STAR TREK: TNG - Stargazer: Three

by Michael Jan Friedman

  If he was going to stop her, he had to do it now, he told himself. Dragging himself along the floor, he worked his way toward Gerda Idun.

  Wiping her eyes so she could see better, she trained her phaser on him. “Please,” she said, “don’t.”

  Nikolas knew he might not get there quickly enough. [231] And even if he could, he might not be strong enough to accomplish anything.

  Still, he had to try.

  Gerda burst into Transporter Room One with unchecked urgency, the doors sliding open for her as quickly as they could.

  With a glance, she saw several things. First, that Gerda Idun and Simenon were on the transporter pad, the former standing over the latter. Second, that Ensign Nikolas was dragging himself toward Gerda Idun, hobbled by some injury he must have sustained.

  And third, that Gerda Idun had a phaser.

  Gerda’s hands and face were damaged, but there was nothing wrong with her feet. Picking up speed, she sprinted across the room and leaped into Gerda Idun feetfirst.

  But not before Gerda Idun fired her weapon.

  Somehow, the phaser beam missed Gerda and struck a bulkhead behind her instead—and that one shot was all Gerda meant to allow. Plowing into Gerda Idun’s midsection, she sent the woman sprawling backward. More important, the impact jarred Gerda Idun’s phaser out of her hand.

  Gerda watched it skitter across the floor and come to a stop. Her every instinct told her to go after it—to get it before Gerda Idun could—and had it not been for Simenon, she would have done exactly that.

  However, she doubted that the Gnalish was lying on the transporter platform by accident. Gerda Idun’s purpose all along could have been to kidnap [232] Simenon—though the navigator couldn’t begin to say why.

  But if it were so, the engineer might be beamed to another universe at any moment.

  So instead of going after Gerda Idun’s phaser, Gerda scrambled in the direction of the Gnalish. Her scorched hands and face felt as if they were on fire, but she managed to get to Simenon and drag him off the transporter pad.

  Then she turned her attention back to the phaser. By then, unfortunately, Gerda Idun had reclaimed it—and was raising it to fire in Gerda’s direction.

  The navigator didn’t even have time to curse. The beam punched her in the stomach and slammed her into the bulkhead behind her, almost knocking her senseless.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw Gerda Idun crossing the room, headed for Simenon. As Gerda watched, her counterpart grabbed the engineer by his armpits and dragged him back toward the transporter pad.

  “No,” the navigator groaned.

  Nikolas, who had gotten as far as the middle of the room, raised his arm and pointed to her. “Your badge,” he croaked.

  Gerda understood. He wanted her to contact the bridge and have them cut power to the transporter.

  But that would take time—several seconds, at least. And she could already see the studs on the transporter console lighting up, indicating that a transport was imminent.

  Gathering what remained of her resolve, Gerda launched herself at her counterpart. This time, she didn’t [233] have the strength for a flying kick. All she could do was drive her shoulder into Gerda Idun’s ribs, making her release Simenon and stagger back from the transporter platform.

  And before Gerda Idun could strike back, the energizing coils above the pad began to glow.

  Gerda knew what that meant. Judging by the expression on Gerda Idun’s face, she knew as well.

  The transport process had begun. In slightly more than a second, the coils would lock on to whatever matter was directly beneath them and begin breaking it down into its component molecules.

  It would be disastrous for any living thing to mount the platform after that point. If Gerda Idun was going to return to her universe, she couldn’t delay.

  Gerda saw the glint of panic in her counterpart’s eyes—the kind of desperation one might see in a cornered animal. Then she watched as Gerda Idun abandoned Simenon, leaped onto the transporter platform, and was bathed in a column of light.

  Gerda Idun’s eyes were drawn to Nikolas—as if he were the last thing she wished to see in this universe. Then she faded into the light and was gone.

  And a moment later, the column of light vanished as well—just as a couple of security officers rushed into the room, their phasers drawn to answer a threat that no longer existed.

  Gerda gritted her teeth and forced herself to get up off the floor. As the two security officers went to Nikolas’s aid, she touched her combadge with the unburned heel of one hand.

  [234] “Captain Picard,” she said, “this is Gerda. The transport is complete. We may leave.”

  “Thank you,” said the captain, sounding eminently relieved.

  It was nothing, Gerda thought. Then, determined to proceed under her own power, she walked out of the transporter room and headed for sickbay.

  Picard didn’t know how his injured navigator had wound up in Transporter Room One, but he knew he could rely on the information she gave him.

  Turning to his helm officer, he said, “Idun, take us out of here.”

  “Aye, sir,” she returned, executing the command on her control console.

  As the drastically shrunken anomaly and the Independent slipped off the viewscreen together in favor of an open starfield, Picard wondered if the Balduk would let them go or take one last shot at them.

  He got his answer when Paxton said, “Sir, the Independent is releasing a full spread of photon torpedoes.”

  Abruptly, the stars ahead of them turned into streaks of light, signifying a jump to warp speed. Picard moved to Idun’s seat and gripped the back of her chair.

  “Aft view,” he commanded.

  It showed him that they had left the Balduk behind, but they had yet to outrun the enemy’s torpedo barrage.

  Picard addressed Idun. “Can we go any faster?”

  She glanced at him. “We suffered a great deal of damage, sir. I’m pushing it as it is.”

  “Push it a little harder,” he told her.

  [235] “Aye, sir,” said the helm officer, and took them up to warp eight.

  The captain could feel an unsettling shudder in the deckplates. Still, it was preferable to the jerk of photon-torpedo impacts.

  And a moment later, the Balduk’s barrage began to diminish as it fell behind them.

  Picard heaved a sigh as his first officer moved up to join him. “Well played,” said Ben Zoma.

  The captain nodded. They had suffered injuries, but none of them fatal. And they had accomplished their objective—they had gotten Gerda Idun home.

  Watching the photon flight vanish into the distance, he said, “Mr. Paxton, send a message to the commander of the Independent. Congratulate him on his ... victory.”

  “Aye, sir,” said the com officer.

  Ben Zoma smiled. “Nice touch.”

  Picard shrugged. “I would hate to be accused of poor sportsmanship, Number One.”

  “Captain,” said Paxton, “I’m receiving a message from Lieutenant Vigo.”

  Picard turned to him. Vigo? “What does he say?”

  “He says he needs help, si.”

  The captain didn’t understand. What kind of help could someone need on Wayland Prime?

  Then Paxton relayed the rest of Vigo’s message.

  Picard frowned. Given the atmospheric conditions on the installation world, the weapons officer must have been trying for a long time to transmit his call for help.

  He turned to Idun. “Wayland Prime, Lieutenant. Best speed.”

  [236] “Aye, sir,” came the helm officer’s response as she punched in the coordinates.

  Finally, Picard said, “Transporter Room One, this is the captain. Can someone tell me what happened down there?”

  It was Joseph who answered. “We had some unforeseen trouble, sir. Gerda Idun wasn’t what she seemed.”

  And he went on to tell Picard what had transpired, including Simenon’s role in the a
ffair and Gerda’s most timely act of heroism.

  “At least,” the security chief added, “that’s the way Ensign Nikolas described it.”

  The captain was so taken aback by Gerda Idun’s treachery, he didn’t even ask what Nikolas was doing there. Obviously, he had misjudged their visitor—misjudged her badly.

  It made him value the Asmunds of his universe that much more.

  Chapter Twenty

  GREYHORSE LOOKED DOWN at Gerda, her hands and face swaddled in bioplast bandages, the sedative he had administered lulling her to sleep on a biobed.

  She seemed so peaceful, he mused. So serene. So different from her waking self.

  More like Gerda Idun.

  But—despite what thoughts the doctor might have entertained earlier—he had concluded that he didn’t want a softer, more human Gerda. He wanted the Gerda he had, boiling to the brim with warrior aggression.

  And had she been killed on the bridge instead of merely burned, Greyhorse couldn’t imagine how he would have gone on living. He loved her that much.

  Reluctantly leaving her side, he moved on to his next patient. Nikolas seemed to be experiencing some [238] discomfort, despite the painkiller the doctor had administered.

  “You shouldn’t be in pain,” Greyhorse told him.

  The ensign turned to him, his eyes pleading silently. “I would have gone with her,” he said.

  The medical officer tilted his head. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I would have gone with her, Doc. With everything, I still would have gone.”

  Greyhorse was about to ask whom Nikolas was talking about. Then he realized he knew.

  He wished he could have given the ensign some word of consolation, but he wasn’t very good at such things. All he could give was his sympathy—because if anyone in the universe knew what Nikolas was feeling, it was Greyhorse.

  “Hey,” said a rasping voice, “how about a little service down here? What kind of sickbay is this?”

  The doctor looked past Nikolas and a few of his other patients, and cast a disapproving eye on Simenon.

  “Wait your turn,” he said.

  Then he left the heartsick Nikolas to take a look at Lieutenant Refsland.

  The man known as Scott stood in front of the transporter room’s control console, feeling the burden of every year he had survived and every wound he had ever sustained, and helped guide the matter stream into the mechanism’s pattern buffer.

  After a moment or two, he saw a blinding white column of light. But then, that was how it was with even [239] the most mundane transport, from one room to the next. And this was a lot more than that.

  This was a cross-universe event, a breaking down of the barriers between reality and reality. It was the type of thing that wasn’t supposed to be even vaguely possible, but somehow was.

  Scott squinted to see through the brilliance of the effect, but he couldn’t. It was too soon to make out the collection of reconstituted molecules inside it, too soon to identify what was slowly but surely materializing.

  Come on, he thought. Ye can do it, lass.

  Finally the column of luminescence started to narrow, to diminish in intensity. And as it did, its contents began to reveal themselves.

  Scott could feel his heart pounding. But then, this was a big moment—the sliver of time in which they found out if their struggle had a future or not.

  Taking a deep breath, he watched the last of the light fade from the platform. He saw Gerda Idun take shape. And he saw what she had brought back with her.

  Scott’s jaw clenched. Nothing, he thought, eyeing Gerda Idun’s empty-handed posture on the transporter platform. She had brought back nothing.

  And she was looking wobbly. Weak-kneed, as if she would topple under the weight of her exhaustion.

  Biting back his disappointment, Scott came around the console and rushed up onto the platform. Wrapping Gerda Idun in his aged-thinned arms, he made sure she wouldn’t fall.

  In the process, the engineer caught a glimpse of her face. She was averting her eyes so he couldn’t look [240] directly into them, but he didn’t have to. Even obliquely, he could see the pain in them, the devastation.

  Only then did he understand—it wasn’t exhaustion that was making her look so unsteady. It was the knowledge that she had failed in her mission. It was the death of hope.

  “I’ve lost him,” Gerda Idun muttered, as if she still couldn’t believe it.

  “It’s all right, lass,” Scott told her, knowing even as he said it how hollow it sounded.

  It wasn’t all right. She knew that as well as anyone.

  “Scott?” came a voice over the intercom.

  It was fuzzy with static, a result of the last pounding they had taken at the hands of the Alliance. Still, the engineer recognized it as the captain’s.

  Scott looked up and said, “I’ve got her, Gilaad.” He hated the words that had to follow. “She’s alone.”

  The intercom was silent except for a low buzz. Then Ben Zoma said, in a voice that remarkably betrayed none of his despair, “That’s too bad.”

  Scott helped Gerda Idun sit down on the edge of the transporter platform. “We can try it again,” he suggested to Ben Zoma.

  “No,” came the reply. “We can’t. They’ll be ready for us. They’ll know what we’re up to.”

  The engineer sighed. Ben Zoma was right, of course. They’d had one chance, and they’d blown it.

  “Ben Zoma out,” said the captain with heartbreaking finality, and soon after the buzzing stopped.

  Gerda Idun took a tremulous breath and buried her face in her hands. “I’ve lost him,” she repeated.

  For the briefest moment, Scott had the eerie feeling [241] that she wasn’t speaking of Simenon at all—that she was referring to someone else entirely. Nikolas, maybe? But Nikolas had been dead for months already. Surely, Gerda Idun couldn’t have been thinking of him.

  No, Scott assured himself. She was talking about the loss of Simenon. She had to be.

  Sitting down beside Gerda Idun, he kept her company in her time of need. He didn’t say anything else. He just sat there with her on the edge of the platform.

  After what she had been through, it was the least he could do.

  As the Stargazer made her way around the star called Wayland at full impulse, Picard surveyed the work being done on his bridge.

  The equipment damaged in the ship’s encounters with the Balduk was undergoing rapid repairs, thanks to a half-dozen of Simenon’s best engineers. It seemed they were all over the place, lying on their backs under half-reconstructed consoles or propping up new plasma conduits.

  Unfortunately, it would be some time before the rest of the Stargazer could be restored to full working order.

  The captain hoped that wouldn’t be a problem when they arrived at their destination, which would be in just a few minutes. Vigo had made the situation sound fairly desperate.

  “Captain,” said Paxton from his comm console, “sensors are picking up a vessel in orbit around Wayland Prime.”

  The one Vigo warned them about, no doubt. “On screen,” said Picard.

  [242] A moment later, he saw what they were up against. It was a Pandrilite vessel, made more for cargo transport than armed conflict. However, appearances could be deceiving.

  “Hail them,” he told Paxton.

  The com officer bent to his task. A minute later, he looked up and said, “No response, sir.”

  “Engineers, clear the deck,” said the captain.

  Simenon’s people didn’t have to be told twice. They stopped what they were doing and piled into the turbolift.

  Picard glanced at Paris, who was still filling in for Vigo. “Are we in weapons range?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  “Captain,” said Paxton, “the Pandrilite is coming out to meet us.”

  Picard could see the cargo ship looming larger on his screen by the moment.

  He was glad that Kastiigan wasn’t on the bridge. But th
en, he had made it clear that he wanted the science officer to stay in his section while they approached Wayland Prime.

  “Weapons range,” Paris reported.

  Picard nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Paris. Target their weapons ports and—”

  Before he could get the rest of the order out, his viewscreen filled with a blinding flash of crimson light and the bridge rocked with the impact. Obviously, the Pandrilite meant to fight.

  After the beating the Stargazer had taken at the hands of the Balduk, she wasn’t exactly battle-ready. But [243] Picard would be damned if he was going to run from this fight.

  “Fire phasers!” he barked.

  Twin energy bolts shot out from the Stargazer’s phaser batteries and speared their adversary. From where the captain sat, they looked like direct hits.

  “Again!” he snapped.

  Paris activated the beams a second time and skewered the Pandrilite in the same place.

  “We’ve disabled their phaser banks,” Paxton reported.

  Picard took some satisfaction in that. “Try hailing them again, Lieutenant.”

  This time, the com officer had a bit more success, if the Pandrilite visage that showed up on the screen was any indication. The fellow’s jaw muscles fluttered with barely suppressed fury.

  “What in the name of the Virtues do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Stargazer,” Picard said. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  “How dare you!” the Pandrilite railed. “We’re here to pick up one of our people—a fellow named Ejanix. There’s been a tragedy in his family and—”

  “Sir,” Paxton interjected, “they’re preparing to go to warp!”

  Here? thought Picard. So deep inside a star system? Did they know how big a chance they were taking?

  Obviously, they were desperate to get away. But even if they were willing to risk destroying themselves, the captain wasn’t about to give them the opportunity.

  “Target their nacelles,” he told Paris, “and fire!”

  [244] On the smaller monitor embedded in his armrest, Picard watched their phaser beams trace fiery paths across the void—and again hit what they aimed for. Both the Pandrilite ship’s nacelles erupted with white-hot fury and went dead.