With that thought in mind, the admiral walked out of the climate-controlled theater into the grasp of the city’s cool, moist air. The lights of San Francisco were dazzling, drowning out the stars.
Nonetheless, it was the panoply of stars that drew his gaze. After all, that was where his opportunity lay.
If I play my cards right, McAteer told himself, this bit of interstellar strife can turn out to be a godsend. It can propel me to the top, even sooner than I had planned.
But that would only happen if he was alert—if he recognized, secured, and made use of every possible advantage. So for the last few months, he had kept his ear to the ground.
Finally, he had heard something—an overture from a Zartani with a wealth of Ubarrak tactical data. McAteer knew that he had to have what the Zartani was offering. It was just what he needed to give the Federation a leg up on her adversaries.
But there was an irony involved—one that would undoubtedly have impressed the hell out of Shakespeare—because the Zartani wasn’t willing to trust just anybody. He wanted to work with one officer and one officer only.
And who, of all people, was that officer? Who held the key that would unlock the Zartani’s treasure chest? The admiral grimaced as if he had just eaten a piece of rotten meat.
Who else…but Jean-Luc Picard?
Now, there’s was a dramatic turn, McAteer told himself. There’s was a twist of fate worth waxing eloquent about. His advancement depended not on Denton Greenbriar or some other paragon of Starfleet captaincy, but on the very officer the admiral had been trying to get rid of.
But unlike Macbeth, McAteer intended to have the last laugh. When the dust cleared and the play was over, it would be Picard’s head on the pole, and the admiral marching around with it like a kid with a new toy.
“That’s right,” he said out loud, savoring the image. “Like a kid with the best toy of all.”
And for the first time that night, Arlen McAteer smiled.
The Cardassian the others respectfully called “glinn” drew in a deep, calming breath. I will not show my anger, he promised himself. Not to mere underlings.
They stood in front of him in their rented suite of rooms, a dozen of his fellow Cardassians with their eyes wide in their ridged, scaly orbits, waiting to see their leader’s reaction to the news. But the glinn wouldn’t give them the pleasure of hearing him curse.
He hadn’t risen through the ranks by giving rein to his emotions. He had been careful to submerge his feelings and consider his actions with cold detachment, leading his superiors to believe that he was older than his years.
And he wasn’t about to diverge from that policy now by letting his anger fly unrestrained.
Instead, he turned back to his second-in-command and said, in a voice of tempered iron, “Repeat that, Merant. But this time, speak a bit more slowly.”
Merant, who was taller and broader than the glinn but not half as shrewd, did as he was told. “The Starfleet captain has escaped from the Second Quadrant Detention Center. Our informant in the security force says the escape was carried out with the assistance of a confederate.”
The glinn nodded. “A female, I believe you said. A human-looking female.”
“Yes, Glinn,” came Merant’s response.
The glinn wasn’t pleased. He wasn’t pleased at all.
After all, he had known about the human’s rendezvous for some time. The army of spies the Cardassians maintained on the Zartani homeworld had seen to that.
In fact, they had been keeping tabs on Demmix ever since his family was killed by the Ubarrak, in the hope that the combination of the Zartani’s wealth and his despair would spur him to do something interesting.
And eventually, it had.
It had spurred him to steal Ubarrak tactical data. And it had spurred him to give that information to the Federation, on the condition that he be granted asylum.
The Cardassians knew all that, and a lot more. They knew that Demmix was to meet his old acquaintance, Jean-Luc Picard, and that their meeting was to take place in the traders’ maze known as Oblivion.
They even knew what Picard looked like. The Cardassian government had had the foresight to maintain a rather extensive file on Starfleet’s commanding officers—including the likeness of every one whose image had ever appeared on the viewscreen of a Cardassian vessel.
The only thing they didn’t know was that Demmix would have his appearance altered. It was the glinn who finally came to that conclusion, after several Zartani had arrived in Oblivion in the weeks prior to the rendezvous and none of them had matched Demmix’s description.
Unfortunately, the glinn hadn’t had the luxury of waiting until the rendezvous took place and then seizing both Picard and Demmix. If he had tried that, the two of them might have given him the slip somehow, or invoked the aid of the city’s security force. And then the Cardassians would have come away empty-handed.
So he had taken a more proactive approach to the matter—by secreting a bomb in the plaza, and putting a simple plan into motion. When his operatives saw Picard and a Zartani approaching each other at the agreed-upon place and time, they were supposed to detonate the explosive.
If all went well, Picard would perish in the blast. The glinn’s operatives would seize Demmix—and his secrets—in the confusion that was sure to follow.
The glinn had even had a backup plan in place. It involved a hired Yridian “witness,” who would accuse the human of detonating the bomb in case he survived the blast.
It had all seemed so clean, so foolproof, right up to the point when the bomb went off. Then, somehow, everything had fallen apart.
The glinn had been reluctant to show his face in the vicinity of the blast, lest he be implicated in it and arrested. But then, that was what underlings were for.
Merant and three others had been deployed in the plaza. Their job was to keep track of any Zartani who showed up at the appointed time, and then grab him as soon as the bomb went off. Not a very difficult task.
And yet, Demmix had managed to slip through their fingers. Worse, the blast had failed to injure Picard. And though the glinn’s backup scheme had worked well enough, landing the human in the local detention center, it now seemed that Picard had found his way out again.
Thanks to an ally who had—no doubt—been on hand all along, ready to help him in case anything went wrong.
The glinn bit the inside of his mouth. I should have thought of that possibility, he told himself. It nettled him that he had been so handily outmaneuvered.
His eyes narrowed as he regarded Merant. “Tell me about this human-looking female.”
Merant blinked—an unmistakable sign of discomfort in a Cardassian. “She had dark skin. A gray dress. And she wore an unusual hat.”
The glinn could feel his anger boiling into his throat as a mental picture of the woman emerged. “And that’s all you know about her?”
Merant blinked again. “Yes, Glinn.”
“That’s wonderful,” said the glinn, allowing his voice to take on an edge that would cut duranium. “Just wonderful.”
There were a great many human-looking females in Oblivion, a number of them with dark skin. As for the hat and the dress…that could be changed easily enough.
Much like Demmix’s appearance.
Fortunately, thanks to his spies on the Zartani homeworld, he had other information at his disposal. He knew what Demmix was like, and what his habits were. And though his men hadn’t been able to grab the Zartani, they had gotten a glimpse of his surgically altered face in the plaza.
But with Picard on the loose, the Cardassians wouldn’t be the only ones looking for Demmix. Much to his disgust, the glinn had a competition on his hands.
He had come here to seize Demmix and find out what he knew. But at the very least now, he had to keep Demmix’s information out of Picard’s grasp.
Otherwise, the Federation would enjoy an immense advantage in this sector. No longer having to worry about the Ubar
rak, it would be able to redeploy more of its resources to the borders of the Cardassian Union.
And that would be bad—not only for Cardassia, but for the glinn himself. His superiors wouldn’t look kindly on him for permitting such a distasteful state of affairs.
Just as the glinn wasn’t looking kindly on his second-in-command at the moment.
“Merant,” he said, “I would like a word with you in private.” He took the others in at a glance. “The rest of you are dismissed. Report to your assigned locations.”
The glinn waited for them to leave. When the last one had filed out of the room, he turned to Merant again.
“I know,” said the glinn, “that the human’s escape from the detention facility was not your fault.”
Merant obviously hadn’t expected sympathy from his superior. It seemed to catch him off-guard.
“Nor is it your fault,” the glinn continued, “that he had an accomplice waiting for him here in Oblivion.”
Merant seemed to relax.
Which was just what the glinn had wanted him to do. It would make what he had to say next that much more memorable.
“However,” the glinn noted in the same reasonable voice, “it is very much your fault that Demmix is at large.”
Merant’s jaw seemed to become unhinged.
“So,” said the glinn, “if the humans find Demmix before we do, and spirit him out of Oblivion, you will be held accountable—first of all, by Central Command.”
Merant started blinking again.
“I don’t envy anyone who’s held accountable by Central Command,” the glinn told him. “Not in the least. On the other hand, a few of them have survived to lead useful lives, insofar as that is physically possible.”
Merant’s jaw muscles bunched.
“But it’s not just Command that will hold you accountable, you see—because I will hold you accountable as well.” The glinn fixed the other man on the spit of his gaze. “And what I will do to you will make Command’s response look like a joke.”
Merant swallowed.
“Is that clear?” asked the glinn, a dark but subtle promise of violence in his tone.
“Yes,” said Merant. “Very clear.”
The glinn smiled, though he was far from amused by the situation. “Good. I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us. You may go now.”
Merant inclined his head. Then he turned and left, no doubt eager to be out of his superior’s sight.
The glinn nodded, satisfied that he had gotten his message across. Merant would find the Zartani before Picard could, one way or another.
Or, thought the glinn, my name isn’t Enabran Tain.
Ensign Cole Paris stood in front of the door to his colleague’s quarters and waited for the sensor mechanism to announce his presence.
Like Paris, his colleague was an ensign, relatively new to the Stargazer and Starfleet in general. But that was where the similarity between them ended.
Paris was human, of medium height and medium build, with fair hair and what had been described to him as boyish features. He was also the latest entry in a long line of Parises, several of his closest relatives occupying a prominent place in the lore of the Fleet.
His colleague, on the other hand, had no height or build, no hair, and no real facial features—though she could project the illusion of features through the transparent faceplate in the special containment suit she wore.
She also wasn’t human, or even solid. She was a Nizhrak, a low-density being whose species had evolved in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant—which was why she had to squeeze her mass into the containment suit. Without it, it would have been impossible for her to move through the ship, much less interact with monitors, control panels, and her crewmates.
Unfortunately, the suit was difficult for Jiterica to control. However, she had been getting more expert at it over the course of the last few weeks.
Coincidentally, it was in those same few weeks that Paris and Jiterica had become friends.
It was something he would never have envisioned in a million years. After all, when he first beamed aboard, he hadn’t known what to make of the Nizhrak. She was so unusual, so different from anyone he had ever met.
Then Commander Wu had asked them to work together to rescue a research vessel called the Belladonna, which had gotten itself caught in a strange, deadly space anomaly.
In order to save both ship and crew, Jiterica had placed her life in Paris’s hands. And he had found the courage to come through for her, overcoming a deep-rooted emotional problem in the process.
For a while after that, their schedules had conspired to keep them from seeing each other. Then they had met unexpectedly in a corridor near Paris’s quarters, and Paris had promised to get together with her.
In fact, he called on her just as soon as his shift that day was over. But then, Starfleet’s Parises were known for keeping their promises.
That first time, Paris and Jiterica had just lounged in her quarters and talked. The next one, they took a walk together through some of the ship’s less-traveled corridors.
Each time, they got to know each other a little better. And Paris found that the more he knew about Jiterica, the more he wanted to know.
It hardly mattered to him anymore that they had risked their lives together. What mattered was how much they enjoyed each other’s company.
It was in that spirit that Paris was calling on Jiterica now. The other times, he had called ahead first. But this time, he wanted it to be a surprise.
After all, as his aunt Patricia had often told him, spontaneity was the secret of life. And he hadn’t known too many people smarter than his aunt Patricia.
But the longer Paris stood in front of Jiterica’s quarters, the more he began to see that spontaneity had its downside. After what had to be a full two minutes, his friend still hadn’t answered the door.
The ensign didn’t understand. He hadn’t asked the ship’s computer to determine Jiterica’s whereabouts more than five minutes ago, and the computer had said unequivocally that she was in her quarters.
Strange, he thought.
Maybe the sensor mechanism had stopped working. It didn’t happen very often, but it was a possibility. To circumvent the problem, Paris touched the pressure-sensitive plate located on the bulkhead, next to the doors.
Still no answer.
The ensign frowned. Maybe he had miscommunicated with the computer somehow. He decided to try it again.
“Computer,” he said, looking up at the intercom grid hidden in the ceiling, “where is Ensign Jiterica?”
The reply came in a pleasant, feminine voice. “Ensign Jiterica is in her quarters.”
Paris’s frown deepened. Something was wrong.
With all Jiterica’s physical differences and the suit she was forced to wear, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that she had gotten herself into trouble somehow—or that it was something she couldn’t deal with on her own.
If that were the case, and she was rescued by a bunch of security officers, it would be a source of great embarrassment to her. And the last thing Jiterica needed, now that she was finally beginning to fit in with the crew, was another embarrassment to live down.
Paris knew an override code from the rotation he had spent in security, shortly after he came on board. If Mister Joseph hadn’t changed the code, he might be able to get into Jiterica’s quarters without anyone knowing.
Of course, if he were wrong, it would be a violation of Jiterica’s privacy—and a serious one, at that. But he felt compelled to take the chance.
Quickly but carefully, Paris tapped the code into a strip below the pressure-sensitive plate. For a moment, he thought Joseph had changed the code after all, or maybe he had tapped it in incorrectly.
Then the door slid open, revealing the contents of Jiterica’s quarters. Without hesitation, Paris took a step inside and looked around. But he didn’t see Jiterica. What he saw was a strange, iridescent mist, filli
ng the room from wall to wall.
At first, Paris recoiled, thinking there was a plasma leak somewhere. But that didn’t make sense. There weren’t any conduits in this part of the ship.
Besides, the mist wasn’t hot. In fact, it felt like tiny pieces of ice as it brushed against his skin. Tiny pieces of ice that were speaking to him…
Not in words, but in a language he understood nonetheless. A language that went directly to his brain and spoke of unimaginable freedom, of easy trust and camaraderie, of a place so beautiful his senses couldn’t begin to embrace it…
Of home.
How was this possible? he asked himself. How could he be feeling such things?
Then, through the twinkling, shifting mist, Paris caught a glimpse of Jiterica. She was lying limply on the bed in the next room—unconscious, or maybe something worse. His heart pounding, he moved toward her, wondering what had happened and how he could help her.
But when he reached Jiterica, he saw that her suit was lying flat and open, and that the ghostly visage he was used to seeing through the faceplate of her helmet wasn’t there. That’s when it occurred to him that the suit was empty.
And that Jiterica was somewhere else.
Paris had already begun to ask himself where when he realized he already held the answer. As if in confirmation, the mist stabbed at his cheek with its icy, pinprick touch.
My god, he thought. It’s her.
The mist was Jiterica…and it was all around him, enveloping him, taking him into itself as if he were part of it. He had never felt anything even remotely like it.
Then he realized that it wasn’t just touching his skin. He was breathing it. He was taking it inside himself, blurring the boundaries where the mist ended and he began.
It felt wrong to Paris. Or rather, it felt right. Too right.
The thoughts he was sharing with her, the feelings, the intimacy…it was too much, too sudden. He wasn’t prepared for it. And though it was her privacy he was invading, it was Paris who felt naked and exposed.
Get out, he told himself. Now.
Stargazer Oblivion Page 6