Takedown

by John Jackson Miller

  A destructive creature, as it turned out. Before Enterprise could follow, Aventine shifted direction again. The action brought the vessel in line with the outpost, just beneath the station’s field of fire. Skimming just meters above the station’s gridwork, Aventine lobbed one photon torpedo after another from its aft cannons.

  Once the flash dissipated, Picard saw Aventine soaring away. The edge of the enormous square of communications arrays blazed orange. “He’s struck the disruptor cannons along the northern end of the grid,” Dygan said, checking his readings. “He’s caused a chain reaction.”

  “The No’Var Outpost’s shields are down,” Worf said. “On his next approach, he will be able to destroy the grid.”

  Without killing anyone in the station, Picard realized.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Faur said. “Aventine’s got an edge in a place like this.”

  “Agreed,” Picard said, wondering how much awe was in his voice. He’d known better than anyone what Riker’s talents were—but this, if it was Riker, was a superlative performance. Astonishing, he thought. I don’t know what I’ve just seen.

  “Locate Aventine,” he said.

  “Making another circuit of the field,” Dygan said. “The Vor’chas are on her again. They’ve made adjustments. It might slow her down some. Based on their past results, she’ll make another pass in three minutes.”

  Kersh hailed. She wasn’t the grudging ally who had signed off with a salute a few minutes earlier; the old ire was back. Her officers appeared less enthusiastic now, many of their viewscreens visibly flickering in the background. “You call that a defense, Picard? Perhaps you should get out and stand on the array yourself, holding up your hand to make him stop!”

  Picard started to reply to the taunt when he paused to think. What was it Riker had said? He thought back—and nearly gasped with realization. Could it be that simple?

  He pressed his badge. “Mr. La Forge to the bridge, immediately.” He looked back to the viewscreen. “Stand by, General. We have another plan.”

  Twenty-four

  AVENTINE

  “Captain, the battle is growing more heated,” Dax’s companion said. The young Vulcan engineer in a spacesuit just like hers looked through the shuttlebay entrance. “Should we be trying to disable the ship while the Klingons are shooting at us?”

  “Let me worry about that, Sovak.” Dax snapped her helmet onto her spacesuit. “Let’s go, Lieutenant.” Both sealed their helmets and manually cycled the airlock.

  Ezri Dax wasn’t fully up on the history of space battles, but she imagined there hadn’t been many where a ship was under attack from both without and within at the same time. She was in one now. Since Aventine had emerged from slipstream, Dax had been working her way to shuttlebay one, trying to teach her errant starship a lesson.

  Riker had deactivated the artificial gravity for the deck except for the footprints of the shuttles—and for good measure, he had decompressed the landing bay and turned out the lights. That had served Dax’s purposes well, since she was planning on blowing a hole in the hull anyway, and she didn’t want Riker to see. She and her spacesuited, gravity-booted companion tromped the short steps through the dark to the shuttlecraft Meuse.

  When parked and deactivated, it and the other shuttlecraft weren’t connected to the main computer; control of the bay doors was enough of a security system. But years before, a being named Arithon had stolen the runabout Seine by using microtorpedoes to destroy the bay doors. Dax had hoped to replicate the feat. At a minimum, outside Aventine’s hull she’d be able to send for help; at best, she might disable the ship enough for its pursuers to stop it.

  Meuse’s hatchway was open: an invitation. She and the specialist Leishman had provided entered the craft. Quickly, they activated its systems without using the vessel’s usual data connection to the Aventine’s computer. They shut off their gravity boots. Meuse’s spotlight casting on the bay doors ahead, Dax reached for the weapons controls. She wasn’t going to let the responsibility for the act fall on anyone else’s head. Aventine was hers to preserve or destroy as necessary.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” came a bored voice over Meuse’s comm.

  The engineer touched Dax’s arm, alerting her. They’d deactivated their suit communicators for fear of tipping Riker off—but words weren’t necessary now to show her what was going on. Meuse tipped forward, its stubby snout drawn quietly but irresistibly to the deck. It struck the deck with a clang that resonated throughout the shuttle.

  He’s messing with the artificial gravity outside, Dax realized. The ship naturally perched atop its nacelles; by somehow altering the settings for just the deck panels beneath Meuse’s prow, Riker had ensured that Dax’s weapons had a good bead on the floor.

  Undaunted, she fired up the engines, trying to lift the shuttle from the deck. Aventine renewed its pull, causing the shuttle to wobble improbably on its nose in the dark, its leading edge attracted to the insistent deck. Meuse’s internal artificial gravity, accustomed to compensating against planetary gravity wells, struggled to make sense of the bizarre environment outside, causing the shuttle’s occupants to lurch back and forth. Only Dax kept her balance, fighting to gain control of the little ship—and yet attempting to change attitude only succeeded in sending Meuse sliding around in the dark. The craft struck something, and then something else. The shuttlecraft finally stopped with a colossal jolt against the starboard wall of the bay.

  “Are we done now?” Riker said over the upturned shuttle’s speakers. “I’m a little busy at the moment.”

  Reluctantly, Dax powered down and clambered out, followed by the engineer. The lights in the shuttlebay came back on, and artificial gravity normalized—showing her the angry path Meuse had scraped across the deck. The entire episode had lasted less than three minutes.

  Angry and dispirited, she made her way to the exit. She didn’t want to blow a hole in her ship. She wanted to put one in Riker.

  ENTERPRISE

  Picard only had moments to fill in his first officer on his plan. The Klingon had met the idea with a skeptical upturned eyebrow—but hadn’t questioned it. There was no time. The plan was already in motion when Geordi La Forge arrived to take the engineering station.

  “Give me energy consumption readings on both Aventine and the outpost,” Picard said. “Inform me the minute anything changes.”

  “The outpost?” La Forge wondered about it, Picard saw, but the engineer knew better than to ask.

  Dygan called out. “Aventine has found a lane and is making another attack run.”

  Not hearing a command, Faur asked, “Move to interdict?”

  “Make it so.” Picard knew they weren’t likely to hit Aventine hard enough to divert her from pummeling the now-defenseless arrays attached to the outpost—presuming Enterprise could hit her at all. But that didn’t matter. He could feel the ship turning and the batteries firing. It was important to make a good show of it before—

  “Change at the outpost,” La Forge announced. “Emissions from the communications arrays just spiked and went to zero!”

  “Picard to Kersh. Status!”

  Only audio came through, weak and crackling. “Damage from the last attack. The ODN for the transceiver array is fried,” she said. “Our whole system is dead!”

  On-screen, he saw Aventine diving toward the defunct grid, its weapons array glowing as Enterprise’s volleys went harmlessly past. This time, Aventine did not fire. It veered, suddenly, skirting past the side of the outpost and disappearing behind it.

  “Aventine is powering down her weapons systems,” La Forge said.

  Dygan reported, “Aventine is moving to leave the vicinity. Vor’chas are giving chase.”

  “They won’t catch her,” Picard said. He looked to his right and the empty seat vacated by Commander Worf. “Track Aventine closely. I want to know her precise heading as she leaves.”

  When Kersh had suggested getting out of the ship to personall
y protect the outpost, it had dawned on Picard that a way existed to do exactly that. Riker had said it: “I’ll be going once this station is offline.” The station now disabled, Riker had been as good as his word. Aventine activated its slipstream drive and vanished from the system, leaving them all behind.

  Picard didn’t really need to wait a few moments before hailing the outpost, but he did so anyway. “Report.”

  “The outpost’s communication system is powering up again,” La Forge said.

  On the viewscreen, Worf appeared alongside Kersh. “Enterprise, it worked. Disabling the station ourselves seems to have satisfied Riker.”

  Kersh looked disgruntled. “Playing dead!” She spat on the deck. “No way for a warrior to win!”

  Picard grinned. “I don’t know that we won, General, if it makes you feel any better. We just took the worm off the hook.”

  The Klingon woman didn’t seem to know what he meant by that—and the captain realized it was an inapt analogy anyway, since the No’Var Outpost was by no means a trap for Aventine. But it was possible to accomplish Riker’s intent for him—or to at least make it appear as though his earlier efforts had succeeded. Picard didn’t want to transmit the idea to Kersh where Riker might hear, so he beamed Worf over personally instead, taking advantage of the fact that the outpost’s shields were down. Evidently his first officer had sold the Klingon general on the plan.

  La Forge gestured to get his attention. “Captain, there was a strange reading from Aventine just as she left. A distortion in the energy output while it was generating the slipstream corridor.”

  Picard stood and walked over to the engineer’s side and examined the data. “The slipstream drive?”

  La Forge nodded. “They’ve been pushing it too hard. The corridor they created is going to collapse before they get where they’re going.”

  “Are they in danger?” Picard asked.

  “No. But they’re going to drop out into normal space before they get anywhere near their destination.”

  “Do we have a way of tracking where they’ll wind up?”

  “No. Just somewhere on the heading. They’ll have to wait a few hours before continuing.” La Forge pointed to a location on the starmap on his monitor. “No doubt on the heading, though. He’s going for the Adelphous Array.”

  Picard turned back to the screen. “Do you hear that, General? Aventine is returning to Federation space.”

  Kersh laughed. “He’s your problem now.”

  The captain didn’t much share her amusement.

  Twenty-five

  Worf wore a sour expression when he materialized on Enterprise’s bridge. Picard had thought it best to bring him quickly back from the outpost. He needed his first officer’s strategic expertise.

  And Worf had already thought through the next steps, as Picard had expected. “Captain, there’s a lot of territory between us and the Adelphous Array. Admiral Riker could emerge anywhere on that route—and he could go in any direction from there.”

  “There’s no reason for Aventine to go there anyway,” La Forge said. “That installation hasn’t been crewed since the Borg Invasion. It’s already out of commission.”

  “Riker would know that. I wonder what he’s getting at?” Picard looked to the counselor, who had been watching in silence from the chair beside Picard’s throughout the engagement. “What did you make of him, Doctor Den?”

  “It’s the strangest thing,” the young Bajoran said. “Everything in Riker’s voice exudes confidence—and not just the superiority of rank and experience. He’s speaking to us like he’d talk to children. He’s a level beyond, or at least he feels like he is. He had not the slightest doubt that he would disable the station and head on to his next destination.”

  “And yet his next destination is someplace he knows is defunct.”

  “Watch where I go next,” Den said, citing perfectly from memory. “The man who attacked us does not waste words. He meant you to heed them.”

  “Watch—and learn,” Picard said, paraphrasing. Taking his seat, he scratched his head. “I don’t know what I am to learn.”

  But it was clear there was something to learn. What had sounded like bluster and bravado to Picard at the time now presented itself to him as another clue. He thought back again to the line from the Corvus Beacon encounter. Was Riker trying to communicate then that he was someone else’s thrall?

  “You say he’s showing that he’s in complete control, Doctor. Is he in control of himself?”

  Den templed his fingers and considered the question. “He’s presenting himself as he wants to be seen. That may be the reason for the holographic image.”

  “You mean, it may be Riker’s mind, but his body may be changed?”

  “Or captive, somehow. We’ve seen outside influence manifest itself in many ways.”

  Outside influence. It clicked for Picard. Riker had attained his goal and departed immediately, not following up on the obvious possibility that he had been deceived. Perhaps Riker was following only the letter of the law, when it came to his mad mission. Enough to satisfy . . . whom? What?

  Starfleet had seen many cases of individuals being compromised by outside influence; it was inevitable in an organization that brought dramatically different species into contact. The effects of such influences ran the gamut, from subtle, almost unnoticeable changes in behavior to complete sublimation and loss of all control. Picard had been near the far end of the spectrum with the Borg—but even with his personality submerged, he had been able to provide Riker and Enterprise’s crew with the clue that saved the Federation.

  Will Riker had—possibly—given him hints that he was under someone else’s sway and that he only needed to disable the outpost’s communications. And he had invited Picard to follow him. Either it all meant something, or not.

  Picard had to find out. And the answers lay in both Enterprise’s future—and Riker’s past.

  “We’re going to the Adelphous Array,” he announced. “But first,” he said, “give me General Kersh.”

  The Klingon woman appeared on the viewscreen, clearly bothered to have her repairs interrupted. “What now?”

  “We are going to give chase,” Picard said. “But first I’d like to route a communication through your array, if you’ll permit it.” A crumpled smile crossed his face. “Before another rogue ship notices it’s still operational and attacks, I mean.”

  Kersh growled. “Let them come. It will be the only way for a couple of my cruiser captains to restore their honor.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  AVENTINE

  “That’s it,” Dax said, staggering into port accessway storage B. The surveillance-free room had become the official staging area for her senior staff—and every member of it had retreated back to it in defeat. She didn’t reject the chair that Bowers offered this time. She looked around at her officers. “I’m about to start taking a laser torch to the decks.”

  “If we could get to one,” Bowers said. “Last torch I saw, he beamed away.”

  Dax queried Mirren, who had been tasked with watching the show from the bridge. “Did he destroy the Klingon outpost?”

  “Disabled it. It looks like he took it down with the first volley,” the Russian woman replied. “I’ve never in my life seen flying like that. That encounter put all our earlier raids to shame.”

  “The ones where we were in control, you mean.” Bowers popped open a vial of water and passed it to Dax. “I think we’re officially unnecessary,” he said, opening another for himself.

  Dax took a sip and looked at Leishman. The engineer was sitting on the floor, hard at work making notes on paper, of all things. Padds still connected to Aventine as of Riker’s takeover were seen as vulnerable to compromise. “Mikaela, any progress on getting us a way to talk to each other while we’re between decks? Riker—or whoever he’s got in there—seems to be intercepting anything sent over the air.”

  “We’re trying,” Leishman said, clearl
y exhausted. “It’s problem number twelve right now.”

  Leaning against the wall, Kedair shook her head. “It should be higher on the list. My people are relaying hand signals so as not to telegraph their moves—and we’re not sure he’s not reading those. How can this guy be watching everything at once?”

  “I guess he didn’t just replicate a bridge crew,” Bowers said. “He’s got a whole Romulan surveillance operation in there with him.” He took a swig of water from a vial. “Maybe he’s hiding them in the bedroom.”

  Dax asked, “What’s the closest you’ve gotten to taking down the holodeck?”

  “I had three people approaching a power distribution line from beneath,” Leishman said, picking up a set of blueprints from near her ankle. Riker had blocked access to any schematics that might be found in the main computer. “As soon as they got within sight of it, Riker beamed them all to their quarters.” She looked up at Dax. “Their individual quarters.”

  Bowers couldn’t help but chuckle. “He sent them to their rooms. You know he’s a parent.”

  Dax was past being amused by the absurdity of the situation. She focused again on her chief engineer. “What have we got that works? That we’ve got control of?”

  “The tractor beam.”

  “That’s a big help,” Dax said. Then her eyes narrowed. “Wait. How do we have control of the tractor beam?”

  “Well, ‘control’ might overstate the case,” Leishman said. She shuffled through papers. “The thing’s been glitchy since the damage we took from Tuonetar, as you know—it’s been giving us energy fluctuations that feed back into the ship’s systems. We detached it from the ship’s power grid to quarantine it while we ran tests. We could switch the unit on while it has no power—so soon as we plugged it in, so to speak, it would activate.”

  Dax frowned. “But it won’t stay on, once Riker notices it. He’d just cut power to the subsystem.”

  “That’s right. We can turn it on—once, for maybe half a second. And he won’t let us turn it on after that.”