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Right through the deck he felt the consistency of the sandy bottom—soft, mushy, gritty, but plenty hard enough to stall the ship.

He realized instantly what had happened. The Justina had been duped by these men who knew these waters, teased into turning inward toward shore. Although there appeared to be water for another quarter mile, indeed it was shallow water. They were aground.

Aground, and under attack!

Chapter Seven

“OH, BEAUTIFUL! COME HERE, PRECIOUS, right up here on my lap. You, too, honey. There we go. Isn’t this nice?”

Holographers, cameras, video equipment, sensor broadcasters, and every manner of recording device available on Sindikash hummed merrily as the governor’s wife gathered several handicapped children against her, drawing two of them up onto her lap.

The governor’s mansion was decorated for the holiday of the founding of Sindikash, which would come in three weeks. Traditional colors were gold, purple, and black, so banners and ribbons of those danced about the halls, and wreaths of grape vines with fake plastic grapes were hung on every window and over the mansion’s massive stone hearths, which were virtually symbols of Sindikash themselves. Most homes had these chunky hearths, or at least a mock version, and they were traditional in the lobbies of most public buildings. Sindikash liked its traditions.

Worf was getting tired of tradition. He wanted to be on the ship, with his son, celebrating his own tradition, but instead he was here, standing beside the entrance, standing guard over somebody else’s.

Back in the quarters he and Grant shared now that they were Rogues, Grant was pecking away at an old style computer terminal, trying to find the track he spoke of, the trail that would tie Odette Khanty to her seedy network.

Worf, Ugulan, and the other Rogues had just come back from space, limping back on the freighter they had failed to “deliver” to Sindikash authorities on the Cardassian border. Worf hoped his message would get through to Picard that the trick had come off as planned. The heavily coded message had been sent along very thin civilian lines, through several trading packets and one drunken lightship keeper. Might take four or five days.

Could he keep Grant safe for five days? The election was ticking closer with each day. They barely had a week left.

He and Grant were completely isolated on Sindikash. Communication with the ship was rare, costly, slow, and dangerous. Any quicker method would attract attention or trip signals. The two were on their own, and that meant Grant’s life was in Worf’s hands.

He started to wonder if teaming up with a close friend might not be a ghastly mistake.

With some effort, he managed to stuff down those thoughts. Again.

One room beyond the executive office, the comatose governor lay in his sickbed, hooked up to several machines that were monitored by doctors in a small in-house clinic one floor below this. The door to the governor’s room was open, and the end of the bed visible, with the unconscious man’s feet creating an uneven bulge in the red blanket.

Worf watched Odette Khanty with the children, hugging and smiling, letting them tug at her hair, as the image of her with them was teleported all over the planet, into the perception of the Sindikash public.

“So wonderful,” she murmured, then laughed. “All right! Let’s just send all of you down to the mezzanine to have ice cream and mints!”

The children cheered and clapped, and she clapped with them. Then a gaggle of aides and parents helped the children out of the room and down the wide carpeted hall, leaving only the media with their recording equipment and lights.

Mrs. Khanty stood up, still aglow with the adoration of the children, and held her hands out graciously to the reporters. “Anything else I can do for you today, anyone?”

From the back of the small crowd, a reporter asked, “Mrs. Khanty, what about allegations tying you to the explosion at the Lowelli Granary in the Great Eastern Territory? And about the Sindikash One-Four Transport? Rumors say there were two witnesses