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“Then I offer a compromise. We will leave this nebula, but not until you tell me how you’ve sabotaged my ship.”

The Changeling smiled with Beverly’s face, and Picard hid his revulsion. “Really, Picard. Why would I destroy this ship? You know how I feel about it.”

“You admire its form, not the ship itself. You’ve experienced that, and now you can move on without regret. You can even re-create it at your leisure. But the thing itself has no value to you once we leave the nebula. As a threat to your Dominion, with or without the shakedown logs, I believe you will not hesitate to destroy it.”

“Leave the nebula, Picard, or we all die.”

“Or you die, you mean. I will die anyway, unless you tell me what you’ve done to my ship. I have nothing at all to lose by remaining here and taking you with me.”

“Picard- “

“Decide!”

The Changling stared at him for long moments. “You’ve finally learned to think like a Changeling, Picard, much to my displeasure. There is a cloaked control device behind the main EPS conduit where it feeds the containment grid for your antimatter storage. It will shut down magnetic containment in a little less than an hour. I expected you to be well outside the nebula by then. You would have been, if you were sane.”

“How do we disable it?”

“Touching it will disable the cloaking device momentarily. There’s a numeric code to be entered on the control pad. Three-three-eight-seven-one-seven-one-oh-four-five.”

Picard touched his combadge. “Geordi, were your people monitoring that?”

“Yes, sir. I have people up there searching already.” There was a pause. “Captain, they’ve found it. The cloak was disabled just as described. They’re entering the code now.”

Picard looked at the Changeling. “If this is a trick- “

“Then we’ll all go together when we go, Picard.”

“Captain.” It was La Forge. “The device shut down and disengaged itself from the control circuitry.”

“Beam it into space immediately, just in case there’s a fail-safe.”

“I’d love to have a look at that mini-cloaking device, but yes, sir. Done.”

“Very good, Mr. La Forge. Hawk, close the trap.”

Running footsteps closed in on them from every direction. The false-Beverly glared at him. “You tricked me, Picard!”

It lashed at him, and encountered a force field. It growled, then dived toward the wall, flowing into a crack until the isolinear chip became visible through the last bit of amber liquid.

Unable to take the chip through the crack, it flowed back out, assumed the form of Linda Addision, and, glaring at him, pulled away a Jefferies tube access panel and dived inside just as armed security officers closed in from every adjoining corridor. Several of them climbed into the Jefferies tube. The others moved out along parallel corridors, doing phaser sweeps as they advanced.

One of the officers remained behind to guard Picard, and handed him a phaser rifle.

Picard took the weapon and tapped his combadge. “Mr. Hawk, the Changeling is in Jefferies tube three-seven-eight delta.” Picard didn’t wait for an answer before he started running in the direction of the transporter room.

“We’ve got visual on it, Captain. Looks like it’s changed into some kind of Klingon racing targ, which is appropriate, since we’re herding it with security teams and force fields. This close to the curve of the engineering hull, there aren’t that many places for it to go without reverting to completely liquid form and leaving the chip behind. It’s headed right for the starboard pylon, as we planned.”

Now it was up to Hawk and his teams. The warp pylon was the most restricted area of the ship, the place where they’d have the most control over what route the Changeling would take. It was in the Jefferies tubes now, but the plan was for the security teams to trap it there. It would need to either drop the chip or move to the life support duct that ran parallel to the tube, and there, it would encounter a difficulty-Picard and his security shadow entered the transporter room. La Forge and another security officer waited.

“I’ll take that chip now, Geordi.”

La Forge placed