“What about the captain’s skiff?” Tuvok pressed.

“Its drive and shields were overtaxed in the deflection effort. It couldn’t handle warp, and could never go fast enough if it could.”

“It does not need to. Assign it to the search for the captain and let me take a shuttle after Troi and Ree.”

She realized he was right; the La Rocca’s engines would not be unduly taxed by a planetary search-and-rescue effort, and what shields it had left could handle wind and residual radiation better than high-velocity space debris. “I’ll send a team in the Armstrong,” she said. “But not you. Get back to sickbay.”

“I am fine. Merely dazed.”

“No offense, Tuvok, but after all that’s been done to your head in your career, I’m not willing to take chances after you got it slammed into a wall.”

He moved closer, lowering his voice. “Commander, I need to go.”

“Look, I understand that you of all people need to protect that child right now—”

“It is more than that.” She was startled that he didn’t deny his emotional stake in this. But then, he was in no more mood to waste time than she was. “From what I…perceived, I believe Ree’s irrational behavior was somehow triggered by Commander Troi’s extreme fear of losing her child, coupled with her perception of the danger to her spouse. And…” He looked away for a moment. “She was counseling me just before this. I believe her fears were amplified by my own…experience of loss. I am partly responsible for what has occurred. I must take responsibility for resolving it.”

“Tuvok—”

“ Please, Commander.”

She had reservations about his objectivity, but she had no time to argue. Besides, maybe a Vulcan who admitted his own emotions to himself and spent every moment working to manage them would be more objective about them than most Vulcans, or humans, for that matter. At least, she was satisfied to pretend for now that that made sense.

She nodded. “Go. Bring them back safe.” She caught his arm, halted him as he started to depart. “Including Ree—if you can.”

His eyes showed nothing but determination. “If circumstances permit.”

CHAPTER T

EN

TITAN, STARDATE 58541.2

“It’s been thirty-six hours,” Keru told the others in the observation lounge, fighting the weariness in his voice. “All available shuttles have searched the area as thoroughly as possible, above and below the surface. All we found is the capsized, empty skiff.” He took a slow breath. “We’ve dropped hydrophone probes, sending out hailing signals to catch Lavena’s attention or hear her calls if she’s down there trying to reach us. But the ocean’s still too disrupted from the impact to have a stable deep sound channel. Even so, the squales don’t appreciate the noise pollution—they’ve been knocking out the hydrophones.”

“What about…what about the squales?” asked Kuu’iut, filling in as tactical officer in Tuvok’s absence. “We know they’ve interceded when our people were in trouble before. Could they have taken them somewhere?”

So many absences,thought Vale. It was odd looking around the table and seeing Kuu’iut sitting there for tacti cal, Huilan filling in as diplomatic officer, Onnta representing medical… and me. I shouldn’t be in the big chair. Not this way.

“Where?” Pazlar countered. In contrast to the past few months, she and Ra-Havreii were sitting as far apart as possible and hadn’t even looked at each other since entering. Even they weren’t the same anymore. “We’ve imaged every floater and seaweed island within a thousand kilometers of the skiff’s location,” the Elaysian went on. “The squales couldn’t have taken them that far in that amount of time. And they would’ve had problems of their own after that impact.”

“And that’s something we have to face,” Vale said. She understood the crew’s desire to see a miracle happen; it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had occurred. She shared their hope, their refusal to give up on the captain and Lavena. But as acting commander of Titan, she couldn’t let her crew dwell on scenarios they could do nothing about. “We’ve done all we could to find our people…and we’ll keep looking for as long as we can.” It wouldn’t be easy, with the shroud of dust and haze still blinding orbital scans. The thorough survey Pazlar had mentioned had been achieved only through the efforts and exhaustion of many shuttle pilots, determined to find one of their own and their captain as well. “But we’re not the only ones hurting. We couldn’t prevent the impact, but maybe there’s something we can do to mitigate its damage.”

“It’s possible we already did, just slightly,” Pazlar said, her voice subdued. “Normally in an impact event, the vacuum chimney effect sucks a great deal of the dust into the stratosphere, where it can linger for months, blocking the sun and cooling the planet. But because we broke the asteroid into pieces, the successive impacts disrupted the chimney effect, and so the majority of the dust was splashed out into the lower atmosphere, and it’s already precipitating out. The sky should clear within weeks.”

“But what about all those heavy radioisotopes suddenly injected into the biosphere?” Onnta asked. “We could be seeing mass die-offs as a result.”

Chamish, the ecologist, answered the Balosneean doctor. “Actually that does not seem to be a concern. Keep in mind that impacts of this type are relatively common on Droplet. The biota have evolved sophisticated methods of DNA repair that protect them against radiation damage and heavy-metal poisoning, at least in limited amounts.”