Star Trek: Pantheon by Michael Jan Friedman Read Free Book Online Page B

question moot by adding his own beam to the equation. Skewered in the back with it, Agnarsson groaned and crumpled to his knees. Then he fell forward, momentarily unconscious.
    The captain turned his beam off. So did his security officers, whom he recognized as Siregar and Offenburger. In the aftermath of the battle, they couldn’t help glancing at the corpses of Pelletier and the others.
    “Are you all right, sir?” asked Offenburger, a tall man with blond hair and light eyes.
    Tarasco nodded, despite the punishment he had taken. “Fine, Marc.” He managed to get to his feet, though it cost him a good deal of pain. “I need your help, both of you.”
    “What is it, sir?” asked Siregar, an attractive Asian woman.
    “We need to get Agnarsson to the weapons room,” the captain told them. “And I mean now.”
    Their expressions told Tarasco that they didn’t follow his thinking. But then, Pelletier had been the only security officer to whom the captain had revealed his intentions regarding the engineer.
    Strictly speaking, he didn’t owe either Offenburger or Siregar an explanation—but he gave them one anyway. “Agnarsson’s become too dangerous. We have to get rid of him while we still can.”
    The security officers didn’t seem pleased by the prospect of killing a fellow human being—a man with whom they had eaten and shared stories and braved the dangers of the void. However, they had seen the engineer’s power, not to mention the bodies of their friends on the floor. They would do whatever Tarasco asked of them.
    Kneeling at Agnarsson’s side, the captain felt the man’s neck for a pulse. It was faint, but the engineer was clearly still alive. And that wasn’t the only thing Tarasco noticed.
    Agnarsson’s eyes, or what the captain could see of them through the engineer’s half-closed lids, weren’t glowing anymore. They had returned to normal again.
    As before, Tarasco was tempted to believe that the crisis was over—that their laser barrage had somehow reversed whatever had gotten hold of the engineer, stripping him of his incredible powers. Then he considered the bodies of those Agnarsson had murdered with a gesture and knew he couldn’t take any chances.
    “Pick him up,” the captain told Offenburger and Siregar. “I’ll keep my laser trained on him in case he wakes.”
    Tucking their weapons into their belts, the officers did as they were asked. Offenburger inserted his hands under the engineer’s arms and Siregar grabbed his legs. Then they began moving in the direction of the Valiant’ s weapons room.
    There were hatches that were closer to their location. Unfortunately, Tarasco mused, shoving Agnarsson out into space might not be enough. If the engineer was able to survive in the vacuum—and he might be—it was also possible that he could work his way back inside.
    The weapons room was a deck above them, which meant they had to use a lift to get to it. It seemed to take forever for the compartment to reach them, and even longer for it to take them to their destination.
    After that, they had to negotiate a long, curving corridor. It wasn’t long before Offenburger and Siregar began showing the strain of their efforts. Agnarsson was no lightweight, after all. But eventually, Tarasco was able to guide them through the weapons room doors.
    The place was dominated by a pair of missile launchers—dark, bulky titanium devices with long, cylindrical slots meant to shoot atomic projectiles through the void. They were empty at the moment, their payloads safely stowed in a series of obverse bulkhead compartments.
    But at least one of them wouldn’t be empty for long.
    The captain pointed to it with his free hand. “Put him in,” he told the security officers.
    Siregar looked down at Agnarsson and winced at the idea. Offenburger hesitated as well.
    “Sir,” the security officer began in a plaintive voice, “there must be a better way to—”
    “Do it,” snapped Tarasco, his stomach