The science officer managed to get her hand between her face and the plastic surface, cushioning the blow. Still, she felt stunned for a moment. Then she heard someone say, “Are you all right?”
The voice that had asked the question sounded strange. Metallic, almost. Valderrama couldn’t imagine why, until she turned to look up and saw the ghostly semblance of a human visage floating inside the clear-faced helmet of a containment suit.
“Are you all right?” Jiterica asked a second time.
“Yes,” said Valderrama. She propped herself up on an elbow. “I’m fine, Ensign. Thank you.”
By then, others had gathered around them. But it was Jiterica who gently grasped Valderrama’s forearm and provided the counterweight that pulled Valderrama to her feet.
It was an eerie feeling, to have those gloved hands tugging at her. But the science officer didn’t show it. After all, the ensign just wanted to help her.
And Valderrama knew how it felt not to be able to help.
“Thank you,” she said a second time.
“You’re welcome,” Jiterica replied in her tinny, computerlike voice, and returned to her terminal.
Valderrama regarded the Nizhrak a moment longer. Then she looked around at the others who had ringed her and said, “I’m all right. You can go back to your stations.”
One by one, the crewmen dispersed. Brushing herself off, Valderrama got a grip on her monitor again and tried to concentrate on the images she saw there. But it wasn’t easy.
Not when she felt like more of a burden to her colleagues than ever.
Picard relaxed his grip on his armrests as the vortices they were passing slid off the sides of the viewscreen. They did so reluctantly, it seemed to the captain, as if they regretted not having torn the Stargazer to pieces.
Ben Zoma leaned closer to him. “Are we having fun yet?”
Indeed, Picard thought. But he kept the remark to himself. What he said instead was, “Report.”
Idun was the first to respond. “Impulse engines still operating at peak efficiency.”
“Shields at seventy-two percent,” Gerda said.
It was better than the captain might have hoped. Simenon’s approach seemed to be working.
Up ahead, another pair of vortices loomed in front of them, their whirling energies wild and hungry-looking. Idun began to steer the Stargazer between them.
But as she did, Picard caught a glimpse of the next group of vortices, deeper in, and they were significantly more tightly packed than any the Stargazer had already encountered. There was barely any space between them for a Constellation-class starship.
Idun turned to the captain, her unspoken assessment evident in her expression. “I agree,” he said. “We’ll see if we have a better chance of getting through elsewhere.”
Turning back to her instrument panel, Idun backed them off the gap and moved them to starboard, since one of the twisters was blocking the way to port. Nor did she stop until she came to another opening that would give them sufficient leeway on either side.
But the story there was much the same. Even if the Stargazer managed to get through the breach at hand, she would be unable to get through the collection of vortices beyond that. The gaps were simply too narrow for her, too rife with destructive forces.
As before, Idun was compelled to slide them to starboard in search of something more promising. However, they hadn’t gone very far before another twister became visible in the distance, threatening to cut off their lateral progress before long.
There was one more opening to starboard before they reached that point—one other chance to make it through both this set of vortices and the next one. The helm officer brought the Stargazer to a halt in front of that opening.
Leaning forward in his center seat, Picard took stock of the situation. The gap in front of them was certainly large enough to accommodate the Stargazer. However, the widest channel beyond it was considerably narrower, and considerably more daunting.
On the other hand, it was broader than any of the other second-rank openings the captain had seen. Perhaps even broad enough to grant them passage if they fought long and hard enough.
Idun was looking at him again. As before, Picard nodded. “Take us through,” he said.
Punching in the requisite commands, the helm officer urged the ship forward. On the viewscreen, the whirlwinds before them appeared to grow larger, exerting more and more influence as the Stargazer sailed boldly between them. Smaller spirals of energy spun off from the main bodies, assaulting the ship.
The deck beneath Picard’s feet kicked and rolled, balking at Idun’s attempts to remain in control. An aft console sparked and gave rise to a slender plume of black smoke, requiring the attention of a crewman with a fire extinguisher.
And still the Stargazer plunged deeper into the jaws of pure, unbridled force.
Suddenly, something whipped them in the direction of the twister to port. Idun made the correction with a burst of thrusters, forcing them back on course. Moments later, they were rocked again by magnetic forces, but they managed to get through that setback as well.
Idun was getting better at this, Picard remarked to himself. She was navigating this corridor between the vortices with more skill and confidence than she had displayed in navigating the corridors that came before it.
Finally, the worst of the passage was over. The vortices began to peel away on either side of them, relinquishing their hold on the Stargazer—and revealing the even greater test that lay ahead of her.
“Shields at sixty-four percent,” Gerda reported, even before the captain could ask.
Sixty-four percent, Picard repeated to himself. It was remarkable, given the challenges they had met. But would it be enough to see them through the challenge to come . . .
And what lay beyond it?
Picard eyed the phenomena between which they hoped to pass. They stood there like the gates of hell, pillars of cold fire that spun and undulated and writhed in what seemed to be the most hideous torment.
As the captain had always heard, misery loved company. The Stargazer had no choice but to give them some.
Picard could feel the tension on his bridge as Idun took them into the opening. It was a palpable sensation, like that of a violin string stretched to its breaking point.
And the trouble they had expected wasn’t long in coming. First there was a rumbling, more felt in one’s bones than heard. Then the Stargazer was wrenched hard to starboard, throwing the captain and everyone else to the deck.
The console next to Paxton’s erupted in a fountain of sparks, forcing the communications officer to recoil from it. As a crewman went to douse the fire, a second one broke out.
Picard staggered to his feet and eyed the viewscreen, where the image of the vortices had rotated a dizzying ninety degrees. Worse, the helm was unmanned. The captain started for it, ready and willing to put his once-considerable piloting skills to use.
But Idun managed to beat him to it. Dragging herself off the deck and back into her seat, she began tapping away at her controls. Little by little, she managed to right the ship.
But no sooner had the twisters turned vertical again on the screen than the Stargazer was bludgeoned anew. Wave after wave of magnetic energy broke over her bow, keeping her from advancing any farther.
Picard heard Idun growl as she struggled with her controls. Clearly, she needed more power.
“Mr. Simenon,” he snapped. “All available power to the impulse engines!” And as he thought about it, he added, “Cut life support!”
“Aye, sir!” came the engineer’s response.
The captain knew that they could survive on the air they had for as long as twenty minutes. Of course, the small amount of energy they saved might not make much of a difference, but it might also represent the margin between victory and defeat.
“Shields down to thirty-eight percent!” Gerda snarled.
Suddenly, the Stargazer began to make progress again. The wall
s of whirling energy seemed to crawl by on either side of them, yielding meter after grudging meter.
But they were far from free of the vortices’ embrace. Picard felt his vessel vibrate and slew sideways, then shoot forward and veer in the other direction.
“Twenty-six percent!” Gerda announced grimly.
The captain began to doubt that they would make it—not that they had any choice but to try. They were more than halfway through now, too far to think about turning back.
The Stargazer lurched forward, fighting the good fight, though the vortices grabbed and tore at her with all their insane power. Yet another console began to spit sparks, and the smell of smoke became strong in Picard’s nostrils, especially without the ventilation that was part of life support.
A little farther, he thought. Just a little farther.
And then he saw it.
Ben Zoma must have glimpsed it at the same time, because he pointed to the viewscreen and said, “Look!”
It was a narrow, vertical strip, seen between the seething near edges of the vortices. A ruddiness, as soft-looking as one of the clouds that stretched over the captain’s native France at sunset.
It provided Picard and his officers with a glimpse of what lay beyond this strait—a hint that if they could only squeeze past these last two vortices, they could at last put this ordeal behind them.
“Shields at sixteen percent!” Gerda told her colleagues, inserting a note of reality into the captain’s newfound optimism.
Picard felt his jaw clench. Once the shields were stripped away, there would be nothing left to protect them but their reinforced titanium hull, and no one could expect that it would last very long under such intensely adverse conditions.
“Six percent!” Gerda called out.
For just a moment, Picard had a vision of his ship being peeled like an overripe fruit, one section of hull at a time. Then, with an effort, he put the image from his mind.
Just in time to grab the back of his chair, because the vortices were clawing at them with renewed fury.
The Stargazer bucked and slid and bucked again, paying for every meter of headway with huge expenditures of energy. She shot forward, came up against what seemed like a tangible barrier, then pierced it and shot forward like an arrow.
And each time they made some progress, the scarlet strip ahead of them got noticeably wider, noticeably closer. The end is in sight, Picard assured himself. We can do it . . .
Gerda swiveled in her seat to look at him. “Sir,” she said in a disgusted tone of voice, “the shields are down!”
The captain bit his lip. Their defenses were gone, and they were hardly out of danger yet. Had they dared too much after all? Would they falter just short of the finish line and be torn to pieces?
Picard shook his head, answering his own unspoken question. Not today, he insisted.
As if to dispute his conclusion, a wave of energy slammed into them head on. It sent the captain sprawling across his center seat, its armrests digging into his ribs. Then another wave hit them and another, each one fiercer and wilder than the one before it.
Without her shields to minimize the blows, the Stargazer was at the mercy of the vortices. She absorbed impact after impact, her lights flickering, her bulkheads keening as if in agony.
“Hull breaches on decks five, six, and seven!” Paxton announced. “Also, on decks ten and eleven!”
“Damage control teams!” Ben Zoma commanded.
There would be more breaches, Picard knew. Many more, if they lingered much longer in this confusion of colossal forces.
Get us out of here, he instructed Idun silently.
But the vortices seemed to have other ideas. They battered the ship’s naked hull with assault after magnetic assault, as if they knew this would be their last chance to destroy the intruder.
And it seemed to Picard that it was just that. Never mind the damage they were taking—the ribbon of red had claimed nearly a third of the viewscreen and was claiming more with each passing second.
“Breaches on fourteen, fifteen, sixteen . . . !”
Suddenly, the lights went out and the captain felt the ship wrenched back and forth, shaken like helpless prey in the jaws of some titanic predator. He clung to his seat and watched the zagging image on the viewscreen, hoping Idun could straighten them out somehow.
Then, just as suddenly as the shaking had begun, it stopped. The lights came back on. And the viewscreen showed Picard a path all but free of the vortices.
He felt a single, small tremor, a final sickening reminder of what they had been through. But after that they were home free, sailing into the region of scarlet mist as calmly and effortlessly as if the vortex belt had never existed.
The captain drew a deep breath. Then he turned to his comm officer and said, “Casualties?”
“Nothing serious, sir,” Paxton told him, relaying the latest information he had received from sickbay. “But there are hull breaches on eleven different decks.”
“And we are defenseless,” Gerda added, “until we can restore power to the shields.”
“That too,” said Paxton.
Picard nodded. They had taken a beating, one from which they would need time and considerable effort to recover. And somewhere beyond this placid sea of blood-red mists waited the White Wolf, who knew this system a good deal better than they did and might have come through the vortices a lot better fortified.
But they had made it through. They were alive. And for the moment, Picard reflected, that was all that mattered.
Ensign Jiterica got the news along with the rest of Lieutenant Valderrama’s science section.
The ship had made it through the vortex belt. They had negotiated the system’s second major obstacle without irreparable damage to the ship. It was a significant achievement, a tribute to the expertise of Chief Simenon and his engineers.
What’s more, everyone in the science section seemed to agree with her. They were laughing and patting one another on the back. Expressing jubilation, the ensign observed.
Jiterica was capable of jubilation as well, maybe even more so than her colleagues were. But she wasn’t jubilant at the moment. She was too intent on something that had begun to nag at her a moment earlier, something that lay just under the surface of her consciousness.
An idea. Or at least the beginnings of one.
Jiterica tapped out a command on her keyboard, and the image on her monitor changed, showing her a spectrographic analysis of the wildly churning gases surrounding the Stargazer. It was a different environment than the one that existed on her homeworld, but still . . .
The ensign tapped out another command and brought up a second analysis. It was encouraging enough for her to bring up a third analysis, and then a fourth.
It was still a raw notion, of course. Jiterica would have to examine it further to see if it held any real promise, and that might take a good deal of time. On the other hand, given the simplicity of her assignment here in the science section, time was something she seemed to possess in great abundance.
Chapter Eighteen
Captain’s log, supplemental. Having completed our passage through the vortex belt, we have at last begun to pierce the heart of this solar system. However, we have paid a price for our progress. We have managed to resurrect only the flimsiest of deflector defenses, and it will be some time before our shields or any of our other tactical systems are back to full strength. At the same time, sensor range is steadily diminishing because of the gases through which we are compelled to travel. And we are strictly on our own now, lacking our colleagues’ advice, since no other Federation vessel has managed to get this far in pursuit of the White Wolf. Of course, we have a vague idea of what to expect here, but none of it is extraordinarily promising.
* * *
STUDYING IDUN’S CONTROL PANEL over her shoulder, Ben Zoma frowned. “Then that’s it?” he asked, already knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from his helm officer. “I do not see any altern
ative,” Idun said.
Ben Zoma nodded. “All right. I’ll inform the captain.”
Picard had spent the last three hours in his quarters trying to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Ben Zoma didn’t like the idea of waking him. However, the captain had asked to be apprised of any significant development, and this one certainly qualified.
The first officer looked up at the intercom grid embedded in the ceiling. “Ben Zoma to Captain Picard.”
No response.
“Ben Zoma to Captain Picard,” he repeated.
This time he got an answer. “I heard you the first time,” Picard said, his weariness evident in his voice.
“Sorry,” Ben Zoma told him, smiling sympathetically. “But I thought you should know—”
“I had a dream,” the captain interjected. “A wonderful dream. We had figured out a way to make the sensors work, long- and short-range, interference or no interference.” He yawned. “We were hot and heavy on the trail of the White Wolf.”
Ben Zoma’s smiled tightened a bit. “Then this is a rude awakening in more ways than one. According to Idun, sensor range has diminished too precipitously for us to continue our forward progress—especially with our deflectors in such sorry shape.”
A long pause. “I see,” said Picard, his voice unmistakably full of disappointment.
It had to be a bitter pill for his friend to swallow, Ben Zoma reflected. Having come so far, only to be stymied by what was really a mere technical problem . . .
“All stop,” Picard commanded, “until we can devise a way to see in this muck.”
The first officer turned to Idun, who looked utterly disgusted with the situation—like any Klingon denied a confrontation with her enemy. “You heard the captain,” he said. “All stop.”
“Aye, sir,” she told him, and cut impulse power.
Without the application of braking thrusters, the Stargazer would continue to drift forward on momentum alone. But she wouldn’t go very fast or get very far that way.
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