The Cardassian’s hull sheered, split—and then the Cardassian scout imploded.
“Yes!” Castillo cried, pumping his fists like a maniac. “Yes!”
It was the cue everyone on the bridge had been waiting for. The bridge erupted in relieved laughter, Bat-Levi’s included. Glemoor preened his frills over and over, and Castillo kept whooping, “Yes! Yes!”
But Kodell—Bat-Levi suddenly froze—he hadn’t said…the captain…
“Kodell,” Bat-Levi said, urgently, turning so quickly her servos squalled, and she almost lost her balance. “Kodell, report! Did we get them?”
“Commander.” Kodell was standing, hands clasped behind his back and quiet triumph written on his face. “Confirm transport, five individuals—alive and well.”
Oh, thank you, God.Bat-Levi felt weak and she backed up, groping blindly for the command chair, swiveling the chair so she could sit. With the smallest of sighs, Bat-Levi slid back, and her servos, for once, didn’t make a sound. She felt eyes on her, and she looked up—and into Kodell’s smiling face.
“Well done, Commander,” he said. “And all without firing a shot—more or less.”
Gaining. Talma had pushed the T’Polengines into the red but still the distance between her and the Cardassian scout was dwindling by the minute. Gaining—she ground her teeth together—the Cardassian was gaining!
Just ahead, she saw the great dense ball of the nebula cloud, its pink and purple colors more intense, the entire cloud more substantial now so close to the neutron star whirling at its heart, being fed by plasma streamers coursing from the brown star.
The Enterprisehailed again, but Talma ignored them. She’d listened to their twaddle: something about her dropping shields the instant they went to warp so they could beam her aboard. She’d cut off the transmission, finally. What, did they think she was that gullible? Probably blow her out of space the moment her shields were down.
Well, she’d take care of herself, thanks. Talma found every spare ounce of auxiliary power and re-routed to the engines. If I can just get inside that nebula, I’ll lose that Cardassian, and to hell with Garrett’s ship. She wouldn’t have a lot in the way of sensors and her tactical would be fried, but the trade-off would be worth it. The Cardassian would be blind; and then she’d hang there and bide her time.
T’Poledged past the outer fringes of the nebula; minute particles of dust and debris scoured her hull. The computer warned, in polite Vulcan, that the radiation level outside the ship would reach lethal levels in sixty minutes. Talma told it to shut the hell up then gave a more refined command, in Vulcan. She watched the random flashes of energy radiating through the nebula like the flow of neural energy through a network of nerves and dendrites. Almost there—her eyes fixed on the screen, as if willing the nebula closer would make it so— just a few more seconds, and I’m safe.
And because she’d told the computer to can it, and because her gaze was riveted upon her viewscreen, Talma didn’t see the other Cardassian scout disintegrate; she didn’t know that the Enterprisehad gone to warp; and she most definitely did not register the flow of ignited plasma rippling from the exploding brown star and propagating itself along the plasma streamers being pulled toward the neutron star until the nebula was a ball of plasma flame—and that was much too late.
All she could do then was scream, and even that was lost as T’Polflashed, vaporized, and was gone.
She would have taken some comfort in knowing that, a split second later, the Cardassian found that it was much too close indeed.
The wall of fire expanded. It tore through one planet. Then two. A few minutes later, the third planet shuddered and convulsed and died.
And on to the fourth.
His throat was so dry he could barely draw a breath. Chen-Mai’s broken wrist throbbed, and he’d tucked it into his suit. But every step jolted bone against bone, and once he’d fainted, fallen. Awakened to find that he’d gashed open his forehead so that he had to blink blood out of his eyes. Still he dragged himself through the maze of tunnels and blind alleys, going by feel, groping along the walls with his good hand. And then, because he was so frightened, he started running, fell, clawed his way to his feet as his wrist screamed in pain, and then fell again. This time, he couldn’t get to his feet, because the ground was moving.
What was happening? The ground was alive; Chen-Mai felt the rock jolt, ripple as if composed of something liquid, not solid. An earthquake. No—Chen-Mai tried to get his mind to work rationally— not possible, the planet was dead, it was dead, the planet was dead!
Something sharp bit his cheek. Chen-Mai flinched, turned his face toward the arched ceiling of the tunnel. He heard the sharp pop and ping of compressed rock splintering, and then a long, loud roar as the mountain began to tear itself apart.
High above, the shock waves from the neutron star coupled with those from the brown star, and rolled over the fourth planet. In a few seconds, the landscape was flattened, the mountains collapsing in, falling toward the planet’s dead core.
And, deep underground, the rock groaned, opened beneath Chen-Mai’s feet. Screaming, he tumbled into the abyss.
And on to the fifth planet.
And, finally, into empty space.
Chapter 36
“I can’t imagine what you expect of me,” said Mahfouz Qadir, in an oily tenor. He tweezed a tiny porcelain cup rimmed with gold from an equally fragile saucer and took a delicate sip of strong, sweet coffee. “You can’t expect that I keep track of every nursemaid, housemaid, and slut on Farius Prime.”
Halak’s swarthy features darkened with a rush of angry blood. “Dalal isn’t a slut, Qadir, and you know it. Now Dalal and Arava are gone, and I want to know where they are.”
“Or what?” Qadir replaced his cup upon its saucer with a soft click of china against china. He squared the saucer on a low carved wood table inlaid with a mosaic of jewels before inclining his head up at Halak who towered over him. “Supposing that I knew and was unwilling to tell you, then what? Eh? Are you threatening me, Samir? You,” Qadir’s bright, black eyes flicked right, “and this pretty Starfleet?”
Oh, brother,thought Garrett. “You could say that.” She folded her arms across her chest. “About Starfleet, that is. Pretty, I couldn’t care less. This isn’t an official visit, though.”
“No? Then those uniforms, they don’t mean anything? The fact that your starship, bristling with armament, is parked in orbit, its weapons trained upon my home, this means nothing? You bring weapons to my house, weapons I must confiscate to ensure my safety, and then you make demands, and this is not official, not a threat from Starfleet? How am I to take this then? How would you, a reasonable woman, take this?”
Garrett wasn’t in the mood. “Don’t count on my being very reasonable. Frankly, you can take it any way you like, but the fact remains that one of your operatives posed as a Starfleet Intelligence officer, kidnapped my first officer, and endangered the lives of my crew. And you’re right; you’re damned lucky I don’t order my ship to vaporize this house of yours. Don’t think I’m not tempted.”