Star Trek: TNG: Cold Equations II: Silent Weapons (25 page)

Worf’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Because we have a lock on a thorium trace inside the capital—and it’s moving. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I think we’ve found our suspect.”

Without delay, Worf snapped, “Three to transport! Energize!”

•   •   •

It was a wall of bodies, a slow and shuffling mass of humanoids twenty people wide stretching for blocks, and no matter how aggressively La Forge shouldered through them, he felt as if he were pushing against the ocean, struggling to get ahead of the current.

He thought he heard Worf’s voice over his combadge, but the street noise was overwhelming. Hovercar traffic zoomed past high overhead, the humming of their magnetic drives rising and falling, working definitions of the Doppler effect. Advertisements in the garish, neon-lit storefront windows of the capital’s Center City district blared trite slogans and music that was blatantly manipulative and designed to haunt the memory. La Forge cringed and fought to ignore them—which only made him all the more aware of them, and drove the infectious melodies into his brain. Thousands of walking feet would have filled the night with the close thunder of footfalls under the best of conditions, but on the rain-slicked pavement, each step resounded with a wet slap of contact, so that the throng carried the patter of rain with them.

Chen’s voice squawked from his combadge and pierced the gray noise of the street. “Enterprise
to La Forge! Do you see the suspect?”

“Not yet.” He adjusted his cybernetic eyes’ sensitivity to alpha-particle emissions specific to the wavelength of thorium-229. His ability to perceive the telltale isotope had been Worf’s reason for putting him on point as they sought to identify and capture the suspect. But either by chance or by design, their quarry had taken refuge among the masses, using their sheer numbers as a shield. He grew frustrated. “
Enterprise,
how close am I?”

The first reply was lost in the clamor of voices and a banshee wail set to power chords promoting some new holosuite thriller program. La Forge covered his right ear and shouted, “Say again,
Enterprise
!” He listened closely, his uncovered left ear turned toward his combadge.

“About five-point-one meters, bearing zero-zero-six off your present heading.”

Eyes locked in the direction Chen had indicated, La Forge slalomed through the crowd, mumbling “sorry” and “excuse me” over and over as he hip-checked one person after another out of his path. Two huge aliens of a species he had never seen before refused to be parted, forcing him to detour wide around them. As he cut in front of the pair, he collided with another person.

She looked up at him from within the deep cowl that had hidden her face.

It was the doppelgänger of Esperanza Piñiero. The duplicate of the dead chief of staff was perfect in every detail save the cosmetic damage wrought by Wexler’s phaser to the bioplast sheeting on her throat. La Forge looked her over in a glance and saw thorium-229 alpha particles escaping from radioactive smears on her shoes.

Then he saw red, a split second before he doubled over from the pain of being punched in the face, gut, and groin, all in the span of a second. Winded and nauseated, he swatted his combadge. “La Forge to away team! She’s running! And she still looks like Piñiero!”

Rapid chatter filled the channel, but over the shouts and alarums spreading through the crowd, La Forge couldn’t tell what any of his shipmates was saying. He forced himself into motion, following the path of least resistance—the swath the escaping android had cut through the knots of aimlessly drifting pedestrians moving between the theater district and the row of tourist hotels lining the city’s central traffic artery.

In the spreading tumult, he heard disruptor fire, followed by screaming. Moments later he hurdled over fallen civilians, some wounded, some dead, all unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire between the android and the Gorn imperial guard she had killed.

More noise from his combadge. He caught only the end of Chen’s update.
“—bearing zero-seven-two off your current heading!”
Turning to his right, he saw the main entrance to a towering, ultramodern tourist hotel, the Sahalax Grand Oasis. More than a dozen people had been knocked to the ground near the fountain in front of the luxury tower, and the hotel’s doormen and bellhops were scrambling to provide assistance.
Looks like our suspect’s handiwork.

Disregarding propriety or risk, La Forge barreled through the gawkers and rubberneckers between himself and the hotel’s entrance. He looked left and right, then struggled to see through the dark smoked-glass windows into the lobby. “
Enterprise,
is she in the hotel? I don’t see her.”

“Same bearing, but range is opening fast. She’s gaining altitude!”

Altitude?
La Forge looked up.

Built into the glass-paneled façade of the hotel were a half-dozen glass-walled elevator pods, conveyances for those who loved scenic views of the capital’s stunning cityscape. Two were stationary, two were descending, and two were ascending. He focused on the closer of the two climbing pods and increased his eyes’ magnification to five times normal.

The doppelgänger was inside the pod. She looked down at him, teased him with a smirk, and waved with a coy waggling of her fingers.

La Forge drew his phaser from under his jacket, aimed, and fired.

His weapon’s brilliant vermillion beam struck the bottom of the elevator pod. A fiery blast erupted from the point of impact, and the lower half of the pod disintegrated.

The android started to fall, then she caught a handrail inside the lift pod.

He fired again, and this time the beam slammed into the android’s gut. Light flared as she was knocked loose, and then she fell, tumbling out of control as she plummeted to the street.

Civilians screamed and scattered as the android’s body fell. Several dozen meters above the ground, she bounced off a protruding portion of the hotel’s sign. Her scorched, limp form cartwheeled erratically into the fountain outside the hotel’s entrance. The water in the fountain was far too shallow to offer any kind of cushion, and the body landed with a loud splash, a sickening thud, and an ear-splitting crack.

La Forge saw that he had become the focal point for a couple of hundred bystanders, all of whom watched fearfully to see what he would do next. He tucked his phaser under his jacket and hurried to check on the fallen android. As he leaned over the edge of the fountain to get a better look at the body, a crimson flash of light behind its eyes was accompanied by a muffled pop of detonation. Then black wisps of smoke snaked out of the stricken android’s ears, nostrils, and slack mouth. He frowned; he recognized when someone was covering their tracks.

He heard Worf before he saw him. “Excuse me. Stand aside.
Move
.” The Klingon shouldered his way out of the crowd, and Šmrhová was close behind him. They jogged to La Forge’s side and eyed the sparking, smoldering synthetic corpse in the water. Worf put away his phaser and looked at La Forge. “Nice shot.”

“Thanks.” Sirens wailed in the night, distant but swiftly getting closer. “Now what?”

Worf stepped over the fountain’s outer wall and waded out to the body. He waved for Šmrhová and La Forge to join him. “Quickly!” They did as he said, and plodded shin-deep through the ice-cold chlorinated water. When they had surrounded the android, the first officer tapped his combadge. “Worf to
Enterprise
. Four to beam up. Energize when ready.”

“Acknowledged,”
Chen replied.
“Stand by, sir.”

Šmrhová shot a surprised look at Worf. “Removing evidence from a crime scene? I don’t think the Orions are gonna like that, do you?”

The air filled with the musical hum of an imminent transporter effect, and Worf shot a devious look at the security chief. “It is easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.”

18

Bleary and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Nanietta Bacco sat down at the desk in her bedroom and activated the comm display. A vivid image of Captain Picard appeared, and the venerated starship captain greeted her with a polite smile and a curt nod.
“Madam President.”

“I was told this is urgent, Captain. Urgent enough to merit waking me up?”

Picard’s mien turned serious.
“Yes, I believe so. I wanted to inform you of several important developments in our investigation of the attack in the arboretum.”
Icons on the screen indicated that he had transferred data files to her.
“The body of Esperanza Piñiero was discovered a few hours ago, in an abandoned building within one of the capital’s less wholesome districts. An autopsy supervised by my chief medical officer, and verified by the chief surgeon of the
Hastur-zolis
and the Orion medical examiner, has proved that Ms. Piñiero was murdered prior to the attack. Her body was held in stasis and then planted for us to find. In short, she was framed, Madam President, and now we know how.”

Speaking succinctly and directly, Picard summarized how his crew had come to suspect the shooter in the arboretum was an android, and the process by which their investigation had led to the discovery of Piñiero’s android impostor.

“Has that android been captured, Captain?”

“Yes, she has, by my chief engineer, Commander La Forge. Thanks to my first officer, the body is now on board the
Enterprise
, where it is undergoing extensive study. However, we seem to have aggrieved the local police by removing it from the planet’s surface.”

Knowing the defensive tendencies and volatile tempers of the Orions, Bacco imagined Picard must be grossly understating the matter. “Don’t worry about that, Captain. I’ll have Ambassador Císol explain to them that it’s a matter of Federation national security.”

“I’ve also been told that the Sahalax Grand Oasis hotel is quite irate about some damage that Commander La Forge caused in the course of capturing the android.”

“Screw ’em. They can bill me.”

Her answer seemed to put the captain at ease.
“Thank you, Madam President.”

“Do you and your crew have any theories about the origin of that android?”

“Our current theory is that it was sent by the Breen. We know they had unfettered access for an unspecified length of time to the factory the Borg had built for Lore, when he’d promised to lead them to a fully synthetic existence. However, our colleague Mister Data assures us the Breen lack the programming and engineering knowledge to create working positronic brains. Which leaves us searching for clues to explain how this impostor, and the one who impersonated Chairman Kinshal,
could have acquired them—or functioned without them.”

She nodded and stifled a yawn. “Keep me informed of your findings, Captain.”

“We will.”

Her mind turned naturally to political concerns. “I’ve also been given to understand that the crew of the
Hastur-zolis
has been working with your people on the investigation. How has that been? Do you get the sense their efforts are genuine?”

The captain sat back a bit and considered the question.
“To my surprise, yes. My officers tell me that the Gorn have been unusually forthcoming with information and quick to support our actions when we’ve met with opposition from the Orions. To be truthful, they’ve comported themselves more like our allies than like members of a rival power.”
He leaned forward, his eyes bright with curiosity.
“Do you think that might bode well for the outcome of your summit?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.” A heavy sigh left her feeling drained, but for the first time since the attack, she felt as if a weight had been lifted from her, and she realized it was because she had been freed from the crushing guilt of doubting her lifelong friend. “Captain, I want to thank you and your crew for all you’ve done since you arrived. I know that I came down on you pretty hard when you got here, maybe harder than I should have. But thanks to you, I know that my friend didn’t betray my trust. I don’t have to wonder what happened; I know.”

“All part of the service, Madam President.”

“No, it was much more than that.” As much as she wanted to shed tears of sorrow and relief, she refused to let them fall. In her mind, she could almost hear Piñiero chiding her,
It wouldn’t be presidential.
“I want you to know that I feel as if I owe you a personal debt of gratitude. You gave Esperanza back to me. Thanks to you . . . now I can grieve.”

•   •   •

Picard struggled to keep his eyes open as he plodded into his quarters. His every step felt leaden, his shoulders ached, and a crick in his neck felt as if it had worsened into a pinched nerve. The day had seemed interminable, one calamity and setback after another. He was relieved to see its end.
One can only hope that tomorrow improves our fortunes,
he mused.

Starlight was the only illumination in the main room. The quarters he shared with Beverly and René were located on the starboard side of the
Enterprise
’s elliptical saucer, which meant they usually faced away from whatever planet the ship might orbit. Now that the ship was holding in a geostationary orbit above the planet’s capital, it shared the city’s schedule of night and day. In just less than ninety minutes, when the planet’s surface and the
Enterprise
once again faced Pi
³
Orionis, the photosensitive coating on the ship’s thousands of transparent aluminum windows would automatically darken to protect the ship’s personnel from being blinded.