Three - Michael Jan Friedman [63]
If Sebring and Runj had guessed what he was up to, they were hiding it exceptionally well. Neither of them seemed to be taking any particular note of their Pandrilite colleague. They weren’t even talking. They were just sitting there, their gazes fixed on something only they could see.
Vigo forced himself to walk all the way to the wall again. Then he turned around and headed back the other way, as if he wasn’t quite satisfied yet.
If they were in Velluto’s, the manager would be ushering them out the door. Have a pleasant evening, gentlemen.
Now that it was Vigo’s third pass, the guards were showing even less interest than before. That was good, he told himself. Because if he was right, he didn’t want them any more interested than they had to be.
He consulted the chronometer. It was only a couple of seconds until the stroke of midnight.
Time, he thought.
And a moment later, the transparent barrier separating him from the corridor fizzled out.
Before either guard could react, Vigo hurtled into [189] them, slamming them into the wall behind them with bone-jarring force. Then he struck one of them square in the face with all his strength, driving him sideways to the floor.
When he whirled to face the other one, he saw that Sebring and Runj hadn’t been as oblivious as they seemed. They were pounding away at the other guard with short, vicious blows, making sure he didn’t have a chance to use his weapon on them.
A moment later, he slumped to the floor beside his comrade, a trickle of blue blood issuing from his nose. Neither of the rebels looked like he would wake up anytime soon.
And their phaser pistols lay on the floor beside them, freed from their senseless hands. Vigo snatched one up and Runj secured the other.
“Good work,” whispered Sebring, massaging his knuckles. “But how did you know the barrier was going down?”
“We’ve got a friend in Ejanix,” the Pandrilite whispered back, though he still wasn’t sure why his mentor had reversed his position.
Sebring smiled. “That guy changes sides more often than I change my uniform.”
“What now?” asked Runj.
“We free the others,” Vigo told him, and started down the corridor toward the heart of the installation.
But he hadn’t gotten far before he glanced back at their guards and thought, Have a pleasant evening, gentlemen.
One day, Picard promised himself, he would have a spacious shipboard office with room for mementos and [190] decorations—maybe even a couch for visitors. But for now, he would make do with his ready room on the Stargazer.
Sitting in front of his monitor, he studied the data that his com officer had assembled for him over the last half hour or so. Then he turned and looked over his shoulders at Ben Zoma and Wu, who were hovering over him.
“It seems Paxton was correct,” the captain said. “Our Balduk friends do appear to exhibit some rather interesting communications patterns.”
More specifically, the largest of the nine enemy ships—the vessel Picard had taken to calling the “Coordinator”—had transmitted instructions to the seven smaller ships clustered around her almost constantly.
However, the smaller ships—which he had dubbed “Satellites”—had seldom transmitted any communications of their own. And when they did it was only to acknowledge that they had received the transmissions of the Coordinator.
Furthermore, the Satellites never spoke with each other. They communicated only with the Coordinator.
Then there was the ninth ship—the one the Stargazer had initially clashed with, which Picard now thought of as the “Independent.” She communicated with neither the Coordinator nor the Satellites, but kept her own counsel.
“That they do,” Ben Zoma agreed. “And if we play our cards right, we may have an opportunity here.”
“The only question,” said Wu, “is how to exploit it. I suppose the obvious move is to try to jam the Coordinator’s messages at a critical juncture, leaving the Satellites without direction.”
[191]