His voice was growing louder and louder, audible all the way across the mess hall. People's heads were turning in his direction. Angelica darted some sideways glances at him, though, increasingly, she was trying not to be noticed, now.
"We're fighting a war, my friend." Kalevar Thrang never seemed to raise his voice, but he was always audible, too. "In wartime, stratagems are necessary. Any soldier knows that."
"But what you have said...." The big Klingon shook his head. "I do not see the need for this. You have made us nothing more than terrorists."
"The powers that be might think that," said Thrang, "but we know differently. We're fighting for the good of Federation and Empire and Republic alike. We're pretending to be terrorists, for the sake of the fight."
He never said anything particularly clever, Angelica thought. Oh, he could be plausible, up to a point... but his arguments often rang hollow, when she considered them. What won people over, she thought, was his air of absolute confidence. He acted, always, as if he knew he was right. And that conviction turned out to be contagious.
Usually. But Kunroth was speaking again. "But this makes us - it makes us seem terrorists, and in that way... it brings us dishonour."
"Let me put it to you this way," said Thrang. "Who knows you're in Action Black?"
Kunroth frowned. "I was told to tell no one. Only those here, on this ship, know that I -"
"Precisely," said Thrang, smiling. "The only people who know about Action Black are us. The people in it. And we know our motives are pure and honourable. The outsiders, who think - for the moment - that Action Black is a terror group... well, they don't know you're a part of it. And they never will." His smile broadened. "So, my friend, where's the dishonour?"
Kunroth shook his head again, slowly. "I do not know," he said. "What you say - is reasonable. But somewhere -" he raised his fist to his chest "- somewhere in here, I feel...."
Thrang sighed. He clapped one hand on the Klingon's shoulder. "Let's talk privately, my friend. Let me explain in a little more detail. And, if you still can't reconcile our aims with your sense of honour... well, we'll find other work for you. Something that will satisfy you. I don't want to lose you, you know. I value all my people."
He moved towards the doorway. On the threshold, he stopped, turned, beckoned to Kunroth. The Klingon hesitated for a second, then followed Thrang out of the mess hall.
Angelica seriously doubted she'd be seeing him again.
She glanced around. The ship had taken on more people: Klingons like Kunroth, a cliqueish group of Romulans, a number of Ferengi, one of whom had taken Tom Tallidge for all he was worth at dom-jot... and a pair of scowling, silent Remans, who were in one corner of the mess hall now. Angelica had reviewed her basic Starfleet psi-block training, had played repetitive pop-music songs over and over again, until the earworms ran constantly through her head; she went to sleep with earphones in and the music playing. It wouldn't be enough if the Remans, or Tharval, really set to work on her mind... it might be enough to block a casual mind-contact.
She had to hope so.
She finished her meal, dropped the dinnerware into the recycler slot, and headed out of the hall. She didn't think she'd attracted any attention. And Thrang would be busy doing... whatever he was doing... with Kunroth. And Tharval was away, somewhere.
There might not be a better time.
She went to the crew deck, but walked past the door to her quarters, on to the end of the corridor, where an opening in one wall led to the Hirogen equivalent of a Jeffries tube. She took a deep breath. No one else was in sight. She was going to have to take a chance - if she was spotted, she'd have no reasonable excuse for being where she was -
So, she told herself, better not get spotted, then.
She swung herself into the tube, descending quickly from rung to rung. She knew the layout of the Hirogen ship, now. They'd all been standing watches, getting to know the ship's functions... rather as if Thrang wanted trained people to replace the original Hirogen crew. It made sense. Thrang would want to replace the Hirogen.
She'd been assigned to Engineering. It was her speciality, originally, after all. She'd been at the engineering station on the bridge when Thrang had talked with the Talaxian, Pexlini. She'd heard what Pexlini had to say.
She reached the bottom of the tube - and she twisted sideways, and took an awkward step to her left, and kept going down. The narrow void between the main plasma induction relays and the warp core wasn't marked as an accessway on the ship's plans; it was a tight squeeze even for a smallish human, no Hirogen could ever have passed this way. But Angelica had studied the plans, had spotted the possible route, and now she was using it. It had one certain advantage; there were no surveillance cameras.
She wormed her way through gaps, ducked under pipes and conduits, and finally found herself where she wanted to be: standing on the ejection panel, below the pulsating column of the warp core itself. She grasped a projecting stanchion, and began to clamber upwards. She tried to make as little noise as she could. The throbbing sound of the core should drown out her movements, but Hirogen senses were acute, if some of the big hunters were on duty in Main Engineering -
But her luck held. She found what she was looking for, ten metres up from the base of the warp core.
It was a squat cylinder, painted matte black, attached to the core with what looked like heavy-duty magnetic clamps. Angelica didn't dare touch it. She had a tricorder in her belt pouch, though, and she risked a scan. It confirmed what she already knew. An antimatter charge, small in itself, but quite enough to breach the core's containment and set off a much bigger explosion.
A scuttling charge. Pexlini had been right.
Slowly, carefully, Angelica began to climb back down the core. She had to get out of here, back through the narrow space and the Jeffries tube, back to her own quarters, without being spotted. And, once she got back... she would have to think.
No comments:
Post a Comment