Fortral returned the gesture to Riker and to Troi as she waited for her translator to finish whispering Riker’s words to her. Then she replied, “I wish you the same, and with sincerity, may many males inhabit you.”
The Araldii ship leader then distorted her mouth in what some might think was a passable imitation of a human smile. Riker immediately turned to Troi for insight into Fortral’s strange statement, but the ship’s counselor just shook her head at him. When he turned back to Fortral, all the Araldon’s blue stripes were glistening, most of them flickering between dark blue and white. A moment later, she flickered into transparency, caught by her ship’s transporter.
“ ‘May many males inhabit you’?” Riker asked.
Troi shrugged. “Whatever it meant, she said it with absolute conviction and well wishes. And I think she was actually trying to smile at you.”
“Then I’ll feel honored…I guess.”
The computer display on Riker’s desk chimed. “Bridge to Captain Riker.” It was Riker’s first officer, Commander Christine Vale.
“Go ahead.”
“Captain, the Araldii ship is withdrawing. Doctor Burke suggests we do the same.”
“On my way,” Riker answered. He gestured to the door leading to the bridge. “Time to go to work.”
Husband and wife, captain and counselor, Riker and Troi stepped onto the bridge of the Titan.
Joanna Burke, director of astronomy at the moon’s Weiler Observatory, was already waiting, standing by the science station to which she’d been assigned. Her attention was riveted on the main viewscreen, where Salton Cross seemed to pulse as its surface roiled with magnetic eddies large enough to swallow planets.
Commander Vale smoothly stood up from the center chair and moved to the right. “All systems ready for warp-point-nine-five withdrawal, bearing zero zero niner zero.”
As Riker sat down in the center chair at the back of the bridge, he thought again that its arrangement was a most comfortable combination of those on the Enterprise-D and -E. He spoke to his navigator. “Ensign Lavena, move us into position above the pole and prepare for warp.”
“Aye, sir.” Aili Lavena’s hydration suit made its characteristic gurgle of slow shifting water as she expertly moved her sheathed hands across her control board. As a marine humanoid at this stage in her life cycle, the Pacifican female was at home only in a fully aquatic environment.
But Lavena’s control of the Titan was assured and absolute, and in response to her flight commands, Salton Cross appeared to rotate on the viewscreen. The movement stopped only when the Titan was eighty million kilometers directly above its north magnetic pole.
“Magnificent,” Doctor Burke said. “Neutrino flux peaked one hundred, twelve minutes ago when the star’s core collapsed. The shock wave is just about to reach the surface. We can expect the initial blast to begin within five minutes.”
“Shields on full,” Riker ordered, even though he doubted they’d be required. At a distance of only eighty million kilometers from a supernova, the Titan’s shields would likely not protect the ship for more than a minute or two, and he had no desire to stay in place long enough to test the estimate. Riker had learned from his mentor to err on the side of caution wherever possible.
“Shields on full,” Commander Tuvok confirmed. As tactical officer, the Vulcan who had served with such distinction on Admiral Janeway’s Voyager brought a wealth of welcome experience to Riker’s crew. He had kept the ship operating smoothly during the first forty-eight hours of the Titan’s encounter with the Araldii, when the newcomers’ intentions had been unknown. Once their peaceful and cooperative nature had been confirmed, both by their willingness to share scientific data and Troi’s own empathic sensitivity, Tuvok had concerned himself solely with the safety precautions required for being so close to a star about to explode.
“Neutrino flux has dropped to zero,” Burke announced. “This is it.”
Riker instinctively wrapped his mind around the relativistic effects he had to account for in the next few minutes. He knew that neutrinos traveled at the speed of light. The fact that the ones produced in the core of Salton Cross were no longer being detected at this distance meant that the fusion reactions at the heart of the star had stopped four minutes and twenty-seven seconds ago. That was the brief time it took neutrinos to travel eighty million kilometers.
The visual image on the viewscreen, however, was constructed by subspace sensor data that propagated at faster-than-light speeds. Most important, that meant he could see the star as it was now.
As Riker watched intently, the star—abruptly—began to grow smaller, as if the Titan were already warping away.
“There it goes,” Burke said with excitement. “The star is collapsing—there’s no outward pressure of internal fusion reactions to counteract the inward pull of gravity.”
Riker held a hand near his face, as did everyone else on the bridge. Even with visual safeguards in place, the flash of light was going to be strong.
“Criticality in seven…six…five…four…three…”
Burke’s countdown was interrupted.
Two seconds ahead of her best estimate, Salton Cross went supernova.
Over the past few weeks, Riker had come to know Burke well enough to realize that she would be thrilled to have miscalculated and would already be mentally revising her model of the star’s interior processes.
The main viewscreen went white.
Thanks to the preparatory sessions Burke’s team had conducted for interested Titan crew, Riker understood why. Slightly less than four minutes and twenty-seven seconds away, a deadly wave of radiation was streaming toward his ship. It would be followed by a slightly slower though even more destructive wall of ejected solar plasma.
The radiation had the capability to knock out every system on Titan, including the shields. And if those failed, every member of the crew would be fatally irradiated within seconds. A few minutes later, when the shock wave hit the ship, the Titan would be shattered, likely into its component molecules.
Riker had no intention of waiting for any of that to happen.
“That’s it, Aili…take us out, warp factor point nine five.”
“Point nine five it is, Captain.”
Riker leaned back in his chair, smiled at Troi. “Best seats in the house,” he said.
In that same instant the main alarm sounded and red lights flashed.
The Titan violently pitched forward, then down.
Riker swiftly scanned his bridge. Under present conditions, the strength of that lag in the inertial dampers could mean only one thing: The ship had dropped out of warp as quickly as it had jumped to it.
“Report!” he said, but already his eyes had found the source of the trouble: Every warning light at the engineering station flashed red.
Riker’s conn officer fought to keep Titan’s dampers and structural-integrity field in alignment.
“Engineering reports warp core offline,” Tuvok calmly announced over the alarms.
“Maximum impulse!” Riker ordered. Though they couldn’t reach light speed on impulse alone, increasing the distance between the radiation shock wave and the ship would buy his ship a few more seconds. “Bridge to engineering!”
The Titan’s chief engineer, Doctor Xin Ra-Havreii, answered at once, voice uncharacteristically tense. Riker could hear shouted commands and rapid conversations in the background. “Engineering, Captain.”
“How soon can you bring warp drive back online?” Riker asked, urgent.
“It is online—the core’s building toward a breach! This is a full-scale—” There was a pause, then Riker heard the Efrosian engineer swear in one of his homeworld’s more obscure dialects.
“Stand by, Captain! Initiating emergency core ejection!”
Riker’s ship shuddered. All alarms switched off.
“Warp core away,” Ra-Havreii said.
A moment later, the ejected core detonated less than a kilometer from the ship.
The too-close explosion drove subspace concussion waves into the Titan, overloading its shields and sending a compression pulse through all major circuits.
The lights on the bridge flickered off.
The main viewscreen winked out.
The ship’s computer network was down.
Riker was on his feet. Battery-powered emergency lights glowed, but the display screens at all stations flashed with random static.
All hands on the bridge turned to their captain for his orders.
But the Titan hung dead in space.
And less than four minutes away, a wall of radiation raced forward at 300,000 kilometers each second to ensure the same fate would soon befall her crew.
3
S.S. BELLE RÊVE, VULCAN
STARDATE 58552.2
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you court-martialed,” Admiral Janeway said. “In fact, I could use a good reason for not just chucking you out of the airlock right now.”
Captain James T. Kirk sat back on his bench in the narrow galley of the Belle Rêve and realized he had no answer for the admiral—at least, not one that he’d accept if he were in her position.
He wasn’t surprised by Janeway’s frustration with him. He knew it had been building for several months, so he couldn’t even feign innocence, which was usually one of his better strategies.
He was guilty as charged and that was all there was to it.
A year ago, when he had been on board Captain Riker’s Titan, Janeway had given him the ship he now commanded. Then, it had been called the Calypso, but as the ship’s new master he’d changed her name to Belle Rêve—Beautiful Dream.
What better name could there be for a ship that sailed among the stars? Except, perhaps, for Enterprise.
According to the central registries, the S.S. Belle Rêve was a commercial freighter of Rigelian registry. Her main hull was a blunt-nosed cylindrical module about the same size as a single nacelle from an old Ambassador-class ship. She had a slightly tapered bulge at the rear of her ventral hull, and two swept-back, outboard warp nacelles. The nacelles were also cylindrical. To Kirk’s eye, they gave his ship the look of an antique.
But, more significantly, what the old-fashioned configuration hid was a cleverly engineered distributed-phaser system. Its critical components were spread throughout the ship so that they could be powered up without being detected. Binary quantum torpedoes shared the same characteristic: They didn’t go “live” until their warhead components were mated just two seconds before launch. Until that last moment of assembly, even the sensors on Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise would have trouble detecting such uniquely arrayed armaments.
When its Defiant-class warp engines were added to the mix, making the small ship vastly overpowered and exceedingly fast, all the ingredients for being one of Starfleet’s best Q-ships were in place.
In the vernacular of an earlier time, Kirk’s Belle Rêve was a spy trawler that sailed where Starfleet chose not to fly its colors.
“I’m waiting,” Janeway said.
Kirk decided to rely on a tried-and-true technique: He answered the question he felt she should have asked him.
“I think I’ve done a good job of fulfilling my obligations to you.”
Janeway blinked as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.
“Captain,” she said, more than a hint of irritation in her tone, “I came all this way because you haven’t fulfilled your obligations.”
Kirk spoke lightly, but his words carried serious intent. “Is that what you really think? Or is that what Starfleet told you to say?”
Janeway leaned forward, punctuating her words by tapping her finger against the galley table. “I gave you this ship so you could be the eyes and ears of Starfleet where and when we can’t send an identifiable ship of our own.”
“You gave me this ship so I could investigate Spock’s disappearance.”
Janeway would not be deflected. “Captain Kirk…Ambassador Spock is dead.”
Kirk felt his chest tighten, but he restrained any show of frustration. It had been years since he had been subjected to Starfleet’s chain of command, even longer since he felt he owed it any particular allegiance.
“We don’t know that,” he said. The dream was vivid in his memory: Do I have your attention?
“I read your report about the events on Remus.”
“Then you also know Spock was absorbed by an unknown phenomenon—”
Janeway interrupted to correct him. “Disintegrated.”
Kirk continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “—and his fate remains undetermined.”
Janeway shook her head. “Is that what this has been about?” she asked. “You’re not just looking for the people responsible. You really think he’s still out there?” The admiral’s voice held both pity and annoyance. The combination was not lost on Kirk. But he didn’t take the bait.
“Of course I do,” he said. The dream wasn’t evidence he could share with her. But there was other proof. “I saw what Norinda was capable of. The shapeshifting—”
With a wave of her hand, Janeway cut him off again. “I know all this. The changing into clouds of dark smoke, mounds of black sand, cubes of different sizes…”
Kirk paused a moment, struggling to keep his vivid recollection of Spock’s disappearance, and the revulsion and the fear it came with, from weakening the case he knew he had to make. “Norinda controlled a technology—or natural abilities—beyond our capacity to define them. Spock might be dead. But he might just as well have been taken by an alien transporter.”
Janeway got up from her bench, then walked to the replicator to study its controls. Kirk understood that the admiral was trying to prevent herself from saying something she might regret. They were both attempting to restrain themselves.
Janeway punched the code for coffee, standard. “One more time,” she said. “You saw him disintegrated before your eyes.”
Kirk joined her by the replicator, waited until she’d taken her coffee mug. “I’ve seen Spock ‘disintegrated’ thousands of times in transporter beams.” He punched the controls for a Vulcan espresso—no caffeine.
“Then for all the times you’ve been ‘unavailable’ for special duty, why haven’t we found you heading back to the Romulan home system?”
Kirk held his coffee cup in a mock toast to Janeway. She merely cupped her own mug for warmth.
“Because,” Kirk said, “Norinda failed to provoke a civil war between Romulus and Remus and the Jolan Movement fell apart after her disappearance.” He took a sip of the hot liquid, detecting as always the loss of authenticity in replication. “As Spock would say, whatever her ultimate goal, logic suggests she’s trying to set up a new movement on another world.”
Janeway stared at him with something close to suspicion. “At your debriefing, you told the review board exactly what Norinda’s ultimate goal was.”
“I told the review board what Norinda said was her ultimate goal. There’s a difference.”
“What?” Janeway demanded.
Kirk stayed silent for a moment. He had originally encountered the shapeshifting alien life-form called Norinda in the early months of his first five-year mission as captain of the Enterprise, NCC-1701. She had lied to him then, told him a story about having escaped from “the Totality”—an ominous alien force that had somehow conquered the Andromeda Galaxy.
A lifetime later, he had met her again on Remus, where she claimed to lead a peace movement that had been banished from Romulus. But all the while, it was Norinda and her followers who’d been attempting to start the very civil war that she claimed to oppose.
“She told me she’d make the Romulans and the Remans want peace by exposing them to war,” Kirk said. “She said her goal was to leave both planets in ruins, with millions dead, because only then would the survivors realize the value of love.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
Kirk’s mind filled with images of all th
e different forms in which Norinda had appeared to him, remembering how she’d used some kind of subconscious telepathy to assume the appearance of the woman most desired by whomever she happened to speak with.
“She’s a monster,” Kirk said at last. “The only peace she can bring is that of the grave. She even appeared to my son as his mother.”
Kirk had had this discussion a year ago. He had settled it then. He settled it now. “I believe all Norinda wants is destruction. To her, the only world that can be at peace is a world without life.”
Janeway hesitated, then seemingly changed the subject of their conversation.
“Have you ever thought that Starfleet’s goals and yours might not be that far apart?”
“Admiral, if you’re looking for common ground, you’re not going to find it. I want to rescue Spock. Starfleet thinks he’s dead.”
“But it’s obvious to me that you’re trying to find Spock by tracking down Norinda. I suggest that’s where our goals converge.”
Kirk reconsidered what he knew of Janeway. She was shrewd, immensely capable. She had brought her ship and her crew back from the wilds of the Delta Quadrant with honor. Her promotion to the admiralty had been a foregone conclusion. He even found her quite attractive and thought he could find her more so, if she ever decided to stop being an admiral for a day.
But he also knew that she was more solidly connected to Starfleet than he had been or ever would be, now. Like his friend Jean-Luc, Kathryn Janeway could be relied upon to put the needs of Starfleet and the Federation first. Except, of course, in cases of egregious misconduct.
But for Janeway, in those circumstances for which there were no clear-cut divisions between right and wrong, Starfleet would always be right by default, until proven otherwise.
Which means, if Starfleet is searching for Norinda…Kirk paused in the midst of that thought.
“I’ve always suspected there was something you weren’t telling me,” he said. “The day you offered me this ship, I sensed it. Right now, I’m feeling it even more.”
“Now you’ve changed the subject,” Janeway said. She gave Kirk a tight smile.
Captain's Glory Page 3
