Kira caught her before she hit the deck. “What’s wrong with her?”
“What isn’t?” Tarses said, taking the woman from Kira’s arms and lowering her gently to the airlock floor. “Just look at her. She’s been the victim of hours of physical and probably psychological abuse. I have to get her to the medical bay.”
Kira tapped her combadge. “Kira to Defiant.”
“Bowers here.”
“Two to beam out, Lieutenant. Have Chao lock on to Dr. Tarses and the injured Bajoran next to him. Tell her to beam them straight to the medbay.”
“Acknowledged. Stand by.”There was a pause as Bowers relayed the orders to the transporter bay, and shortly thereafter, Tarses and his patient were enveloped in a curtain of shimmering light, and then were gone.
Kira exhaled heavily. “Sam, have Shar scan this ship again for life signs. What do his readings show?”
A moment later, she heard Shar’s voice over her combadge: “Nineteen, Captain. The seven remaining members of the boarding party, plus the original twelve…”Shar trailed off, realizing the impossibility of the readings. If they were genuine, then they should be showing one less than the original twelve occupants of the craft, now that one of them had been beamed aboard the Defiantwith Tarses.
“Let me guess,” Kira said. “You’re still showing them concentrated in engineering and the bridge.”
“Confirmed,”Shar said.
“The problem is, with the exception of the doctor’s patient,” Kira told him, “everyone we’ve found aboard this ship so far has been recently killed. Something here is sending out false life signs.”
Bowers’s voice came back. “Captain, I strongly recommend aborting the mission and returning to theDefiant.”
“Not yet. Stand by,” Kira tapped off, then on again. “Kira to Gordimer.”
“Gordimer here, Captain.”
“Report, Ensign.”
“Sir, we’ve secured the bridge, but the crew was already dead. They were all killed by weapons fire.”
“Stay where you are, Ensign. I’m coming up.”
Residual energy signatures were consistent: the deaths aboard the Besinian freighter had been caused by the same weapon.
Kira studied the killing field. She noted the single door leading out of the bridge, center aft, saw that all the crew stations faced the forward viewer, considered where and how each of the bodies had fallen, and formed a picture in her mind of how it all happened.
A single killer, making his way through the ship. He or she would have started here, in the bridge. The female Arkenite slumped over the command console was first, shot point-blank like the mercs in the corridor outside engineering. But to get away with that, the killer had to have somehow come in unnoticed…or had to have been known to the crew. Someone they hadn’t feared. One of them.
The sound of the weapon would have caused the rest of the bridge crew to turn. The killer had fired next on the two farthest to port, a female human and a male Bolian; both victims’ disruptors were still holstered. Next to go had be the human conn officer, who had perished in the act of taking out his weapon.
The last to die had put up a fight: a Nausicaan who probably took cover behind the tactical station at starboard when the shooting began. By the time the killer’s arc of fire had swept to that side of the bridge, the Nausicaan had freed his weapon and started shooting back; the front of the command console was seared. For some reason the Nausicaan stood up—perhaps he thought he had shot his attacker?—and that was all the killer needed to finish him off. The Nausicaan’s broad torso was charred black with multiple hits. He’d fallen back against the forward bulkhead, dead before he slid to the deck.
The killer had then proceeded to engineering, met the two in the corridor on the way, dealt with them, and then went on to eliminate the rest of the crew. It made sense for the killer to start in the bridge and work his way aft; the engineers would have been slower to react if they lost contact with the command crew, whereas those on the bridge might have determined more quickly that there was an internal danger to the ship. Taking out the bridge crew first would have given the killer time to cross the distance between the two sections before the engineers were fully aware that anything was wrong, especially if they were occupied with being chased by a Federation starship when it all happened.
Gordimer’s people had found an isolinear cube inserted in the command console. The block contained a sophisticated autopilot program, adaptable to fit the conditions defined by external sensor readings. Thus, evasive maneuvers and defensive measures continued even after the crew was dead, and a special signal designed to give outside observers the impression of twelve distinct life signs in two separate areas of the ship convinced the Defiantthat she was still engaged in a meaningful pursuit. Even the voice Kira thought she’d heard over the static of the comm channel had been fake, designed to mislead.
“DeJesus to Captain Kira.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sir, I’m still on the engineering deck. I found a shuttlepod bay, just large enough for one craft. The doors were open and the bay is empty, but my tricorder is showing atypical graviton concentrations.”
“A cloaking device?”
“That’d be my guess, sir. I think whoever killed these people planned his escape.”
That power spike Shar thought he detected,Kira realized. If it was a thruster burst, a cloaked shuttlepod could have propelled itself clear of the freighter whileDefiant was still on approach, and then gone to warp without our realizing it.
Gordimer approached her. “This was all planned,” he said, voicing the same conclusions she had. “All of it. But why?”
Kira’s thoughts during the chase returned to her: Maybe most of these weremercenaries, opportunists. But someoneamong them was sending out a message to whoever would come after them for what happened on Bajor.
Then an earlier notion replayed itself in her mind: the fact that the Defianthad beaten the odds against finding the Besinian vessel after so great a head start. Now Kira knew the truth: The Defianthadn’t beaten the odds at all. It had been lured out here.
Nog reported in: “Captain, I’ve managed to get the warp drive operational, and have already initiated a restart sequence, which should take no more than fifteen minutes. A minimal crew should be able to get this thing back to the station for analysis by 0100 tomorrow morning at warp five.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Stand by for further instructions.”
Kira’s mind raced. The killer expected, even wanted, the freighter to be caught. The crew had probably been misled into believing there would be a very different outcome to the confrontation, and had been killed to keep them from talking. The autopilot and the decoy readings were designed to keep the Defiant’s crew distracted so the killer could escape.
But why not destroy the ship?Kira wondered. Why not just—?
Kira’s thoughts froze as she saw it. The restart sequence.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Now,” she told Gordimer. “Contact the ship. Have them lock on to both teams and be ready to beam us out on my command.” Tapping her own combadge, she cursed herself for not seeing it sooner. “Kira to Nog.”
“Nog here, Captain.”
“Shut down the restart sequence, Lieutenant.”