“Battlefield promotion,” said Riker, frowning slightly. Vale understood. She remembered Fortis now: Tall, pale, and slender to the point of being reedy, she was no one you’d would expect to enter, much less survive, a fight. But when a Breen attack had taken the life of her captain and first officer on the U.S.S. Sparrowhawk, it was Bellatora Fortis who’d kept the nearly crippled ship in the fight. And it was Fortis who brought her home. Her reputation was that of a good soldier but not one possessed of the most flexible mind. The necessities of the war had put a lot of people in the captain’s chair without giving them the chance to truly develop space legs as explorers. Vale hoped Charonhadn’t stumbled into something too complex for her captain’s linear sensibilities to navigate.
“Give me warp seven, Ensign,” Riker said.
“Warp seven, aye.”
“Nice color, by the way,” Riker said quietly, and Vale suddenly realized he was speaking to her again. “Brings out the red in your uniform.”
“Very funny,” she said, not the least bit amused by the joke, but grateful to see some glimmer of the old Riker emerge. He was quiet after that. The entire bridge was. The stars, transformed to pinprick strokes of white by the ship’s warp field, streamed past Titan’s main viewer as silent as the void that held them.
Vale had wanted some external force to arrive and snap them back into cohesion. Now she’d got it, and it stuck going down.
What was it her mother always said?
“Be mindful of wishing, Christine. You might get what you ask for instead of what you want.”
Chapter Three
T he pulse hit Titanten hours into her journey, slapping the vessel out of warp the way a Klingon fist knocks teeth out of an enemy’s mouth.
The tidal forces created by Titan’s return to what should have been normal space shorted out systems, disrupting everything utterly, washing over and through the ship as if its amazing catalogue of defenses were nonexistent.
Before the gravity reasserted, a fair number of the crew were slammed into bulkheads or ceilings by their own pent-up inertia. The most durable or agile of them were unfazed, snapping into duty posture even before the Red Alert klaxons directed them to their stations.
The more fragile crew members-the primates, the smaller reptiloids, the relatively spindly Dr. Celenthe-took the brunt. Ensign Torvig spent a harrowing fifteen minutes forcing his cybernetic enhancements back to heel after nearly all of his primary control subroutines had been wiped by the pulse.
Contrary to appearances, the pulse hadn’t come out of nowhere. Both Tuvok and Jaza managed to belt out timely but ultimately fruitless exclamations of warning in the second or two before the ship was overcome.
They had been studying the pattern of the distortions that led them here, seeking its point of origin, but while there was evidence of some sort of massive quantum disturbance throughout this region, there was as yet no sign of its cause. The interference itself defied analysis.
Just as they were calling Ra-Havreii to get his input on the problem-perhaps it lay not with the phenomenon but with Titan’s sensor nets-the pulse hit.
When the emergency lights came on and the shouting died to sporadic spikes in the post-disaster pall, there was a single question in the minds of Titan’s crew.
“What the hell was that?” Riker asked, picking himself up off the deck as the emergency lights came on. “Status report!” He watched as Vale climbed back into her seat and immediately began to pull information from her console.
“Secondary systems are still initializing, Captain,” Vale said, the crimson light casting her in harsh black shadows.
“Helm control is wobbly,” said Lavena, after righting herself. “Warp engines are offline.”
“The hull is intact,” Tuvok said, as other systems came online. “No breaches reported. Minor torque striation on the port nacelle strut.”
“The effect seems also to have subsided,” said Jaza, who had returned to the bridge only in the last hour. “It’s still present, but preliminary scans show local conditions are approaching normal.”
“What hit us, Mr. Jaza?” Riker asked.
“Energy pulse of some kind, but readings are still imprecise. Analysis under way.”
Riker acknowledged this with a curt nod and listened intently as the voices of his crew flooded in over the comms.
This is not good, Vale thought. The ship was running exclusively on emergency power; if its condition was the result of an attack, Titanwas ill-equipped to repel or even to run from a second volley.
“Tactical status, Mr. Tuvok,” she said.
“Phasers are down,” said the Vulcan. “Photon and quantum torpedoes are online, but targeting systems are unresponsive. Shields are currently at half strength.”
A figure moved to stand next to Riker. Vale looked up and saw Troi standing beside the captain. Vale hadn’t even noticed her arrival. She caught Deanna’s softly delivered report in her husband’s ear: “A quarter of the crew is in a near panic.”
Again Riker nodded, and Vale was grateful to see that whatever was going on between them, they both knew when to set it aside. Troi took her station to the left of the center seat, and immediately began coordinating with Keru the support/rescue efforts of their respective staffs.
“Bridge to sickbay. Status report.”
“ Ree here. Sickbay systems are operating at less than peak, but while a great many injuries are presenting, they are thus far all relatively minor…”
While Riker took Dr. Ree’s report, Vale left her seat and crossed the deck to sciences. “Could this be what happened to the other ship?” she whispered to Jaza.
“I wish I could say,” Jaza said without looking up, his voice tinged with frustration. “So far none of these readings make sense. I’m going to need more time to find the answers, Commander.”
“We need to know what we’re dealing with, fast,” Vale stressed. “We’re sitting ducks out here, Najem.”
He glanced at her and flashed a small smile. “Then you need to stop distracting me, Chris.”
“…We’ll continue to keep you apprised, Captain.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Riker out,” the captain said, then followed with, “Bridge to engineering.”
“Ra-Havreii here,”said the Efrosian’s voice, his normally melodius tones now rife with tension. “This isn’t a good time, Captain, but I’ll have something for you in a few minutes. Engineering out.”
Riker looked at Vale, almost too surprised to speak. “Did he just dismiss me?”
Vale’s expression hardened. “I’m on it,” she said, glancing at Troi as she marched toward the turbolift. “Counselor, you’re with me.”
Main engineering was a hotbed of activity when the two bridge officers arrived. Tool-laden techs scurried everywhere, scrambled up and down gangways, bellowed commands and confirmations back and forth over the noise of other shouts. Some of the activity was due to the ongoing state of emergency, certainly, but there was something else at work, something she couldn’t isolate.
The pulse didn’t cause all this, she thought, surveying the scene of chaos. These people are stripping the place down to the chips. Unable to spot Ra-Havreii in the bedlam, Vale snagged a passing engineer and asked where his department head had got to.
“Not present in this moment, Commander,” said Ensign Urgar, a big ursinoid who seemed more concerned with the cycle inverter he had resting on one massive shoulder than in talking to his XO. “Engine master has come and gone.”
“He was just here,” said Vale, her temperature spiking higher than the considerable ambient heat. “And what’s he got you people doing? It looks like a full overhaul.”