Oblivion - Michael Jan Friedman [11]
He regarded her with suspicion. After all, it was quite a coincidence that her path had crossed his a second time, and in the space of little more than an hour.
Might she have had something to do with the bomb? the captain wondered. Or my incarceration? Or both, perhaps?
And why is she here now? he asked himself. To offer some tidbit of false information that will further damn him as a criminal?
He watched through the transparent barrier of his cell as the woman approached the Tyrheddan security officer. Leaning forward over the desk between them, she whispered something in the fellow’s tiny, round ear.
The security officer laughed, making a sound like rocks scraping together. Then he whispered something back.
Wonderful, Picard thought. They are old friends. How else could they be conversing so easily?
He shook his head, only now recognizing the full extent of his naïveté. The woman in the hat, the bomb, his accuser…it had all been a trap, and he had walked right into it.
How foolish could he have been? How blind? Cursing himself, he forced himself to watch as the security officer and the woman continued their conversation.
With his loudest laugh yet, the Tyrheddan pressed a stud on his desk and opened a drawer. Then he bent over to get something out of it.
Picard frowned. Were they talking about him? Commenting, perhaps, on how easily he fell prey to their scheme?
He was still wondering when the woman picked up a heavy-looking stauette on the security officer’s desk and slugged him over the head with it.
As the officer collapsed in an insensible heap, the woman grabbed the handle of his hand weapon and slipped it out of his belt holster. Then she headed for Picard’s cell.
The captain entertained the possibility that she would use the weapon to kill him. He continued to suspect as much as she purposefully pressed the pad in the bulkhead that would deactivate his cell’s energy barrier.
But no sooner had the energy wall fizzled away than the woman turned the pistol around and extended it to him. He looked at her for a moment, caught off guard.
Then, warily, he took it.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s go!”
Picard had a million questions elbowing each other in his head. However, he resisted the impulse to ask any of them. After all, they had to get out of the detention center before any of the other security people came around.
Leading the way to the diamond-shaped hatch that served as an entrance to that portion of the facility, he touched the bulkhead pad beside it. The hatch opened quickly and quietly, exposing a long, straight stretch of corridor.
“Not that I’m complaining,” the captain said with a glance at his companion, “but what made you decide to risk your life for a perfect stranger?”
The woman’s eyes seemed to lose their focus for a second. Then she said, “I’m a pretty good judge of character. I didn’t believe you were responsible for that bomb.”
Picard recalled the way she had spoken to him at the bar, as if she believed they had met before. Maybe that was why she was inclined to trust him—because she felt she knew him.
“Even so,” he said, “it was quite a gesture.”
The woman shrugged. “I was in a tough spot myself a while back, and someone went out on a limb for me. Let’s just say I was returning the favor.”
The captain absorbed the information. “Then, whoever helped you, I’m indebted to him—as well as to you.”
She made a sound reminiscent of amusement. “I’ll remember to thank him for you.”
The hatch at the far end of the corridor was shaped like an arch. Another bulkhead pad opened it for them, revealing a compact, well-lit room that might once have served as a lounge or a mess hall.
But now it was full of equipment—workstations, sensor readouts, and a half-dozen wall-sized banks of security monitors, displaying more than a hundred key locations throughout Steej’s section of Oblivion.
Fortunately, only two of the workstations were manned by security officers. And even more fortunately, neither of those officers looked up to see who had entered