It caught Nikolas completely by surprise—so much [72] so that he doubted the evidence of his own eyes for a moment. But as he stared back, he saw that he hadn’t imagined it.
The woman was still smiling at him. At him.
Then, before he could say anything, she was gone around another bend in the corridor, along with Mr. Joseph. And Nikolas was left with his mouth hanging open.
Impossible as it seemed, one of the Asmunds had favored him with a smile. But he didn’t have the slightest clue which of them it was—Gerda or Idun.
As far as Nikolas was concerned, they looked exactly alike. If there was a way to tell them apart—other than the way they wore their hair, or where they sat when they were on the bridge—he was unaware of it.
But he needed to know which of them he had seen. Because once he knew that, he could find out what that smile had been about.
With that in mind, the ensign bolted after the woman. Unfortunately, he came around the bend too quickly and almost knocked over Lieutenant Ulelo.
Muttering an apology, Nikolas tried to disentangle himself from the com officer. However, it took longer than it should have. And by the time the ensign resumed his pursuit, the object of it had already entered a turbolift.
“Wait!” he blurted.
But it was too late. The doors had already begun sliding together. All Nikolas got was a glimpse of blond hair and blue eyes before the doors closed completely.
[73] Damn, he thought, and hit the heel of his hand against the duranium bulkhead in frustration. Idun—or was it Gerda?—had gotten away.
Then he realized that it didn’t matter. All he had to do was catch up with Pug Joseph later and find out which Asmund he had been walking with.
Simple, he told himself. You’ll have your answer before you know it.
He just didn’t know how he would be able to wait.
In Vigo’s dream, he was back on Pandril, in a pastel-colored lecture hall with a lofty, arched ceiling and the Three Virtues sculpted in sharp relief on the walls.
Humility was represented by a figure with his eyes downcast and his fists pressed together. Selflessness was offering food from a basket he was carrying. And Stoicism was indifferent to the flame that burned in the cup of his joined palms.
Ejanix was standing in the center of the room, beside a holoprojection of a starship engine’s reaction chamber. “Matter,” he said, considering the hologram, “and antimatter. What happens when they come together?”
Vigo raised his hand. “They annihilate each other.”
“Exactly,” said Ejanix, speaking loudly enough for his voice to reverberate majestically from wall to wall. “They annihilate each other—releasing an enormous amount of energy in the process. And it is this energy that propels our starships through the void of space.”
The void of space. Vigo loved the phrase. And he especially loved it when it was spoken so passionately.
“Imagine,” said Ejanix, “two substances so different [74] from each other that mere contact between them unleashes that kind of power. How can one hope to control such volatility?”
Vigo had read ahead. He knew that the matter and antimatter that made up starship fuel were stored in magnetic containment vessels until the time came for them to be mixed through the medium of a synthetic dilithium crystal.
Raising his hand again, he offered to share his knowledge—an act of selflessness, and therefore a virtuous act. But at the same time, he felt a certain amount of pride in knowing what others did not, and pride was as much at odds with the virtue of humility as matter was with antimatter.
The virtuous path, Vigo reflected, was not always an easy one to follow.
“Ah,” said Ejanix, extending his hand in Vigo’s direction, “here’s someone who can shed light on the question for us.”
The other students turned to look at him. He could feel their scrutiny as if it had weight and substance.
“Tell us, then,” Ejanix continued, “how is all this power held at bay?”
Suddenly, Vigo noticed that his instructor’s hand wasn’t empty. It held a phaser—a type that Vigo had never seen before—and it was trained directly at Vigo’s forehead.
“Get up,” Ejanix told him.
Vigo didn’t understand. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Get up,” his instructor said again.
[75] But this time his voice was considerably deeper, considerably harsher. Much more so, in fact, than Vigo would ever have imagined possible.
He was about to ask if there was something wrong with his instructor’s throat when something happened—something shockingly and devastatingly painful.
Vigo cried out—or thought he did—and found himself on a carpeted surface in a dimly lit room. There was a twisted length of blanket on the floor beside him, one corner of which was wrapped around his thigh. Other than that, he was dressed in just his sleeping pants.
And his jaw hurt. It hurt terribly—as if someone had struck it with a hunk of metal as hard as he could.
That’s when Vigo realized that he wasn’t in a lecture hall after all. He wasn’t even on Pandril. He was in the modest quarters assigned to him at the development facility on Wayland Prime.
Nor did he have to look far to explain why his jaw hurt, or how he had fallen out of bed. The explanation was hovering over him in the form of a figure too big and blue and hairless to be anything but another Pandrilite.
But it wasn’t Ejanix, the weapons officer noted. It was someone else, dressed in civilian clothing and armed with a phaser pistol, which—as in Vigo’s dream—was pointed right at his forehead.
It didn’t make sense, he insisted inwardly. This was a secure Starfleet installation. There shouldn’t have been any civilians in it, armed or otherwise.
And yet ...
Vigo peered at the intruder as he got to his feet. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”
[76] The fellow didn’t answer either question. He just used his phaser to gesture toward the door, momentarily removing Vigo from its line of fire.
It was as big a window of opportunity as the weapons officer could reasonably have expected—which was to say it wasn’t big at all. But if he were lucky, it would be all he needed.
Without hesitation, he launched himself in the other Pandrilite’s direction, his right hand reaching for the phaser while his left grabbed for the fellow’s throat.
The intruder cried out and pressed the trigger on his weapon, but by then Vigo had thrust it off line. The seething, red beam shot past his ear and struck the bulkhead behind him.
Vigo heard the wail of tortured metal, but he didn’t have time to examine the damage. He was too busy using his grasp on his assailant’s throat to smash the fellow’s head against the wall behind him.
Flesh and bone struck the duranium surface with an audible thud, an indication of the considerable force behind the blow. But the intruder was a Pandrilite. It would take more than that to knock him out.
A second time, Vigo slammed his adversary’s head into the wall. And a third. Then he switched gears, pivoted into the intruder and wrenched at the phaser as hard as he could.
As he had hoped, it came free in his hands. But his adversary hadn’t quite had all the fight knocked out of him. No sooner had Vigo gotten sole possession of the weapon than he felt a fist bludgeon the back of his neck.
Fireworks went off in the weapons officer’s brain, but he [77] didn’t dare falter. Driving his elbow into the other Pandrilite’s ribs, he sent him staggering backward. Then he whirled and lashed out with his foot at his adversary’s chin.
The impact snapped the intruder’s head back and sent him flying into the wall. Immediately, Vigo turned the setting on the phaser to stun—but as it turned out, he didn’t have to use it. His assailant slid to the floor and lay there at an awkward angle, unmoving.
Finally, Vigo had a chance to get his bearings. Think, he told himself, as he drew in a deep, welcome breath. If there’s one intr
uder, there may be more.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, he heard the rasp of voices out in the corridor. They were coming from off to Vigo’s right, where Sebring and Runj had their quarters.
At least one of the voices was deep and resonant enough to belong to a Pandrilite. And it was giving orders, the same way Vigo’s assailant had done.
Another voice sounded like it was protesting. The more Vigo listened, the more it sounded like Runj. No one else at the installation was likely to be slurring his words so badly.
Like Vigo, it seemed, the Vobilite had been assaulted in his sleep. Maybe Sebring as well.
But it took a security override to get into someone’s quarters—or else an intimate knowledge of the door-locking mechanism. How could the intruders have gotten either one of those things?
And where were the installation’s security officers? Why hadn’t they detected the intruders’ arrival in time to lock the place down?
Vigo forced himself to put such questions aside for [78] the moment, knowing he had more immediate concerns. The voices in the corridor were getting closer by the second.
“Antazi!” one of them called.
It was a Pandrilite name—probably that of the fellow who had woken Vigo up. Apparently, his compatriots wanted to know if he was all right.
Vigo answered—in his own way. Swinging out into the corridor with his phaser at the ready, he fired at the first unfamiliar face he could find—another Pandrilite, as it turned out. The beam catapulted Antazi’s friend into the air and dropped him on the deck, unconscious.
But there was another big, blue figure right behind him, a phaser in one hand and Sebring’s arm in the other. Seeing his comrade go down, he extended his weapon in Vigo’s direction—but as he fired, the human lowered his shoulder and spoiled his captor’s aim.
It was all the opening Vigo needed. His phaser beam speared the intruder and sent him skidding down the corridor, bereft of his senses.
“Nice shot,” said Sebring, disarming the Pandrilite who had woken him. He had a nasty-looking cut over one eye. “These guys friends of yours?”
Vigo knew that the human was only half-serious. Still, he said, “I’ve never seen them before in my life.”
But they were all Pandrilites. He found that curious, considering his people seldom ventured offworld, much less hired themselves out as mercenaries.
Runj joined them, a phaser in his hand now too. “Any idea what they’re after?”
[79] Vigo shook his head. “Not specifically, no. But in a place like this, it could be a great many things.”
Sebring looked up and down the corridor. “You can say that again, pal. I just wish I knew how many of these slime devils we’re up against.”
“We could go through the installation one hallway at a time,” Runj said around his tusks, “and find out that way. But I wouldn’t advise it. I think we can be reasonably certain that they outnumber us.”
“Also,” said Vigo, “they may have taken hostages. That will make it a good deal more difficult for us to fight them.”
Sebring swore beneath his breath. “And if the research our people have been doing here falls into the wrong hands ...” His voice trailed off, leaving the rest to their imagination.
Vigo nodded. The research had to be their priority. But there were only three of them. How could they win against a potentially much larger force?
Then it came to him. “The intruders couldn’t have beamed down—not with that magnetic-storm belt out there. They had to descend in a shuttle, just as we did.”
Runj looked at him. “And they’ll need to take that shuttle back up.”
“Exactly,” said Vigo.
“So if we disable the thing,” Sebring reasoned, “they can’t leave with it.”
“Or what they came for,” Runj added. “At least until they can send down another shuttle.”
“If they even have one,” said Vigo.
[80] Sebring shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
“But we’ve got to strike now,” said Runj, “before they realize we’re on the loose.”
Vigo agreed wholeheartedly. “Let’s go,” he said, as he made his way to the nearest exit past the motionless bodies of his fellow Pandrilites.
Chapter Six
GREYHORSE WAS RECALIBRATING the sensor array on one of his biobeds when, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of two people entering sickbay.
One of them, he knew, was Pug Joseph. The other was the individual who had beamed aboard the ship recently under mysterious circumstances.
Taking a deep breath, Greyhorse gathered himself. Then, slowly and deliberately, he looked up.
And saw her.
The doctor had been warned by the captain as to what was coming his way. But he hadn’t been warned strongly enough or thoroughly enough to prepare him for the sight that greeted his eyes.
He had expected to see someone who looked like his lover but wasn’t, someone along the lines of Gerda’s sister Idun. But the woman who had just walked into [82] Greyhorse’s sickbay was Gerda. At least, it seemed that way. And yet, in a profoundly disturbing way, she wasn’t.
The doctor couldn’t explain why he felt that way about her. And yet, he did.
The woman smiled as she and Joseph approached him—and that too was shocking in its way, because Gerda had never smiled that way, nor would she. But the newcomer was smiling in the very way Greyhorse was certain Gerda would have smiled if she had ever been inclined to do so.
“Doctor Greyhorse?” the woman ventured.
He cleared his throat to buy himself some time. “Yes,” he said at last, with an annoying quaver in his voice. “That’s correct. I’m Doctor Greyhorse.”
“Best doctor in the quadrant,” Joseph chipped in. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You’re in good hands.”
“I’m sure I am,” said the newcomer.
Greyhorse ignored both their compliments. “Though you seem to have suffered no ill effects,” he said, “the captain felt it was only prudent for me to look you over.”
“Of course,” the woman said. She looked around. “Where would you like me to sit?”
Greyhorse indicated another biobed with a gesture. “This will do. You have biobeds in your universe, don’t you?”
“We do,” the woman confirmed as she moved to the device and slid onto its surface. “But I don’t think they’re quite as advanced as the ones you have.” She shrugged in a way the doctor found immensely appealing. “Not that I’m an expert on such things.”
Greyhorse decided that it would be best to minimize [83] his conversation with the newcomer and avoid her gaze. He found it too confusing to do otherwise.
“This won’t take long,” he assured her in his most clinical voice. Then he punched the requisite studs in the side of the bed and examined his readouts.
His patient was human right down to the cellular level. The captain would be pleased to learn that, at least.
She was healthy as well. If she had suffered any ill effects as a result of her transit from universe to universe, they didn’t show up on his scans.
No evidence of exposure to any of the more exotic diseases either—just as the transporter’s biofilter had indicated. Not even Hesperan thumping cough, which most of the crew had contracted at one time or another.
Greyhorse checked for signs of plastic surgery, but couldn’t find any. Her hair, eye, and skin color were natural. And when he compared her genetic makeup with his file data on Gerda and Idun, he found that she matched them almost exactly.
All in all, the newcomer was just what she seemed—an exact duplicate of Gerda and Idun Asmund, every bit as close to them as they were to each other.
“Do I pass?” she asked.
He couldn’t help glancing at her. She was smiling again. But then, she had never been raised by Klingons or exposed to the savagery of their culture. She had grown up in some other, more human—more civilized—milieu, and it showed.
“You do,” he said flatly, doing his best to conceal all of the emotions he was feeling.
The strongest of them, surprisingly, was fear. [84] Greyhorse was very much afraid that he would find this pleasant, easygoing, undeniably more human version of his lover more attractive than Gerda herself.
“We’re done?” asked Joseph.
The doctor turned to him. “You are. I’ll contact the captain with my findings.” Then he glanced at his patient again; it was unavoidable. “Thank you for your time.”
“Don’t mention it,” she told him.
Then she lowered herself off the biobed and glanced at Joseph. “Shall we?”
The acting security chief didn’t say anything. He just smiled and nodded. Then he accompanied the woman as she made her way to the exit.
Greyhorse found himself envying Joseph. He wanted the newcomer to stay so he could get to know her better. He wanted to find out in what ways she differed from Gerda—and in what ways she was the same.
However, he didn’t ask her to come back. He retreated to his office instead.
It was only when he was safely inside the enclosure that he slumped into his chair, let his head fall back, and breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.
Vigo stopped and waited for his Starfleet colleagues to catch up with him.
To this point, luck had been on their side. They had made their way through half the installation without running into any of the intruders, Pandrilite or otherwise.
Now they were standing just inside the arch of an exit door—the same door from which Riyyen had emerged [85] to welcome Vigo on his arrival. So far so good, he thought. But their next step would be a tougher one.
Vigo looked at Sebring and then at Runj. “It’s a cloudy night,” he said, recalling the meteorological scan he had seen before he went to sleep. “We’ll have that going for us.”
“Great,” said Sebring, in a sarcastic tone. “What could possibly go wrong?”
The Pandrilite resisted the urge to answer him. Without another word, he pressed the metal plate next to the door. It opened as if there were nothing amiss—no security breach, no invaders, and no possibility of the Federation losing some of its best-kept secrets.
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