Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [194]
If someone had wished, they could have taken advantage of this situation to blow up one of the Stargazer’s shuttles without warning. In fact, they could have blown up all the shuttles.
Picard looked at the acting weapons chief. “It seems we have a saboteur on our hands.”
“That was my conclusion too, sir.”
“Do you have any idea who it might be?” the second officer asked.
Vigo shook his hairless, blue head. “No, sir. However, I believe there are ways to find out.”
“See that you pursue them,” Picard told him. “However, you must do so without letting anyone know what you’re doing. We need to keep this privileged information for the time being.”
“Yes, sir,” said the weapons officer, and left the room with a laudable sense of urgency.
Picard watched the doors to his quarters slide closed, leaving him alone again. Dropping into a chair, he heaved a sigh.
Just when he thought the dawn might be in sight, the shadowy figure of a saboteur had appeared on the horizon.
He needed to think this through, he told himself. But he was too fatigued to do so on his own. Looking up at the intercom grid in the ceiling, he called upon the one man he felt he could trust implicitly.
“Mr. Ben Zoma,” he said, “this is Commander Picard.”
“Ben Zoma here,” came the reply.
“Meet me in my quarters,” the second officer told him. “I’ve learned something you may find interesting.”
Gilaad Ben Zoma sat back in his chair and considered the problem with which his friend had presented him.
Finally, he spoke. “There were only two unknown quantities on the ship when we came up with the notion of using shuttles as tactical weapons. One of them was Jomar. The other was Serenity Santana.”
“Ms. Santana was unconscious,” Picard reminded him.
The second officer was seated on the other side of his quarters’ anteroom, a cup of hot tea resting on a table beside him. He looked as if he would much rather have gone to bed than begun unraveling a mystery.
“True,” Ben Zoma conceded. “But do you remember what you told me about her brain activity? How it remained elevated even when she was unconscious? For all we know, she could have been manipulating someone in order to sabotage that shuttle.”
The second officer tilted his head. “You mean…one of us?”
“A crewman,” Ben Zoma suggested. “You, me…anyone, really. They might not even have a recollection of having helped her.”
“On the other hand,” said Picard, “Santana has already admitted her treachery regarding the ambush. If she had used a pawn to sabotage the shuttle, why wouldn’t she have admitted that as well?”
“Good point,” Ben Zoma acknowledged. Suddenly, something occurred to him. “Unless she had two different agendas…”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What if Santana’s role in the ambush was what she claimed it was—a response to the Nuyyad’s threats—but her sabotage of the shuttle was for a different purpose entirely?”
Picard mulled it over. “That would explain why her fellow colonist didn’t think twice about bringing our attention to the altered junction.”
“On the other hand,” said Ben Zoma, arguing with his own proposition, “what could she have gained by blowing up the shuttle?”
“The same as Jomar,” said the second officer. “Nothing—except possibly the sacrifice of their own lives.”
“We’re lacking a motive,” Ben Zoma noted.
“So it would seem,” said his friend.
Ben Zoma looked at him. “You might want to confront one of them about this. Or maybe mention it to our friend Williamson. One of them is bound to tell you something interesting.”
The commander considered it. After a while, he shook his head. “I don’t think so, Gilaad. I want to identify the culprit before he or she realizes we have suspicions.”
“Then we need to keep tabs on them around the clock. Follow their every move until they slip up.”
“If you say so,” said Picard.
“I’ll volunteer to hound Jomar,” Ben Zoma offered.
“And Santana?”
“I’ll send Pug down to do that. He knows her as well as any