Текст книги "The Art of the Impossible "

Автор книги: Keith R. A. DeCandido

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Monor made a dismissive noise that sounded like a leaky pipe. “You’re drunk.”

“Of course I’m drunk! I drink to the souls of the dead—slain by Cardassian cowardice!”

“The only coward I see is an old wreck who should be embarrassed to let himself be seen like that! Look at you—inebriated, unkempt. You wouldn’t last an hour on a Cardassian ship. That’s why you Foreheads will always—”

“That’s enough!” Haden barked, which came as a great relief to Troi. “Both of you shut the hell up. Mr. Troi, what’s our ETA?”

Troi double-checked the navigational computer. “Thirty-five minutes at this speed.”

“When we arrive, the Carthagewill aid in any rescue endeavors, and our sickbay will be at your disposal as well.”

“That is appreciated, Captain.”Qaolin spoke in a more subdued tone. “The Federation, at least, has always been honorable.”

“‘Honorable.’”Monor made the leaky pipe noise again. “That’s your catch-all word for everything, isn’t it?”

“Worry not, Monor,”Qaolin said with a wide, half-toothless grin, “it will never be applied to you.”

Haden continued as if the two men had not spoken. “After that, as per the agreement signed at the Betreka Nebula by both your governments, we will investigate the destruction of the building, and report our findings to both of you—and to your respective governments, and to Ambassador Dax and the Federation Council.” He turned toward the communications console to look at Vaughn. “Lieutenant Commander Vaughn, you will lead the investigation.” Then he turned back to the screen. “I expect both of you to cooperate fully with Commander Vaughn and his team. If you don’t—well, that will go in our report, as well.”

Monor scowled. “I can’t imagine what help we can provide, Captain, since the incident had nothing to do with me or anyone from—”

“Do you fear that the Federation will learn what I have known for fifteen years, Monor?”

“What, that you’re a pathetic drunken—”

“Screen off,” Haden muttered, and Zipser quickly cut off the communication, returning the main viewer to the image of the distorted starfield that signified the Carthage’s warp-speed travel. Then the captain rose from his chair and moved toward the turbolift. “Commander Li, let me know when we arrive, and have the transporter chief prepare for multiple transports. And put all shuttlecraft on standby, just in case.”

As Wai-Lin Li sat in the command chair she said, “Should I alert sickbay also?”

“I’ll do that. I’m going there now to do something about this headache I just acquired.” As he passed Vaughn, Haden added, “Mr. Vaughn, feel free to use whatever Carthagepersonnel you need, but get to the bottom of this thing quickly, understood?”

Vaughn nodded. “Yes, sir. With your permission, I’d like Lieutenant Commander Troi to assist me.”

“Permission granted.” As the turbolift doors opened, he said, “You have the bridge, Number One.”

Chapter 24

Raknal V

By the time the Carthagearrived, there was comparatively little rescuing to be done. The building in question held several residences as well as three merchants. Most of the debris had been cleared by Klingon rescue workers. Fifty-three people were in the building when it collapsed, of whom twelve were dead. At Commander Li’s insistence, the remaining forty-one were transported to the Carthagerather than brought to the local hospital, on the logic that a starship sickbay was better equipped than any Klingon hospital, a point no one could truly argue.

Once that was done, all that was left was the wreckage—and twelve dead bodies. Troi stood before what was left of the building as the last of the rescue workers started to leave. A semipermeable force field was keeping all but the workers and Starfleet personnel away from the site. The field would allow those with a particular transponder to pass through it, one held by all the workers and by Vaughn, Troi, and the other Carthagepersonnel on-planet.

At the sight of the twelve corpses being left on the ground, Troi grabbed one of the departing rescue workers by the arm. The worker looked at Troi’s hand like it was diseased. Troi quickly removed it.

“What’s to be done with the bodies?”

The worker shrugged. “Disposed of in some manner.”

“Don’t you have any—well, funerary rites?”

Again, he shrugged. “They are not warriors. If they lived dishonorable lives, then Fek’lhrwill escort their spirits to the Barge of the Dead, which will take them to Gre’thor.”

Troi knew that that was the Klingon equivalent of hell. “What if they lived honorable lives?”

At that, the worker scowled. “Then they deserved better deaths than this.”

Troi found he couldn’t argue with that either way.

After the last of the rescue workers departed, Troi was alone with the building. Vaughn was interviewing people who were nearby when the building collapsed, and had asked the Carthagesecurity chief to do the same with the survivors in sickbay.

Troi, meanwhile, was tasked with examining the site itself. He looked up at the building. It had been made from plasti-form over a metal frame. Parts of the frame—which looked to be an alloy of rodinium, iron, and a metal the tricorder couldn’t identify—remained intact. A preliminary scan with the tricorder indicated that the frame had weakened and collapsed in the southwest quadrant of the foundation. When that gave way, a large chunk of the building went down.

Troi proceeded, as Vaughn had instructed him, to go over every millimeter of the building. All the evidence pointed to a simple structural collapse, which would make Monor happy, if not Qaolin. Wonder what that third metal in the alloy is,he thought. That may have been responsible. Iron and rodinium are pretty tough, but that third metal’s an x-factor.

It took two hours to do most of the job. The items he found in various states of repair ranged from the obviously personal—clothes, furniture, pictures, artwork, padds labeled in the angled Klingon script, well-worn weaponry, cooking implements, food—to the assorted items that were for sale in the stores.

When he came across a small figurine that was vaguely in the shape of a targ,Troi felt a lump in his throat. Up until this point, he had managed not to think about what it had been like going through Kestra’s things seven years ago—a task that had been left to Troi alone, since Lwaxana had already started her campaign to eradicate Kestra’s very existence—until he came across this toy targwhich, despite looking nothing like Kestra’s teddy bear, reminded Troi almost painfully of My Bear. Troi had given Kestra the stuffed black bear when his daughter turned four. It had floppy arms and legs, a tiny smile, wide brown eyes, and a sufficiently soft interior to make him eminently huggable—a feature Kestra employed often. Kestra had never come up with a name for the bear, insisting on simply referring to the toy as “my bear!” The name stuck.

After Kestra’s death, Troi had given My Bear to Commander Li for her daughter.

He set the toy targback down amid the wreckage. Once he and Vaughn were through, someone was supposed to come and sort through all this. Troi was grateful that his assignment to Vaughn’s detail meant he would be spared that duty. Once was more than enough.

The one part of his job he hadn’t done was to do a full check of the southwest quadrant. He clambered over pieces of plasti-form and shards of blades and precious stones—the store over the collapsed part of the building sold weapons and jewelry; both proprietors and one customer were among the dozen dead—to see if he could better determine the cause.

Unfortunately, the weakened beams in question were under more material than he could move safely, because of both the weight and the number of items with sharp edges. Besides, it was only a matter of time before the building collapsed the rest of the way—the remains of the foundation couldn’t bear the added concentration of mass for much longer.

Luckily, Troi didn’t have to move it himself. He trained his tricorder’s sensors on the broken beams under the wreckage, then tapped his combadge. “Troi to Sulma.”

“Sulma here.”

“Chief, I need some help here. Can you tie in to my tricorder?”

“Hang on.”A pause. “Yeah, okay, got it.”

“Can you lock onto the pieces of metal I’m scanning and beam them to a position about three meters to my left?”

“Don’t see why not. Hang on.”Another pause. “Got it.”

“Thanks, Shawn. That’s a big help.”

The transporter chief laughed. “No big deal. It’s not like I’m doing anything difficult. Not like that time Commander Li needed me to beam that funky alien gourd off her arm. Anyhow, energizing.”

Seconds later, several bent, broken, and shattered fragments of metal materialized three meters to Ian Troi’s left.

“Thanks again, Shawn. I owe you lunch. Troi out.”

Now Troi did an in-depth scan of the beams. The tri-corder still couldn’t identify the third metal in the alloy—but it did identify some resonance traces that matched a similar investigation they’d done in the Barradas system near the Romulan border a few months earlier. “Oh, this isn’t good.”

“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 heardof 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 thismess?”

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 theywant 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 feelthat 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 Carthagewill 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, talkto 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 Carthagesickbay.

“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.