by David
The Centurion followed.
"Should we break orbit and follow, sir?
In case Captain Sejanus needs our
help?" Wesley asked.
"No," Picard said firmly.
"Absolutely not. Our assignment and our
responsibility is to protect Tenara. Just
keep both ships on the main viewscreen."
If Sejanus does get himself into trouble,
I'll have no choice but to go to his aid.
The main viewscreen showed the running
battle. The Centurion was right behind the
M'dok ship, pouring huge amounts of energy
into it in the form of phaser bolts and photon
torpedoes.
"The M'dok are only moving at about
one-tenth warp, sir," Worf said. "That first
barrage from the Centurion must have crippled
them."
There was something unspoken in what Worf said
approval of Sejanus' tactics. Picard
understood the Klingon to be saying that if one were
forced to fight, then that was the way to do it. Picard
hoped that Worf had not failed to see how
unnecessary it had been for Sejanus to fight at
all--that it had been the appearance of the
Centurion on the scene, coming in
unexpect edly from deep space, that had
precipitated the battle.
"Turning and fighting, at last," Worf said
with undisguised satisfaction. "The only
choice left to them at this point."
"A channel to the Centurion, Mr.
Worf," Picard said.
"Channel open, sir."
"Captain Sejanus," Picard said, "I
urge you to break off this engagement now, before there
are casualties."
Sejanus' face filled the screen.
"We--"
A loud burst from the M'dok ship indicated
that the fight was truly joined--and
suddenly the uneven battle no longer seemed
so uneven.
The M'dok counterattack was vicious and
unrestrained. The percentage of energy they were
diverting from their deflector shields to their
phasers was almost total--and the Magna
Romans found themselves under such heavy bombardment
that they were in no position to take advantage of
that lowering of the M'dok shield energy.
"Centurion taking some damage," Worf
said. "Their shields will be in danger soon, at
this rate."
At some level, Picard had known it would
come to this--to his being drawn into a battle
by Sejanus, inffbeing forced to take lives and
to endanger his ship. "All right! We'll go
to help them. Mr. Crusher, lay in course and
initiate. Mr. Worf, full power
to shields. And then full phaser power as soon
as range permits."
But even as the Enterprise was on its way,
the Centurion suddenly accelerated
directly toward the M'dok ship, full in the
face of its continuous phaser barrage.
Still sluggish, and no doubt astonished, the
M'dok were unable to maneuver out of the way. The
two ships collided at an immensely high
closing velocity.
More precisely, their shields collided.
Both sets of shields flared as they radiated
the kinetic energy that had just been dumped into them.
The ships bounced away from each other like rubber
balls.
But it had been a glancing blow, and it had
been under Sejanus' control. So while the
Centurion wobbled drunkenly for a moment and
then came back under control, its shields low
but still intact, the M'dok ship spun away,
rotating wildly, and in one area its shields
went far too low for safety. As soon as that
area rotated back into view, photon
torpedoes flashed out from beneath the Centurion's
saucer and into the area of weakened M'dok
deflector shields.
The M'dok ship exploded soundlessly. The
marvelous construction of metal and energy and
design, of science and technology, of
hardware and software, erupted in a minuscule
fragment of a second into a boiling, expanding
cloud, glowing in every color, a mad
orgy of self-consuming energies.
The terrible image faded, and space was
empty once again.
"Captain Sejanus hailing you again."
"On-screen."
Sejanus' face was a mask of confusion.
"Picard, why didn't you come to our defense?"
For a moment Picard was too stunned
to respond. Then he gathered his wits. "You
deliberately forced this encounter, Captain. I
do not condone the needless slaughter of an
opponent!"
"Needless slaughter!" Sejanus looked
surprised. "We are talking about the animals
who butchered an entire village--or perhaps
you've forgotten that story, Captain!"
"Perhaps you've forgotten what we're doing
here," Picard said. "It was the appearance of your
ship, and the way you chose to come on the scene, that
made the M'dok fight. You forced it."
"If you recall," Sejanus said icily,
"we were fired upon first."
"Semantics, Captain," Picard
replied. "And what about your own ship and crew?
How dare you risk their lives
unnecessarily? That engagement should never have
happened! The M'dok were fleeing!" His voice
had risen in volume. Picard realized he was
close to losing control, to shouting out his anger.
"They came to this planet to attack,"
Sejanus said firmly.
Picard shook his head. "I've been trying
to avoid putting you in this position, but you've
made it necessary. In addition to the orders
Admiral Delapore sent both of us, he
also included coded orders specifically to me,
giving me the authority to place myself in
supreme command of both our ships and the entire
Tenaran operation. I didn't want to invoke
that order, but your behavior makes it
unavoidable, and I am now doing so."
"Why, that's nonsense!" Sejanus
blustered. "Why should I believe that?"
Picard straightened again and lowered his voice
to its normal level. "I'll have a copy of
my orders transmitted to your ship immediately,
and of course you can contact Starfleet Command for
verification, if you like."
"I'll do that," Sejanus said. "Rest
assured, I will most certainly do
that."
Sejanus' image disappeared.
"That fool," Picard muttered softly,
taking his seat again. Is he deliberately
trying to start a war?
"Picking up an interesting anomaly on the
planet's surface, sir," Data said,
breaking in on Picard's train of thought.
"What kind of anomaly?"
"We just caught it on our last pass,
sir. An unnatural concentration of
metallic elements. Coming over the area again
now."
"On viewscreen, please."
At first, it seemed to be merely an
elongated clearing
in the Tenaran forest, with something
glittering at one end of it. "Magnification,"
Picard called out.
The picture ballooned outward, and
Picard could see that the clearing was not a
natural one--that trees had been shattered and
thrown violently aside, that the ground had been
plowed up--and that the glittering object was
actually many objects, the remnants of a
ship.
"M'dok," he said. "But how did they get
past us?" He opened a channel to engineering.
"Mr. La Forge, what happened to the
satellite net?"
Geordi's voice came back clear and
strong. "Nothing, sir. It's working just fine."
"An inept landing," Worf said, nodding
toward the picture on the viewscreen. "Perhaps
it killed them."
Picard shook his head. "Didn't you know that
cats have nine lives, Mr. Worf?"
"Sir?"
"Never mind. We'll make no
assumptions. Mr. Data, scan the
wreckage, please."
"Aye, sir." After a brief pause the
android said, "No organic traces in the
wreckage, sir."
Picard grunted. "Then they're somewhere in the
forest."
He had no need to say any more than that. The
forest stretched for thousands of square kilometers
below them, impenetrable from above even with their
sophisticated instruments. The M'dok could be
hiding anywhere in it, and the Enterprise
would have no way of finding them. Everyone near that
crash site was in extreme jeopardy.
Picard rose to his feet. "Mr.
Worf, please find Commander Riker for me on
the planet's surface. And contact the
Centurion and have them warn their personnel
to be on the lookout for the M'dok. I'll be in
the ready room."
"Aye, Captain."
"And, Mr. Data?"
"Yes, sir." The android turned in his
chair to look at Picard.
"Find out how they got past us, and make
sure it doesn't happen again!"
It took close to half an hour for Worf
to locate the Enterprise's first officer.
Finally Picard was speaking to Commander Riker's
image on the small screen on the ready
room's desk.
Picard filled him in on the arrival of the
M'dok ships, and the destruction of one of them
by the Centurion. "Now we've just detected
signs of a crash landing on Tenara by another
M'dok ship. We can detect no signs of
bodies inside the wreckage, so we must
assume that the M'dok survived the crash and
are now at large on the surface--probably
within the forest somewhere outside Zhelnogra, where
they are hidden from our sensors. I'm
transmitting the coordinates of the crash to you
now."
Riker's expression grew tense. "That's
very bad news, Captain. Has there been no
response from the M'dok Empire to our offers
to help them fight the plague?"
"None yet, I'm afraid." He shook
his head. "Number One, this may mean war
yet."
"I sincerely hope not, sir--especially
if Tenara ends up being the battleground."
Riker paused. "How did this ship sneak by the
satellite net?"
"Commander Data thinks that the two ships we
saw were sent to record as many hours as possible
of the satellites' sensor broadcasts, so that
they could later analyze them and learn
to duplicate them. The ship that crashed used that
knowledge to dupe the satellites."
"Could they have staged the battle to allow that
second ship to sneak by?"
"Absolutely not," Picard said firmly.
"Captain Sejanus deliberately
provoked that incident."
Riker shook his head. "I still have trouble
believing that of a man like Sejanus, sir."
"I have the feeling none of us knows him as
well as we thought, Number One." Picard
changed the subject. "How's your survey
coming?"
"Fine, sir. I'll be sending back
preliminary reports tomorrow, but it seems that
all the Tenarans will need from us are basic
supplies and perhaps a few pieces of heavy
machinery to rebuild." He hesitated a
moment. "Are we having problems with the
government, sir? With Melkinat?"
Picard shook his head. "I'm afraid I
don't understand."
"Well ..." Riker looked uncomfortable.
"I'm afraid his daughter seems to have turned
against us--me--over the last day or so. Very
strange."
"Nothing you've done, I trust?"
"No sir," Riker said emphatically.
"She was supposed to complete the survey with us
and then return to Zhelnogra, but now she's
gone off on her own. I'm at a loss
to explain it."
"Well, contact me again when you rendezvous
with her in Zhelnogra. Perhaps one of us will know
the reason for her change of attitude then."
He exchanged a brief smile with his first
officer. "Picard out."
The small screen went dark.
"Mr. Worf?"
"Aye, sir."
"About those personal-defense training
classes you wanted to conduct down on the
planet's surface?"
"Yes, sir?"
"I think now would be a good time to start
arranging those."
The M'dok commander stretched lazily,
purred with satisfaction, and curled up into a
ball. He was comfortably fed (for the first time in
how long?), pleasantly warm, and intended
to sleep for the next few hours. He was on his
way to doing just that when a hissing voice he
knew all too well interrupted
him.
"Commander! Darkness! Now would be the perfect
time."
The squad leader seemed determined to sink his
teeth into that afternoon's argument again, to nibble at it,
worry at it, growl over it--in short,
to drive the commander mad with it.
He opened one eye and bared his teeth.
"Squad Leader! Orders! Now would be the
perfect time for punishment for insubordination."
"But if we fail to move now, and the Federation
finds us, then who will be in the wrong?"
The commander could sense the growing feeling in the
others that the squad leader was right. The most
elementary of battle tactics seemed to be
escaping them; this plague was making them
into animals. It was time to reassert himself. He
rose halfway and shook himself, throwing off
sleepiness, then stood erect. The commander was the
tallest and broadest of the party--which was in large
part why he had risen to a higher rank than
any of the others. Now he glared down at them,
growling as the fur along his shoulders and on his
head rose, making him look even bigger. The
other M'dok stepped back nervously and
avoided his eyes.
He sneered,
and his foot lashed out, into the
pile of bones on the ground before him. Tenaran
bones flew into the air and showered down on the
squad leader. To have the bones of prey thrown
upon him was one of the worst insults a M'dok
warrior could suffer, but suffer it he did, and in
silence. He had to.
The sun had set two hours earlier. On
the horizon, the moon was a thin sliver. Even
for humans who lived in rural surroundings, like
the Tenarans, the landscape was only dimly
lighted. But to the M'dok, the light was more than
adequate for killing. It had been daylight
when this party had descended upon a tiny
village, inhabited by only two families,
and killed everyone there. Now the commander wanted
to sleep until the meal was properly digested,
but the squad leader wanted to keep moving,
to head toward the much larger town ahead of them.
We need our minds and bodies clear before
then, the commander knew.
"Enough!" he snapped. "It was I who
devised the method of deceiving the satellites and
thus found a way of landing on this world
once again, despite the Federation defenses.
I decide when we move--and where."
The squad leader, his eyes still averted,
grumbled to himself, bent to pick up a human
leg that still had some meat on it, and retreated behind
a tree.
Satisfied, the commander dropped to the ground
again, curled into a ball once more, and began
to drop off to sleep. The stray thought crossed
his mind that perhaps he would be wise to have the squad
leader tied up until morning. But he was too
sleepy and full of food to bother.
It was the first serious error the commander had ever
made. It was also the last.
Chapter Nine
"Attack me," Worf ordered.
Ingerment, the young Tenaran man standing in
front of him, giggled. The other young Tenarans
seated in a circle around the two giggled in
response. Ingerment stared at the ground.
"I said, attack me!" The deep,
rumbling voice was louder this time.
Ingerment giggled again, but this time with more
nervousness than amusement. The others did not
giggle at all. They were beginning to look
uncomfortable--and some of them, scared. Still, nothing
happened.
"Attack me!" Worf roared. The
Tenaran turned pale, his eyes widening in
fear. He raised his right hand, hesitated, and
then shoved Worf lightly in the chest.
Worf raised his face to the ceiling of the
gymnasium and howled the ancient cry of a
Klingon warrior. The Tenarans all