Oblivion - Michael Jan Friedman [0]
Picard would contact the Stargazer with a com device he had hidden on his person. And before long, both he and Demmix would find themselves safely aboard the Stargazer.
Simplicity itself.
Or so the captain expected—until he was driven backward by a blinding white, shrieking burst of energy. Before he could even wonder what was happening, he slammed into something hard, rattling every bone in his head.
Then Picard felt a second impact and realized he had stopped moving. The floor, he thought, feeling its flat, reassuring presence beneath him. I’m lying on the floor.
It was only then that he opened his eyes and saw the vision of chaos that had flattened the landscape of the plaza. There were merchants and kiosks and food strewn everywhere, victims of the savage and unexpected blast.
“Him! He’s the one who set off the bomb!”
Picard turned to see who had cried out—and, more important, to whom he was referring. To the captain’s surprise, the long, accusatory finger was pointing in a most uncomfortable direction.
At Picard himself.
Other Stargazer Novels
The Valiant
Gauntlet
Progenitor
Three
Requiem
Reunion
First Virtue
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS
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Copyright © 2003 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
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For the winter warriors
of Farpoint 2003
Acknowledgments
Oblivion is a state of forgetfulness, but it would be an injustice for me to forget those whose efforts helped make Oblivion a book. First there’s Margaret Clark, my editor at Pocket Books, whose unerring eye kept me time and again from looking like a complete idiot (“First it’s a phaser, then it’s a disruptor…it can’t be both, can it?”). Then there’s Scott Shannon, my esteemed publisher and one of the most decent human beings on the planet. And finally, there’s Paula Block, executive director, publishing at Viacom, to whom Star Trek book readers owe a greater debt than they know.
I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of actress Whoopi Goldberg (you may have heard of her) and actor Paul Dooley, along with the writing staffs of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, who created and developed two of the characters around whom this narrative revolves.
Chapter One
JEAN-LUC PICARD WAITED for the octagonal portal in front of him to iris open with a faint scrape of metal on stained metal. Then he stepped through the resulting aperture, leaving behind a heavily ribbed cavern of polished duranium that had once been the cargo bay of an Yridian freighter.
Had this been any other Yridian vessel, Picard would have been entering an airlock, the black, frigid vacuum of space visible through transparent slivers in the surface at its far end. Instead, he found himself in a short, unremarkable corridor, its only illumination the parallel tracks of tiny floor lights guiding his footsteps.
Several wildly echoing strides brought Picard to another octagonal portal. As before, he waited for the thing to blossom like a flat, metal flower. Then he emerged into the chiseled, black environs of a Tellati armory.
Of course, there weren’t any weapons in this armory—not anymore. But Picard had seen enough Tellati hulks to recognize the rows