“I’ve got him,” said the captain. “We’ll meet you en route. Good job, B’Elanna.”
“Yeah, real good job,” she muttered bitterly.
“You promised me this wouldn’t happen!” barked Prefect Klain, pounding his fist into his palm as he paced the back office of a carpet store in the old section of Astar. “You guaranteed it.”
“Oh, please,” came the snide response. “There are no guarantees in an experiment like this. Besides, you got what you wanted—IGI is history.”
“We’ll all be history if this keeps up! Padulla was bad enough, but did it have to happen here? When are you going to deliver the antidote?”
“Soon. We need a few more days.” The speaker knew this was a lie, as there was no magic antidote—never would be. “Those idiot Cardassians upset several experiments when they attacked IGI—I wish I knew who caused that. But if the disease is spreading this fast, we’ll be done soon.”
“Now! I demand you put an end to it now!”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll tell the Maquis everything! I’ll…I’ll tell the Cardassians. I’ll expose you.”
The other party’s eyes narrowed. “That would not be a good idea. For one thing, you would be ruined.”
“I don’t care anymore!” snapped Klain with exasperation. “This has got to come to an end, do you hear me?”
“I hear you…all too well.”
Suddenly a loud beep sounded in the unkempt back office, followed by a pounding on a distant door. A voice broke in over the comm channel: “Intruders at the public entrance!”
“Delay them!” Furious, the speaker turned to Prefect Klain. “You fool! You were followed!”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. I took side streets and watched out for—” Klain’s dark eyes widened in horror. “What are you going to do with that phaser?”
“What I should have done long ago.”
The phaser spit a red beam, which gnawed a burning hole in Klain’s stomach. With a groan, he staggered to the door but collapsed halfway there. His assassin pressed a button, opening a secret panel, and hurried out the exit into the alley.
Chapter Fourteen
“USE YOUR PHASERS!” ordered Chakotay when the door to the carpet store wouldn’t budge.
As several Helenites watched with horror and curiosity, Torres and Tuvok stepped back and blasted the metal security door with full phasers. It began to sizzle and melt.
“What are you doing?” demanded one of the onlookers, a burly Antosian/Catullan.
“It’s all right,” said a small man in a white lab coat. “I’m Dr. Gammet from IGI, and this is official business.”
His words appeased the crowd for the moment, although it was unlikely the quiet row of shops ever saw this much excitement. As the door crumbled into molten gobs, a phaser beam streaked from the store, barely missing Tuvok. The onlookers gasped and ran for cover, but the Vulcan stood his ground and calmly returned fire. A groan issued from within.
Tuvok kicked what was left of the door off its hinges and leaped over the molten metal on the ground. Chakotay, Torres, and Dr. Gammet charged into the store after him, and they found a brawny Helenite sprawled across a dozen rolls of carpet, a gaping wound in his chest.
Tuvok knelt down and felt for a pulse, then he shook his head. “He is dead. I regret that my phaser was on full.”
“You had no choice,” said Chakotay. He turned to Torres, who was studying her tricorder. “Where is Klain?”
“Not far.” She led the way through the carpet store to the rear, where she found a door marked with symbols meaning “Private. No Admittance.” Leveling her phaser, Torres pushed the door open and charged into the room.
A moment later, Chakotay wished he had been the one to go first. Lying in the middle of the small, unkempt office was Prefect Klain, crumpled on the floor like a pile of rags. Distraught, Torres bent over the body and put her head to his chest, listening for any sign of life. From the severity of his wound and the pool of blood, Chakotay doubted he was alive.
Still he tapped his combadge. “Chakotay to Spartacus. Stand by to beam one to sickbay.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Dr. Gammet, feeling for a pulse. “He’s beyond us now.”
“Belay that order,” said Chakotay sadly.
B’Elanna jumped to her feet, fierce anger and tears in her eyes. “I killed him…as surely as if I had pulled the trigger.”
“No, you didn’t,” said the captain, putting his arm around her trembling shoulders. “But we’ll find who did it.”
“How could his murderer have escaped?” asked Tuvok, scanning the small room with a tricorder.
“By Mizrah!” gasped a voice. Chakotay turned to see a female Helenite standing in the doorway, her hand covering her mouth and a look of horror on her face.
“What’s on the other side of this wall?” he asked, pointing to the wall opposite the door.
“An alley,” she rasped.
“Tuvok, you’re with me,” ordered the captain. “B’Elanna, you’ll probably want to stay here and—”
“No!” she said through clenched teeth. “I want to come with you.”
“I can handle this mess,” muttered Dr. Gammet. “I’ll take a look around, too. The three of you go ahead.”
There was no time to argue, as Chakotay led the way out the door, through the shop, and into the street. Since they were in the middle of a block of stores, he motioned Tuvok to go one way, while he and Torres ran the other.
An onlooker yelled at him, “What are you people doing?”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious, running?”
“Just you.”
Figuring no one at the front of the store had seen anything, Chakotay dashed to the corner with Torres on his heels. They took a right onto a side street and ran to the alley behind the carpet shop. There was no one in the vicinity—not the murderer, not a witness, not anyone they could question.
Chakotay had seen dark alleys before, but none more foreboding than this. He drew his phaser and a handheld lantern, but B’Elanna charged ahead of him, rage in her eyes. The captain almost called after her to wait, but he knew she wouldn’t when she was in a state like this.
He tapped his combadge. “Tuvok, where are you?”
“Making my way east down the alley,” answered the Vulcan.
“Keep an eye out for Torres—she’s headed right for you.”
“Acknowledged.”
Since the alley was covered from both ends, Chakotay looked around the area, trying to figure out where they were in the unfamiliar city. While in pursuit of Klain’s tracking signal, they hadn’t paid any attention to where they were going. He had to admit that they were lost.
A cool breeze brushed his face, bringing with it the earthy scents of salt, fish, and rotting seaweed. Chakotay followed the breeze to the end of the block and saw that the street stopped at the wharf. Lights twinkled on the dark water of the bay, where several boats and sea-gliders floated in peaceful repose. Some of the docking slips were empty.
Our prey escaped via sea-glider, he thought to himself. That’s why they chose this place as their headquarters—to be close to the sea-gliders.
His combadge chirped, jarring him out of his reverie. “Torres to Chakotay.”
“Go on.”
“We’ve finished searching the alley—there’s no one here.”
“I think they escaped via sea-glider,” said the captain. “Let’s go back to the ship and run some scans—”
“There’s a problem,” Torres cut in. “Tuvok’s been arrested.”
When Chakotay got back to the front of the store, he found Torres and Dr. Gammet arguing with two Helenites wearing tricornered hats and blue uniforms with gaudy piping and epaulets. A large hovercraft was also parked in front of the store. Tuvok was nowhere in sight, although several of the onlookers had remained to watch the continuing drama.
“What happened?” asked Chakotay.
&nb
sp; “I tried to explain to them,” said Gammet with exasperation. “I told them that we were fired on first, and that your man returned fire in self-defense.”
“Excuse me,” said a stout official, “are you the Maquis captain?”
“Yes.”
“We have to arrest you, too.”
“Wait a minute,” replied Chakotay, trying to stay calm, “are you going to give us a chance to explain?”
“We have accounts from several witnesses. They all tell us that you were trying to break into this shop, and the shopkeeper was trying to protect his place of business. No one denies that you fired first at his locked door, and that the Vulcan killed the shopkeeper. Not only that, but we found our prefect dead inside. In my thirty years of service, this is the worst case of violence we’ve ever had on Dalgren.”
“Do you understand who these people are?” asked Gammet. “And what we’re trying to do? We were chasing the people who are responsible for unleashing the plague on Helena!”
The official glowered suspiciously at him. “Are you saying that Prefect Klain was responsible for the plague?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Gammet.
“Do you have any proof to back up this slanderous claim?”
“If you’ll allow us to search his genetic company, perhaps we can find proof.”
“There will be a full hearing,” the other official assured him, “and plenty of search warrants. Which one of you killed Prefect Klain?”
“None of us!” shouted Torres. “Oh, this is pointless. People are dying by the thousands, and you’re worried about two people.”
“He was our prefect,” insisted the official. “That’s the highest office in the land.”
“I know who he was,” said Torres, glaring at him.
Her distress and reddened eyes had some effect on the officials, who evidently knew who she was, too.
“You’re not a suspect,” the official said with sympathy. “But until we find out what happened here, we have to hold the Vulcan and your captain.”
Chakotay briefly considered making a run for it and ordering Seska to beam him back to the Spartacus, but they needed cooperation, not more strife. As unibloods, he and Tuvok were obviously at a disadvantage.
“I’ll go with you,” he told the officials, “as long as you realize that these arrests could further the spread of the plague.”
The officials scratched their chins and looked at one another with indecision. Chakotay had the impression that their jobs were mostly ceremonial on the normally peaceful planet.
“Listen to him,” pleaded Dr. Gammet. “Captain Chakotay’s ship and the medical teams he brought with him are the only things standing between us and disaster.”
“But he ordered them to fire their phasers!” shouted an onlooker. “I saw him!”
The stout official, who was the elder of the two, took a deep breath and came to a decision. “Dr. Gammet, if you will vouch for the captain, we’ll allow him to remain on his own cognizance until the hearing. But we have to hold the Vulcan, because he admits to killing the shopkeeper.”
“I’ll vouch for all of them,” said Gammet. “They only want to help us.”
“Where is Tuvok being held?” asked Chakotay.
“In the Ministry of Public Policy,” answered the official. “You can visit him in the morning.”
Dr. Gammet strode up to the officials and said, “Right now, we’ve got to go to Genetic Enhancement—Klain’s company—and search it.”
“We can’t get a search warrant until morning,” said the stout official obstinately.
Torres snarled with anger. “A few days from now, when you’re lying in bed—dying a miserable death—I hope you’ll remember these delays you caused us. Better yet, I hope you come to us to save your life—or the lives of your children—and we say, ‘Sorry, can’t do anything until the morning.’”
The official’s dark complexion paled several shades. He finally motioned to the hovercraft and growled, “Get in.”
They could see the fire burning in the night sky from blocks away, the flames rising above the silhouette of the city like rocket thrusters. Helenites were running to and fro, pointing helplessly at the conflagration, and their driver stopped the hovercraft and stared in amazement. The air smelled like burning tar, and sparks floated in the darkness like erratic meteorites.
“That can’t be!” he exclaimed. “The automatic sprinklers and transporters…the flame retarders…we haven’t had a fire in Astar in a hundred years!”
He tapped a button on the instrument panel of the hovercraft and shouted over the commotion, “This is Chief Mufanno calling headquarters. There’s a fire in section twelve, near the corner of Cosmos and Unity—”
“In the Genetic Enhancement building,” said Dr. Gammet, drawing the obvious conclusion.
“Yes,” agreed the official, staring at his passengers and realizing that they might have been telling him the truth about Prefect Klain. “Call out the Coastal Watchers and rush them to—”
“I wouldn’t do that,” cautioned Dr. Gammet. “Don’t get anywhere near that building, unless you’re wearing an environmental suit. You don’t know what might be in there. The safest recourse is to keep people away, and let it burn to the ground.”
The official stared in shock at the doctor and licked his blue lips worriedly. “Belay that order. Let’s cordon off the block and keep people away. Just let it burn.”
“Let it burn?” asked an amazed voice on the comm channel.
“That’s right. Don’t let anyone get near it, unless they’re wearing an environmental suit. There are, uh…biohazards.”
Chakotay sighed wearily and hopped out of the hovercraft. “I don’t think we’re going to find any information in that building. B’Elanna, contact the ship and head back as soon as you can. I’m sure Seska could use some relief on the bridge.” He started walking away.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Back to the Velvet Cluster. There’s a man I’ve got to see. I have a feeling our time is running out.”
Gul Demadak breathed a tremendous sigh of relief as he read the coded message on the hidden screen in his library. At last, he was free to do what had to be done. He had also survived the most dangerous partnership he had ever undertaken. If this message hadn’t come, he was probably only days, perhaps hours, away from from losing his post as military commander of the DMZ. He would make the Detapa Council and Central Command very happy with his next order.
“Experiment cut short,” read the message. “Move in and clear out Maquis. Await my order for final resolution.”
Demadak knew what that final resolution was—the end of the thorn in his side known as Helena. Now his place in history and the next great reign of the Cardassian Union was assured.
He quickly sent another message: “Await my arrival, and begin Phase Two. Prepare for Phase Three.”
All during the night, Thomas Riker hurtled through the darkness, clinging to a chunk of wood and shivering in his wet clothes. Inside the pipe, he didn’t know if it was night or day, sea or land, hell or heaven—whether he was ill or merely exhausted and half-crazed. All he knew was that the instincts for survival and revenge were stronger than the temptation to let go and end it, although that thought was never far from his mind.
Did you survive all those years, put up with all the ridicule and unfairness, give up everything you worked for, and come all the way to Helena…just to die?
No! Riker answered the voice within him. I have to make my life—and my death—mean something. I’m alive for a reason, and there’s something I have to do.
Riker wasn’t sure he was destined for success in Starfleet anymore, as he had once been convinced. He thought about the love of his life, Deanna Troi, and how he should never have let her get away. He had given her up for what? A career! What was a career but a bunch of disconnected, often incomprehensible events from which a person tried desperately to make some sense? The only thing i
n his life that had ever made any sense was Deanna, and he had willfully given her up.
His fingers and legs were painfully cramped as he clung to his board, and he had lost his meager supply of food in the rushing water. But none of that seemed as important as the realization he had just reached. When he got out of this, he would redeem himself. He would no longer let life drag him along like this current—he would bend it to his will.
To his surprise, Riker took comfort from a fact which he had resented bitterly for two years. I’m not alone. There is another William T. Riker on the Enterprise. He would let that other Riker scale the heights and have the incredible career that he had always considered to be his due. Tom Riker would be the altruistic and unselfish one—the one who thought and acted for other people.
He had taken the first step by giving up his high-profile bridge position to become a medical courier, then he had gone one step further by shipping out with the Maquis. He wondered what he would do next to further his development as a person.
Without warning, the artificial river dropped away beneath him, and Riker plunged headfirst into darkness. Involuntarily, he yelled and flailed his arms, losing his tiny life raft. At the last second, he ducked his head, put his arms out, and dove into a cold, dark pool of water. He protected his head, certain he would smash into a shallow bottom, but he came out of his unexpected dive in water that was plenty deep enough to swim in. Riker stroked and kicked with all his might, and he broke the surface, sputtering for breath.
Treading water, he looked up and saw a million stars, sparkling like the brightest lights of San Francisco or Anchorage. “Yes,” he breathed gratefully, slapping his hand on top of the water. As his eyes adjusted to the night sky and its tiny but vibrant bits of light, he could see that he was swimming in a small reservoir, with a dam looming on one side and a lower embankment on the other.
I made it! Where he was hardly made any difference, as long as it wasn’t that damn island.
Knowing he was too weak to tread water for very long, Riker swam toward the low side of the reservoir. He finally found a ladder and dragged himself out of the chilly water. Collapsing on the concrete embankment, he lay there for several minutes, letting the water drip off his shivering body. He was only half-alive, but he was alive.