Star Trek - Day Of Honor 02

by Armageddon Sky

  Until now.

  There had not even been a flare of comet tail across the field of the Defiant's vision to alert them. Five minutes after Gul Hidret's apoplectic face had cut to black and Ensign Farabaugh had hurriedly transferred Armageddon's rusty image back up on the viewscreen, a brilliant white explosion spasmed over the planet's sea-covered northern pole. Sisko jerked back from the glare, even though he knew they were orbiting far above the planet's stratosphere. He swung instinctively toward the weapons console. "Report!"

  "Sensors have detected a seventeen gigajoule explosion at planetary coordinates seventy-three point five by one-twenty-four point nine," his security officer said. "The radiation signal shows only natural thermal decay, no evidence of ionized plasma or radioactivity."

  "That's a comet impact." O'Brien sent Sisko a grim look from engineering. "And it's only a few hundred kilometers from our away team at the main Klingon outpost."

  "Four-hundred-and-ninety-seven kilometers, to be precise," Worf clarified in a stiffly proper voice. "However, vital signs on all away team members appear stable."

  Sisko didn't bother asking why the Klingon had programmed that information -- ordinarily the responsibility of the Defiant's science officer -- to route through his piloting console. Instead, he turned his frown on Dax's young replacement. "Ensign Farabaugh, I asked you to locate the most threatening fragments in the cometary field. What happened?"

  "Nothing, sir."

  Worf slewed around at his pilot's station to bestow an even fiercer scowl on the young man. "Seventeen gigajoules is equivalent to the force of nine photon torpedoes! Would you call that nothing if you were down on that planet?"

  Farabaugh's eyes widened slightly, but his sincere look never wavered. "The explosion was thirty-seven kilometers up in the atmosphere, Commander Worf. I doubt our away team even heard a rumble of thunder from it."

  "Lucky for them," O'Brien commented. "And for us. What are the odds the one comet we miss intercepting is the one that explodes prematurely?"

  "We didn't miss that comet, sir," Farabaugh said in mild surprise. "The computer noted its trajectory ten minutes ago, while the captain was talking to Gul Hidret. It just didn't trigger an alarm."

  Sisko lifted an eyebrow at his young science officer. "You knew that fragment was going to disintegrate too high to cause any damage? How?"

  "Relative velocity, sir." Farabaugh punched a series of commands into his science console, and the fading afterglow of the comet impact on Armageddon disappeared. The starless black screen that replaced it told Sisko this was a computer simulation, rather than a real sensor view. Multicolored streaks swam and spiraled across the black background like minnows in a chaotic school, leaving faint, glowing trails behind them. "After I scanned the comet field to find the ones most likely to collide with Armageddon, I ran impact simulations for each of them. You can see from the white and blue streaks that most of the ice fragments are moving at extremely or moderately high velocity relative to the orbital motion of Armageddon."

  "And those are the most threatening ones?" O'Brien guessed.

  "Actually, no, sir. Any comets that hit the planets atmosphere fast are subjected to enormous crushing forces. Given the low density of cometary ice, almost all the fast-moving fragments detonate high in the stratosphere. Only the ones over seventy kilometers in diameter will survive long enough to affect the surface." Farabaugh tapped another command into his panel, and a few dozen comet fragments lit up in reds and yellows. "These are the dangerous fragments -- the ones that are either big enough or slow enough to survive their passage through the atmosphere. They're the ones we have to worry about."

  "Will they also crash into the planet with no warning?" Worf demanded.

  Odo sent him a sardonic glance. "Comets are not Klingon warriors, Commander. You can hardly expect them to issue a proper challenge before they attack."

  "No." Despite his agreement, however, Sisko noticed the Klingon sat scowling up at the screen, as if he could somehow intimidate the comets into more honorable behavior. "How much leeway do we have before an impact event, Mr. Farabaugh?" Sisko asked.

  "I've programmed the computer to issue a priority-one alarm half an hour before each projected impact." The young science officer glanced back at him uncertainly. "Will that be long enough?"

  "That depends on what preventive action we're going to take." Odo glanced across at Sisko. "Which was what I believe we were discussing before we were so rudely interrupted by the Cardassians."

  "I don't think there's much left to discuss." Sisko sat back in his command chair and steepled his fingers. "Phasers are ready and the coast is clear. Which of these comets do you want us to shoot first, Mr. Farabaugh?"

  "Um -- actually, Captain, there's something I wanted to tell you about that." The young officer cleared his throat diffidently. "I'd rather we didn't shoot any of them, if you don't mind."

  Sisko saw Worf turn to scowl again at the beleaguered ensign, and waved the Klingon into fuming silence. "All right, Mr. Farabaugh. Explain."

  "Actually, sir, I think I know what he means," O'Brien said before Farabaugh could gather himself together. "We learned about this in planetary engineering. If you explode a comet that's threatening to strike a planet, all you do is increase the area of devastation by turning it from one big impactor into a whole bunch of medium-sized ones."

  "Exactly," Farabaugh said, looking relieved. "The destruction quotient goes up anywhere from four to ten times, depending on the number of fragments and their trajectories. And since a phaser blast would tend to selectively refract through cracks and fissures in the comet, it would be almost impossible not to break it into fragments."

  Worf's scowl faded into a more thoughtful frown. "What if we increased dispersion and decreased intensity on the phasers? That should vaporize the whole comet even if it breaks apart."

  "Except it will also create a radiating impulse wave that will disturb other comets in the cloud into new orbits," O'Brien said. "Which means we might add one or two more major threats for every one we remove."

  "And there's no way to know that without running the tracking program all over again every time we vaporize," added Farabaugh.

  "Too risky. We might point a comet at the planet before we even knew we did it." Sisko tapped his steepled fingers against his chin, considering his rapidly dwindling alternatives. "Well, the one thing we agree on is that we can't just sit here and let Armageddon happen. So we'll have to find something we can do." He shot an inquiring glance at his chief engineer. "You must remember something else from that planetary engineering class of yours, Chief. What were the recommended ways of dealing with an imminent comet impact?"

  "Deflection by modulated photon torpedo blast," O'Brien said promptly. "The idea was not to break it up, just alter its trajectory enough to turn the hit into a miss."

  "And the photon blast probably stripped off just enough of the dust mantle to vaporize a layer of interior ice," Farabaugh guessed. "Then the gas spurt would push the comet in the opposite direction."

  "Right." O'Brien waved a hand at the multitude of colored streaks on the main viewscreen. "The problem is, there's a lot more red and yellow blobs up there than we have torpedoes. And even quantum torpedoes aren't strong enough to reach more than one or two comets at a time."

  "Can we achieve the same effect by modulating our phaser array?" Worf demanded.

  The chief engineer shook his sandy head. "We'd have to remodulate it for each blast, and you know how many hours that would take."

  "Not to mention the fact that it would make the phasers inoperable for defensive purposes," Odo commented. "And considering that I've just detected the ion trail of a cloaked vessel entering the system --"

  "Location, velocity, estimated size?" Sisko demanded. For all the implicit trust he felt in Odo and Kira, there were times when the captain would have given anything for them to have had Starfleet training.

  "Extrapolated destination?" Odo scanned his panel. "Cloaked ves
sel is currently two-hundred-and-fifty thousand kilometers out from system center, traveling at seventy-five percent impulse speed and slowing rapidly. It appeared to be a Jfolokh-class vessel, but with the ion trail dissipating as it slows, the computer can't be sure. Extrapolated destination is an equatorial orbit around Armageddon." He looked up at Sisko. "If I had to guess, Captain, I'd say the Klingon blockade was back in town."

  Sisko grunted. "Mr. Worf, notify the away team that from now on, all communications are on secure channels only. And tell them they either beam up soon or not for a while." He turned toward his chief engineer. "I don't care how you do it, Chief, but I want the Defiant's emissions down as close to zero as you can manage for the next few hours. I don't want those Klingons to get even a sniffof our presence here until we've located the survivors and are ready to beam them out."

  O'Brien grimaced. "I don't know about zero, sir. I can recirculate the ship's thermal output and put a magnetic bottle around our warp exhaust, but there's not too much I can do about the diffuse ionization off the shields. And with all the comets bumbling through our current orbit --"

  "-- we can't turn shields off," Sisko finished for him. "But we may be able to lower the transfer charge without compromising our deflection capacity. Do the best you can, Chief."

  "Aye, sir." O'Brien scrambled out of his chair, pausing only long enough to tap open his direct channel down to the Engineering deck. "Frantz, cap the warp exhaust, now. Ornsdorf and Frisinger, start recycling our waste heat through the impulse baffles to equalize it with ambient."

  "Aye, sir." The competent calmness of that reply was so obviously modeled after O'Brien's own legendary composure that Sisko had to smile. "Desired delta on the heat output?"

  "As close to planetary infrared output as possible," O'Brien said. "And I'm coming down to recalibrate the power circuits for the shields, so get all those lines stripped and ready for modulation."

  "Aye, sir."

  Satisfied that his ship was going to be as invisible as any able-bodied vessel could be, Sisko turned his attention back to Worf. "Any response from the away team, Commander?"

  The Klingon's glum look told him the answer before he even began to speak. "Dr. Bashir says he is not finished evaluating casualties among the new Klingon encampment, Captain. They appear to have experienced at least three impact events, although none were as direct and damaging as the one that affected the first settlement. He has asked me to beam Ensign Ledonne into the new camp to aid him."

  "Is the Klingon ship still out of short-range sensor detection limit?" Sisko asked his security officer. When Odo assented with a grunt, he nodded his approval back to Worf. "Tell the doctor this will be his last chance to reassign his team, or to beam any Klingons aboard for medical treatment. What progress have the others made in locating the hostages?"

  "Commander Dax has sent a full report on the interrogations she and Major Kira have conducted so far, but says they have been unable to convince any among this group of exiles to cooperate with them as Gordek did. She is no closer to identifying who the hostage-takers are, much less what their location might be. She has also transmitted the data she has collected on the planet's environmental conditions, to be attached to your logs."

  "Hmm." Rather than reassuring him, that news made Sisko's skin crawl with apprehension. The only time Dax went out of her way to keep him informed of her scientific discoveries was when she thought she might not be coming back to explain them in glorious detail herself. "Keep a high-security communications channel available for the away team to use at all times, Mr. Worf. And keep a close eye on their vital signs. We still don't know if the exiles they're dealing with are any more trustworthy than the ones who found the Victoria Adams."

  Worf grunted curt approval of that policy. "I have already programmed an automated linkage between the shields and the main transporter controls. We can have the away team aboard with only a moment's loss in defensive capability."

  "Good work, Commander." Sisko saw the irritated look Ensign Farabaugh threw Worf, and shook his head warningly at the younger man. It was true that Worf's preemptive action had usurped some of the science officer's traditional responsibilities, but the end result was all that mattered right now, not how it was achieved. He distracted Farabaugh with a wave of his hand at the viewscreen. "As long as we've got a computer simulation running up there, can we add the Klingons' estimated course-heading to it?"

  "Yes, sir. All I need is the tracking data from Mr. Odo's station."

  "I'm transferring it to you now. And for your information, young man, I am not Mister Odo."

  "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." Farabaugh ducked his head over his panel, and, a moment later, a bright green disk appeared at the far edge of the viewscreen. Even if he hadn't known it was the ion-trace of the cloaked Klingon vessel, Sisko's space-trained eyes would have been caught by its unusual rate of deceleration and its erratic slalom swings through the comet field. "The Klingon vessel isn't deflecting the comet debris, Captain," Farabaugh said unnecessarily. "It's taking evasive action."

  "I can see that." Sisko could admire the fierce jerks and swoops of the unknown vessel, even while he pitied any Klingons aboard with weak stomachs. No inertial dampener in the galaxy could cope with shifts that rapid. "Interpretation, Mr. Worf?"

  "I am not sure, Captain." Worf squinted up at the screen as if he could visualize the Klingon ship better that way. "Perhaps they are practicing battle maneuvers. If so, they are not standard ones."

  "If I didn't know any better," Odo said dryly, "I would say they were out glee-riding."

  "Glee-riding?" Worf repeated.

  "It's what Bajoran adolescents call careening as close as they can to the rocks when they're out ice-sailing. Personally, I call it trying to kill themselves just for the fun of it."

  Watching the green disk swing wildly out of its way to needle between two closely orbiting comet fragments, Sisko had to admit that Odo's description did seem apt. "If that really is a Jfolokh-class vessel, it's running damn close to its operating tolerances. The pilot's either very good or very foolish."

  "Or both," Worf said grimly. "I find it difficult to believe that this ship has been sent to resume the official Klingon embargo."

  "They don't know that we're here," Sisko reminded him. "And they've probably sent all their better ships to man the Cardassian border. No matter how it's getting here, it's certainly headed for the orbit I'd expect a blockading ship to take up."

  "True." Worf glanced back over his shoulder. "In that case, sir, I suggest continuous passive scanning to be sure the Klingon vessel does not attempt to beam anyone to or from the planet surface."

  Sisko nodded at Farabaugh. "Do it. And monitor their communications, too. I doubt they'll be saying much on open channels, but it never hurts to listen."

  "Aye, sir."

  The green disk that was the cloaked Klingon vessel made one last swashbuckling swoop around a spiraling comet fragment, then settled reluctantly on station around the glowing amber sphere representing Armageddon in the computer simulation. Sisko lifted an eyebrow, noticing that the skimmed comet fragment had been blasted into a different direction by the encounter with the Klingon's warp exhaust.

  "Looks like you'd better rerun your impact prediction model, too, Mr. Farabaugh," he said. "After all those close encounters with the Klingons --" He broke off, sitting straighter in his command chair. "That's what we can do!"

  Odo gave him a caustic look. "Have a close encounter with the Klingons?"

  "No -- with any comet that looks like it's going to hit the planet." Sisko leaped out of his chair and began pacing, trying to gather together his whirling thoughts. "We'll have to uncap our warp core exhaust, at least long enough to alter the orbit of the fragment we want to intercept. It's either that or vent some of the thermal waste stored in the impulse engines."

  "Either way, we would leave a clear trail for the Klingons to see," Worf pointed out. The tactical officer did not sound negative, just thoughtful. "I
f we plotted our course carefully, however, we could use the planet's gravitational field to loop us toward the comet with just a one- or two-second impulse thrust. Then we would only need to graze the comet with our angled shields in order to deflect it."

  Farabaugh looked up from his science console. "Can we plot a course that won't affect the other comets in the field, Commander? That way, our collision models won't need to be rerun every time we interfere."

  "We can if we wait until the comet is just about to enter Armageddon's gravity well." Sisko came to a halt in front of the viewscreen and pointed at the halo of clear space around the planet. "All we'll need to do is adjust the velocity of our circumpolar orbit to be sure we're close to the comet's projected entry point."

  Odo snorted. "And you don't think the Klingons will notice when a comet suddenly bounces off of empty space?"