The Art of the Impossible

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “What isn’t good?”

  Troi turned to see that Vaughn had come back inside the force field.

  Before Troi had a chance to answer the question, Vaughn added, “Just so you know, I’ve cleared the area of all onlookers. There’s one Klingon guard outside the force field, but otherwise, it’s just you and me for dozens of meters around.”

  Smiling at his friend, Troi said, “The joys of a sparsely populated colony that has transporter technology. No need for crowding. In any case, I’ve discovered two things.”

  “Which is the one that isn’t good?”

  “Both, unfortunately. One is that the rest of this is going to come crashing down in the next half-hour or so. We’ll want to bring the force field in a little, use it to minimize the damage to the surrounding area.”

  “Good idea. What’s the other thing?”

  Pointing at the shattered framework, Troi said, “This wasn’t because of shoddy construction. That beam was weakened by an explosion.”

  “What? How the hell did we miss that?”

  “It was a very small bomb with a very low yield and a detonator that works well at this size. That’s all they needed, as long as they put it in the right spot. This beam, as it happened, was.”

  “What kind of explosive?”

  “Standard triceron. That’s not the kicker, though. You ever hear of molecular-decay detonators?”

  “I’ve heard of them.” Vaughn shrugged. “I know that they’re virtually undetectable and that Romulans are the only ones who’ve been able to get them to work reliably.”

  Smiling grimly, Troi said, “Only half right. Yes, Romulans are the only ones who use them, but they’re not as undetectable as they used to be. A few months ago on the Carthage, we figured out how to detect them in the Barradas system.” He held up his tricorder display so Vaughn could see it. “I’m picking up residue of one now.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. The Romulans have pretty much kept to themselves since Tomed. Why would they get involved in this mess?”

  Troi shrugged. “I don’t know, Elias, but this is definitely a Romulan operation.”

  “Or someone trying to set up the Romulans.”

  “I doubt it.” Troi barked a laugh. “I mean, if someone else figured out how to rig an MD detonator, I doubt they’d use it for something like this. They’d go around selling it to the highest bidder—or at least using it for an explosion with a bit more oomph than this.”

  Vaughn let out a breath through his teeth. “Probably, but I have to consider all the possibilities. You’re right, though, Romulan sabotage is the obvious answer. Which leads me to wonder what they want with Raknal V.”

  Troi shrugged. “Maybe they just want to—” Before he could continue, his tricorder beeped an alarm. “Elias, someone’s penetrated the force field.”

  “What?”

  Expanding his tricorder range outward, he asked, “You said you posted a Klingon guard?”

  “Qaolin’s people did, why?”

  “The only life signs I’m picking up are you and me—and our intruder, but it’s masked with some kind of screening field.”

  Vaughn started to look around, seeming to take in the entire three hundred and sixty degrees around him at once. Then he sprang into action rather suddenly, leaping to push Troi to the ground. “Get down!”

  Even as he did so, Vaughn unholstered his phaser and fired it.

  Green beams of coherent light sizzled over Troi’s head, which meant the weapon they came from could well have been a Romulan disruptor. Or, as Elias pointed out, Troi thought, someone trying to set the Romulans up.

  Somehow, despite the weight of Elias Vaughn on top of him, Troi managed to get a look at his tricorder. It was still picking up the life reading, and also the masking field. Whoever was firing at them didn’t want to be identified by species. Troi had no idea what that meant in the grand scheme of things, but that was Elias’s problem.

  Troi’s problem was getting out of this alive.

  Vaughn had gotten into a crouching position, covering Troi’s prone form, and fired again. Right after he did so, the life sign reading fluctuated. For a moment, it registered as Vulcanoid. My God, it really could be a Romulan.

  “We’ve got to get out from the open,” Vaughn said. “We’re sitting ducks out he—”

  Then a green beam struck Vaughn, and he went down—albeit with no obvious physical trauma. Since when do Romulan disruptors have a stun setting?

  That question was the last thing Troi thought before a green beam struck him in the shoulder. As blackness started to claim him, he heard a rumbling sound. The building’s about to collapse! He tried to make his arms and legs move, but they refused to respond to his brain’s commands. The ground started to shake under him even as consciousness slipped away, and he felt something heavy smash into his chest…

  Intellectually, Elias Vaughn knew he had opened his eyes. However, he had no empirical evidence to back this knowledge up, as there was no qualitative difference between what he saw after he opened his eyes and the pitch blackness of unconsciousness.

  Immediately, he assessed the situation. His head was pounding, and there was a coppery taste in his mouth that he knew was blood. Although he was aware of the presence of his body below his sternum, he couldn’t really feel that part of him as such. There was also a very heavy weight that was keeping him in place—probably one of the metal frames of the building. That weight pinned both his arms, and attempts to wiggle free proved futile. He wasn’t moving.

  He also couldn’t get at his combadge to call for help. If his combadge was even still on his uniform, which he couldn’t tell from the darkness.

  Vaughn also had the vague queasiness that often accompanied awakening from a phaser set on stun. The weapon that fired on him and Ian Troi looked and sounded like a Romulan disruptor, which didn’t traditionally have a stun setting, but Vaughn himself knew how to reprogram its lower settings so that it could mimic a stun blast, so it stood to reason that their assailant might know how, also.

  All in all, he thought, I’ve been in worse spots. That thought was a rather telling commentary on the kind of life he lived, Vaughn realized.

  “Oooooh.”

  The noise sounded like Troi’s voice. “Ian?” Vaughn’s voice was a barely legible croak; he cleared his throat, and repeated himself.

  “E—Elias?” The voice sounded weak.

  “I’m here, Ian. Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “Wha—wha’ happen’?”

  “Best guess is that our assailant rendered us unconscious, then left us in the building for when it collapsed.”

  “M—makes sense.”

  Vaughn frowned. “Why?”

  “Well, feels like there’s a big piece o’ plasti-form ’n my chest.”

  Oh, hell. Instinctively, Vaughn once again struggled against the beam that held him in place, but he had neither the strength nor the leverage to budge it. He was trapped. And given the numbness in my lower body, I doubt I’m in any shape to move even if I could get this thing off me. Dammit.

  “Can you reach your combadge?”

  “’S not there.” Troi’s voice was weakening. “Musta fallen off.”

  Or more likely was removed. “Stay with me, Ian.” He couldn’t afford to let Troi go into shock. “Talk to me.”

  “Why’d ’e do ’t?”

  Vaughn blinked. At least he assumed he did. It was still pitch black, after all. “Why did who do what?”

  “Th’ Romulan. Stunned us. Coulda jus’ killed us.”

  “Assuming it was a Romulan, then—”

  “Was.”

  That confused Vaughn. “Was what?”

  “Was Romulan. Or Vulcanoid, anyhow. Gotta readin’ after y’ shot ’im.”

  A pity that Ian’s tricorder probably went the way of his combadge. “In any case, the lighter setting means less physical evidence on the bodies of being shot. All there’d be is nerve damage. If the saboteur shot to kill,
either there’d be evidence of the disruptor blast on our bodies, or we’d just disintegrate, in which case our missing bodies would raise a red flag. Much easier to leave our bodies in the collapsing building, where cause of death would be blindingly obvious, and likely no one would investigate further. It’s just his bad luck that we both survived.”

  “Jus’—one—of—”

  “We’re both going to make it,” Vaughn said sternly. “The Carthage will send someone to look for us.” He couldn’t imagine Vance Haden letting his second officer and a mission specialist stay missing for any length of time.

  “Not—if—combadges—gone.”

  Troi had a point. “They’re still going to look for us. And once they find that we’re not with our combadges, they’ll search. We’re virtually the only humans on this planet, it won’t be too hard to pick us up.”

  “Mebbe.” Troi made some kind of noise. “Hell’va s’prise.”

  “Surprise?” Vaughn asked after a moment, when no explanation was forthcoming. Besides, silence could be deadly.

  “Tol’ D’anna I’d have—s’prise f’ her. Not—what I—had ’n mind.”

  Normally, Elias Vaughn did not believe in giving people false hopes, but he was damned if he was going to sit here and listen to Troi bury himself. “You’re not going to die, Ian. They’ll be by soon to rescue us.” A pause, which Vaughn refused to let go on for any length. “What was the surprise going to be?”

  “Dunno. Hadn’—decided yet. Was part’a th’ fun.” Troi’s breathing was getting more labored. “Th’s really hurts.”

  Trying like hell to sound encouraging, Vaughn said, “We’ll be rescued soon, Ian.”

  “Sorry I—c’dn’t see you one las’ time—imzadi.”

  He knew that last word was a Betazoid term of endearment of some sort. Lwaxana was an especially powerful telepath, even by the high standards of her species, and Vaughn wondered if Troi thought his wife could hear him.

  Futilely, Vaughn tried once again to move the beam, but his strength had diminished—probably because of blood loss, based on the increasing coppery taste in his mouth—and his leverage certainly hadn’t improved.

  Dammit, Haden, find us already! I can’t just sit here and listen to him die!

  But it seemed that was exactly what was going to happen.

  “Elias?” Troi’s voice was barely a whisper.

  “I’m here, Ian.”

  “Thanks.”

  Vaughn couldn’t imagine for what this man had to be grateful to him. “For what?”

  “Didn’—wan’—die—’lone. Gladjer—here.”

  “You’re not going to die, Ian. We’re going to make it out of here, they’ll patch us up on the Carthage, and we’re both going to go back to Betazed to visit Lwaxana and Deanna, and you’re going to give Deanna her surprise.”

  Silence.

  “Ian?”

  Nothing.

  “Dammit, Ian, talk to me!”

  Elias Vaughn still remembered, with crystal clarity, the day a decade and a half ago when charged particles tore a hole in the shuttlecraft Hoplite. Vaughn had fully expected to die when the explosive decompression blew him toward the vacuum of space, and the only reason he hadn’t was because of the fast thinking of Ian Troi.

  Now he sat helplessly, kept by a piece of metal from returning the favor.

  Snarling, he tried once again to shift the beam, pushing his entire body upward in an attempt to free himself.

  Blue and red spots danced before his eyes, shockingly visible in the total darkness, but still he struggled. Ian’s going to die unless I can get this thing off me.

  Chapter 25

  U.S.S. Carthage

  The next thing Vaughn knew, he awoke in the Carthage sickbay.

  “About time you woke up. You’ve been out for the better part of a day.”

  He looked around, blinking his eyes repeatedly. The red and blue spots were still there, but started to fade after a few moments. The last thing he remembered was trying to shift the beam. Now Commander Li was sitting next to his biobed. Vaughn could hear sounds around him—no doubt the usual business of sickbay.

  An attempt to speak was a complete failure, even after he cleared his throat.

  However, Li answered his unspoken question. “Commander Troi didn’t make it. He was DOA. Somebody made off with his tricorder, and both your phasers, transponders, and combadges. Your legs were crushed—doc says it’s going to take months before they’re back to normal, but they can be healed.”

  Many thoughts went through Vaughn’s head. One was that the Romulan connection needed to be investigated. One was that somebody needed to find Curzon Dax and beat him until he admitted that his solution to the Raknal V problem was a total disaster, just as Vaughn had predicted. One was that “months” was a long time for him to be out of commission.

  But the thought that remained at the forefront was how a seven-year-old girl was going to react to the news that her father was never coming home.

  Chapter 26

  Raknal V

  The specially designed transporter beam deposited Corbin Entek in the apartment that he had rented on Raknal V’s northern continent.

  The stealth transporter was a handy tool of the Obsidian Order. It masked its signal by hiding amid the authorized transporter patterns that flew back and forth from the surface to orbit and from orbit back to the planet. In this case, Entek had beamed here from the wreckage of the sabotaged building by hiding amid the transporter traffic going from the surface to the Carthage, “bouncing” the signal off the Starfleet ship and coming back to the planet behind a beam from the Cardassian Orbital Center to the spaceport on the northern continent.

  The technology was years ahead of anything Central Command had, of course. It was the benefit of seeking out, hiring, and paying top money for the best, as opposed to getting one’s equipment on the open market.

  As soon as he materialized, Entek checked the time. It was still two hours before he was to make his report. He decided to get a meal. The apartment was conveniently located near an especially good restaurant, which Entek had discovered upon his arrival two weeks earlier. They served an especially fine sem’hal stew made from some local vegetables, marinated in kanar, and the thought of having some now cheered Entek a great deal.

  Especially after what he’d just observed.

  Though he was not able to get near the wreckage of the collapsed building—as a Cardassian in the Klingon section of the planet, that would be quite impossible without surgical alterations that Entek did not have the means to have performed—he was able to release a small roving imager. It told quite the story.

  Romulans. Between the two Starfleet lieutenant commanders’ conclusions regarding the molecular decay detonator and the type of weapon used by the person who subsequently attacked those two men and tried to bury them alive, it was patently obvious that the Romulans were trying to stir things up between the Klingons and Cardassians even more. It would seem that Praetor Dralath truly wishes a war.

  As he entered the restaurant, Entek wondered if Tain suspected this all along. It would explain why I was sent.

  A monitor screen showed a Cardassian speaking. Entek recognized the man as Prefect Monor’s aide-de-camp Ekron. “The tragedy on the Klingon continent is just another example of the shoddy work we have come to expect from Klingons, who believe that their alleged prowess at hand-to-hand combat somehow entitles them to domination of the galaxy. In truth, they cannot even keep a building from falling down. It is more proof that Cardassia deserves—”

  “What rot,” said Entek’s server, who chose that moment to come by. “I take it you’ll have your usual?”

  “Sem’hal stew, yes. And some water. What do you mean, rot?”

  “Hey, look, I’m the last person to say something nice about the Foreheads, but I mean, come on—they know how to put a building up. That was sabotage, plain and simple. And you know Monor was behind it. And did you hear? One of those Starflee
ters died, too.”

  Only one? Entek had assumed that both Elias Vaughn and Ian Troi died when the building collapsed on them. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

  “Yeah, two people from their ship were investigating the mess, and the building fell on them. One of them died, but they got the other one back up to orbit and saved him. Now you know that was Monor. I mean, come on—the Klingons aren’t going to go around dropping buildings on their allies like that, but Monor? He’d do it in a minute.”

  The server went off to place Entek’s order. The Obsidian Order agent brooded, even as he mentally prepared the report he would make to Gul Monor’s office of the sedition he had just heard. The server would not be working here for long.

  This isn’t good. If even the Cardassian people are believing the worst of the government, then the Romulans’ work is being done for them. A Federation death won’t help matters. Cardassia needs to get out of this conflict. Perhaps we can use the Romulans’ hatred of Klingons to give Dralath the very war he seems desperate to fight and also restore some of Cardassia’s lost lustre.

  As he waited for his stew, Entek finished his mental composition of the sedition report, and began to compose his report to his supervisor—and to Enabran Tain.

  Chapter 27

  Deep Space Station K-7

  Lorgh wasn’t sure why simply walking the hallways of this ancient space station made him tense. Perhaps it was the odd looks that the station’s denizens—mostly humans—gave him. Perhaps it was simply the reputation that this place had in Klingon history. After all, it was here that the infamous tribble infestation got its start, a plague that had menaced several Klingon worlds until the foul species was finally eradicated like the vermin they were.

  Still, this was the ideal meeting place—close to the Federation–Klingon border, administered by civilians rather than Starfleet, and sparsely populated these days—for his meeting with the human Vaughn.