Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [113]
He should have known she’d try something like this, the security chief told himself. He should have known.
He scowled. Asmund could be anywhere on the Enterprise now. Absolutely anywhere. He had no choice but to have his people comb the ship for her, inch by inch.
And Morgen…he had to contact the Daa’Vit, alert him to—
“Lieutenant Worf?”
The Klingon turned at the sound of his name. He was a little startled to see Morgen standing there, casting a curious eye over the proceedings.
“Is something wrong?” the Daa’Vit asked innocently.
Worf’s scowl deepened. “That,” he growled, “is one way of putting it.”
The bleeding from her temple had stopped, but Asmund’s head hurt mercilessly. Taking a deep breath, she leaned back against the cargo container and tried to put her thoughts in order.
By now, she thought, they would have found the communicator in the turbolift. And begun the search in earnest.
But it was too late. Avoiding the use of the lifts completely, she’d found an entrance to the cargo bays on Deck Thirty-eight and slipped inside.
Fortunately, the bay’s manifest had told her it had the kind of cargo she needed. And the Enterprise crew had been every bit as efficient as it was reputed to be; the dolacite containers she sought were all in their proper locations.
Used extensively these days to line the insides of warp nacelles, dolacite was the only substance routinely carried on Federation starships that could foil internal sensor systems. By hiding among containers full of the stuff, Asmund had effectively rendered herself invisible to the ship’s internal security systems.
She glanced at the phaser in her lap. Picking it up, she felt its reassuring heft.
Under other circumstances, it might have been a liability to her. After all, every phaser was hooked in with the ship’s computer—to prevent the use of power levels at which a random blast could punch through a hull wall. And with that kind of hookup, it wasn’t all that difficult to scan the Enterprise for phaser locations—there were only a few dozen of them on board.
It was certainly a lot easier than trying to find a single human bio-profile among a mostly-human population of more than a thousand individuals.
But the dolacite protected her from that kind of detection as well. Which was a good thing. She needed the phaser.
You’ve bought yourself some time, she mused. You’d better put it to good use.
If only her head didn’t hurt so much.
All in all, Beverly decided, they’d been pretty fortunate. Not only had Simenon’s strategy gotten them out of the slipstream, but they had avoided any truly serious injuries. The worst was a compound fracture of the leg, suffered by a man named Starros—one of the security officers who had been watching Idun Asmund. Nor had sickbay sustained any damage; there wasn’t even a tricorder out of place.
Of course, Asmund had escaped in the course of the beating the ship had taken. And according to Worf, she was armed with a phaser and dangerous as hell.
But so what? They were also in Romulan space, in peril of being blasted to atoms or—if Fate was kind—merely becoming prisoners of the Empire.
Somewhere along the line, the doctor had decided it wasn’t worth getting scared. And so, when the last of those injured in the attempt to break free of the slipstream had been treated, she’d decided to return to her cabin, and enjoy some much-needed rest.
As soon as she stepped out of the lift, Beverly noted the beefed-up security presence in the vicinity of her door. She asked what it was about.
“Lieutenant Worf’s orders,” one of the officers on duty replied.
“I see. Then you’ve got squads like these by the captain’s quarters as well? And Commander Riker’s?”
“In every occupied residential corridor, Doctor.”
Crusher nodded. “Good,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to be singled out for special treatment or anything.”
The security officer looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t mind me,” the doctor told her. “I’m just asserting my right to be in as