Star Trek: TNG: Cold Equations II: Silent Weapons (20 page)

Chen moved quickly to her friend’s side and lowered her voice to a discreet hush. “What’s the plan, Dina?”

“I’m resetting the sensors to look for changes in the mist cloud on that roof that aren’t consistent with standard models of Brownian motion. It should just take a few more . . . got it!” Working with grace and speed, she transmitted her data to Šmrhová’s tricorder and patched into the comm channel. “Commander! Target is bearing two-five-one from your position and descending. I think he found a staircase access! Routing civilian police to your location!”

A few seconds later, La Forge hollered back,
“Found it! Heading inside!”

“Nice work, Dina,” Chen said, then she hurried back to the command chair. “Rosado, have a security team beamed down to cover that building’s street-level exits, and ask the
Atlas
to do the same. Balidemaj, I need an update on that Gorn battleship. What’s it doing?”

“Holding station at two hundred thousand kilometers, sir.”

Until that moment, Chen had been under the impression they were acting in cooperation with the Gorn, but the
Hastur-zolis
’s sudden shift in posture worried her. “Energize shields, but don’t raise them. Then charge all weapons to ready standby, but don’t lock any targets.”

The other bridge officers looked up from their posts at Chen, as if she had just issued General Order 24 or something. For a moment, she felt horribly self-conscious, as if by arming the ship’s defensive systems she had just committed some grievous faux pas. Then she imagined what Captain Picard would do if his crew ever reacted this way to one of his commands. She aimed an unforgiving stare at Balidemaj and marshaled her best impression of a confident captain. “That is an
order,
Lieutenant.”

To her relief, it worked. Balidemaj returned her attention to her console. “Aye, sir.”

As the shields and weapons charged, the rest of the bridge crew resumed their duties. For a moment, Chen almost felt entitled to gloat a little bit.

Then she heard La Forge’s worried voice over the comm.

“Enterprise
? I think we have a problem.”

•   •   •

After chasing the preternaturally fast bank chairman down several flights of stairs and losing ground to him in a long service corridor, the last thing La Forge had expected to find on the other side of the door at its end was a bustling multilevel galleria packed with civilians.

“We’re in a shopping mall,” he said for the
Enterprise
crew’s benefit as he and Šmrhová waded into the crowd. “And I don’t see the suspect anywhere.”

All he did see was moving bodies and bobbing heads, a sea of green skin into which the fleeing chairman had vanished. Kinshal could be anywhere in the dense knots of people milling about on the promenade that ringed a huge rectangular atrium, in the center of which was suspended a holographic projector filling the air at ninety-degree intervals with four identical audiovisual promotions. Unabashedly cliché and mawkishly sentimental images were paired with earworm jingles, all enticing consumers to spend their hard-earned salaries on all manner of luxuries they couldn’t possibly need.
Never mind a criminals’ paradise,
La Forge thought.
From where I’m standing, this looks like Ferengi heaven.

“I have an idea,” Šmrhová said as she stepped away from him.

He reached out and caught her arm. “You know you can’t just start shooting in here.”

“Trust me.” She tugged her arm free and slipped out of the flow of foot traffic, and he dodged through the moving maze of bodies to join her. Facing the wall, she pulled her tricorder free from its holster under her coat and fiddled with its settings. “That holographic projector up there? It’s Bolian-made. Most of the time it runs a loop from its built-in memory. It’s usually hard-wired into a control system, but if memory serves . . .” She smiled. “It also has a wireless option.” Her good mood turned devilish. “And the mall’s marketing team never changed its default password.” She called up a file from the tricorder’s memory and routed it to the control screen for the projector. “Watch the crowd for anyone who starts running.”

Moments later, the titanic saccharine advertisements playing in the center of the mall changed to an image of Siro Kinshal, accompanied by text in several major languages of local space, all of which cited his name and the phrase Wanted by Orion Colonial Police.

Half the crowd ignored it, and the other half received it with guarded anticipation, as if it were merely the setup for some kind of avant-garde promotion. Then, two levels below La Forge and Šmrhová, a woman’s shout rose up from sonic fog of crowd noise: “Hey! That’s him!”

A disruption in the river of window-shoppers rippled outward as people fell against one another, shoved and jostled by the frantic fugitive as he sprinted toward a descending escalator.

“Got him,” La Forge said. “He’s heading for street level, east exit!”

“Acknowledged,”
Chen replied from the
Enterprise. “A team from the
Atlas
is there.”

Below, Kinshal lunged through the mall’s east exit into the street. Šmrhová put away her tricorder and drew her phaser as she stepped to La Forge’s side. “We need to be there.
Enterprise,
beam us to the east exit.”

“Transporter Room Five has the ball,”
Rosado said over the open channel.

The beam took hold of them, and the interior of the mall vanished in a swirl of prismatic particles and a rush of white noise. When it faded, and the beam’s protective hold abated, La Forge and Šmrhová were on the street outside the mall.

Starfleet security officers lay in the street. Some were stunned and groaning; a few had been slain by brute force, their skulls pummeled or their heads torqued until their necks snapped. Civilians fled in every direction, screaming over the wails of approaching sirens, and sounds of phaser fire echoed from the alleyway across the street. Šmrhová pointed and ran. “This way!”

La Forge struggled to keep up with her, but she was more than twenty years his junior and, he was embarrassed to admit, in far superior physical condition for a prolonged chase. As she disappeared into the alley’s misty shadows, he stumbled to a halt and struggled for breath. “
Enterprise,
do you have a visual on the suspect?”

“Negative,”
Chen said.
“Something’s obscuring our view of the alley.”

“La Forge to Šmrhová. Do you see him?”

She replied with bitter dudgeon,
“I can’t see a thing in this fog.”

He studied the roiling vapors with his eyes’ infrared filter. “Actually, I think it’s steam.”

“I don’t give a damn if it’s the mists of Avalon. I’m running blind here.”

The prospect of failure led La Forge to grind his teeth. He took out his tricorder and started a sweep using ultrasonic echo-location. “
Enterprise,
do you have anything? Maybe signs of movement in the steam? Or a signal from the chairman’s personal comm?”

“Sorry, sir,”
Chen said.
“We’re coming up empty.”

He shut off his tricorder and slapped it shut. “That makes both of us.” He tucked the device back under his coat and walked back toward the street. “Šmrhová, meet me back at the mall’s east entrance. Chen, we need a medical team at those coordinates, on the double.”

“Acknowledged. Medical teams are beaming down now.”

“One more thing,” La Forge said. “Have the police issue a warrant for the chairman’s arrest—and inform Data’s lawyer there’s at least one other android in town.”

•   •   •

In the past seven minutes, Picard had learned more than he’d ever wanted know about the history of Gorn thermal-contrast sculpture. What he’d hoped would be a simple conversation-starter had turned out to be a personal hobby of Azarog, the Gorn
zulta-osol,
who had seized the chance to regale them all with tales of his long-nurtured dream of leaving politics to become an artist.

Making a show of noticing his empty glass, Picard tried to back out of the conversation circle. “If you’ll excuse me, I—” Bacco cut him off with the slightest grasp of his arm.

“Oh, you can’t leave
now,
Captain.” The president fixed him in place with a threatening stare above a mirthless smile. “Not when Azarog is just getting to the best part of his story.”

Bateson piled on to the verbal assault. “Indeed, Captain. Given your deep appreciation for the arts, I have to believe you’d never forgive yourself if you missed a moment of this.”

Deprived of a graceful exit, Picard mustered his most genial demeanor. “Of course.” He bowed his head slightly to Azarog. “My apologies,
Zulta-osol
. Please continue.”

“As I was saying,” the archosaur said, resuming his anecdote, “it was on my first journey outside the Hegemony, during a visit to Trill, that I first encountered the cold springs beneath that planet’s arctic volcano. The interplay of temperatures there inspired me to experiment with the notion of thermally inverted sculpture, layering materials of decreasing conductivity to create a heart of fire in a metaphorical sea of darkness.”

Togor, the imperator’s
wazir,
hissed. “Do you expect us to believe that
you
invented the
Koziol-zellos
school of thermal sculpture?”

Azarog straightened his posture and rose to his full height. “I was an early pioneer of it.”

Nizor
Szamra bared his fangs. “I say this with the greatest respect, old friend: that is the most ridiculous lie I have
ever
heard—and I have spent half my life in
politics
.”

From Picard’s combadge came a single beep, followed by an incoming signal.
“La Forge to Captain Picard, Priority One.”

This time no one tried to stop Picard as he backed away from the group to continue the conversation at a discreet remove. “Picard here. Go ahead, Geordi.”

“Captain, the bank’s chairman, Siro Kinshal, is an android infiltrator.”

“You’re certain of this?”

“Positive. We tried to arrest him, but he got away. But the witness who led us to him said he helped someone else breach the bank’s secure perimeter to enter the bank.”

Picard’s pulse quickened. “An accomplice. Do we know who it is?”

“Not yet. But if these androids can impersonate someone like Kinshal, they could be just about anyone. Captain, I think the president’s life might be in danger.”

“Acknowledged.” He turned and saw that all the Federation Security protection agents in the room seemed to be reacting to news delivered via their in-ear subvocal transceivers. “Keep looking for the chairman. I’ll alert Starfleet Command as soon as the president’s secured.”

“Yes, sir. La Forge out.”

Filled with a sudden paranoia that anyone in the room other than himself, his wife, or the president might be an assassin in disguise, he hurried back down a path bordered by looming fronds to rejoin the two heads of state and their VIP guests. As he shouldered his way back into the group, he noticed Bacco’s senior protection agent, Steven Wexler, moving in their direction at a quick step. “Madam President, Your Imperial Majesty,” Picard said, “forgive the interruption, but I have reason to believe the bank’s security has been compromised. I strongly advise you all to return to your secure suites in the sublevel immediately.”

To his surprise, no one voiced a word of protest. Bacco nodded to Sozzerozs. “Lord Imperator, I think we should say good night. Be well and safe, and we’ll meet again tomorrow.”

“Most sensible, Madam President,” the imperator said. “May fortune keep you from harm until we meet again. Ms. Piñiero, Captains, Commander, Doctor—good night.”

The Gorn moved with dispatch toward their designated private exit. Bateson and Fawkes stepped away as the
Atlas
’s first officer tapped her combadge and hailed her ship. Picard gently took hold of Crusher’s elbow, and then he turned to confer with Bacco’s protection agent.

Wexler charged at Picard with manic eyes and a drawn phaser. “DOWN!”

For a tiny fraction of a second, Picard froze. Everything happened so fast, but his fear-fueled rush of adrenaline made it feel as if time had slowed down.

He and Crusher turned their heads to look over their shoulders. Esperanza Piñiero was drawing a compact phaser from under her shirt and raising her arm. Whoever her target was, Picard realized, whether it was President Bacco, Imperator Sozzerozs, or anyone else at the reception, he and Beverly were standing in her line of fire.

The other protection agents were swarming toward Piñiero, most of them reaching to draw concealed weapons, and the troops from the Gorn Imperial Guard were belatedly snapping into action and converging to surround their imperator.

Piñiero’s thumb tensed over the phaser’s firing stud.

Bacco stared at her chief of staff, frozen in place by terror and shock.

There was no time to think, so Picard acted by instinct, and did what had to be done.

He pulled Beverly to the floor and draped himself over her as a living shield.

Angry screeches of weapons fire filled the rooftop garden. Grunts and groans followed as the wounded and dying fell all around Picard, who didn’t dare to look up. An ear-splitting detonation left him dazed and squinting in pain, and then his nostrils filled with the searing bite of tear gas. As the shrieks and ricochets of small arms receded, he opened his eyes, only to wince as his tears flowed but failed to salve the burning pain caused by the smoke. From the far side of the rooftop he heard another explosion, followed by the brittle melody of shattered transparent duranium. Through the kaleidoscope lens of his tortured eyes, he saw Wexler crouched in a defensive pose over the prone form of the president, his weapon drawn. Then fiery pain in Picard’s chest wracked him with agonizing coughs until he freckled his hands with bloody spittle.

His grip on consciousness weakened, and as it slipped away all he could do was hope that his snap decision hadn’t just cost the Federation one of the finest presidents in its history.