“The Romulans,” Worf confirmed, voice dripping with venom.
“Romulans of two centuries ago,” Picard reminded him.
“The Romulans of two centuries ago were still Romulans, and they did begin a war with Earth and its allies. Captain, I find it very convenient that the vessel is set so close to our position. Convenient and suspicious. Perhaps we were meant to find it.”
“A trap, you mean? Something to draw us in . . . It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve so lured the Enterprise, would it?” Picard shook his head doubtfully. “But for what purpose?”
“I do not know, but the Romulans have shown an interest in Starfleet propulsion systems in recent months.” Worf gave that hesitant grimace that Picard was so used to. “I do not like it,” he grumbled. “The presence of such an old Starfleet vessel appearing in our path . . .”
“Such things do happen, Mister Worf.”
“Indeed, but,” the Klingon pointed out, “they tend to happen with ships whose fates were previously a mystery.”
“That much I can’t argue with, but . . .” Picard couldn’t quite put his reasoning into words, perhaps because it wasn’t really reasoning. His previous experience with the Romulans was feeding directly into his gut. “This doesn’t feel like a Romulan trap, Worf. If they were so keen to lure a Federation starship, there are many more effective methods. They could create a disaster to which we would be bound to respond, for example.”
“If not the Romulans, then perhaps some other race.”
“Even if it turns out to be a vessel constructed by others, it could simply be a race who once encountered an NX vessel and were . . . suitably impressed.” Worf merely gave Picard a skeptical look. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Mister Worf. A very old Earth saying.”
“A phrase coined by the imitators, I presume.”
“Very likely, but that doesn’t make it any less of a truism.” Picard straightened his uniform. “Let’s be very careful, just in case.” He nodded to the young man at ops. “Scan the system thoroughly, Ensign, and take particular care to look for signs of cloaked vessels.” He turned back to Worf. “Number One, prepare for the possibility of using shuttles to set up a tachyon detection grid if we have to.”
“Aye, sir.”
“We’re in visual range of the object,” Choudhury announced.
“On screen.” A tiny gray bug seemed to be flying toward them, carried by the Enterprise’s own forward motion. It took only a few seconds to resolve itself into a disc-shaped forward section, with two cylindrical units trailing behind. “Well,” Picard breathed softly, allowing himself a small smile. “That’s no paperweight, Worf.”
“No, sir.” Worf sounded impressed, and Picard couldn’t blame him. Klingons revered the past at least as much as humans did, and Picard suspected that some of his own passion for archaeology might have rubbed off on Worf. The captain watched the image grow on screen, and felt doubly sure that the sensor sweeps for any sign of a trap would come up negative. It just looked too natural, hanging there in the vacuum, if a metal spaceship could in any context be considered natural.
The drifting ship was essentially a thick saucer, with a deflector array cut into the leading edge. Two humped fairings on the aft section were attached to a flattened “W” of a wing-like structure, and the warp nacelles were mounted on either side of that.
The outer hull, which in its day had shone bright with steel and silver, was now the dead gray shade of Earth’s moon. It looked as if it was made of frozen rock, the nowmatte plating pitted with micrometeoroid impacts.
“NX-class,” Picard said softly, his eyes glued to the image. “Just as you predicted. I never thought to see one of those in the wild, so to speak.”
“It looks ancient,” Worf rumbled.
“It certainly seems well-worn to say the least,” Picard agreed. “Magnify. Let’s see if we can get a view of her registry, and identify which ship she purports to be.”
The view on the screen zoomed in to the top of the saucer section, forward of the bridge. The hull plating was scored and pitted, the surface layer of the metal chipped away, but enough of the registry and name remained to be legible.
“NX-07,” Picard murmured, “Intrepid.”
“Or a copy thereof,” Worf reminded him.
“Hm.” Picard wasn’t ready to revisit on that theory. “Worf, you said that all of the NX vessels’ fates are known, and accounted for. What do the records say happened to Intrepid? If she isn’t listed as missing in Starfleet’s records, what presumed fate had been assigned to her?”
Worf glanced momentarily at a display. “She is recorded as having been destroyed by a Romulan mine—shortly after hostilities had ceased at the end of the Earth-Romulan War. Very little wreckage was ever found, and only four bodies were recovered.”
“She doesn’t look destroyed to me.” Picard stood, and stepped closer to the screen. “What made Starfleet think that a Romulan mine was responsible for the loss of Intrepid?”
Worf tapped at his display. “Captain Lambert was in the middle of a transmission to Starfleet when contact was lost. The subject of the call was to the effect that the Intrepid had observed the detonation of a Romulan mine nearby, and that he intended to investigate the extent of the field.”
Picard turned in surprise. “Wouldn’t this have constituted a violation of the ceasefire treaty?”
Worf shook his head curtly. “The field is thought to have been laid early in the war. The detonation witnessed by the Intrepid was probably one of the last mines auto-destructing as part of the treaty stipulations.”
“Then there definitely was a Romulan minefield in the Intrepid’s vicinity?”
“Yes, sir. The Vulcan ship Ni’Var, one of the vessels that searched for the Intrepid, confirmed that a minefield was in place at the edge of the system. It had already been decommissioned by the time they got there. Standard Romulan procedure would have been to decommission emplaced weapons by self-destruction,” Worf went on. “They have never enjoyed the risk of others studying their weapons technology.”
Picard nodded, and sat, never taking his eyes off the image of the Intrepid. “So it was assumed, given all the available evidence, that a mine had self-detonated right under the Intrepid, and destroyed her.”
“Yes sir. The Ni’Var is also the vessel which recovered the bodies of four of the Intrepid’s crew.”
“Only four bodies, but no real wreckage? Didn’t that strike anyone as a little bit odd?”
“It was theorized that a new model of mine was responsible, designed to leave as little trace as possible. Of course when signals were sent through diplomatic channels to try to ask the Romulans about that, there was no reply.” It was clear from Worf’s tone that he was neither surprised nor impressed by that fact.
“The ship looks ancient enough, but . . . How does it look from a tactical point of view?”
“There is no obvious sign of weapons damage,” Worf said. “No torpedo blast points, no phaser scorch marks, no carbon scoring.”
“He’s right, sir,” Choudhury agreed. “Sensors don’t read any elevated particle levels that would suggest any form of energy weapon impact.”
“But, after two hundred years, any such levels would almost certainly have returned to normal anyway.”
Choudhury frowned. “The best way to tell would be to take a boarding party across, and conduct more detailed close-up scans for any residual particle stress patterns in the structures. But . . .”
“I would caution against a boarding party, sir,” Worf interrupted. “At least until we’ve conducted more thorough scans of both the ship and the area. It could still be some kind of fake.”
“Conduct the most thorough scans possible,” Picard ordered, “both of the ship and of the surrounding area.” Picard returned his attention to the Intrepid. It was worn and gray, cold and dead, but it retained a certain beauty, as everything that survived long enough seemed to do. Perhaps it was in the nature o
f the universe for time to transform into art everything it touched, or perhaps it was just his own personal bias showing. Picard knew that he would be a liar if he said he didn’t feel the pull of the ship out there, or if he said he didn’t want to board her, and tread those ancient deck plates.
He smiled, and called out, “Commander La Forge, report to the bridge.”
2
Intrepid looked fossilized. Where the Enterprise gleamed and shone with light like an angel swooping to greet its aged ancestor, the Intrepid was a dark stone, looking as if it had been carved from a single piece of ore. Her hull was dull and matte, pitted with scratches and holes, and her viewports were as black as the void all around, as if the ship was interwoven with it, and part of the void itself.
In spite of all of that, she was beautiful.
La Forge could feel his breath catch in his throat when he came onto the bridge and saw her there, framed in the main viewscreen. He had recognized the shape at once, of course, but bringing himself to believe his eyes took a little bit longer. “That can’t be what it looks like . . .”
“My thoughts exactly,” Worf rumbled.
“According to our scans, it can indeed be what it looks like,” Picard said firmly. “An NX-class vessel hundreds of light-years and two centuries from where, history tells us, she was destroyed by a Romulan mine.”
Geordi patched the sensor readings that Choudhury had been taking through to the bridge’s engineering station. “It doesn’t look like there’s any sign of what actually did happen to her.”
“Indeed. She is something of a mystery.” La Forge could hear Picard’s interest and excitement in his tone. The captain always enjoyed a historical puzzle, as much as Geordi enjoyed an engineering one. He let himself smile, infected by the love of a good mystery.
“There is a lot of weathering by micrometeoroids and radiation, but no sign of anything like a major collision, no sign of weapons damage . . . and no hint of energy remaining in the Intrepid’s systems.”
“Not that our sensors can register.”
La Forge was already thinking ahead. “There may be something in internal storage, but we’ll need to go and take a closer look to be absolutely certain one way or the other.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say, Geordi. So far there’s no sign of other vessels in the vicinity, but I’d like you to assemble an engineering team and go across and investigate this . . . derelict.”
“And see if we can wake her up?”
“First and foremost to ascertain definitively whether this is indeed the vessel it appears to be. If so, to find out how she came to be here.”
“And if not . . .”
“If not . . . then I should very much like to know what this ship actually is, and for what purpose it was put here.”
Geordi understood. “In case it’s a sprat to catch a mackerel, huh?”
“Precisely.” Picard turned to Choudhury. “Jasminder, assemble a small security team to accompany Mister La Forge’s team. It’s unlikely that there would be a threat over there, but . . .”
“But why take the chance?” Choudhury gave an approving nod. “I’m on my way.”
The corridor was momentarily illuminated by the transporter beam; stray molecules that had been captured along with the travelers, giving up their energy in the visible spectrum as they dissipated. Geordi La Forge barely had time to register the light on the Intrepid’s interior surfaces before it faded.
He and the entire away team were wreathed in white, like ghosts in old fiction; their faces turned bloodless blue by the gentle lighting around the edges of their helmets’ faceplates. The white EV suits were molded to the individual, making them tight-fitting but comfortable, and were designed to prevent the wearers from becoming the ghosts they already resembled.
Choudhury was the first to activate the sims beacons set onto her helmet, the others following a second later. La Forge had brought three engineers with him, all with equipment belts around the waists of their EV suits. Choudhury had brought two security guards with her. The seven of them were now standing in the central corridor on B deck, and Geordi was surprised by how narrow it was in comparison to the companionways on the Enterprise. The walls, overhead, and deck were all a dark gray, though the specs Geordi had downloaded suggested that there were once color variations.
“No atmosphere,” Choudhury announced, consulting her tricorder. Her voice came through the helmet speakers quite crisply. There was no gravity either, but the suits’ magnetic boots held them to the floor quite effectively.
“No surprise,” La Forge responded, glancing at his own tricorder’s display. “Temperature is the same in here as it is outside the ship. There must be quite a few breaches, probably all very small.”
“Weapons fire?” Choudhury asked. “I mean, old-style projectile weapons?”
La Forge shook his head, forgetting that his helmet wouldn’t respond with the movement. “The system’s Oort cloud, more likely.”
“Shields and navigational deflector control must have been down.”
“Shields? Not in those days. They had to polarize the hull plating back then. Shields were, well, not exactly science fiction, but definitely something that was not in Starfleet’s arsenal.” He turned, directing his beam in both directions along the corridor. “As for the navigational deflector, I’m guessing that must have been out of commission long before the ship got to this system.”
Choudhury’s two guards moved to either end of the corridor, their phaser rifles held ready, but not raised. The engineers spread out, consulting their equipment. Taurik, closest to La Forge and Choudhury, showed them the readings on his tricorder, which had been configured to read radiation levels. “Commander, the radiation on board is above background level, but not severely so. The decay pattern suggests it has been higher in the past.”
“Not much higher, though.” La Forge watched a line track across the tricorder’s screen, and brought up some recorded benchmarks to compare it to. There was a trace for background radiation, a trace for the ship’s own EM background, and a trace for the output of the parent star of the system they were now in. He tapped his suit’s comm unit. “La Forge to Enterprise.”
“Go ahead, Geordi,” Picard’s voice answered.
“Captain, the radiation pattern here is consistent with the Intrepid having drifted across this system for two hundred years.”
“And the micrometeoroid damage?”
“If the ship drifted in through the Oort cloud, with no shielding, that’d probably match up too, Captain. Though we’d have to double-check the composition of the cloud.”
“I’ll have that arranged,” Picard responded, then Geordi could just make out his voice ordering someone to launch a probe, before returning to address the away team. “Geordi, is it your opinion that the vessel is genuine?”
“We’ve only seen some corridor space so far, Captain, but it’s definitely old. If this isn’t actually the NX-07 then it must be a reverse-engineer job contemporary with the original. I don’t have any doubts that this ship has been drifting here for two centuries. It’s definitely not a modern vessel placed here for our benefit.”
“Understood. Picard out.” La Forge could hear the relief in the captain’s voice, and a hint of the same pleasure that Geordi felt, at the increasing certainty that this was a genuine piece of history.
“Where do you want to go first, Commander?” Choudhury asked.
“The bridge and engineering. Taurik, engineering takes up the aft sections of D and E decks. Take Vargas with you, and check out just how cold the engines and the power systems are. I’ll take Khalid and look at the bridge.”
“Aye, Commander.”
Choudhury addressed her people. “Go with Taurik, just in case. I’ll accompany Commander La Forge.”
As Taurik, Ensign Emilia Vargas, and the two security men set off toward the aft end of the corridor, Geordi led Choudhury and Ensign Leon Khalid a few steps in the other direction.
He stopped at a man-sized access panel. “There’s no power for the tubolifts, so we’ll have to climb.” He felt around the edges of the panel, the EV suit’s gauntlets making it harder to get a grip, and heaved with all of his strength.
The panel remained closed. “It seems to be fused shut. Khalid, hand me a pry bar.” The ensign drew a stout metal bar from his equipment belt and handed it to La Forge. With some effort, Geordi popped the panel free, and Choudhury helped him move it aside. They shone their lights into the space beyond, which was a black hollow like the socket of a recently pulled tooth. The lights picked out the glinting lines of a ladder at the back of the space, leading upward.
“This should take us up to A deck.”
“Perhaps I should go first,” Choudhury suggested.
“If you want, sure.” He gave her a phaser-cutter. “At the top, you’ll have to cut through the door.”
“Understood.” Choudhury ascended the ladder, and, after a moment, Khalid and La Forge followed her. It was only a four-meter ladder, but by the time Geordi reached the top he could see the light of the phaser-cutter. A roughly oval section of the door, its edges still glowing, toppled outward with a heavy thud that La Forge could feel through his boots.
The three of them ducked through into the bridge, careful not to stumble. The crisp clarity of their sims beacons in the sterile chamber picked out horseshoe-shaped stations on either side of the forward part of the bridge, with the helm console between them. The main viewscreen was smaller than Geordi had expected, and totally matte-black. The captain’s seat should have been in the center, of course, but only the base of its mounting was there. More stations were set behind the center position, including a table-like affair recessed at the rear of the bridge. There was no sign of the crew that Geordi could see.
There were a surprising number of handholds around the bridge, and the control consoles had a lot more buttons and switches than La Forge had seen in a long time. It was a good thing, he realized, as they’d never even see the label on a smooth LCARS console if it was as dead as these boards. Maybe, he thought, they had the right idea back in the day.
Star Trek The Next Generation® Page 3
