Twist of Faith

by S. D. Perry

  Vaughn nodded slowly. “You may be right about that.” He took a deep breath and expelled it heavily, finally reaching the foundation of his thought, the essence of what he was trying to express. “I don’t know. I just know that I don’t want to fight anymore.”

  Picard leaned back, looking out at the fiery storm once more. “I understand,” he said softly, and Vaughn believed that he truly did. The captain’s ability to empathize was perhaps his most admirable trait. It was a rarity in any species, and most particularly in upper echelon Starfleet.

  The intercom signaled again. “Captain, Commander—we may have something.”

  That was a surprise. Vaughn left his personal thoughts behind as he followed Picard toward the door to the bridge. He’d been so sure about the Breen, had already decided that perhaps the Klingons had picked up something, but that “possible Breen warp signatures” wasn’t it. Following the treaty, the Breen had withdrawn to their home space for the most part. But though they were certainly capable of deceit, building a military presence in hiding didn’t fit with the Breen’s cultural psychology….

  …although it does fit in with a few other reports I’ve heard of late… Reports that were still on a need-to-know basis. It was a funny thought, though Vaughn was too aware of the Enterprise’s current position to find any humor in it.

  They stepped out onto the bridge and moved to their seats, Vaughn taking the advisory position to the captain’s left. All they could see on screen was the rolling sea of unstable plasma.

  “Mr. Data, report,” Picard said.

  The android consulted his operations console as he spoke. “Sir, the ship I am detecting is not Breen. It is a freighter, and it appears to be Cardassian in origin.”

  Picard frowned. From his other side, Riker spoke softly. “What’s a freighter doing out here?”

  Data answered him. “It is caught between two conflicted masses of pressure. Sensors indicate that the freighter is powerless, and there are no life signs aboard. Also, that they have been trapped in this area for an extended period of time.”

  “Estimate? How long?”

  “Considering the relative consistency of both pressure fronts and initial reads on hull integrity, I would estimate that this particular eddy has existed for thirty years or more.”

  Picard’s frown deepened. “Can you get a visual?”

  “Trying, sir.”

  A few seconds later, the main screen’s view changed, and Vaughn caught his breath, fascinated. The long, dark freighter tumbled slowly end over end against its bright backdrop, as it apparently had for decades, dead and alone. Vaughn felt his earlier exhaustion dropping away at the sight, barely noticing his relief that there was no battle to be had.

  Haunted, it looks haunted.

  “Captain, if you have no objection, I’d like to lead an away team to investigate,” he said, not sure why he was so intrigued, not caring particularly. It seemed to be a day for impulsiveness.

  Picard glanced at Vaughn and smiled, so slightly that it was barely visible. He looked back to the screen.

  “Commander Data, is the ship’s hull intact?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Meaning it’s possible to initiate an atmosphere, at least temporarily. AG’s a must, but we can suit it against cold, wouldn’t have to wait for an environmental toxin analysis then, either….

  Picard nodded, and turned again to Vaughn. “Commander, I hope you’ll allow Commander Riker to accompany you, and advise you in your selection of team members.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Captain.”

  Vaughn and Riker both stood, Riker asking for Data to join them, recommending that La Forge and an Ensign Dennings meet them at the transporter. Vaughn found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the exanimate freighter, and finally understood why he was so interested, the reason so fundamental but so odd that he’d almost missed it.

  Somehow, looking at the lifeless freighter, he felt quite strongly that his future was inexorably tied to whatever they would find there.

  I am getting old. Such fanciful thinking and daydreaming adventure wasn’t his style. Vaughn shook himself mentally and headed for the turbolift, but in spite of his own best efforts to act his age, his excitement only grew.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ensign Kuri Dennings was the last to arrive at the transporter room, slightly breathless in her environmental suit and obviously excited to have been asked along. As she hurriedly donned her helmet, Riker introduced her to Commander Vaughn, making a point to mention the anthropological study she’d done on Cardassia’s occupation of Bajor. Vaughn asked several educated questions about the occupation as they stepped onto the transporter pad, all of them making minor adjustments to their helmets before pressurizing their suits.

  “Is everything ready?” Riker asked La Forge, his own voice sounding annoyingly strange in the confines of the headpiece. Irritating, SEWGs. No matter how streamlined the suits got, they still felt bulky and restrictive.

  “Yes, sir. Our tractor beam is holding her steady. Gravity’s been established, there are some emergency lights…though it’s going to be a little cold, even with the suits. Negative 80° C at last check.”

  They could handle cold, but not dark. “How long will we have before the portable’s cell runs low?” Riker asked.

  Vaughn answered. “Considering the size of the freighter, I’d say about two hours. It’s a standard cargo model, isn’t it? 220?”

  He directed his own question at La Forge, who nodded, looking distinctly impressed behind the thick lens of his faceplate. “That’s right, Commander.”

  Vaughn smiled. “Sorry. I should leave the engineering matters to the expert.”

  Riker was also impressed, though not because of Vaughn’s awareness of portable generators; the commander seemed to know a little bit about everything, but used it well, also knowing when to defer to others.

  And when to shut up. The elder commander didn’t seem to ramble, ever. Riker didn’t know that he’d be so reserved with eighty years of war stories under his belt, and his taciturnity only added to his appeal; Vaughn wasn’t mysterious, exactly, but there was an impression of great intensity behind his genial exterior, of levels operating within levels.

  “Shall we?” Vaughn asked, and then nodded to Palmer at the controls. “Energize, if you please, Lieutenant.”

  A sparkle of light, and they were standing in the well of a large control room, littered with random debris and dusted all over with glittering frost. There were no bodies; the crew had probably sealed themselves in whatever areas were easiest to seal, to retain atmosphere for as long as possible. The freighter’s bridge was cold, empty, and dimly lit by a handful of emergency lights, reminding Riker of nighttime on the mountains of Risa. He’d camped there last before the war, alone, huddled in front of a small fire as a cold plateau wind ruffled his hair….

  …where did that come from? A weird connection, to say the least. Risa was light-years away, literally and figuratively.

  Vaughn stepped away from their group, surveying their surroundings. Ensign Dennings and Data both held up tricorders and started to take readings, and La Forge turned toward what had to be the engineering console with his case of adapter components, his silvery eyes glinting in the low light.

  “Anything we didn’t expect?” Vaughn asked, addressing no one in particular. Data answered, his voice startlingly clear. Physically, he didn’t need a suit, but the helmet comlinks were still the best way for him to stay in contact with the rest of them.

  “Tricorder readings are consistent with those of the Enterprise sensors,” Data stated. “This ship was caught in a plasma storm approximately thirty-two years and four months ago. The structural damage in evidence would have made it impossible for them to break free from this pocket of space. Their power and life support would have failed in a matter of days.”

  “There were at least three Cardassian ships lost in the Badlands around that time,” Dennings added, “but all mili
tary, no record of a freighter.”

  Geordi had plugged into one of the consoles and was reading from a small screen. “I think it’s called the Kamal,” he called. “Ring any bells?”

  Kamala. The smell of her hair, and the way she tilted her head ever so slightly when she spoke… Riker blinked, taken aback by the sudden vivid memory of the empathic metamorph. He hadn’t thought of Kamala in years.

  Seems like I’m determined to let my mind wander. Deanna said I’ve been less focused lately, guess I should have paid more attention….

  He also knew from Deanna that the crew desperately needed some time off, that stresses were high and productivity low. Since the end of the war, the Enterprise had been inspecting defunct military installations, transporting supplies and emergency aid, chasing after possible terrorist groups—in short, wrapping up the loose ends to a war. It was almost the Enterprise’s turn for a much-needed break, and considering his lack of concentration, he abruptly decided that it couldn’t be too soon.

  Dennings was checking a padd she’d brought with her. “There was a transport freighter Kamal, but no record of it being lost. Of course, the Cardassians aren’t exactly famous for sharing that kind of information. Not then, anyway.”

  Not much of a mystery here; the freighter had gotten stuck. For some reason it reminded him of an abandoned ship they’d come across when he’d been on the Potemkin, though that had been a personal craft, caught in a natural soliton wave….

  Snap out of it, Will!

  Vaughn turned to address them, his eyes glinting with interest. “Well. I know it’s not standard procedure, but if no one objects, I’d like very much to poke around a bit, see what there is to see.”

  He looked at Riker. “Commander, I know there are safety protocols to consider….”

  Riker smiled at the half question. Vaughn certainly didn’t need his permission, but was gracious enough to ask, acknowledging his status as executive officer. “I think an ‘unofficial’ inventory would go much faster if we split up.”

  “I think so, too,” Vaughn said, smiling in turn. “I thought I’d head for the aft cargo bays…perhaps we could each take a direction, and check in every fifteen minutes?”

  Everyone nodded, and Riker found himself feeling relieved, looking forward to having a few moments to collect himself as he assigned sections to Dennings and Data; La Forge wanted to stay on the bridge and download whatever information he could. Riker wasn’t tired, but felt as though he was suffering the symptoms of too little sleep—although of course he had stayed up too late, catching up on reports, and then a very late dinner with Deanna…

  …curled up together afterward and talking about work, her eyes as dark and shining as when we met…

  She’d had a sleeveless yellow dress that she often wore that first summer he’d been stationed on Betazed. He remembered the crisp feel of it brushing against his arm when they’d held hands and walked through the university’s grounds, laughing about some random observation and enjoying the sun against their youthful faces—

  God. He had to get some downtime, and soon.

  There were dead Bajoran civilians in the cargo bays, corpses crushed beneath long-worthless boxes of supplies or sprawled atop broken sections of hull and deck. Prisoners of the occupation, their sad, frozen bodies were too thin, a testament to the suffering they’d experienced in life—and though there were a number of Cardassian soldiers among the dead, the oppressors and villains of the occupation, Vaughn found himself unable to work up any anger. They were all dead. The occupation was history, and dead was dead. He wasn’t always so unfeeling, so uninterested, but the reality of the Kamal had become a veil, a mist through which his life was being played like a holodeck program.

  The memories had started small at first, shadows of experience that touched him and were gone. But the memories grew in detail as Vaughn continued to walk through the dark and cold, becoming more than vague images, becoming brighter than what was in front of him. Having never experienced a spiritual epiphany—and from the oft-heard tales of such experiences, he assumed that was what was happening—he wasn’t sure what to expect, but perhaps the memories were part of it. Part of letting go…?

  Violence and death and rationalizations. It was hard, the truth; he’d seen and done many things that he wished he hadn’t. He walked on, and the memories came faster, the intense feelings striking like lightning. People he’d loved, long ago; a dog he’d had as a child; the first time he’d kissed a girl. But overriding the touches of fond nostalgia were the battles, the substance of his life as a soldier. He couldn’t stop remembering other tragedies, deaths as needless and terrible as the ones laid in front of him now. He’d witnessed innumerable wars, he’d documented the bloody aftermath on dozens of worlds—and he’d participated in more sorrows than he wanted to count.

  My life has been about death. In the name of preventing it, I’ve killed so many, and seen so many killed….

  The civil war on Beta VI, where over eleven thousand men had beaten each other to death with sticks and rocks on one catastrophic afternoon, and all his team had been able to do was watch. The genocidal holocaust on Arvada III. The Tomed incident, in 2311; he’d been a lieutenant then, only in his thirties, back when he’d still believed that evil was doomed to fail simply because it was evil.

  Vaughn walked slowly through connecting corridors as he’d gone through the lower cargo bays, his mind light-years from where each leaden step carried him. The desperate and hungry faces of Verillian children, orphaned by war. The mad, hopeless cries of fear and warning that had echoed down the halls of the Lethean veteran asylum. The terrible assassination of the Elaysian governor that he could have stopped, if only he’d known the truth even moments earlier….

  Vaughn was so caught up in the barrage of memories that he was slow to recognize the change of light. It wasn’t until he stepped into the next bay that he noticed; the dim red of the emergency lighting was different here, the massive hold bathed in a purplish glow.

  It wasn’t as important as the images that held his mind, that battered him mercilessly as he walked inside. A dying scream. A crying woman. Friends lost. Feelings of triumph and pride, hate and fear.

  The light grew brighter, illuminating the faces of the dead cast about like debris, and Vaughn stopped walking, trapped by a lifetime of memory.

  On the bridge of the Enterprise they had very little warning before the giant wave hit them from behind, its intense burst of radiation shattering across their shields in a sparkling halo of light. The truly powerful ones were very rare, and because the surges of energy traveled like tsunami beneath the surface of their plasma ocean, they were hard to foresee; the sensors didn’t pick it up until six seconds before impact.

  “Sir, there’s a sudden concentration of highly charged plasma radiation behind us at mark, ah, hitting us now.”

  Even as the words were leaving Lieutenant Perim’s mouth, the Enterprise was reacting, struggling to spread out the concentrated phenomenon, cutting sharply into the ship’s power supply as the shields automatically prioritized their energy use.

  Picard knew what it was before Perim had a chance to finish her sentence. The experienced physical effect was surprisingly mild, lights brightening suddenly and then lowering in strength, less background noise as nonessential equipment powered down, but he wasn’t encouraged. A shield drain big enough to tap into something as insignificant as the lights had potentially devastating consequences.

  “Engineering, report,” Picard snapped, nodding to Perim at the same time. “Hail the away team, and put the freighter onscreen.”

  Status from Lieutenant Achen in engineering was fast and mixed. The last of the concentrated energy flux had traveled past them and wasn’t dragging a secondary current, which meant they weren’t in immediate danger of being hit again; all systems and their backups were suffering severe power shortages, but there was nothing irreversibly damaged except for the subspace communications array—it had been scramb
led, and could take days to recalibrate and realign. Their shields were operating at substandard levels and wouldn’t be up to par for several hours, which shouldn’t be a problem so long as nothing else rammed them anytime soon—and the power to the tractor beam had been cut, releasing the freighter.

  “No answer from the away team, sir,” Perim reported, sounding tense and frustrated. “It looks like our short-range is down, too.”

  “Do we have transporters?” Picard asked.

  “Negative, but that’s temporary,” said Achen. “They were just knocked off-line, so as soon as they’ve got enough power built up for the fail-safe, they’ll automatically reinstate.”

  Picard watched as the magnified freighter settled across the main screen, weighing and measuring the possibilities. Nudged by the turbulence of the power wave, the freighter was slowly moving away from the Enterprise. Perim called out the approximate rate of four meters a second.

  At their rate of movement…say, five to ten minutes until they move far enough to completely dissolve the conflict of pressures, less if they’re caught in a heated current.

  Re-establishing a tractor lock would take too long. Factoring in the accompanying glitches to transport failure, Picard calculated that they’d need anywhere from four to nine minutes, assuming there was no trouble with the fail-safe charge.

  “Get the transporters working immediately, priority one,” he said. “Helm, can the sensors read anything beyond lifesigns?”

  Perim shook her head, running able hands over the console pads. “Four living humanoids…no beacon read on Commander Data, no distinctive bio-signature capacity from here.”

  “I can’t get their combadge overrides to signal, sir,” communications added.

  For the well-shielded Enterprise, the random plasma tsunami had acted as an energy leech, no permanent damage done. But the freighter was no longer shielded by the tractor beam, had in fact been pushed toward possible danger by the beam’s dying surge—and the away team might not even know it.