Stargazer Oblivion Read online

  Nikolas stared at the platter of food on the tray in front of him. He couldn’t even remember what it was that he had ordered. All he knew was that it didn’t appeal to him anymore, if indeed it ever had.

  “Maybe not,” he conceded.

  “I was telling you what happened to the Yeager,” said Obal, “and how she barely survived her encounter with the Ubarrak near Turion Prime.”

  “Right,” said Nikolas, doing his best to work up some enthusiasm for his best friend’s sake—and failing miserably.

  Obal’s eyes screwed up as if he were trying to look into the human instead of at him. “If you like, we can talk about something else.”

  Nikolas knew what his friend was trying to do—the same thing he had been trying to do for weeks now. But it hadn’t worked in all that time, and there was no reason for Obal to believe it was going to work now.

  Still, he wasn’t going to stop. That much seemed clear. Obal could be pretty stubborn when he wanted to be, especially when it came to what he perceived as Nikolas’s welfare.

  “I can’t think of anything I really want to talk about,” Nikolas said, wincing at how bitter and self-centered he sounded. He glanced at his friend. “Sorry, but…” He shrugged.

  “It’s all right,” said Obal. “I understand.”

  No, thought Nikolas, you don’t.

  How could he? Obal hadn’t seen the woman he cared about vanish in a column of light, transported not just off the ship but to a completely different reality.

  A reality he would have made his own, if she had let him. But she had come to Nikolas’s universe on a mission, and she had refused to abandon it—no matter how sorely she might have been tempted to do so.

  And now Nikolas would never see her again.

  Obal leaned closer to him. “I know it is painful, my friend. But it does you no good to pine for Gerda Idun. You must put her behind you. You must move on.”

  Easy enough to say, Nikolas thought. Impossible to do—at least for me.

  Gerda Idun had shown up unannounced on their transporter pad, the apparent victim of a transporter screwup. Nikolas hadn’t seen it, but he had seen her.

  She was a dead ringer for Gerda and Idun, the human twins who served at helm and navigation on the Stargazer’s bridge. And yet, she was so different from either one of them.

  Gerda and Idun had been raised by Klingons, but that wasn’t the case with Gerda Idun. As a result, she was easier to read and to get along with. And before he knew it, Nikolas had fallen in love with her.

  Then it turned out that her arrival on the transporter pad hadn’t been an accident after all. She had been dispatched to Nikolas’s universe to abduct the Stargazer’s chief engineer, Phigus Simenon, in the hope of shoring up a rebel cause in Gerda Idun’s universe.

  Thanks to Nikolas and then Gerda, the abduction never came off. Gerda Idun was sent back to her comrades painfully empty-handed—but no more so than Nikolas, who lost the only woman he had ever loved.

  Worse, Gerda and Idun still lived and worked on the Stargazer. Every time Nikolas ran into one of them, it reminded him of what might have been.

  It stinks, he told himself. He had no appetite. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even rest without thinking of Gerda Idun. And he didn’t know how much more he could take of it.

  “You need to be alert,” said Obal, breaking into Nikolas’s thoughts, “if you’re to receive the promotion that the captain spoke of.”

  Picard had mentioned such a possibility. At the time, Nikolas had considered it the best thing that could possibly have happened to him.

  Funny. He even remembered the words the captain had used—or most of them.

  “I would take special care to avoid physical conflicts with your colleagues, whether they start in anger or not. It would be a shame to mar what is becoming a most compelling case for promotion.”

  But that was before Nikolas saw Gerda Idun disappear on that transporter pad. Now he didn’t give a damn if he got a promotion or not. The whole thing was an abstraction, hardly worth thinking about.

  Besides, he had disobeyed Picard’s orders. He had gone to the transporter room when Gerda Idun was scheduled to leave, instead of reporting to his assignment in engineering.

  The captain hadn’t seen fit to take him to task for it, perhaps because Nikolas had fortuitously had a hand in thwarting Gerda Idun. Still, he doubted that the incident would count in his favor.

  The ensign shook his head. “I don’t think I’m hungry anymore,” he told Obal. Then he got up, lifted his tray off the table, and started for the matter-recycling bin.

  Too late, Nikolas saw a flash of scarlet uniform. Before he knew it, his meal—whatever it had been—was decorating the front of his tunic.

  And a tall, broad-shouldered Bolian, who had been adorned with the steaming contents of his own tray, was standing there glowering at him with angry black eyes.

  Nikolas knew the guy. His name was Hanta. He worked in the science section under Lieutenant Kastiigan.

  Hanta was known for having something of a temper—a rare quality in a Bolian. To that point, Nikolas had never considered it a problem.

  But it became one when Hanta uttered a curse in his native tongue and shoved Nikolas backward into another crewman, who was in turn knocked halfway off his chair.

  Nikolas felt the hot rush of anger flood his face. He could have tried to quell it, subdue it—but he didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was shove Hanta’s curses back down his throat.

  His teeth clenched, Nikolas got his feet underneath him and launched himself forward again. Then he drove his fist into the Bolian’s bifurcated face.

  Hanta staggered back a couple of steps, and bellowed with rage and surprise. But before he could strike back, Nikolas came at him and hit him again, snapping his head around.

  And the ensign would have landed a third blow if someone hadn’t grabbed his wrist and held it back. Before he knew it, he was being borne to the floor by his crewmates, despite his demands that they release him.

  “Nikolas,” said a familiar voice, “please stop struggling. There is no need to fight.”

  The ensign turned and saw Obal looking down at him, his expression one big plea for reason. And with a deep, shuddering breath, Nikolas felt the fight start to go out of him.

  “It’s all right,” he said, his voice sounding distant, like someone else’s. “You can let me up now.”

  “You sure?” someone asked.

  “I’m sure,” he breathed.

  Little by little, he felt the weight lift off him. He got up on one knee and saw that Hanta was being let up as well. The Bolian’s nose was leaking dark blood.

  And his eyes were still full of fury. But then, he hadn’t managed to get a blow in.

  Nikolas felt a little pang of satisfaction as he realized he had finally won a fight on the Stargazer. But it went away when he saw a trio of security officers crossing the room, headed in his direction.

  “What’s going on here?” asked Pug Joseph, the sandy-haired acting chief of security.

  “Nikolas attacked me,” said Hanta, in a tone that could have cut duranium.

  Joseph turned to the ensign. “Well?”

  Nikolas didn’t feel compelled to offer a counter argument. What was the point? Whether he was justified or not, he had gotten into a fight.

  And it would cost him. He could hear the captain’s words all over again, but this time they had an ominous ring to them. I would take special care to avoid physical conflicts with your colleagues….

  “I’m waiting,” said Joseph, a more patient man than most.

  Nikolas shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Joseph’s eyes narrowed. “If that’s your statement, I’ll put it in my report.”

  Nikolas didn’t object.

  Frowning, Joseph took stock of the place. “I’d clean this up if I were you,” he told the combatants. Then he led his security officers out of the mess hall.

  As Nikolas bent
to pick up the debris of his meal, he saw Obal kneel beside him. The Binderian glanced at him with disappointment etched in his features.

  After all, Nikolas’s chances of a promotion had just diminished to less than nothing. He and his fists had quite effectively seen to that.

  Picard had hoped that his newfound companion might know Oblivion better than he did. As it turned out, she knew the place a lot better.

  It was a good thing, too. As they made their way from hulk to increasingly obscure and dilapidated hulk, the captain saw a number of Steej’s blue-and-black security officers, all of them clearly on the prowl for someone.

  But Picard always found himself looking at them through the cluttered window of a curio shop or the translucent EM barrier protecting an exotic liquor emporium. One way or the other, they eluded the Rythrian’s dragnet.

  Sometimes it required the exertion of a dash from one place to another. Sometimes they had to move so slowly and carefully that it seemed they would never get anywhere.

  Finally, Picard’s companion guided him to a stark-looking hatch with a yellow sign plastered across it. The captain could read only one of the languages in which the sign forbade entrance to the derelict beyond it.

  Ignoring the sign, the woman in the hat punched a code into the pad that had been installed beside the door. As it slid open for her, she said, “Come on.”

  Then she led the way through a poorly lit but otherwise unremarkable airlock to another hatch, which didn’t seem to have been secured the same way. That one opened at their approach, revealing a large space that wasn’t illuminated any better than the airlock.

  It was deserted except for an army of squat, gray containers, perhaps twenty of them sitting on a black metal superstructure while several times that number were scattered about the deck. A warehouse, Picard thought, though he couldn’t have said what was being stored there.

  Not that it mattered. They needed a place to catch their breath and plan their next move, and his companion had obviously found them one.

  As Picard followed the woman inside, habit compelled him to identify the structure’s origin. Mathenite, he guessed. Or perhaps Pygorian. Both species designed their cargo holds with exposed energy conduits.

  As the hatch slid closed behind Picard, his companion wove her way to a place behind a flock of stacked containers and sat down with her back against one of them. Then she gestured for the captain to do the same.

  He did as she suggested. Then he took out his “borrowed” phaser and checked its charge. Apparently, the device still had plenty of energy left—though, obviously, the captain hoped he wouldn’t need to use it.

  The woman took a deep breath, then closed her eyes and let it out. Clearly, their flight from the authorities had worn her out. But then, Picard reflected, any effort was exhausting when a person was carrying a burden to begin with.

  And she was most certainly carrying a burden. He just couldn’t say what it was.

  “What is this place?” he whispered.

  His companion opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him. “It was last used as a warehouse. But at the moment, it’s…between owners.”

  The captain looked around. “These containers must have been worth something. I’m surprised the last owner didn’t take them with him.”

  “He probably would have, if he were still alive. Unfortunately, he owed someone a little too much for a little too long.”

  “Then why didn’t that someone seize the containers?”

  “Security got to him first.”

  Picard nodded. “I see.” As he regarded the woman, something occurred to him. “If I may ask, how did you know the code to get in here?”

  She looked away from him, her eyes glinting with reflected light. “People talk. I listen.”

  He smiled. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” she confirmed.

  Whether his companion was embellishing the truth or not, Picard was grateful to her. “I’m just glad you didn’t listen to that Yridian when he accused me of setting off that bomb.”

  “You have to know whom to listen to,” she noted.

  Something occurred to him. “If you were so certain of my innocence, why not simply dispute the Yridian’s account? It could have simplified the situation immensely.”

  “Because I know the security forces on Oblivion,” the woman said. “It’s more important to them to blame someone than to make sure it’s the right someone. Believe me, my account would have fallen on deaf ears.”

  “So now,” said the captain, “they’re after two someones.”

  She looked at him, the slightest, pale hint of amusement in her eyes. “I thought misery loved company.”

  Picard had to smile at her counter. “It does. But in this case, it wishes it could have escaped without embroiling someone else in my troubles.”

  “Don’t worry,” his companion told him. “As I said, I’ve been in trouble before.”

  He believed her. Despite the mildness of her manners, she had made quick work of his guard, suggesting that it wasn’t the first time she had clunked someone over the head.

  “How long do you propose we stay here?” the captain asked.

  The woman shrugged. “Until I think of somewhere else to go, I suppose.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Are you in a hurry?”

  “I have to find someone,” he explained. He weighed how much to tell her. “I was supposed to meet him in the plaza, and then that bomb went off.”

  She frowned. “We can worry about that tomorrow, after we’ve gotten some rest.”

  Picard didn’t like the idea of waiting that long, but he had to admit that it made sense to lie low. And he was in need of some sleep.

  “As you say,” he told his companion.

  “By the way,” she added, “I’ll be sleeping here. You’ll want to sleep over there.” She jerked her thumb at a spot on the other side of some containers.

  The captain smiled at her sense of propriety. “Of course. I mean, I hope you don’t think—”

  “Thinking’s got nothing to do with it,” she told him, clearly intending to terminate the conversation.

  Picard chuckled to himself. Quite a character, this—

  It was then that he realized he didn’t know his benefactor’s name. It was an oversight he felt compelled to correct.

  But to find out her name, he would be obliged to offer his own—and as much as she deserved his trust, there was too much at stake for him to confide the truth in her.

  “Incidentally,” he said, “my name’s Dixon Hill.”

  The security guards already knew him that way. Why weave a more tangled web than he had to?

  “Hill,” she echoed.

  A smile seemed to play around the corners of her mouth. For a moment, Picard wondered if he’d had the bad luck to run into a scholar of twentieth-century detective fiction out here, past the bounds of Federation space—though the odds against that were absurdly long.

  “You’ve heard the name before?” he asked innocently.

  Abruptly, even that suggestion of a smile vanished. “No,” she told him. “It sounded familiar for a second, but…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes lost their focus again.

  The captain said, “And you?”

  The woman turned to him. “Guinan.”

  “Guinan…?” he said, fishing for a last name.

  She seemed to consider her response for a long time. Finally she said, in a thin and colorless voice, “Just Guinan.”

  Chapter Five

  LIEUTENANT ULELO, THE NEWCOMER in the Stargazer’s communications section, allowed himself to be ushered down the corridor that led to the ship’s observation lounge.

  “Come on,” said Emily Bender. “It’s supposed to start any minute now.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ulelo told her. “They’ll wait for us. They always do.”

  When he and Emily Bender met, shortly after his arrival on the Stargazer, she claimed to have known Ulelo at Starfleet Academy. U
lelo had no recollection of such a thing. But then, he didn’t remember anything that far back.

  In fact, the only thing Ulelo recalled with crystal clarity was his mission. His secret mission. And the only way he could carry it out was to avoid distractions like Emily Bender.

  As a result, he had tried his best to do that. He had told her he didn’t remember her. He had rebuffed her less-than-subtle suggestion that they start an intimate relationship.

  But then, through a series of circumstances Ulelo still didn’t quite understand, Emily Bender had become his friend—not his lover, as she had originally intended, but someone close to him nonetheless.

  And mission or no mission, the com officer had become accustomed to that friendship—not to mention the circle of acquaintances it brought with it, most of whom were at that very moment waiting for him to join them.

  As soon as Ulelo and his companion arrived at the door to the lounge, Emily Bender tapped the metal plate located beside it. Immediately, the door slid aside, revealing the half-dozen crew people seated around the room’s black oval table.

  As Ulelo scanned their faces, he identified each of them in his mind. Pfeffer, a lieutenant in the security section. Kochman, the junior navigation officer. Ensign Kotsakos. Transporter operator Vandermeer. Iulus and Urajel, both currently assigned to engineering.

  “Well,” said Iulus as Ulelo and Bender took the only empty seats in the room, “look who’s here. We thought we were going to have to send a search party out for you.”

  “That’s right,” said Kotsakos, a slender woman with black hair drawn into a bun. “If we have to listen to Sulak’s Concerto for Harp and Flute, you have to listen to it too.”

  That got a laugh from the group.

  “I was detained in the science section,” Emily Bender explained, “running extra diagnostics to get ready for the anomaly. And Ulelo was kind enough to wait for me.”

  “Quite the gentleman, that Ulelo,” said Vandermeer.

  Again, everyone laughed. But it wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was gentle, the kind of laugh shared by comrades.

  “Hey,” said Pfeffer, a stocky, blond-haired woman, “the gang’s all here. What are we waiting for?”