Star Trek The Next Generation®

by David A. McIntee

  “I’m still concerned that they’re bound to try to take some advantage of the situation. We should put them under guard.”

  “They’re our guests, not prisoners,” La Forge said from the center seat.

  “That was when we had a fully functioning starship. Right now, the situation has changed.”

  “Captain, Kat has a point,” Nog put in. “The Romulans have always been at their most dangerous when responding to—”

  “When responding to an effect that they carefully set up or provoked. That isn’t the case here. There’s no way they set this up,” La Forge said.

  “They’ll still be working out how to turn this to their advantage, because they’d be stupid not to,” Nog pointed out.

  “We need the cooperation of our guests. But . . .”

  “I’ll keep an eye on them, sir,” Nog promised solemnly.

  Guinan felt uncomfortable, and it wasn’t just from injured ribs or painful cuts. It was looking across at Sela. Even for a member of a race known for listening to and reading people, Sela was a puzzle. Her expression could have been simmering anger, or just challenging arrogance. Maybe it was the Romulan blood in her that made it hard to tell, or maybe it was just Sela herself; her upbringing having marked her.

  “Hello, Guinan.” Sela’s tone was unreadable.

  “Sela.” Guinan wondered why she had come to Nelson’s alone. “Can I get you something?”

  “I doubt you could give me what I want.”

  “Try me.”

  “You’re thinking of her now, aren’t you?”

  “Her?”

  “My mother.”

  Guinan was indeed thinking of Tasha Yar. The resemblance between mother and daughter was too strong for her not to think of the woman she had never known, yet had heard so much about, when she saw this Romulan. “You look a like her picture.”

  “Too much.”

  “They say that every woman eventually becomes her mother, in some way or other.”

  “Really? And which ‘they’ is this ‘they’? No, wait. Don’t tell me. Humans.”

  “I’ve heard it said by the Klingons, the Ferengi, and even the Romulans. I wish I’d known her.”

  “She remembered you, you know. Well, another you, from another timeline. I’m not even sure you’re the right you to be talking about this to.”

  “Are you blaming me for your mother’s death?” Guinan felt guilty in spite of herself. She knew the story, and knew that another Guinan had tried to give someone who was dead a chance to live.

  “No. At least not in the way you mean.”

  “I know the story, Sela. I heard it from Picard. Tasha Yar would still have been dead if that other me hadn’t said anything. If that other me hadn’t even known that her existence in that timeline was wrong.”

  “A Starfleet officer would still have been dead. But she wouldn’t have been my mother.”

  “No, and you wouldn’t exist.”

  Sela leaned in close. “That’s what I blame you for.”

  “Your existence? And what’s the punishment for that?”

  Sela stood. “I have an appointment in the conference room.”

  The Tal Shiar chairman’s appointment was with the Starfleet captain who passed her a padd with the data on the trans-slipstream wakes. “What is this?” she asked.

  “It’s a sensor log of a trans-slipstream wake. Please, Sela, don’t make a fool of yourself by pretending you’ve never seen one before.”

  Sela’s expression went cold and flat. “I’m not a fool, Captain. Fools don’t rise in rank in the Empire.”

  “No, I don’t imagine they do . . . But I wanted to know if you have seen this type of reading before. Before the cause of it crashed into you.”

  “What makes you think that I’ve seen it before?”

  “That’s not a denial,” La Forge pointed out.

  “Would you prefer a denial?”

  “Ever since we first detected this waveform, we’ve been in communication with Starfleet about it. We distributed the record to others, who’ve been watching for it. We know you’ve had probes listening in on our communications, because we found one while Bok was in charge of the Intrepid. It’d be an insult to Romulan technology if those probes hadn’t eavesdropped on the messages. All even without Ferengi smugglers and criminals blabbing all over the galaxy.”

  “If you have a point, make it.”

  “A wake has to be caused by something. A vessel of some kind. We’ve been trying to identify it, and you were looking for it too. You had to, as it represents a drive technology beyond slipstream.”

  “A Tal Shiar officer called Saldis has been working on this. I’ve read his reports and immediately recognized what brought us here.”

  La Forge hesitated. “This trans-slipstream wake, two hundred years ago, destroyed a Romulan minefield, and threw the NX-07, Intrepid, hundreds of light-years. Another wake caused the disappearance of the U.S.S. Hera a dozen years ago. A third hit us and brought us here, as you say.”

  “So?”

  “My mother was captain of the Hera. The ships that caused these wakes killed her. I just thought . . . I thought we needed to establish a common ground, since we’re now on a shared mission, Chairman.” The word stuck in his throat.

  “So we both have dead mothers?” Sela scoffed. “The same mission I’ll grant you—to return home. The difference is that I didn’t just sign on a dotted line somewhere that I would uphold the rules of the service I was joining. I was raised into that service. It’s a privilege, not just a duty.”

  “Your father was an admiral, wasn’t he?”

  “What of it?”

  La Forge couldn’t resist a sad smile. “You think you’re the only person who was inspired to come out into space because of your parents? My mother became the captain of that starship, and my father is in Starfleet as well. I knew from the time I was old enough to hold a toy starship where I wanted to go and what I wanted to be.”

  “As did I, in spite of my mother.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” La Forge meant it. “Chairman of the Tal Shiar is a bigger job than being proconsul, I hear. She’d have been proud of you for doing so well, even in a foreign government.”

  “In the end I was better off without her. Perhaps other people might be too, especially humans.”

  “No, I don’t think they would be. In fact, I don’t think you were better off without her. I think you were probably better off because you remember a time when she was there.” He tried to wrap his head around Sela’s viewpoint, but, truthfully, wasn’t sure that he could. “Somehow, her death drove you forward, and even did you good, but it can’t have done that without her having been there in the first place.”

  “I killed her, Captain.” Sela’s voice was momentarily strained, and exactly how he remembered Tasha Yar’s. It was like hearing a ghost. The moment passed as she continued. “At least I was responsible for her execution. And I never looked back. All the way up the ladder.”

  “We’re getting away from what we need to be discussing,” La Forge said.

  “Survival is what we need to be discussing.” Sela frowned. “Is it my imagination or is the gravity getting a little stronger?”

  “We haven’t adjusted the setting . . . There isn’t enough power to spare.” He raised himself on his toes experimentally. “No, but you’re right, I feel a little heavier than I did a few hours ago . . .” They went out onto the bridge, where La Forge checked the environmental control station. “Point six g . . . but we’re only generating point five.”

  “The only reason we could be experiencing an increase in local gravity is if the Challenger is accelerating,” Sela pointed out.

  “Which it’s not going to do unless we get out and push.”

  “No . . . Which means we must be accelerating toward a mass of some kind. But what?”

  “The questions are, ‘What is it? And how soon before we hit it?’”

  34

  “Wotch
er, Doc,” Vol called up from engineering.

  Leah, knowing that she was the doctor Vol was calling to, answered, “Go ahead, Vol.”

  “The sensor net is cooking with gas now. External sensors only, though.”

  “Externals are perfectly adequate, Vol. With any luck we can identify the gravitational attractor that’s pulling us.” She brought the sensors online and began scanning in the direction in which Challenger was accelerating by point one g. There was nothing in range. She knew it was only a matter of time however, and set the computer to notify her when it had a result.

  Then she started scanning for trans-slipstream wakes.

  This time the results were immediate, and she called La Forge over. He leaned in beside her at the ops station. “What have we got?”

  “The trans-slipstream wake signature. Actually, more than one. I’m reading a whole lot of them.”

  “If there’s a gravitational attractor in the area . . . Let’s scan the area for that quantum granulation in subspace that Sonya reported was everywhere in G-231.”

  “Any particular reason why? Or this just a hunch?”

  “There was a lot of granulation in the vicinity of the black hole near G-231, which means a lot of trans-slipstream wakes, which means a lot of traffic by whatever causes them, if they’re using high-mass objects as marker buoys.”

  “Right.”

  “So, why near the black hole? It’s a natural navigational buoy.”

  “This gravitational attractor isn’t on the same level as a black hole.”

  “But it’s the only attractor around, so a species that uses gravity wells as navigational markers, and comes out here, isn’t going to pass up the only marker for thousands of light-years. It’s as big a deal out here as a supermassive black hole would be in a stellar-dense area.”

  “That’s a pretty big assumption, Geordi. Just because they seem to have used the Bolus Reach, and we’ve ended up here, that doesn’t necessarily mean they use gravity wells that way on a regular basis.”

  “It’s not just that. The report the Klingons sent was about something matching the trans-slipstream wake spotted near a black hole. The Cardassians saw something resembling it in a dead system with a super-dense neutron star.”

  “All high-mass gravity wells.”

  “It’s the only common factor, and that has to be significant.”

  “It looks like you’re right,” she said slowly, as the numbers scrolled past major subspace granuation. “The peaks and troughs are off the scale. This is definitely a major hub for the ships that are causing the wakes. It’s a regular traffic jam.”

  “Then all we need to know is what the attractor is, and where.”

  “I’ve set the computer to call me when it has that information.”

  “Then it’s time we had lunch.”

  “You’re thinking about lunch at a time like this?”

  “I’m thinking about blood sugar and alertness levels. Nobody’s any good if they’re not properly fed and rested.”

  Half asleep in their dining chairs in Nelson’s, La Forge and Leah listened to the faint creaks and pops of distant metal cooling in space, which would normally be drowned out by the sound of the engines. In fact, they were sounds which would rarely happen when the ship was fully powered.

  “I’ve been thinking . . .” La Forge began.

  “Me too.”

  “We’re already pretty much sharing quarters. I wondered if, when we get home . . .”

  “Do you think we’ll ever get home?” The words came out a little more anxiously than she intended.

  “I can’t let myself think that we won’t.”

  “Me neither,” she lied. “So . . .”

  “I was hoping that someday our arrangement might become more permanent.”

  “Every probability curve must have a far end,” Leah said.

  “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”

  “Some days,” Guinan’s voice interrupted softly, “working the night shift brings its own rewards.”

  “Anything you just imagined you heard,” La Forge said without opening his eyes, “is classified information.”

  In engineering, Barclay was a flurry of hyperactivity, helping Vol with this, helping Voktra with that. Anyone who didn’t know him would have taken him for a super-efficient worker with no sense of fear.

  That, of course, was exactly the impression he was striving for. He didn’t like for his crewmates to see his anxiety at the best of times, and he sure as hell didn’t want a group of Romulans to see him afraid or nervous. They could probably smell fear, but he was going to do his damnedest to uphold the image of a Starfleet officer.

  “We’re outside the galaxy,” he was saying, “which means that sooner or later we’re going to have to go back through the galactic barrier.”

  “How could we have passed through the barrier in the first place?” Voktra asked.

  “It has been known to happen, but almost always by accident. No one has ever developed a drive and shielding that could allow it on a regular, repeatable basis.”

  “Haven’t they . . . ?”

  “No one that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “What about whatever dragged us here? I don’t see it crippled beside us.” Voktra let herself smile, and Barclay was taken aback. He’d never seen a pretty Romulan before, nor had he ever thought of one that way. “Think of the strategic advantages of being able to exit the galaxy, travel around through empty space, and re-enter at a point of your choosing, without passing through hostile space in between.”

  “You mean circumvent borders.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. No one’s going to look for warbirds entering their space through the galactic barrier.”

  “And was attracting one of those things worth the chance to do that?” Barclay asked.

  “We didn’t attract whatever hit us.” She frowned, puzzled. “What are you suggesting?”

  “You’re sure? We know they use high-gravity bodies as navigational markers, and you have an attractive body.” Barclay blushed furiously, and waggled his fingers as if to wave away the slip. “I mean, a forced quantum singularity, in your engine core. That might have attracted—”

  “Romulans are not in the habit of attracting other species,” Voktra stated flatly.

  “Er, that’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”

  “I’m sorry, that came out a little . . .”

  “Strangely?”

  “It’s a stressful situation, and my mind is rather preoccupied.”

  “Oh, I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Good.”

  “So,” Barclay continued hesitantly, “what exactly happened when your ship was hit?”

  “We were trying to locate and neutralize sabotage set by one of the chairman’s political rivals. The warp core had been rigged to overload—or overfeed—the singularity.”

  Barclay nodded, understanding. Voktra’s story made a lot more sense to him than Qat’qa’s suspicions. He looked at his hands, relieved that they weren’t shaking. “You know, you don’t seem like a Romulan.”

  “I’ll try not to take that personally.”

  “I meant in a good way.”

  “You don’t seem like a Starfleeter.”

  “Oh.” He was disappointed. His efforts to uphold the image must have failed.

  “You’re not as lazy.”

  Barclay beamed.

  “I have tested out our maneuvering capabilities,” Qat’qa reported when La Forge and Leah returned to the bridge, slightly refreshed for having eaten. “The power we’re drawing from the runabout is giving me a delay in response to controls, but it is workable.”

  “Plot a series of orbital courses we can use, and take us into the best stable orbit you can manage around the attractor.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Once we’re in orbit we should be able to catch our breath and see what kind of shape the Challenger is really in, and figure out what to do next.” H
e turned to Leah. “What kind of sensor readings are we getting from the gravitational attractor?”

  “None.”

  “None?” That was weird; every high-gravity phenomenon La Forge had heard of put out hard radiation. “Not even X-rays or hard gamma?”

  “No, no X-rays, no gamma rays, nothing I’d expect to see from any natural source.”

  “Nog, launch a probe toward the attractor. I want to see what it is we’re about to start hanging around with.”

  Nog keyed the appropriate command on his console. “Probe away.” After a few moments, Nog reported, “Still no sensor readings from the probe, other than in the visual spectrum. We can see the attractor.”

  “What is it?”

  Nog hesitated for a heartbeat. “It appears to be a starship.”

  “On screen.”

  The main body of the ship was the same size and shape as the Challenger’s own primary hull. It was lightless, but a faint edge of galactic light picked out the shape. A wedge on one side clamped two nacelles to the disc, while a triangular structure stood above the opposite surface.

  “It’s Federation . . .” Qat’qa exclaimed.

  “Nebula-class,” Nog confirmed.

  La Forge hardly dared breathe. “Let’s see if the probe can shine some light on her, Nog.”

  Nog manipulated more controls, turning on a powerful light source built into the probe. He guided the probe over the upper forward section of the saucer, casting its light over the registry number. “NCC-62006.”

  “The Hera,” La Forge breathed. His eyes filled with tears. “It’s the Hera.”

  35

  La Forge was awestruck, in every sense of the word. It was not just a great joy but an emotional tsunami that crashed over him. “I don’t believe it . . .”

  “I thought it was exactly what you were hoping to find,” Leah said, puzzled.

  “Hoping is one thing, but I never actually expected it. I mean, not to find the Hera so intact. It’s like . . .” He didn’t even know what it was like, really. To have come to the end of a personal quest that had been a shadow over his life for so many years, whether he admitted it or not. “It’s like finding the Holy Grail.”