Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 054 - Warpath by David Mack

Author:David Mack [Mack, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Star Trek Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781416507758
Google: HWLaXjenJIMC
Amazon: 1416507752
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2006-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

22

U.S.S. Defiant

VAUGHN STOOD ALONE AT THE AFT STATION ON THE BRIDGE. He had surrounded himself with star charts and recent intelligence reports on suspicious ship movements in the Almatha sector. It was a prodigious amount of raw information… and it was all just for show. Staring at it, he thought that it all seemed to blend together into a hazy mass. None of it really mattered to him.

A sip of tepid coffee left a bitter flavor in his mouth, but he didn’t really care. His thoughts were haunted by Prynn. Why did I always think there’d be more time? I spent years avoiding her; did I think she was going to come to me? It had been months since he had made his first effort to bridge the cold gulf that had grown between them. She hadn’t turned away his unannounced visit to her quarters, nor had she directly refused his invitation to meet again for dinner at a time and place of her choosing. To his dismay, that second reunion had never materialized. She had postponed it for her trip to Andor and had rescheduled it twice again since her return.

The lonely part of him had wanted to remind her about it, but Prynn had never liked being pushed. Rather than risk her canceling the dinner entirely, he’d convinced himself to give her space and time, to let her reciprocate his efforts at communication when she felt ready. I should’ve tried harder, he admonished himself. Should’ve followed up, made sure she knew I really wanted to see her… hear her… know who she was….

Trying to clarify a mental picture of her, he was ashamed at how little he really knew of her private life. All he had ever really been certain of was that she had inherited Ruriko’s countenance and poise, and that she had reflected his own dark, angry youth. Part of him wondered if the similarities in their natures, more than their differences, had been to blame for the length of their estrangement. I waited so long to let go of my pride… and I think she was almost ready to meet me halfway. Or maybe she always was… if only I’d been willing to ask.

He scrolled through a report about some smugglers working from an asteroid belt in the Ankaro system. It was sketchy at best, and he doubted that such small-time operators would be able to recruit someone like Taran’atar. He moved the file into the growing list of improbable targets.

Bowers’s suggestion that Taran’atar would likely continue on his original heading, despite now being cloaked, seemed more plausible to Vaughn the longer he thought about it. Plotting the Jem’Hadar’s original heading forward, he made note of which systems it intersected. With minor adjustments for local navigational hazards, there were easily a dozen possible destinations for the noH’pach.

Complicating the matter was the fact that Vaughn had no way of knowing how far Taran’atar intended to travel. None of the planets along the heading appeared to have

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