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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 Dea
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 co
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’halstew 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 ca
“What rot,” said Entek’s server, who chose that moment to come by. “I take it you’ll have your usual?”
“Sem’halstew, 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 knowMonor was behind it. And did you hear? One of those Starfleeters 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 knowthat 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.