Stargazer Oblivion

by Michael Jan Friedman

  And not just once, but twice.

  Dropping out of the hatch at the end of the access tube, Enabran Tain joined Karrid and Beylen.

  Fortunately, there was no one else around to witness their exit, just as there had been no one around to witness their entrance. However, the glinn told himself, that was the only sense in which they had been fortunate.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he snarled.

  As they made their way toward the nearest airlock, which joined the Chezzulid vessel with an unoccupied Droonan scout ship, Tain went over what had happened in his mind.

  Despite everything, the human had betrayed him. It was clear now that he had never intended to allow Tain to get his hands on the female. He had planned this outcome from the beginning.

  Could the Cardassian have foreseen such a betrayal? Could he have prevented it? Of course. And without question, he should have.

  But he had been too eager to get his hands on Picard’s companion and then on Demmix, and he had allowed that eagerness to blind him. And now he had nothing to show for his efforts but a cut above his eye and a frost-damaged hide.

  Had he and his men not evacuated the tube so quickly, it might have gone even worse for them. At least they had escaped with their lives.

  As always, Tain kept his curses to himself. However, his face burned with shame for the way he had been outmaneuvered.

  He wasn’t used to it, especially at the hands of a mere alien. On one hand, he had to confess a certain admiration for Picard’s talent in the area of duplicity.

  On the other, he felt an insatiable thirst for revenge.

  Chapter Sixteen

  NIKOLAS TOOK A DEEP BREATH and let it out very, very slowly. “That’s when he told me he didn’t want me back until I was ready to concentrate on my work.”

  Obal frowned from his seat across the dining table. “That doesn’t sound good,” he said over the murmur of voices in the mess hall. “Lieutenant Simenon has the captain’s ear.”

  “Oh,” said Nikolas, “I have no doubt that Captain Picard will come looking for me the moment he comes back. And not just because of Lieutenant Simenon. Lieutenant Vigo is looking at me funny now. I figure he’s the next one to rake me over the coals.”

  Obal looked concerned. “Perhaps you should consider speaking with Doctor Greyhorse. I’m sure you’re not the first crewman who has had trouble falling asleep.”

  Nikolas shook his head. “Sleep isn’t the problem, Obal. Not really. What I’m in need of, Greyhorse can’t prescribe.”

  The Binderian fell silent, an expression of acute disappointment on his small, pink face.

  Inwardly, the ensign cursed himself. All Obal was trying to do was give his friend a little hope, and Nikolas was resisting it at every turn.

  But what he had said was true. Greyhorse couldn’t help him. As far as he could tell, no one could.

  “Listen,” he told Obal, “I know you want to give me a hand, and I appreciate it—I really do. But trust me when I tell you that you’re wasting your time. There’s no cure for what I’ve got. There’s no treatment.”

  “You can’t allow yourself to think that way,” the Binderian insisted. “You’ve got to be positive in your attitude.”

  Nikolas smiled bitterly. “I’m positive, all right. I’m positive that I’m a drag on you and everyone else on this ship.”

  “No,” said Obal. “That’s not you speaking. That’s someone else. If you want to pull yourself out of this, you can do it—I know you can.”

  The ensign was about to disagree when he realized there was someone standing behind him. And in the next heartbeat, the angle of Obal’s gaze confirmed it.

  What’s more, Nikolas had an idea who it was. But, tired and foggy as he was, he would be damned if he would let Hanta get the drop on him.

  “Hey, Ensign,” said the Bolian, finally making his presence known, “I want to—”

  Nikolas didn’t give him a chance to finish. Instead, he pushed himself out from the table as hard as he could, making Hanta cry out with pain and surprise.

  Then he got to his feet and drove his fist into the center of Hanta’s face, feeling something crack in the process.

  The Bolian didn’t try to return the favor. He wasn’t in any position to do that. All he could do was stagger for a moment and collapse.

  But he didn’t lose consciousness. Nikolas was glad of that. It gave him a chance to stand over Hanta and gloat.

  “What happened?” he asked. “I thought you were going to paint a bulkhead with my guts.”

  “You idiot,” the Bolian rasped, holding the sides of his broken, bloodied nose between his fingertips. “I didn’t come here to fight you. I came to apologize.”

  Nikolas stared at him. “What…?”

  “It was getting out of hand,” Hanta said. “I wanted to put an end to it.” His eyes sparked with animosity. “You’re an animal, you know that? You don’t belong on a starship.”

  Nikolas swallowed. The words cut, and cut deeply—mostly because he didn’t doubt that Hanta was right.

  He didn’t belong there anymore. And the sooner he accepted the fact, the better off everyone would be.

  Tain hated the idea of meandering through Oblivion without any real destination.

  Unfortunately, he had no choice in the matter. He had exhausted all the Zartani hotels and eating places he could find, and come away without any idea of Demmix’s whereabouts.

  Most frustrating.

  His only hope now of finding Picard and his companion was to patrol hull after hull, keeping an eye out for them—and in that regard, his eyes were just as valuable as anyone else’s.

  As the glinn made his way through the crowd in Six Corners Plaza, where the bomb had gone off just a day earlier, he noted how quickly the site was returning to normal. The debris had been cleared away, the place was full of people, and a few of the vendors were already back in business.

  He wished his own enterprise could have gone half as swiftly. He was beginning to loathe Oblivion.

  Just then, the Cardassian felt the vibration of his communications device. Taking it out, he said, “Tain here.”

  “Glinn, this is Jaiman.”

  Tain turned away from the flood of foot traffic. “What is it?”

  “We’ve tracked down the so-called Cataxxans.”

  The glinn’s heart was filled with a fiery jubilation. “Where are they?” he demanded.

  “At a hotel called the Emperor’s Eye. It’s on the same line as the Sillerac cruiser.”

  Tain knew the place. “Stay with them. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

  “As you wish,” said Jaiman.

  Tain felt a measure of satisfaction as he turned and headed back the other way through the crowd. He didn’t care who he had to push out of his way to get by, or how many curses they might hurl at him.

  They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the prospect of finding the Zartani and snatching him out of Picard’s hands.

  He had been relentless in his pursuit of Demmix, and now Demmix would finally be his—along with Demmix’s would-be savior. The human had deceived Tain, made him look foolish. But it was the Cardassian who would have the last laugh.

  Anger churning in his belly, Tain picked up the pace as he plowed through the last of the crowd. After all, he wanted to be there when Picard realized he had been undone—and by whom.

  The Emperor’s Eye was a massive, dome-shaped hotel fashioned from the remains of an opulent, old Denobulan pleasure cruiser.

  Picard didn’t see a single Zartani in the large, tastefully decorated lobby, with its soaring observation ports at either end, because the Emperor’s Eye didn’t cater to that clientele. Nonetheless, the captain had reason to believe that Demmix was staying there.

  Guinan looked around. “It wouldn’t be easy for Demmix to sleep in this place.”

  “True,” said Picard. “But he could do it if he wished. It would just mean waking up at night according to a preset ala
rm and changing his gas supplement.”

  “A little risky,” his companion noted. “Alarms have been known to fail.”

  “Demmix’s life is in jeopardy either way,” the captain pointed out. “The Emperor’s Eye would appear to be the lesser evil in that regard.”

  Guinan nodded. “I suppose.”

  As they spoke, they stayed as far from the manager’s desk as possible. After all, they were fugitives from both the authorities and the Cardassians now, and a conversation with the manager—while potentially illuminating—could too easily get them into trouble.

  “Besides,” Picard observed, “this is the last hull in this line. If Demmix was headed this way, as the question he posed to the footwear clerk seems to suggest, he could not have had any further destination.”

  “I think I’ve found the guest directory,” Guinan said. Taking his arm, she turned him in the right direction. “See it?”

  “I do,” the captain confirmed.

  It was a black plastiform workstation with rounded edges and a softly glowing orange screen, stuck away in a remote corner of the lobby. Picard and his companion made their way over there and punched in Demmix’s name.

  The screen advised them that there was no guest there by that name. The captain wasn’t surprised. If Demmix had taken a room there, it would have been under an alias—probably the same one he had used to book passage to Oblivion.

  He said as much.

  “So what do we do now?” Guinan asked. “Go room to room looking for a Zartani?”

  Picard looked around for inspiration—first at the manager’s desk, then at the lobby entrance, and finally at one of the big, majestic observation ports.

  And suddenly, he had a hunch—the sort that Dixon Hill might have come up with, woefully short of hard data but long on instinct. In Hill’s case, his hunches always seemed to work.

  The captain hoped he would be as lucky.

  “I don’t think Demmix is in a room,” he said. “I think he decided to pursue another option.”

  “What’s that? Sleeping in a hallway?”

  It wasn’t quite that absurd. “Follow me,” said Picard, and led the way back out of the hotel.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IT WASN’T A SIMPLE MATTER getting access to the Rythrian cargo hauler that Picard had spotted through the observation port of the Emperor’s Eye.

  He and Guinan had to make their way through a holographic communication center full of flesh-and-blood merchants and their life-sized, ghostly correspondents before they could catch even a glimpse of a likely hatch.

  “That should be it,” the captain said.

  Guinan squinted as she tried to make it out in the soft, projector-lit darkness. “Where? Near that Yridian in the long, purple robe?”

  “Actually,” Picard said, “he’s a hologram.”

  She frowned. “So he is.”

  “Look over to the right a little,” the captain advised.

  Guinan looked. After a moment, she said, “I see it. But those two bruisers look like they’re standing guard over it.”

  Indeed, there was a Nausicaan standing on either side of the hatch—and Picard had his share of trouble with Nausicaans in the past. But as he was trying to figure out what to do about them, they moved away—obligingly leaving his objective unguarded.

  “Lucky break,” said Guinan.

  “Let’s get going,” the captain said, “before they decide to come back.”

  And get going they did. Weaving their way through a maze of figures both solid and ethereal, they reached the hatch and saw it iris open for them.

  Their luck really was holding. Before either the Nausicaans or anyone else could take any particular interest in what Picard and his companion were doing, they entered the hatch and watched it iris closed again.

  The captain found himself in a narrow, worn-looking airlock. And unlike the others he had been in, this one was T-shaped. He had a choice of advancing to the hatch straight ahead of him or entering the one to his left.

  “What do you think?” Guinan asked.

  Picard recalled the observation port and what it had showed him of the cargo hauler. “I think we go straight ahead.”

  Like its twin behind them, the hatch irised open, revealing a dimly lit enclosure. Taking out his stolen disruptor, Picard held it in front of him as he led the way inside.

  The hold in which he found himself was about half the size of his ready room back on the Stargazer. It was cluttered with squat, dark supply containers, each one branded with a pale blue symbol to show they had been authorized for transport.

  However, Picard doubted there was anything in them. The cargo hauler was three decades old if it was a day, and the containers had probably been standing there since the hulk became part of the orbital city.

  Certainly, the dust on the floor around them seemed to indicate that. But that wasn’t all it indicated.

  There were footprints in it—not Picard’s or Guinan’s, but someone else’s. Someone who had been here before them. And at least some of the footprints led to a cluster of containers against the wall.

  The captain glanced at his companion, making sure he made eye contact. Then he glanced at the floor. Guinan followed his gaze, saw what there was to see there, then looked up and nodded ever so subtly.

  Clearly, there was someone hiding there. Or there had been. If that person was still present, he might be armed—and watching the intruders from his concealment.

  Waiting to see what they would do, perhaps. And if they did the wrong thing, it might be answered with a blaze of directed-energy fire.

  “Looks empty,” Picard said. He looked at his companion. “Let’s try the other hatch.”

  “I’m with you,” Guinan said, signaling that she understood what he was up to.

  They started back toward the entrance to the place. But before they quite reached it, the captain turned and fired into the suspect cluster of containers, unleashing a beam of pale blue destruction—while Guinan ducked behind the containers arranged near the hatch.

  Rolling to his right, the captain looked for return fire. But there wasn’t any.

  Still, he had a feeling there was someone there. Raising himself up on one knee, he extended his weapon and said, “I know you are there.”

  There was no answer.

  “Come out where I can see you,” said the captain, “or I will fire again, and this time I will take my time.”

  Still no response—at least, at first. Then a shadow separated itself from the other shadows in Picard’s sights.

  “Now,” he said.

  The shadow stood up. It was vaguely human-shaped, tall, slender. And as its face was revealed in a shaft of gray light, the captain caught a glimpse of black eyes, bronze skin, and white hair. That could mean only one thing.

  It was a Zartani. And not just any Zartani, he realized, but the one he and Guinan had been risking their freedom to find.

  “Demmix,” he said.

  The Zartani looked wary. “Who are you?”

  The captain smiled. “Not who I appear to be.”

  Demmix tilted his angular head to the side. “Picard?” he said wonderingly.

  “At your service.”

  Uttering an exclamation of pure joy, the Zartani came out of hiding and embraced him. “I was afraid you had been killed in that explosion in the plaza.”

  “No such luck,” Picard gibed.

  Demmix regarded Guinan. “And who’s this?”

  “A friend,” Picard assured him. “Without her help, I would never have found you.”

  The Zartani smiled. “Then I’m glad to see her as well.”

  The captain made an inclusive gesture. “How did you find this place?”

  “I did some research before I left,” said Demmix. “As you can see, it came in handy.”

  “I should tell you,” said Picard, “we are not the only ones searching for you. There is a pack of Cardassians on your trail as well.”

  “Not
to mention Steej,” Guinan added.

  Demmix looked at her, then at the captain. “And who, if I may ask, is Steej?”

  The captain tried not to sound too worried. “The director of security in this quadrant of Oblivion.”

  The Zartani’s brow creased. “Why is the director of security looking for me?”

  Picard sighed. “When the bomb went off in the plaza, I was accused of having set it. Security took me to a detention center, which I escaped with Guinan’s assistance. But I was never cleared of the crime. As far as Steej knows, I’m the bomber.”

  Demmix didn’t comment. He just frowned.

  “You look concerned,” Picard noted.

  Demmix snorted. “The man who was supposed to get me off Oblivion is a hunted fugitive. Wouldn’t you call that cause for concern?”

  “Trust me,” said the captain. “Now that we are together, we will find a way to reach the Stargazer.”

  “A way to—?” his friend echoed. He looked stricken. “Don’t you have your communicator?”

  Picard shook his head. “It was taken from me. Any idea if there’s a working com system in this vessel?”

  Demmix pointed to another hatch, half-hidden by some containers. “Through there.”

  “Let’s take a look,” said the captain.

  What they found, at the end of a long corridor, was an open doorway that led to the vessel’s control room. It was a bit like the Stargazer’s bridge, but a lot smaller.

  Fortunately, the rest of the ship wasn’t as dusty as the cargo hold. Apparently, the ventilation system was better in some places than in others.

  As Picard had hoped, the communications panel looked none the worse for age.

  Demmix ran his fingers over its controls. “If we can get this thing going,” he said, “we should transmit the information I’ve gathered on the Ubarrak. That way, if we don’t make it to the Stargazer, the Federation will still be able to make use of what I’ve learned.”

  The captain smiled at him. “Done. But don’t worry. We will make it back.”