STAR TREK: TNG - Stargazer: Three

by Michael Jan Friedman

  Had she been up to no good, she had certainly had her chance to demonstrate it. With the ship in a state of battle alert and her escort unconscious, she could have [164] accessed any of several systems and done all kinds of damage.

  Instead, she had rescued Picard’s security chief. And judging from the reports he had received, she had done it at great risk to her own life.

  If Gerda Idun had been one of his officers, he would have placed a commendation in her file. As it was, all he could do was thank her.

  “Would it be à problem to wake her up?” the captain asked Greyhorse.

  The doctor produced a hypospray. “Actually, I was about to do that anyway.” Pressing the device against Gerda Idun’s arm, he released its contents into her system.

  A moment later, her eyelids fluttered open and she looked around. “Pug—?” she groaned.

  “He’s all right,” said Picard.

  “Thanks to you,” Greyhorse added.

  The captain noted the look on the doctor’s face as he regarded Gerda Idun. Clearly, Greyhorse admired what the woman had done—and he was a hard man to impress.

  Their guest took a deep breath and let it out again. Her brow wrinkled. “No pain.”

  “Your lungs took a beating,” the doctor told her, “but I was able to prevent any serious damage. You may have some discomfort when the painkillers wear off, but nothing you won’t be able to handle.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Picard knew two things.

  One was that Gerda Idun had earned a good deal more freedom. He would no longer insist on having her [165] escorted about the ship. A combadge that would let him keep track of her whereabouts would suffice.

  The other thing was that he would get her back to her own universe, Balduk or no Balduk.

  Nikolas breathed a long, heartfelt sigh of relief as he stood at Vigo’s weapons console.

  When he heard that Gerda Idun had been hurt, that she had been taken to sickbay, he had gone numb all over. It was almost as if he were the one who had been stricken by potentially lethal EPS explosions.

  In fact, it had taken all of his willpower to keep from bolting for the turbolift and going down to sickbay to see her for himself.

  Then, just a moment ago, he had heard the good news—that both Gerda Idun and Joseph would be all right. That, in fact, Gerda Idun had gotten the security officer out of the danger zone all by herself.

  Hence, the sigh of relief.

  Obal couldn’t have been more wrong, Nikolas told himself. This wasn’t just a physical attraction. The ensign had never felt this way about anyone before.

  And just his luck, the object of his affection was determined to leave him. In fact, she was determined to leave his whole damned universe.

  Nikolas didn’t know if he could handle that. If there were only another way ...

  Suddenly, it came to him. There was another way. And when he saw Gerda Idun, he would tell her about it.

  * * *

  [166] Wutor was still basking in the glow of his victory over the Federation starship when Delakan called to him from her data-collection panel.

  “We’re being prodded by another ship,” she said, studying her monitor. “The Asajanarin.” She looked up, an expression of disgust on her face. “A High Order vessel. With a full seven subordinates in tow.”

  The commander nodded. “I’ll talk with them.”

  A moment later, his viewscreen filled with the image of another Balduk, his tongue sliding confidently over his teeth. “I am Ujawekwit, commander of this vessel.”

  Wutor could tell from Ujawekwit’s bearing and accent that he was an aristocrat, an individual from a family with ample lands—just like Wutor’s own family, prior to his blunder. No doubt, he was used to being obeyed.

  “And I am Wutor,” he spat back. “What do you want?”

  The commander of the Asajanarin smiled, his lips pulling back from his teeth. “You may depart now,” he said with High Order disdain. “I and my subordinates will see to it that this portion of Balduk space remains inviolate.”

  Wutor had expected this sort of behavior. In fact, he would have been shocked if his High Order counterpart had taken any other approach.

  “I have no intention of departing,” he snarled. “The Ekhonarid has already clashed with the invader and repelled her. According to Law, these coordinates are mine to guard and defend.” He leaned forward in his brace. “Though you may stay here and assist me, if you like.”

  The High Order commander’s eyes narrowed beneath [167] his brow ledge. “I do not assist Middle Order vessels. Stand aside and I will forget your insult.”

  It was a game, just like the one Wutor played with Tsioveth. Ujawekwit knew only too well that Wutor was within his rights. He was just hoping he could intimidate him into giving them up.

  But Wutor had been fortunate to stumble onto such an exquisite opportunity, and he might never stumble upon another one. He wasn’t about to relinquish it so easily.

  “The defense is mine!” the commander of the Asajanarin insisted angrily.

  “It belongs to me!” Wutor barked back. “You know the protocols. Or do you wish to poach on my coordinates and risk the wrath of your overseers?”

  Ujawekwit couldn’t take that chance, and they both knew it. If his overseers found that he had knowingly violated the protocols, he might be stripped of his command—and perhaps a portion of his lands as well.

  “Well?” Wutor prodded.

  The other commander glared at him. “I will stay,” he said, each word cutting like a dagger, “and assist you in your defense of Balduk space.”

  It was clearly the wisest course of action for all concerned. “Good,” said Wutor, providing the ritual response as he settled back comfortably into his brace, his position secured. “I welcome your assistance.”

  Gerda glanced at her sister, who was sitting beside her at the bridge’s helm console.

  More than an hour had passed since they took their [168] stations in the midst of the battle with the Balduk. Normally, Idun would have said something to her sister in all that time, or at least cast her a knowing glance. But she had done neither.

  Clearly, she wasn’t happy with the way Gerda had acted with Lieutenant Refsland earlier. In fact, Gerda wasn’t happy with her behavior either. No matter what kind of thoughts the man had entertained, it didn’t justify her assaulting him.

  But Idun was her sister. She wasn’t supposed to turn a cold shoulder to Gerda, regardless of the circumstances.

  Suddenly, one of the navigator’s long-range sensor monitors began flashing. Turning her attention to it, she saw that Gerda Idun’s return to her own universe had just grown significantly more complicated.

  “Sir,” she said, turning to Captain Picard, “sensors are picking up additional Balduk signatures.”

  Picard looked at her. “How many more?”

  Gerda consulted her monitor again, then turned back to him. “There are now nine vessels, all told, though all but one is smaller than the first.”

  The captain got up from his seat and looked over the navigator’s shoulder. Seeing the ranks of the opposition for himself, he looked anything but happy.

  “Get me what you can on them,” he said.

  Gerda nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  She shared his concern. If it had been difficult to get near the anomaly before, it would now be a good deal more so. Clearly, Picard had his work cut out for him.

  Gerda glanced at her sister again. It wouldn’t do the [169] Stargazer any good for Idun to start speaking to her, but it would certainly make her feel a lot better.

  Ejanix couldn’t hear the sounds Riyyen made as Kovajo’s men beat him, because Ejanix had placed himself in a room at the other end of the installation.

  But he imagined that he could hear them—every last groan and gurgle and unanswered plea for mercy.

  How had it come to this? All Ejanix had wanted to do was improve the lives of his people, and perhaps bring a l
ittle justice to Pandril. At the outset, it had seemed like such a golden ambition.

  But somewhere along the way, the gold veneer had worn off, and the base, dark metal underneath had begun to show through. Ejanix saw now that the rebel movement wasn’t quite as pure as he had first believed.

  They weren’t above resorting to violence—and not just of the kind that put them and their fellow Pandrilites on opposite sides of a phaser battle.

  There was a worse kind of violence, Ejanix had realized. And it was going on now in Kovajo’s interrogation room, for the sole reason of forcing Vigo to tell them what he knew.

  Finally, Ejanix couldn’t take it anymore. Bolting from the room in which he had sequestered himself, he made his way down one corridor and then another.

  Finally, he came to the interrogation room. The door, he saw, was open. There weren’t even any guards outside it.

  Sensing that something was wrong, the engineer swung inside—and saw some of the rebels, Kovajo included, gathered in a knot at the center of the room. At first, Ejanix [170] didn’t see any sign of Riyyen. Then he realized that the Dedderac was sitting at the center of the knot.

  “How did this happen?” Kovajo demanded of Ferrak.

  Ferrak held his hands out. “I don’t know. I didn’t hit him that hard, I swear it.”

  Ejanix felt his throat constrict. With legs that felt like someone else’s, he moved closer to get a better look at Riyyen. The Dedderac’s head was tilted back, his mouth was open, and his eyes were staring at the ceiling.

  “By the Virtues ...” Ejanix said softly.

  Riyyen was dead.

  Having heard him speak, Kovajo and the others turned to look at him. They looked like children who had gotten caught with their hands full of sweets.

  “He was a Dedderac,” Ejanix said. “His physiology is different from ours.”

  He knew then that he should have said something to that effect earlier, but he hadn’t. Like Riyyen’s murderers, he hadn’t expected the differences to be that significant.

  But apparently, they were.

  Suddenly, Kovajo was in front of Ejanix, cutting off his view of Riyyen. “You can thank your friend for this,” he said. “Had Vigo cooperated with us, we would never have resorted to anything of this nature.”

  Ejanix nodded. “Of course.”

  But in the shelter of his own mind, he was thinking again of something Vigo had told him. And will it be a bloodless revolution, Ejanix?

  The engineer swallowed. What have I done?

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE BALDUK WERE REKNOWNED as a savage-looking breed. Their leader was no exception.

  He had pitted, pitch-black skin with scars denoting his rank, mere holes for ears, and eyes that were like tiny, pale green fish darting between jutting brow ridges and painfully prominent cheekbones. His thick, white hair was gathered into a cascade at the back of his head, giving him a vulpine appearance, and as he spoke his long, narrow tongue slithered across an abundance of short, sharp teeth.

  “I’m here,” said the Balduk.

  Picard nodded approvingly. It had taken hours of patient work on Paxton’s part, but the com officer had finally gotten their adversary to respond.

  “I’m Jean-Luc Picard,” he said, “captain of the Stargazer. Thank you for answering our hails.”

  [172] The Balduk leader didn’t identify himself. He just said, “What do you want?”

  “A cessation of hostilities,” said the captain. “We need to return—briefly—to the anomaly we were studying and we don’t wish to have to fight you for that privilege.”

  The Balduk’s pale green eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why do you need this?”

  “Because when we were in the vicinity of the anomaly earlier, we inadvertently took on board a being who doesn’t belong in our universe. We believe the only way to send her home is to re-create the conditions that brought her to us—including the proximity of the anomaly.”

  Picard didn’t see any need to mention that the being in question was human, or that she was from a mirror universe, or that Starfleet personnel had had contact with another mirror universe seventy years earlier. He simply laid out the essential facts and waited for a response.

  The Balduk’s tongue insinuated itself among his teeth. The captain recognized it as an indication that his adversary was considering the situation.

  Finally, the Balduk spoke again. “Home is important. We understand the being’s need to return. But the anomaly, as you call it, is in my people’s space.”

  Picard wanted to tell the fellow that he had a most convenient grasp of stellar geography. But under the circumstances, he bit his tongue.

  “I am not disputing your right to that part of space,” he said. “I am simply asking for access to the anomaly for a short period of time.”

  The Balduk’s tongue slithered some more. Then he [173] shook his head from side to side. “If your ship violates our borders, we will destroy it.”

  “But,” Picard argued, “it would not be a violation if you granted us free—”

  Before he could finish, the Balduk’s image vanished from the viewscreen. The captain found himself talking to a vast, unbroken field of stars.

  Not that it mattered. Obviously, he would sooner get help from the unheeding stars than he would from the Balduk.

  Nonetheless, he had been right to ask. Had he succeeded in his request, it might have saved lives on both sides.

  “You know,” said Ben Zoma, leaning close to him, “Simenon is almost ready.”

  “But it won’t do any good,” Picard noted in response, “unless we can get near the anomaly.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  The captain eyed the viewscreen. “Whatever it takes to get Gerda Idun home.”

  Ben Zoma nodded. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  Nikolas touched the metal plate next to Gerda Idun’s door and waited for it to slide open. When it did, he smiled at her and said. “Surprise.”

  She smiled back, though she looked a little weary. “Come on in.”

  “I looked for you in sickbay,” he explained as he entered Gerda Idun’s quarters, “but Greyhorse told me he had already released you.”

  “Yes,” she said, depositing herself in a chair on one [174] side of the room and leaving Nikolas its counterpart on the other side. “I wasn’t hurt as bad as I might have been.”

  He nodded. “I’m glad.”

  Gerda Idun must have seen something in his eyes then, because her smile faded. “It’s sweet of you to check on me,” she said, “but I was just about to go to bed. I guess I’m still feeling the effects of the medications the doctor gave me.”

  “Nonsense,” Nikolas told her. “Nobody walks out of sickbay still feeling the effects of medication. You’re just trying to get rid of me.”

  She chuckled—nervously, he thought. “And why would I do that?”

  “Because you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say.”

  “And that is?”

  “That I’m falling in love with you,” he told her, the words sounding perfectly natural to him. “And that I want to be with you, in this universe or any other.”

  Gerda Idun stared at him. “That’s ... that’s very flattering,” she said, uncharacteristically caught off guard. “But you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  The ensign laughed. “You may be right about that. This probably isn’t the most well-thought-out decision I’ve ever made. But it doesn’t matter. I’m determined to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  “It’s impossible,” Gerda Idun told him. “You can’t go where I’m going.”

  “We don’t know that,” he insisted. “If you can be sent back there, maybe I can too.”

  She shook her head. “We’ll be lucky if the circuits [175] hold together long enough to transport one person. Two would be out of the question.”

  “Simenon hasn’t said that,” said Nikolas. “If there’s even a chance—�
��

  Suddenly, a tear ran down her cheek.

  It was so unexpected, so unlike her, that it drew him to her the way a lump of iron was drawn to a magnet. He crossed the room and joined her on the other side, knelt in front of her and took her hands in his.

  “The rest of my life,” Nikolas told her.

  Gerda Idun shook her head. “No.”

  He started to protest, but she put her hand over his mouth.

  “Not the rest of your life,” she said firmly. Then her features softened and she added, “Just tonight.”

  And she kissed him long and passionately.

  Vigo was almost done eating the food he had been given when he saw Runj turn his head toward the corridor—an indication that one of their captors was coming back to see them.

  He was surprised when it turned out to be Ejanix.

  After their last conversation, Vigo hadn’t expected his mentor to return any time soon. And yet, there he was, seemingly back for more.

  Crossing the room to where Vigo was sitting, he got down on his haunches again. As the rebels at the door watched with interest, he looked the weapons officer in the eye. “I thought you would want to know ... I considered what you said.”

  The weapons officer looked at him. “And?”

  [176] “And nothing’s changed. I still feel as I did before—that we’re right to do as we do.”

  Vigo sighed. “It’s difficult for me to believe you’re the same man I learned from back on Pandril. The Ejanix I knew would never have violated the Virtues by gloating—even if he had something to gloat about, which you don’t.”

  The gibe didn’t seem to bother Ejanix. Obviously, he had been prepared for such a remark.

  “You may not think what we’re doing here is something to be proud of,” he said, “but when history judges us, it won’t be with an Elevated Caste eye. We’ll be judged by those whose lives have been made better by our rebellion.”

  “By Kovajo,” said Vigo, “and others like him.”

  “I hope so,” Ejanix said unflinchingly.

  “And the bloodshed that will take place between now and then? What will history say about that?”