Enigma - Michael Jan Friedman [79]
“But it will be,” said McAteer.
“Will it?” asked Ben Zoma. “Is it a done deal? Or are you still planning to go through the formality of a hearing?”
The admiral’s expression turned hard. “You know what I mean.”
“I believe I do,” said the first officer, and he let his words hang in the air.
“You know,” said McAteer, “I think I may have mentioned that commendation prematurely. I mean, there is a review process. Not everything we recommend comes to fruition.”
Ben Zoma knew better. “No problem, Admiral. You sleep well, now. But then, why wouldn’t you?”
And he left the room.
But he had to confess that, for a moment at least, McAteer had had him going. He had him eating out of his hand with all that trash about courage and commendations.
But the admiral didn’t admire what he had done. All he wanted to do was tempt Ben Zoma into betraying his friend—abandoning him in his hour of need. Then McAteer could say that even Picard’s first officer had lost confidence in him.
How could I have been so stupid? he asked himself. How could I have thought that McAteer was anything but a sniveling, conniving son of a sand flea?
He couldn’t wait to tell Picard about his conversation with the admiral. No doubt, his friend would find it amusing.
Epilogue
EVEN BEFORE NIKOLAS OPENED HIS EYES and got his bearings, he harbored a feeling that something was wrong. And the more alert he became, the more dead certain he was: Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
For one thing, he was stretched out in a bend of one of the corridors, his head pounding, his brow smarting as if it had been cut. When he touched his fingertips to the offended area, they came away with a thin smear of blood.
He had gotten hurt. How?
Nikolas coughed. There was smoke in the air—not thick enough to see very easily, but more than thick enough to choke on. Why is there smoke? he asked himself.
Then it all came flooding back to him….
The alarm, shrill and insistent, whipping his pulse into a frenzy as it rang through the cargo ship. The impacts that had thrown him off his feet and slammed him against the bulkheads. Then the glare of sparks, and the smell of smoke.
And finally…nothing.
The Iktoj’ni had been attacked, no doubt by the same people the captain had been warned about. And Nikolas had been knocked unconscious. That would explain the cut he had suffered.
But he couldn’t feel any impacts, so the attack was obviously over. Or at least, no one was firing at them any longer.
Then why hadn’t anyone come around to see if he was all right? Where were the emergency medical teams the captain had designated before they set out?
And where was his friend Locklear? He had been right behind Nikolas when they started for the bridge, but there was no sign of him in the corridor.
Nikolas listened, but all he could hear was the hum of the engines. No people sounds, not from medical teams or Locklear or anyone else.
How hard had the ship been hit? he wondered. Were there so many casualties that they just hadn’t gotten to him yet? Or were the medical teams themselves among the victims?
Scanning the corridor, Nikolas located an intercom grate on the bulkhead. All he had to do was contact the bridge and find out what was going on. Then he could lend a hand, do whatever the captain asked of him.
Dragging himself to his feet, he realized that his head wasn’t the only part of him that had taken a beating. His arms and legs were stiff and bruised, and there was a sharp pain in his ribs every time he took a breath.
But Nikolas could deal with it. Especially if some of the other crewmen were hurt worse.
When he reached the intercom grate, he depressed its trio of red buttons in the proper series and opened a link to the bridge. “Captain,” he said, “this is Nikolas. What’s going on?”
He didn’t get an answer. And a second try got the same result.
All right, he thought, no problem. The intercom system must have been damaged. I just need to get to the bridge and speak to someone in person.
Toward that end, he started limping along the curve of the corridor,