Текст книги "Precipice"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

29

July 30, 2267

Haniff Jackson lunged for the ball as it bounced hard less than a foot behind the short line. He swung his racquet as he dived, but caught nothing but air.

The ball struck the floor a second time and ricocheted off the back wall. Jackson slammed to the deck with a pained grunt.

His opponent gave the racquet tied to her wrist a fast twirl and flashed a cocky grin in his direction. “Thirteen–six,” Desai said. “Are you sure you’ve played racquetball before?”

“Yes,” Jackson said. His entire body was drenched in sweat. Beads of perspiration fell from the tip of his nose as he pushed himself up from the floor.

Desai scooped up the ball from the floor and walked back toward the court’s service zone. As she passed Jackson, she asked in a sweetly mocking tone, “Do you need a time-out?”

“I’m fine,” he said. Flexing his arms to push through the pain of his abraded elbows, he added, “Serve when ready.” He rolled his head in a circle to release the tension in his neck, then settled into his stance for another rally.

The petite JAG officer faced the front wall and lifted her racquet. With her left hand she released the ball and let it bounce once. As it returned to its drop-height and seemed to hang for the tiniest fraction of a second, Desai swung in a blur and swatted it. The sharp pop of contact was still echoing off the walls as the ball returned on an almost straight-line trajectory—and hit Jackson in the face.

A red flash filled his vision. When it cleared, he was lying on his back, looking up at Desai. “Time-out,” he said.

“Are you all right?” she asked, wincing with embarrassment as she kneeled beside him. “I didn’t think I hit it that hard …”

“It’s fine,” Jackson said. “I was planning on getting my nose flattened, anyway.” Lolling his head toward Desai, he added, “Now that I have your undivided attention, have you given any more thought to that intel we got from ch’Nayla?”

She nodded. “I have. And I’m sorry to say I think he’s right. Most of it is completely inadmissible.”

Sitting up slowly, Jackson grimaced with discomfort and disappointment. “I guess that means we can’t even use it to issue warrants to look for evidence that isn’ttainted.”

“Afraid not,” she said. “You and ch’Nayla can use it as a guide to update the station’s security protocols, but as far as using it for evidence, it’s worthless.”

He pulled his hand across his upper lip and wiped away a trickle of blood running from his nose. “Great. Just great.” As he got back on his feet, he let Desai hold his arm and offer him a bit of support. “Thanks,” he said.

“Any time.” She waved her racquet at the front wall. “Ready? That last serve’s a mulligan.”

Jackson shook his head. “No, thanks. You cleaned my clock in the first game, and you’re two aces from handing me my hat in this one.” He pulled off his protective eyewear. “I can tell when I’m beat.”

Desai followed him as he walked off the court. “Don’t talk like that. I know you’re upset about the Malaccainvestigation, but that’s just how things go sometimes.”

“I’m not in the habit of accepting mass murder, arson, and terrorism as an example of ‘Just how things go,’ ” he said, pushing open the door of the court. He turned and passed other courts on his way to the men’s locker room. “Fifty-two people died in that attack. On my watch. And while we spend our time worrying about rules of evidence, they spend their time finding new ways to rob our ships and kill our people.”

It was hard for Desai to keep pace with Jackson, whose stride was much longer than hers, but she was doing her best. “Haniff, don’t you think I want to see Zett and his accomplices put away for life? The rules piss me off, too, but in the end they work in our favor by making our cases as strong as they can be.” She caught his arm before he entered the locker room and made him turn to face her. “I promise you, I won’t stop until I see him convicted in a fair and open trial.”

“How?” Jackson replied. “Nothing we get on this guy ever sticks. Short of him giving you a full, unsolicited confession, how do you plan on bringing him to trial?”

She folded her arms and looked away. “I don’t know.” Meeting his accusatory glare, she added, “But unlike some people, I won’t quit before the game’s over.”

The challenge implicit in her remark made him smile. “You really want to earn those last two points, eh?”

“No,” she said, jabbing him playfully with her racquet. “I want youto makeme earn them.”

He admired her spirit. “All right,” he said, waving her back toward the court. “Let’s go finish this.” She led the way, and he put his eyewear back on. “You know, if you took cheap shots like that at the bad guys, we might’ve put a few more of them in jail.” When she frowned at him, he added, “Just sayin’.”

She opened the door to the court and waved him inside. “And if your hands were as quick as your mouth, that ball might not have hit you in the face.”

“Touché.” He set himself into a ready stance on the right half of the court while Desai strolled confidently back to the service zone. He called out, “Before you serve … ?” She turned back, and he continued. “I just want to say I’m sorry for going all negative on you. This case just has me feeling like I’ve been hitting my head against a brick wall for months, know what I mean? To be so close and watch it slip away makes me crazy sometimes.” He shook his head. “All I’ve wanted to do for the past year was bring the people behind the bombing to justice. Is that really so much to ask?”

Desai offered him a bittersweet smile. “I wish I knew what to tell you. On some level I believe in karma. If Zett was the one who bombed the Malacca,or part of a conspiracy to make it happen, then I like to think he’ll get what’s coming to him, either in this life or the next.” Walking back toward Jackson, she continued, “There’s an old saying: ‘The arc of the universe bends toward justice.’ You need to have faith in that, Haniff.” She stopped in front of him. “Our duty is to serve the truth first, and we do that by obeying the law. Leave justice to the universe.”

Then she reached up, grabbed his shirt collar with one hand, and pulled him down into a long, torrid kiss. When she released him, he was short of breath, and he felt dizzy from the sudden rush of blood away from his brain. She gave him a playful shove. “Now get your head back in the game, Lieutenant.”

He blinked and tried to focus on something other than Desai’s derriere as she strutted back to the service zone.

She lifted her racquet, called out, “Thirteen serving six,” and dropped the ball. He saw it bounce once. He heard her racquet make contact.

A red streak caromed off the front wall. A shallow bounce several meters to his left made him lunge and flail to make a backhand return shot. His racquet sliced at empty air.

He landed on his face.

“Fourteen–six,” Desai said with a triumphant grin.

“I hate this game,” Jackson said.

July 31, 2267

A chirping comm woke Rana Desai from a deep sleep. She opened her eyes to near-total darkness inside her quarters and hoped she had merely dreamed the beeping tone that announced an incoming message. Listening to the soft background hum of the station’s ventilation system, she was almost ready to close her eyes and let herself drift back to sleep when the alert sounded again. It was a triple tone, which indicated a priority signal.

Desai stifled a groan and pushed aside her bed covers. She picked up her soft cotton bathrobe from the floor and wrapped it around her naked body as she got up. Tying shut her robe, she padded out of her bedroom to the main room of her quarters and slipped into the chair behind her desk.

She silenced the comm alert before it could shrill again, then activated her desktop monitor. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, a familiar face appeared on-screen.

It was T’Prynn. “Hello, Captain,”the Vulcan woman said. “I apologize if I woke you.”

Shock put an edge on Desai’s whispered reply. “T’Prynn? What are you … ? What’s this about?”

“It is urgent that I speak privately with you,”said T’Prynn, whose surroundings were nondescript but resembled a ship. “However, given my current status, a face-to-face discussion seemed imprudent.”

In no mood to be manipulated by the former intelligence officer, Desai said, “You’re facing charges ranging from tampering with Starfleet medical records to going AWOL. The only conversation I’m willing to have with you is the one in which you surrender yourself to Starfleet.”

“I think you should make an exception in this case,”T’Prynn said. “The reason I am contacting you is that I am offering to trade intelligence.”

“Then you’ve contacted the wrong person,” Desai said. “You should be talking to your successor, Commander ch’Nayla.” With mocking sweetness, she asked, “Should I transfer you?”

Unfazed by Desai’s challenges, T’Prynn said, “I have proof the Klingon military is conspiring with criminal elements associated with the Orion known as Ganz and his entourage aboard theOmari-Ekon. I would be willing to trade my evidence for certain pieces of information regarding Starfleet’s current activities aboard Vanguard.”

“Tempting,” Desai said. “Surrender yourself and we can talk about it in detail for as long as you’d like.”

“The Klingons appear to have solicited the services of a suspected master thief,”T’Prynn said. “This is unusual behavior for the Klingons, who as a rule take whatever they want by brute force. Their actions in this case suggest either they lack the strength to take what they want, or they wish to conceal the fact they are the ones who have taken it.”She arched one eyebrow. “What I wish to know is this: What might be of such great value and dire risk to the Klingons that they would resort to hiring criminals to acquire it on their behalf?”

Desai replied, “Those are all very interesting questions. I’m sure Admiral Nogura and Commander ch’Nayla will be willing to give them all due consideration when they interview you in the brig here on Vanguard.”

T’Prynn remained the picture of calm. “I understand your reticence to trust me or to share classified operational data. That’s why I am prepared to offer you a valuable item of intelligence up front, as a demonstration of my good faith.”

“Why can’t you understand this, T’Prynn? You’re a fugitive from Starfleet military justice. Until you turn yourself in, nothing you say will be compelling enough for me to treat you as anything other than a suspect. Are you listening to me? Until you surrender, it won’t matter what you tell me.”

“Diego Reyes is alive and in Klingon custody.”

Desai recoiled from the screen. “You’re lying.”

“I assure you, Captain, I am not.”

Shaking her head in furious denial, Desai said, “You have a long track record as a liar, T’Prynn. You tell people what they want to hear, you manipulate them, blackmail them—”

“I am guilty of those offenses,”T’Prynn said. “And one day soon I will stand and answer for them in a Starfleet court. But what I have told you is true: Diego Reyes is alive. I have proof of it, recorded less than forty-eight hours ago, and I can tell you on what vessel he is being held.”

“Tell me now,” Desai said, even as she felt the wound of her months-old grief being torn open by T’Prynn’s news.

“First I require information. The only location in the Taurus Reach where the Klingons would be reluctant to attempt a seizure by force is Vanguard. What is currently aboard the station for which they would be willing to engage the services of a professional thief?”

Desai’s inner skeptic told her not to trust T’Prynn. “No,” she said. “I won’t be tricked, not like this.” Her anger flared. “You know what Diego meant to me. I won’t let you use those feelings to make me give you what you want.”

“Captain—”

Before the Vulcan could say another word, Desai terminated the transmission. The monitor went dark with a soft click. She pressed a button on her desk and opened an audio channel to the operations center. “Desai to ops.”

Lieutenant Commander Yael Dohan, the station’s gamma-shift officer of the watch, replied, “Ops, this is Dohan. Go ahead, Captain.”

“Commander, I need a trace on the source of the priority message I just received in my quarters.”

“Yes, ma’am. Hang on a second.”Over the line, Desai heard people working and sharing reports in muffled conversations. A moment later Dohan was back on the line. She sounded confused. “Captain, I think you must be mistaken. The comm logs show no incoming messages to your quarters since yesterday at fourteen thirty-three hours.”

Desai thumped the side of her fist on her desktop and mumbled under her breath, “Damn you, T’Prynn.”

Dohan asked, “Do you want us to check the logs again, Captain?”

“No, Commander. That’ll be all. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, ma’am. Good night.”

The channel clicked closed, and Desai sat at her desk and fumed in the dark. Then she noticed Haniff standing in her bedroom doorway, the muscles of his nude body well defined by the light spilling from her desktop monitor.

He asked in a groggy voice, “Something wrong?”

“No,” Desai lied. “Go back to bed.”

He nodded, turned, scratched the back of his neck, and plodded back into the bedroom. Desai turned off her computer monitor, looked toward the bedroom, and sighed. If T’Prynn was lying, then she was even more cruel than Desai had ever thought. But if she was telling the truth …

Then this is certainly going to make things a bit more interesting,Desai brooded.

Pennington shook his head and fought to rein in his temper as T’Prynn shut down the comm terminal. “How could Desai be so stubborn? You practically gave her everything, and she still wouldn’t listen to you.”

“She has good reason to doubt my veracity,” T’Prynn said. “An assessment with which I expect you could sympathize.”

The Vulcan woman seemed completely untroubled by the harsh rebuff she’d just received from Captain Desai, and Pennington didn’t understand why. “Okay, so if the goal was to win her trust, why not just give her the coordinates for Kane’s rendezvous with the Klingons and let Starfleet sort it out?”

T’Prynn got up from her seat. “Because we do not yet know what the purpose of that meeting is.” She walked aft, and Pennington followed her down the dark and silent corridor.

“What difference does it make?” he asked.

She answered over her shoulder, “If Kane’s transaction with the Klingons turns out to be innocuous, exposing it will be of little or no expiatory value to me.” The door to the ship’s only shower room opened ahead of her, and she continued inside with Pennington close behind her. “Furthermore, tipping off Starfleet to that meeting before we establish its parties’ intentions would prematurely alert Ganz and his retainers to the breach in their internal communications by Starfleet Intelligence.”

He turned his back as T’Prynn began undressing. Though she had shown no sense of self-consciousness about disrobing in front of him during their months alone in space, he nonetheless felt discomfited each time it happened. He asked, “So what do we do now?”

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed T’Prynn setting her folded garments inside a cubby hole above the changing bench. “We will proceed to the rendezvous coordinates and establish a surveillance position.”

“More low-energy, run-silent-run-dark, then?”

“Correct. Radio silence and a minimal energy signature will be essential to avoiding detection while we await the arrival of Mister Kane and his Klingon clients.” Nude, she stepped into the shower and turned on the water. “Be patient. I suspect that whatever Kane is up to will be revealed soon enough.”

30

August 1, 2267

In the hubbub of Vanguard’s security center, a system-failure alert came and went so quickly on one of the junior officers’ boards that Haniff Jackson almost didn’t notice it. “Seklir,” he said to the young Vulcan man. “Report.”

Seklir keyed in commands, eyed the data on his monitor, and replied, “Power failure in tube four of the main turbolift hub. The cause appears to be an overloaded plasma conduit, which has caused a fire condition on Cargo Deck B.”

“On screen three, please,” Jackson said.

The image appeared in one frame of the master situation monitor. Flames leaped from cracks in a bulkhead, and smoke billowed from a slagged plasma conduit, filling the corridor.

Jackson asked, “Are fire-control teams responding?”

“Affirmative,” Seklir said. “The deck officer reports the fire is contained. Sections one-ninety through one-ninety-eight of Cargo Deck B have been evacuated and sealed off until fire teams arrive.”

The security chief nodded. Closing off sections threatened by fire was standard procedure. It limited the supply of oxygen to the blaze and curtailed its ability to spread.

Then he realized the fire was directly above the classified laboratory known to its resident scientists as the Vault. “Seklir, deploy additional security teams to Cargo Deck A, in sections one-ninety through one-ninety-eight.”

“Aye, sir,” Seklir said.

As the Vulcan ensign relayed Jackson’s order to the deck officer on the lowest occupied level of the station, the image from Cargo Deck B went dark on the master display screen.

“What just happened?” demanded Jackson.

Seklir worked at his terminal for a moment. “The fire has spread into the security node at juncture CB/one-ninety-two.” He looked up at Jackson. “We have lost surveillance video and internal sensors on Cargo Decks A and B.”

Jackson had a feeling something bad was about to happen. And this day started off so well,he thought. He turned and snapped to his deputy, “Signal ops to sound Yellow Alert.”

Heihachiro Nogura smiled at his yeoman as she set a tray bearing his lunch on his desk. “Thank you, Ensign.”

“You’re welcome, Admiral,” said Ensign Toby Greenfield. The diminutive brown-haired young woman asked, “Is there anything else I can get for you, sir?”

“No,” said Nogura. “But I’d like to move the meeting with the department heads back to sixteen thirty hours.”

Greenfield nodded. “I’ll let them know, sir.”

Nogura nodded his acknowledgment, and Greenfield left. The admiral picked up a spoon and began enjoying his chicken noodle soup.

The Yellow Alert klaxon whooped once, and the comm signal on his desk buzzed. Spoon still in hand, he reached over and opened the channel. “What’s going on?”

“Admiral,”replied executive officer Commander Jon Cooper, “we’re receiving an emergency report from Doctor Marcus.”

“Details,” Nogura demanded.

“She says toxic gas is flooding the Vault. Security informs me the fumes might be a byproduct of a plasma fire on Cargo Deck B.”

Pushing aside his lunch, Nogura said, “Evacuate the Vault.”

“Yes, sir. Engineering is deploying a hazmat unit.”

“Belay that,” Nogura said, wary of sending personnel who lacked the proper security clearances into the classified lab. “Contain the situation and seal the lab until Doctor Marcus’s team is able to initiate its own recovery protocols.”

“Aye, sir,”Cooper replied. “Evacuating the Vault now.”

Blue fog gave every light source in the lab a pale halo as Carol Marcus fought for breath and waved her people toward the Vault’s exit. “Move it, people!” she shouted.

Hot, hacking coughs wracked her chest with pain. Fumes stung her eyes, which watered and blurred her vision. Through her hazy veil of sight she struggled to identify and account for all her people. They stampeded past her, toward the bright-white tube tunnel that led back to the nondescript maintenance office they used as their cover address within the station.

She spotted Ming Xiong easily—he was the only person not running for his life. He stood at the exit, shouting to those who couldn’t see to guide them to the door. “Gek! Tarcoh! This way, c’mon!”

Dr. Tarcoh, a middle-aged Deltan theoretical physicist, collapsed a few meters shy of the door. Marcus staggered out of the line of escaping personnel and labored to help the tall but seemingly fragile man to his feet. She supported his weight as they stumbled the rest of the way to the exit.

As she passed Xiong, she asked him in a hoarse voice, “Is that everyone?”

“I think so,” he said, slipping under Tarcoh’s other arm so he could help Marcus carry the man out.

They exited the brightly lit tunnel into office CA/194–6. The twenty-odd scientists who had left the lab ahead of them had packed the office beyond capacity and spilled out its open door into the corridor beyond. A Starfleet security officer was at the door, waving the scientists out of the office. “Everyone please move into the main corridor,” he said. “We need to seal this compartment! Please proceed to the corridor in an orderly manner and wait there for additional instructions.” The security officer reached out a hand to help steady Tarcoh. To Marcus and Xiong he said, “There are medical teams on the way. Take him to the junction at section one-ninety-two.”

Marcus and Xiong nodded at the security officer, who waved them past, ushering them out the door. In the corridor, the other scientists cleared the center of the passage and stood with their backs to the walls.

Looking back to ask the security officer how soon the medical teams would arrive, she didn’t see him anywhere. Then she saw the door to CA/194–6 was closed. For a moment she wondered whether the security officer had sealed the compartment from the inside or from the outside, but there was no time to ask questions. She already had her hands full.

Lieutenant Jackson reached Cargo Deck A and sprinted out of the turbolift. He was several sections away from the Vault because the turbolift shaft closest to the lab had lost power when the fire had started on Cargo Deck B.

His every step echoed off the metal deck plates as he ran through the corridors. He saw people standing outside the lab as he passed the junction for section one-ninety-eight. Many of them were dressed like civilians; he guessed they were the scientists who worked in the Vault. Mingled with them were members of the security detail he had sent down to secure the area. Everyone stood aside and let him pass. He kept running until he saw Dr. Marcus and Lieutenant Xiong kneeling beside a middle-aged man with a bald pate.

“Doctor Marcus!” exclaimed Jackson. “Is everyone all right?”

Marcus waved at Jackson as if signaling him to slow down. “We’re fine,” she said. “The lab’s been evacuated and sealed.” Throwing a nervous look back toward the Vault’s cover location, she added, “I think one of your men might have locked himself in trying to seal it, though.”

Suspicion raised the hackles on Jackson’s neck. “One of my men is inside?” He looked at Xiong. “Which one?”

Xiong shrugged. “No idea. Never saw him before.”

Jackson started walking toward CA/194–6. He stopped at a wall panel and opened a comm channel to the security center. “Seklir, this is Jackson. Can you confirm which one of our people sealed the Vault after the evacuation?”

“Checking, sir,”the Vulcan said. A moment later he added, “None of our people has reported sealing that compartment.”

“Is anyone in the Vault right now?”

“Internal sensors in that section are still offline, sir.”

“Retask some from adja—”

Something shook the station as if an earthquake had struck. Jackson and the others in the corridor were thrown to the deck as the lights went out. When emergency illumination flickered on, Jackson pushed himself back to his feet and opened an emergency-equipment panel. “Seklir, do you copy?”

“Aye, sir. What is happening?”“Something just blew up inside the Vault,” Jackson said, retrieving a pair of goggles and a breathing mask with an air canister. “I’m going in to see what it was. Send everyone you can. I want this deck sealed. Got it?”

“Understood, sir.”

Jackson ran back to the door and keyed in his security override code. With an asthmatic hiss the door slid open. Heat and fumes gusted into his face. He put on the goggles and strapped on the breathing mask. As he entered the smoky office, he secured the air canister to his belt and opened its valve.

The concealed door to the lab had been shattered into millions of tiny fragments, which lay scattered both inside and outside the cylindrical tunnel. The passage, normally lit to an almost blinding degree, was dark. Jackson moved with speed but also caution. He drew his phaser as he neared the passage’s end.

The transparent doors ahead of him were coated with black soot and dust, rendering them opaque. He wedged his fingers between the two door panels. With a pained grunt he forced them apart. They screeched and scraped in their tracks.

He opened the doors wide enough to squeeze his broad chest through. As he pushed his way into the lab, he saw a shadowy humanoid figure at its center.

The intruder’s build looked masculine to Jackson’s eyes. He was dressed in black and wore a balaclava-style hood over his head. His eyes were hidden by wraparound black glasses.

Somehow the man had blasted through the protective shielding in the middle of the lab. He was standing in the experiment chamber, next to the testing platform for the Mirdonyae Artifact—and holding the skull-sized, twelve-sided crystal in one hand while giving Jackson a jaunty wave farewell with the other.

As Jackson belatedly lifted his phaser to fire, the intruder ducked out of sight behind the bank of consoles that surrounded the experiment chamber.

Jackson freed himself from the door and ran into the lab, toward the bank of consoles. When he reached them and looked into the area beyond, he saw that a panel had been pulled from the floor, exposing a half-height sublevel filled with machinery, wiring, circuits, and power conduits.

He pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open. It responded with a dysfunctional-sounding “no signal” chirp, and he remembered with frustration that the interior of the Vault was hardened against signal traffic. Only hard-line communications could go in or out of the lab.

Dammit,he raged, tucking his communicator back into place on his hip. He hurdled over the consoles and through the breach in the test area’s curtain of transparent aluminum. Scrambling through the gap in the floor, he dropped in a crouch to the cramped sublevel.

The security chief spun in fast ninety-degree turns, searching the black maze of machinery and tubing for the escaping thief. All he saw was darkness.

Take the path of least resistance,he told himself. If you were trying to make an escape, you’d want to move fast.

He found the direction that had the fewest obstructions and started moving. He shuffled forward, ducking under low-hanging components and occasionally crawling on his belly.

Then he caught a brief flash of dim light and motion directly ahead of him. He quickened his pace. Moments later he clambered out a small maintenance hatch into what he realized was the turbolift shaft disabled by the plasma fire. A few meters below him was a stalled lift car. On top of it, something was smoldering and giving off acrid smoke.

Jackson climbed down the shaft’s emergency ladder. He stepped off the ladder onto the lift car and stomped on the burning debris until its fire was extinguished.

Picking through what was left, he recognized a black balaclava hood and a synthetic-skin prosthetic face mask. Both continued to disintegrate even as he inspected them, leading him to suspect they had been treated with a chemical to catalyze their rapid molecular breakdown. Within minutes, both would likely be completely gone, vanished without a trace.

Just like our thief,he brooded, looking up into the impenetrable darkness of the turbolift shaft.

Nogura stood at the Hub, an octagonal situation table located on the elevated supervisors’ deck of Vanguard’s operations center, and listened to the latest reports with a mounting sense of dread.

“Looks like he escaped up turbolift shaft four,”Jackson said over the comm. “I found the remnants of a disguise on top of a stalled lift car, but no sign of the artifact or the intruder.”

As the operations staff routed the starbase’s interior schematics to the Hub, the tall, curly-haired XO organized them in response to Nogura’s demands for information. “Cooper,” Nogura said. “How many ways out of that shaft are there?”

“Dozens,” Cooper said, highlighting all the access points. “And that’s not even counting the normal exit points on each deck—that’s just crawl spaces and emergency hatches.” He tapped some live vid feeds and with a fingertip dragged them across the Hub’s interactive surface. “We’re monitoring all the main exits from that shaft, and I’ve got security and engineering working to put eyes on all the other points, but it’s a lot of ground to cover.”

Feeling his blood pressure rise ever so slightly, Nogura studied the map and ruminated aloud, “If I were looking to slip out of that turbolift shaft without being noticed, where would be the best place to do it?” He traced the station diagram with his index finger and noted all the parts of the station with which it intersected. Then he stopped near the center of the station’s massive primary hull assembly. “Cooper, have security lock down the main hangar deck. Search everyone. Verify their identification. Check every bag and every short-term locker.”

Nogura turned away from the Hub and watched the vid feed from the Vault, whose internal sensors had come back online just in time to show off this spectacular breach of its security.

He frowned and declared for everyone in the ops center to hear, “Ground all docked starships. Shut down all transporter systems. No one gets on or off this station until further notice.” He paused then added with grim conviction, “Whoever did this can hide, but they can’t run.”