Oblivion - Michael Jan Friedman [12]
At least, at first. And by the time one of them did, Picard had taken aim at him.
With a squeeze of his phaser’s trigger, he sent a seething red beam across the room. The officer, a human, was blasted out of his chair.
The other uniformed individual in the room, a black-and-white-striped Dedderac, whirled in his seat and drew his weapon. But Picard was too quick for him. With another squeeze of his trigger, he slammed the Dedderac into the massive bank of monitors behind him.
The captain hadn’t seen either of the officers move to sound an alarm, but he couldn’t be sure they hadn’t done so. Taking his companion’s hand, which was unexpectedly cold to the touch, he drew her through the maze of equipment.
Even though he hadn’t noticed any other security officers in the room, he remained alert for an ambush. But none materialized. He and his savior reached the exit unmolested.
Opening the diamond-shaped hatch they found there, they emerged from the detention center into a long, hangarlike space—one that had the inverted fleur-de-lis of security rendered in silver on each of its bulkheads, and a half dozen exit hatches. The place was surprisingly empty except for a single uniformed figure, who was standing in the center of the enclosure and searching himself as if he had misplaced something.
As luck would have it, the figure was Steej.
It seemed to Picard that the Rythrian hadn’t noticed him yet. That was the good news.
The bad was that Steej was a good sixty meters away, too far for Picard to trust his accuracy with an unfamiliar weapon. And if he missed, the Rythrian would be close enough to the exit on the far wall to escape—at which point he could clamp down on the captain and his benefactor with all the power at his disposal.
Gesturing for his companion to remain where she was, Picard started in Steej’s direction. He moved as quietly as he could, hoping the scrape of his footgear on the hard metal surface wouldn’t betray him.
Fifty-five meters, he thought. Fifty. Forty-five…
That was when Steej turned, moved to do so either by instinct or perception, and looked back over his shoulder. Still closing on him, the captain squeezed off a blast.
At first he thought it was going to hit its target. Then he saw it slice past the Rythrian and bury itself in the bulkhead behind him.
With a curse, Steej pulled out his weapon and fired back. But by then Picard had gone into a roll. He saw a blur of bloodred brilliance, but felt no impact—meaning his adversary had missed as well.
Capitalizing on the fact, Picard came out of his roll and unleashed another bolt. This time, he hit the Rythrian in the shoulder, spinning him about and sending his phaser flying from his hand.
Holding his shoulder, Steej tried to run. But Picard pursued him, took careful aim, and knocked the security director off his feet with a well-placed beam.
Satisfied that Steej wouldn’t be calling for help until someone found him and revived him, Picard looked to the woman in the hat. She was waiting by the entrance to the detention facility, as he had instructed her to do.
“Which way?” he asked, his voice echoing urgently throughout the enclosure.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the woman pointed to one of the hatches on her left. “That way,” she said.
Trusting that she knew what she was talking about, Picard followed her lead.
Chapter Four
ENSIGN ANDREAS NIKOLAS DIDN’T KNOW how long his friend Obal had been speaking to him before the fact finally registered in his brain.
“…an Ubarrak warship,” the Binderian said grimly. Then he looked at Nikolas, obviously expecting a reaction.
The human looked across the mess-hall table at Obal. He could have pretended that he had been paying attention, but he didn’t think he would be very convincing.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “I guess I wasn’t listening to that last part.”
Obal heaved a heartfelt sigh. “I don’t believe you were listening to the first part either, my friend. Or the middle part, for that matter.”
Nikolas stared at the platter of food on the tray in front of him. He couldn’t