“I’m not even going to pretend I understood any of that,” Reyes said. “Whatever. With sensors offline, that just means Ganz will send more goons out to find us. So, what do you say we get the hell out of here?”
“ Hang on,” Jackson said. We’ve got a problem. It looks like somebody just activated a transport inhibitor shield around theOmari-Ekon.”
Reyes replied, “That means he knows somebody’s here, trying to help me.”
“A logical conclusion,” T’Prynn said, “though it’s also possible Ganz is simply anticipating a transporter as our means of escape. Either way, it does not appear that we’ll be beaming off this ship.”
Reyes took another look at the disruptor in his hand. “You said internal sensors were offline? I’m thinking that means we might have another card to play.”
25
Ganz was more than ready to kill someone. Diego Reyes was his preferred target of choice, but at the moment, anyone would do.
“Where is he?” Turning from the railing of his balcony, which overlooked the Omari-Ekon’s gaming deck, Ganz moved back into his office and regarded Tonzak. To his credit, the head of security seemed appropriately terrified, which did little to alleviate Ganz’s increasingly foul mood.
Clearing his throat, Tonzak replied, “I don’t know. I had three teams following his movements. The last time I heard from Nakaal and Drev, they had spotted Reyes heading away from the gaming deck and into the service passageways. They tracked him to a maintenance compartment in section six, but they don’t know what he was doing.”
Ganz knew what Reyes had been doing, though it alarmed him that he had acquired this knowledge only after the troublesome human had completed whatever task had taken him to the maintenance section. “He was accessing the ship’s computer,” he said, feeling his jaw clench.
“How could he do that?” Tonzak asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“He had help, obviously.” Moving to his desk, Ganz settled his muscled physique into his oversized padded chair. “He would have needed it to get past our security safeguards.” Though he held no doubts that Diego Reyes possessed no small number of skills in his own right, the security measures implemented to protect the Omari-Ekon’s computer system were such that the human would not have been able to bypass them all from the intetface terminal he had utilized in the maintenance office. Navigating through the maze of protocols and oversight subroutines required a level of knowledge about the system Reyes could not have acquired on his own. At least, that should have been the case, unless Ganz’s security staff was even more incompetent than this latest failure would seem to indicate. What concerned Ganz now was what information Reyes might have accessed or taken from the computer once he found a pathway into the system, as the human had done a remarkable job covering his tracks.
I’ll just have to ask him myself, then.
Finding some momentary satisfaction at the thought of how such a discussion might proceed once Reyes was brought before him, Ganz asked, “Where are Nakaal and Drev now?”
Tonzak said, “In the infirmary. Neither of them was injured that severely, though Drev took the worst of it.”
“Make sure I never see either of them again. Anywhere.” Ganz chose not to elaborate, leaving it to his subordinate to exercise whatever initiative and action he thought best. “And no one else has seen Reyes?”
Shaking his head, Tonzak replied, “No. He has to be hiding somewhere on one of the maintenance levels or in the service crawlways. With sensors offline, we’re having to conduct a section-by-section search with handheld scanners.”
Ganz released an irritated grunt. Disabling the ship’s internal sensors was a shrewd play on the part of Reyes or whoever had helped him. The hand-carried units Tonzak’s people would be using to conduct their search would be helpful, but it would still take time, perhaps long enough for Reyes to find a way off the ship. Whoever was assisting him had to have a plan for extracting him, which Ganz hoped had at least been disrupted by his decision to activate transporter inhibitor fields throughout the vessel.
“Have security round up every human and send them to the exit,” he said. “I don’t care who they’re with or what they’re doing. I want them off the ship, now.” That, he decided, would at least simplify trying to find one lone human among a ship full of Orions and representatives of the other nonhuman species currently on board.
“That will take time,” Tonzak said.
“Then the faster you get started,” Ganz snapped, “the happier I’ll be.” Walking back to the balcony, he looked down at the gaming deck and let his eyes wander over the mass of patrons standing around the gambling kiosks and tables or the bar, or occupying tables or booths in the restaurant and the smaller, satellite bars situated around the casino’s perimeter. There were more humans among the crowd than he could count, and he also saw more than a few Starfleet uniforms.
“We’ll have to notify the station that we’re doing this,” Tonzak said.
“You can notify them after they’re off the ship,” Ganz replied. “Make up a story. Something about a contaminant that’s dangerous to humans, but get it done. Now.” He knew that such a deception would not hold up under scrutiny, and without question would bring with it Admiral Nogura’s unwanted attention. There would be time to deal with that later, he decided. For now, the priority was capturing Reyes and finding out what information he had retrieved from the ship’s computer.
From behind him, he heard Neera’s soft yet still questioning voice. “Ganz? What are you doing?”
“Trying to find Reyes,” Ganz answered, turning from the railing to see Neera regarding him with an expression of questioning disapproval. “He got into the computer and probably took something, though I have no idea what that might be. If he’s managed to copy something, then he’s probably looking for a way off the ship.”
Neera gestured toward the balcony. “And your response is to eject every human? Do you honestly think Nogura will let that pass unchallenged?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Ganz replied, feeling his mounting anger beginning to seep around the edges of his self-control. “If Reyes gets off the ship with whatever he’s stolen, Nogura won’t have any reason to let us stay here.” Indeed, he expected the admiral’s order for the Omari-Ekonto disembark from the station would come within minutes after Reyes’s successful escape.
“He can’t beam off the ship,” Neera said, sounding now like a mother attempting to lecture a recalcitrant child, “and your people are working to restore the internal sensors. Once that’s done, finding him will be much simpler. There’s no need to rush headlong through this situation. Patience is our best ally now.”
Ganz’s response was interrupted by the sounds of disruptor fire, accompanied by shouts of alarm and shock from the gaming deck, drifting over the balcony and into his office.
“What’s going on?” Neera asked, moving toward the balcony, but Ganz stepped in front of her as he caught sight of disruptor bolts flashing upward toward the ceiling above the gaming floor. Moving to where he could look out from his office without exposing himself, he realized he also could hear the intermittent yet unmistakable whine of a Starfleet phaser in between the more frequent reports from disruptors. He peered over the balcony railing and saw people running in all directions for the gaming area’s various exits. Several of his security staff—some with disruptor pistols drawn—were scrambling to move in and around the scattering patrons. A few had taken up positions behind the bar or various gaming tables, aiming their weapons and searching for something at which to shoot. Ganz followed their gaze into the mob of people moving toward one of the casino exits, and his eyes widened in surprise and anger as he recognized two people in the crowd: Diego Reyes and the Vulcan who at one time had been the former commodore’s intelligence officer, T’Prynn.