enjoy dealing with. All right, Gart ... tell her
that she should let us know the moment that the Sindareen
start moving for their ship. Tang, I want your people
deployed--"
"Already done, sir." Tang pointed to several
different locations.
Riker looked around and smiled grimly. The
security personnel gathered in the street served
as a distraction. In the meantime, more of them had been
deployed to strategic points in
surrounding buildings, crouched on rooftops or
poised in windows. They had phasers armed and
targeted on the rooftop where the Spider perched like
an oversize predator.
"Problem is," continued Tang, "the Sindareen
may not look it, but they're pretty tough.
Phaser blasts can stop them, but not on lower
settings. Ranges that stun the Sindareen can
severely injure, even kill other
humanoids."
"Humanoids such as Betazoids," said
Riker slowly.
"Right. Which means if they bring any of the
hostages along as potential shields ..."
"You'll have to work around it, Sergeant. Alert
your marksmen to take extreme care. We're not
going to lose these raiders, under any
circumstances."
"Yes, sir. And just in case they do make it
to their ship ..." Tang gestured to one of his
security team. He was lugging a large case, and
he staggered over with it to Tang and placed it at his
feet. Tang snapped it open and Riker saw
within the case the formidable Level 10,
shoulder-mounted phaser cannon, Model II.
Tang hefted it out of the case, and Riker was
impressed again by the display of strength on the part
of the smaller man. As he had before, he patted it
affectionately and said, "Believe me,
Lieutenant ... they're not going to get away."
"That's good to hear. All right, Sergeant.
Apprise your people that we definitely have nine
Sindareen in there. I don't want any,
repeat, any shots fired until we've counted
nine of them emerging and approaching the ship. As
soon as the last one is out, which means the hostages
are unguarded--start firing. If they manage
to get airborne, I'll be counting on you to bring
them down. I do not," he reiterated, "want
to see them get away. We're going to be sending
a message to them and all of their kind, and we're
sending it now."
"Understood, Lieutenant."
"Good. Oh ... and watch your aim,
Sergeant," Riker cautioned. "You miss them and
hit the Betazed moon, and we'd have a problem on
our hands."
"I won't miss, Lieutenant. Count on
it."
The cases were loaded and the other Sindareen were
bringing them up toward the roof. Maror stood in
front of the Betazoids, studying them
appraisingly for a moment.
"As charming as this has been," he said, "we
really have to take leave of you now. However ...
it's my concern that the Federation men might decide
to give us problems upon our departure. And so, just
for some added protection, I'd like one of you
to accompany me. Ideally, I'd bring all of you
... but our ship is small, and we're heavily
loaded already. So it's going to have to be one. Now,
let's see ..." He scanned them briefly,
and then, tucking his weapon under one arm, he said
firmly, "y. You're wounded anyway, so you
won't give any trouble." And he reached for
Chandra.
"ationo! Leave her alone!" shouted Deanna
as Maror grabbed the frantic Chandra by the arm.
Deanna leaped forward, her fingernails raking
across Maror's face, and Maror howled in fury
as lines of blood welled up on his pale
cheek. His face contorted with rage, he hurled
Chandra to the parquet floor, and her head cracked
with explosive force against it.
Deanna instinctively turned toward her friend,
but Maror grabbed her and swung her around. He
yanked her forward and snarled in her face, "You
know, I thought you had nerve. And intelligence. Out
of respect for that, I was going to leave you be. But
you weren't intelligent enough to know when you were getting
... it's going to be you."
Xerx actually gasped in fright and staggered
slightly. Riker put a hand behind him to steady him
and was almost afraid to ask what had happened.
He didn't have to ask as Xerx said, "I've
lost contact. Chandra's unconscious." Riker
waited for Xerx to pull himself together sufficiently
to provide more information, and Xerx did so. "There was
something ... they--the Sindareen--were going to take
one of the hostages with them. For a shield. And they were
taking Chandra. And she struggled and fell ... and
now I have no sense of her. Lieutenant ..."
And there was pure terror in his voice.
Tang's comm unit crackled to life. "This
is Sommers at Gamma Point," snapped a
voice. "I have a visual. They're coming out,
sir!"
"All units are to wait for my signal!"
barked Tang. "Repeat, not a shot is to be
fired until you have the clearance from central command!"
He looked to Riker. "You're the CO,
Lieutenant. Gonna be your call."
"We stick with the plan. When all nine are
exposed, we open fire," said Riker firmly.
"My daughter! Gods, Lieutenant ... you
can't shoot my child!"
"They'll shoot clear of her, Gart," Riker
said, looking to Tang for confirmation.
Tang nodded his head in agreement. Then from his
supplies belt, he removed a small pair
of electronic sensor binos and, putting them
to his eyes, studied the rooftop.
"Get me one of those," ordered Riker.
"Binos for the lieutenant!" snapped Tang,
not removing his gaze from the rooftop. Moments
later, Hirsch reappeared and handed a pair of the
instruments to Riker. Now he had the roof under
close scrutiny as well.
At first there was no movement at all, andfora
moment Riker toyed with the notion that this was all some
sort of scam--t, in fact, another means of
escape was all set up, and the ship was simply
there as a distraction. But then he saw the door to the
roof slide open and the first of the Sindareen appeared
--two of them, lugging a large crate between them.
"Hold fire," said Riker softly, and the
order was repeated by Tang. It wasn't necessary,
really. Everyone knew what their orders were and what
they were supposed to do.
There was an eerie silence over the area. When
Tang had been in similar situations, the buzz
of the crowd was positively deafening, and sometimes
came close to interfering with the job. Whatever was
going through the minds and hearts of the Betazoids, they
were having the exquisite courtesy to do it
quietly.
More of the Sindareen appeared, lugging more crates.
Riker counted them off softly to himself ... five
... six ... and then he said, "Have we got them
targeted, Tang?"
"Target report," said Tang into his comm
unit.
"Alpha Point, target acquired," came
the first reply. The snipers had chosen their
targets in order of appearance based on their
designation: Alpha took the first target
to appear, Beta took the second, and so
on.
One by one the rest of the snipers reported in.
All of them had targets in their sights.
Eight of the Sindareen had made themselves visible.
Riker muttered a low curse. The lead two were
approaching the confines of the ship. Sure enough, a
second later one of the snipers reported, "This
is Alpha Point. About to lose target
acquisition. Awaiting instructions."
Riker could envision the finger of the sniper, poised
over the trigger. He wanted to give the order
to cut loose, and he could feel Tang's gaze
upon him. But there was no way that he could give the
clearance ... not when the ninth raider was still
unaccounted for.
Then there was more movement, and the final member of the
Sindareen raiding party made his appearance.
In his right hand, he was cradling a blaster. His
head was turning slowly, clearly trying to spot
whatever Federation people might be trying to target him.
His left arm was curled around the throat of a
woman.
"Deanna," breathed Riker.
He zoomed in on her face. Her jaw was
set, her eyes unblinking. If she was afraid,
she was making a great show of keeping her feelings
to herself.
"That's nine," said Tang.
"Lieutenant--?"
"They have a hostage," Riker said tonelessly.
"I know that, sir."
Riker was silent. "Who's your best
marksman?"
Tang anticipated the request and tapped his
comm unit. "Sommers. Shift target to the
Sindareen in the rear. Lorie, pick up
Gamma's target."
"Acquired," came Lorie's voice from
Alpha Point.
This was immediately followed by Sommers saying,
"Got him in my sights."
"Clear shot?"
"Negative," replied Sommers, "repeat,
that's a negative. Target's moving too much."
Riker saw immediately that Sommers was correct.
Maror was too experienced at this. He kept
shifting his position, swinging Deanna around so that
she was constantly in the way.
Riker pressed the binos so hard against his eyes
that he thought they were going to come out the back
of his head. He knew what he should do. The vast
majority of the hostages were already in the clear.
Only one was left ... one who might still
survive if everything fell right. But if they
made no move, then the raiders would escape, and
more people would pay down the line.
Deanna, he thought bleakly.
At that moment, Deanna was swung directly
into Riker's sight line ...
And she looked straight at him. Straight and
proud and unafraid.
Two ^ws rang in his head.
I understand.
"Take them," said Riker.
"Take 'em," Tang ordered. "Take
'em."
Deanna flinched.
From all around, phasers blasted outward,
enveloping the surprised Sindareen in coronas of
energy. Several staggered and went down. One of them
managed to survive the blasts and tumbled into the
ship.
Sommers missed Maror. Deanna's
instinctive, uncontrollable shiver,
anticipating the barrage that was about to occur, had
been enough to warn the Sindareen leader that something was about
to happen. As a result he'd dropped to a
crouch, dragging Deanna down with him. Sommers
had been aiming high anyway, banking on
Maror's exposing his head for the brief moment that
Sommers would need. But it didn't happen, and
now Maror dashed for the ship, dragging Deanna with
him. The marksmen shot around him, steering clear of the
trapped Betazoid.
For a split instant, Maror's back was
exposed, and Sommers fired. The high-power
phaser beam, which would have severely burned and
possibly even crushed Deanna Troi,
staggered Maror. It caused him to stumble forward,
almost falling atop his prisoner, but then he
recovered and reached the inside of the ship, shoving
Deanna inside ahead of him. The hatch
rampway closed, with several crates of
Betazoid art treasures--along with five of the
Sindareen--left lying on the rooftop.
"Dammit!" shouted Riker. "Dammit!" It
was a totally un-Starfleet response. It was
also understandable.
With a roar of impulse engines, the Spider
swayed into the air. Obviously whoever was
piloting the ship was doing so in a god-awful
hurry, not taking time to engage in proper
navigational procedures, but instead concentrating
only on getting the hell out of there.
Riker didn't even have to look behind him to know
what Tang was doing. The hard-bitten sergeant
had swung the phaser cannon onto his shoulder and
activated it. "Can you bring them down?" said
Riker without turning.
"I can blow them out of the sky. Quick and fast."
"Can you cripple them?"
"Trickier. Not as sure. And," Tang added
quietly, "there's no guarantee she'll
survive the crash. You may not be doing her any
favors."
"I know."
The Spider had now gained the skies and was
heading west, angling upward. In a moment it would
pick up even greater speed and hurl itself far, far
away from Betazed.
"Cripple them," said Riker.
Tang made an adjustment on the power and
fired.
The intensity of the phaser blast was beyond anything
Riker had ever experienced directly. The air
crackled around him, and he thought he was going
to choke.
The blast took out the starboard engine and the
navigational instrumentation of the Spider. The ship
lurched wildly, tried to regain control, and
failed. It spiraled downward, leaving a trail
of thick black smoke behind it miles long.
"Where's it going to come down?" said Riker
tonelessly.
"Judging from the speed and trajectory,"
Tang replied, "somewhere in the region known as the
Jalara Jungle."
There was silence for a moment, and then Gart Xerx
said, "If she makes it through the crash, she has
a good chance. The jungle has its dangers ...
mud pits and such ... but there are few really
dangerous animals to contend with."
Riker turned and stared at him. "You're
forgetting the most dangerous animals. They're the
ones steering the ship."
CHAPTER 25
Maror didn't know what he was running from, or
what he was running to.
No. That wasn't precisely right. He
knew what he was running to. He was running
straight to hell. But if there was one thing of which he
was resolved, it was that he was going to take the
damned Betazoid woman with him.
She sat on a rock nearby, and to his
frustration she looked exactly as she had the day
before, and the day before that. Even though her clothes were
ripped and dirty, her face filthy, her hair
hanging in stringy ringlets that had lost all their
bounce in the moisture of the jungle. Even with her
shoes gone, her prospects slim.
Still, she had composure.
He couldn't take it anymore. He wanted
her to be like other women he had captured. He
wanted her to beg or plead. He wanted her
to whimper or moan. He wanted her to ...
to something.
He swung his gun up and aimed at her.
"Ask for your life."
With a small shrug of her slim shoulders, she
said evenly, "Please do not kill me."
He stared at her in disbelief. "You call that
begging?"
"No. I call that asking. To be honest, it's
pointless. You'll kill me or not. I can't stop
you. Begging will demean me and accomplish nothing.
I see no advantage to it, and I won't do
it."
With a roar of unbridled fury, he stalked
over to her and grabbed her by the back of her head.
He yanked down hard, and the angle in which he
pulled her skull made her mouth open
involuntarily. He shoved the barrel of the gun
into her mouth, angling it so that the ray blast would be
certain to blow her brain up through the top of her
skull.
"I said beg," he repeated.
Her eyes rolled up to regard him for the
briefest of moments, and then up into the top of her
head. Her breathing slowed, and her entire body
went limp.
For an instant he thought she'd passed out, but
then he realized what she had done. She'd put
herself into a trance, or into some sort of deep
meditative state. When she was like that,
nothing he could say or do would bring her out of it
until she was ready to be brought out. He could blow
her brains out and she would never know or feel it.
So there he was, feeling like something of a fool.
You couldn't threaten someone who wasn't aware of