Section 31_ Rogue - Andy Mangels [67]
Zweller apparently sensed something, too. Anxiously, he asked, “How is Aubin?”
“Dead,” she replied coldly, gripping her phaser hard. “And now really isn’t the best time to discuss it, Corey.”
“Admiral,” Riker said, happy to interrupt. “Since you managed to get in here, I’m assuming you also have a way of getting everyone out.”
“Right, Commander.” To Hawk, she said, “Lieutenant, signal Captain Picard. Tell him we’ve got ten to beam up.”
Hawk nodded. Tapping his combadge, he said, “Away team to Kepler.”
Riker was relieved to learn that Zweller’s gambit had paid off. The captain had indeed brought a shuttlecraft into transporter range for a lightning rescue. Riker smiled at Troi, who grinned back, evidently thinking similar thoughts.
Then Riker looked again toward Hawk and realized that something wasn’t right. The lieutenant was repeatedly tapping his combadge, which issued a burst of static before going silent.
Hawk’s eyes locked with Riker’s. “I can’t raise the Kepler.”
Riker told himself that the shuttle’s transmitter might simply have run afoul of the local weather patterns. But he knew that the combadge’s silence might also indicate that something far more serious had happened. He felt a deep chill spreading in his gut.
“Damn!” Batanides said. “Keep trying. And let’s find someplace to hide. The last thing we need now is to get captured by the Chiarosans. Or the Romulans.”
“Admiral,” Riker said. “Maybe the Romulans are exactly what we need.”
Batanides seemed to grasp his meaning. “What’s your plan, Commander?”
Hawk thought that the Chiarosans looked intimidating even when sprawled unconscious on the floor. He tried to ignore them as he adjusted his tricorder to scan for Romulan biosignatures. While Hawk worked, the admiral quickly brought Riker, Troi, and Commander Roget up-to-date, including some of the details surrounding Ambassador Tabor’s death, Captain Picard’s rescue mission, and the discovery of a Romulan cloaking field some five AUs south of the Chiaros system’s orbital plane.
When Hawk idly mentioned that the energy field the Enterprise had encountered might have been partly responsible for the Slayton’s destruction, a collective gasp went up among five of the bedraggled former hostages. Zweller, however, stood apart from his crewmates, stony-faced. Hawk wondered: Had the Section 31 agent known all along about the Slayton’s fate?
“Oh, my God,” Troi said, her dark eyes moistening as she appraised Zweller’s colleagues. “No one’s told them.” Hawk’s tricorder nearly slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers when he realized what a bombshell he had dropped on these already-shaken people.
Admiral Batanides interrupted Hawk’s unpleasant train of thought. “Are any more troops coming, Lieutenant?”
Hawk forced himself to concentrate on the business at hand. He raised the tricorder again, watching as its indicators moved slowly across the readout panel. “No, sir,” he said. “But there are definitely Romulan lifesigns here. It’s hard to tell, scanning through all this rock, but there may be as many as half a dozen of them in various parts of the complex.”
“Scan for tetryon particles,” Riker said. Without hesitation, Hawk again adjusted the tricorder and resumed scanning.
“What good will that do?” barked Gomp.
“Romulan ships are powered by quantum singularities,” Riker explained patiently, “that usually give off tetryon particles as a by-product.”
“Got it,” Hawk said, smiling triumphantly-the tricorder had indeed picked up the fingerprint of a Romulan quantum singularity drive. “And it’s located exactly where Commander Zweller’s message said the spacecraft hangars would be.”
Hawk noticed then that all eyes were upon Commander Riker, who clutched a Chiarosan pistol in his right hand. Acutely aware that they were looking to him to tell them their next move, Riker turned a questioning look on the admiral. Batanides gave him a quick nod, effectively transferring command of the mission to him.
“Mr. Zweller,