suit. Apparently, the engineer reflected, the Nuyyad’s weapons range was a little greater than that of the colonists.

Direct hits,
said Brentano.
But no damage to report. Shields are holding at eighty-six percent.

Range in fifteen seconds,
thought Hilton-Smith.

Simenon watched the blips get closer. Again, they fired their vidrion cannons, and this time he thought he could feel a little tremor in the floor beneath him.

Shields down to seventy-two percent,
Brentano told them.

Range in five seconds,
Hilton-Smith reported, her eyes reflecting the light from her screen.
Four. Three. Two…

“Fire!” Williamson commanded, his voice ripping through the chamber.

On Simenon’s monitor, a half dozen red phaser beams reached out and pummeled the enemy vessels. Inwardly, the Gnalish cheered. After all, he had personally helped increase the force of those beams.

“Their shields are taking a beating,” observed Brentano, pure excitement in his voice.

Of course, none of them expected to win this battle from the ground. If the Magnians were going to prevail, their allies in the heavens would have to take the lead.

Just as the engineer thought that, he saw a third blip enter the picture.
The
Stargazer
has arrived,
he announced silently, but not without a certain amount of pride.

Picard eyed the bright, diamond-shaped ships on his viewscreen. “Fire again!” he thundered.

A second time, the
Stargazer’
s phasers stabbed at the enemy vessels, wreaking havoc with their shields. What’s more, the Magnians’ sensor enhancements allowed each beam to find its precise target.