Scotty was delighted for La Forge. The lad deserved his closure, and, in any case, to find the ship all the way out here was something of a miracle. Enough of one, Scotty thought, that anybody in the crew could appreciate. And this was the massive gravitational attractor? He couldn’t even begin to imagine how that could be the case, but he couldn’t wait to find out. It would beat thinking about how many cellular regeneration treatments he had missed.
“I’ve been in Starfleet for over a century,” he said when he came to the bridge, “and I’ve never seen the like.”
“This is what I joined Starfleet for,” Nog agreed. His voice was filled with amazement.
Sela watched the probe’s telemetry on a screen in her quarters. The sight was impressive, but the only thing that she could think was this couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. La Forge’s mother’s ship, brought here by the trans-slipstream wakes years before they were supposedly discovered by Starfleet?
She didn’t believe a word of it. She knew Saldis wouldn’t have believed it either.
“So,” she said to her junior officers, who were gathered around. “This is proof that the Federation has been experimenting with the trans-slipstream technology all along.”
“It seems obvious,” one of them, an eager young centurion agreed.
Sela didn’t reply. I wonder if they sacrificed his mother, the way they sacrificed mine?
“Captain La Forge, can I see you in private?”
Guinan’s request was sufficiently unusual that La Forge immediately responded. She wasn’t in Nelson’s but in her quarters. The cabin was hung with silken drapes, and filled with incense. For the first time ever, La Forge saw her without a hat.
“What is it, Guinan?”
“I needed to talk to you about what’s happening, and what’s about to happen. And about why I came aboard the Challenger.”
“Back on Starbase 410, you said you wanted to give your engineer friends your time.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Maybe you’re thinking about it too much.”
“There’s something about the way you’ve been watching, and talking. It’s as if you’re waiting for something. Or someone,” La Forge said.
“Maybe I am.”
“Who, or what?”
“I don’t know yet. But it’s why I needed to talk to you.”
“You’re waiting for someone or something that you don’t even know?”
“That’s right. It’s happened a lot in my life, actually. At least for the past hundred years.”
“Hundred years? Since you were pulled out of the Nexus?”
Guinan nodded. “Sometimes I just know that I ought to be in a particular place at a particular time, because something important will happen there, or then.”
“Your connection with the Nexus tells you these things?” La Forge supposed.
“Tells is too strong a word. Hints would be more like it. Or maybe suggests, guides, arranges behind my back.”
“But if you were beamed out of the Nexus a hundred years ago, how can it still have an effect on you? Was it that strong an experience, or . . . Did you see an expanse of future history—”
For once, she looked serious. “It was the strongest experience of any kind I’ve ever had. Stronger and more real than anything in what, for want of a better word, I’ll call my real life. But it wasn’t a matter of just seeing some display of prophecy and trying to remember all the dates and places. It’s a far more vague, and deeper, connection.”
“Like a Vulcan mind meld?” La Forge offered.
“Yes, that sounds not too far off. But it’s not a meld with another person, or with the energies of the Nexus itself. It’s more like a mind meld with my own shadow. With a memory of myself.”
“What sort of memory?”
“When I was beamed out of the Nexus, I fought to stay there. I willed myself not to go, not to give in to the transport beam. And something of me did stay behind. An echo, a shadow . . . Whether it’s because I so desperately wanted to stay there, or whether the Nexus does that to everyone who enters it, or some mix of both and the energy of the transporter . . . I don’t know. I just know that to my . . . shadow, all time is one, and it feels that I should be here on the Challenger.”
“Because something important will happen?”
“I guess so. But the definition of important may vary. It could be saving the universe from invading aliens, or discovering the perfect cocktail recipe that uses kanar.” Her eyes twinkled. “There must be something that kanar’s good for.”
“I’ll take your word for that.” La Forge let himself relax. Guinan had deftly turned the conversation around, and he was grateful, because he didn’t really want to pursue anything too deep right now. “If you find it, they’ll probably inaugurate an all-new culinary Z Magnees Prize just for that.”
36
Challenger swung gently into a distant orbit around the Hera, settling into a stable course, that was no longer under acceleration, so the gravity had stabilized back to half a g.
“Nog,” La Forge asked, “has there been any communications traffic from the Hera?”
“None, Captain.”
“Not even a distress signal?”
“Nothing. They’re completely signal-dark.” Nog spread his hands helplessly. “Their power may be as dead as Intrepid’s was.”
“A starship’s automated distress signal has a separate power source just in case of exactly that kind of total power loss. It should be able to keep transmitting for decades.” La Forge gritted his teeth, frustrated. “It’s been a dozen years since the Hera went missing, but the automated distress call should still be running.”
“Unless it was deactivated manually,” Leah suggested.
Nog agreed. “Maybe they abandoned ship and went somewhere else. They wouldn’t need the distress signal to be running if they thought they were safe.”
“Where could they have gone? Kat, are there any planetary systems within sensor range?”
“Nothing, Captain. No stars, no planets. Just whatever gravitational attractor was pulling us in the direction of the Hera. I can’t even seem to get a reading on the interior of the Hera.”
“No life signs?”
“No. I read the usual physical makeup of a Nebula-class hull, with tritanium, duranium, and so on, but I get no sensor readings at all beyond the hull substrate. It’s as if . . . It’s as if there is no interior. Or the interior is cloaked.”
“You’re right, that is odd.” La Forge thought for a moment. “Keep trying, but modulate the sensor wavebands you’re using. Scan for anything that might show signs of a malfunctioning cloak on board, just in case.”
“A cloak,” Leah asked, “on a Federation starship?”
“Do we have enough power restored to run the astrometrics lab?” La Forge asked.
Leah nodded. “Just about.”
“Then we might get a few answers.”
Challenger’s astrometrics lab was a holodeck, with a ramp jutting out into a three-hundred-and-sixty degree space. Projections were displayed into the interior of the room, giving a true display of space.
“Is this just a pretext to get me alone?” Leah asked as she and La Forge entered.
“Believe me, that’s the last thing on my mind.”
“I was joking, Geordi.”
“Sorry.” He brought up a display of local space, showing Challenger orbiting Hera. “What we need is a projection of the gravitational effect we’re under. Something that shows the position of the center of the gravity well.”
“I’ve got readings from when the sensors came online, and at regular intervals until now.”
“We know we’ve been pulled in this direction since we arrived in this region. We know the gravitational force has gotten a little stronger, so we should be able to project the source.” Nothing new appeared in the display, but the Hera swelled slightly. “That’s impossible. It’s show
ing as no further away than the Hera.”
“Unless . . . could it be the Hera herself?”
“I don’t see how. Maybe if it were a Romulan ship, the singularity in their warp core could have begun to consume matter and grow, but I can’t think of any way a Starfleet warp reactor could react that way. Can you?”
Leah barely suppressed a laugh. “I’ve been designing warp engines for a long time now, and I’ve never seen anything artificial that could generate a gravitational field of that magnitude. No matter how far something went wrong.”
La Forge could feel a tightness in his kidneys, and a spreading chill. “All right, I don’t doubt for a moment that you’re right and it’s impossible, but . . .” He touched a console button. “La Forge to Nog.”
“Nog here, Captain.”
“Can you give me a sensor reading on the Hera’s mass?”
One moment . . .” There was a slight gasp, almost a squeak. “Captain! It’s impossible, but . . .”
“I kind of expected it would be, Nog. What’s the mass of the Hera? I’m guessing it’s not the three million metric tonnes that it should be.”
“Forty-seven hundred . . . solar masses.”
Leah and Geordi exchanged a look. “Impossible!” Leah exclaimed. “There wouldn’t be a ship there. Only a supermassive black hole could have a mass like that. And its attraction would be a hell of a lot greater than it is.”
“I wish Data were here,” La Forge said with feeling as they returned to the bridge. The android could run numbers quicker than any living man and had a decidedly non-mechanistic instinct for having and playing hunches. La Forge could have used that kind of ability right about now.
Scotty sympathized entirely with Geordi’s thought. He had been quite impressed with the android officer aboard Enterprise, and was saddened to hear of his death. At least Spock was still alive, but it was a damned shame that there was no way to get hold of him and bring him out here.
If they could have done that, he reflected, they wouldn’t actually need to. It was a frustrating paradox, and one of too many that Scotty had experienced over the years. He stepped around the bridge rail to stand beside Nog.
“A penny for them?”
“What?”
“Your thoughts,” Scotty explained. “Ye looked a little lost in them.”
“I was just wishing Jadzia Dax was here . . .”
Sela looked out of the viewport of her quarters, and saw only her own reflection. Her mother’s image, which followed her everywhere, haunting her.
She closed her eyes and, when she opened them again, focused on seeing the Romulan standing before her. It was a shame that it wasn’t another Romulan. Or, preferably, a warbird or two.
Reinforcements would have been very useful in her current situation. Very useful indeed.
Scotty and La Forge stood in the circle of consoles in main engineering, running numbers. Vol hovered above them, enjoying the lighter gravity. “There’s an oddity about this gravitational attraction of the Hera,” La Forge was saying.
“Apart from the existence of a gravity well or the continued existence of the Hera in the same space?” Scotty said. “But ye’re right. It doesna’ have the gravitational power that four and a half thousand solar masses would. Maybe the sensors are a wee bit buggered.”
Vol lowered himself, upside down, to peer at the figures. “Well . . . maybe the one oddity is an explanation for the other.”
La Forge looked up at the octopoid’s single eye. “I’m open to ideas. Go ahead.”
“Sensors indicate that the gravity well’s spatial manifold is well inside the Hera’s hull. Actually it’s barely fifty meters across, if the readings are reliable.”
“Which they may not be, considering the shape we’re in,” Scotty said.
“And considering the anomalous nature of the . . .”
“Anomaly?” Geordi interrupted. “I think as captain I should outlaw the use of that word.”
“The thingy, then,” Vol suggested. “The point is, though, it means the hull isn’t an absolute event horizon. It should be possible to make physical contact with it, and maybe take samples.”
That, Geordi thought, was an interesting idea. He would have been a liar if he tried to say he hadn’t thought of visiting the Hera as soon as he saw it. An away team to the Hera. It was an irresistible idea.
“Let’s assemble a team.”
37
“Status of the transporters?”
“Still offline,” Scotty said apologetically. “We canna spare the power to run them. Though I wouldna recommend using the transporter in any case.”
“If we could beam across to the Hera—”
“We’d be beaming onto a spatial manifold, and that’s a one-way trip if ever there was one.”
“If there’s no interior space to beam into, right?” La Forge sighed. “Can we spare one of the shuttles for a trip to the Hera?”
Scotty sucked on his teeth. “They’re all tied into the EPS grid now. Maybe if we dropped the internal sensors, and restricted turbolift use . . .” He made a few quick calculations. “Aye, that would do it.”
“Then I’m going across to the Hera.”
“What makes you think you’re going to lead the away team?” Leah demanded. She had not responded well to his announcement when he spoke to her in his ready room.
“It’s my mission—”
She cut him off with a chopping gesture. “First off, you’re the captain now. That makes it unwise. Secondly, you’re emotionally compromised. Conflict of interest, whatever you want to call it. That makes it extremely unwise. Thirdly, under the circumstances, you’re a lot more necessary to hold things together while we’ve got both damage and a potentially hostile set of guests. That makes it stupid.”
“All those are good rational reasons, but—”
“Do you want an irrational reason?”
“Do I need one?”
“All right, an emotional reason then. I don’t—” She shook her head, almost wincing. “I already know what it’s like to be widowed. I don’t need to repeat the lesson.”
He held her for a moment. “I understand, but . . . I have to go.” He walked out onto the bridge.
Leah followed. “Nog, tell the captain why he shouldn’t lead this away mission.”
“Your leading the away team to a dangerous anomaly is tactically unsound, Captain.”
“See?”
“It’s my decision to make,” La Forge said.
“Is it?” Leah tapped her combadge. “Doctor Brahms to Doctor Ogawa.” Geordi froze, unable to believe that she’d do this to him. “The captain is considering leading an away mission.”
“To his mother’s ship?” Ogawa’s voice was as concerned as it was disbelieving.
“All right.” La Forge held up his hands. “I surrender.” Leah slumped in relief, rather than triumph. “I guess it needs someone with a clearer head.”
“I’ll go,” Scotty said. La Forge looked up at him, standing behind the bridge rail. “I’ve been on more dodgy landing parties than you’ve had hot dinners.”
“Are you sure you want to go?”
“Who else would you trust?”
La Forge didn’t deign to reply to that. He trusted all of his crew, but saying so would have insulted Scotty, and singling him out would have insulted everyone else.
“I’ll join the away team too, with your permission,” Barclay said hurriedly.
“Ye’re welcome to come, Mister Barclay.”
Voktra, who had been assisting Barclay, cleared her throat. “Permission to join the mission?”
Barclay turned. “Are you sure you want to come?”
“You don’t expect us to let you Starfleeters discover the Hera’s secrets alone, do you? Chairman Sela will insist on a Romulan presence on any away mission.”
“She has a point, sir,” Nog said. “I volunteer as well. Someone will have to keep an eye on the Romulans.”
“Then we’ll mee
t in shuttlebay one in an hour,” Scotty declared. “I don’t know about you, but I intend to get a good breakfast before going.”
A safe distance along Nelson’s bar from Barclay and Voktra, Nog related the story of the choice of away team to Guinan.
“I think those two have different motives for going,” he finished.
“From each other?”
“No, that’s the same, I think. From everybody else.”
“Nog,” Guinan said in a mock-warning tone, “You’re not suggesting that Reg is a little sweet on his Romulan counterpart?”
“I think so.” He shook his head in wonderment. “I expected tension between our people and the Romulans, but . . .”
“But not sexual tension.”
“He’s mad,” Nog judged.
“He could be heading for heartbreak,” Guinan agreed, “but stranger things have happened.”
“Humans and Romulans?”
“Just ask Sela about that one.”
“And I thought Father marrying Leeta was weird enough.”
“Leeta?”
“A Bajoran dabo girl.”
Guinan folded her hands and took on a sage-like demeanor. “Sometimes the alien is attractive. There’s a difference between the alien individual and the alien as a collective. One, individually, tends to be admired, or something to aspire to. An outsider who doesn’t have to fit in with the day-to-day life that we’re used to. An outsider who does things differently. Unusual and exotic. But collectively, the alien isn’t exotic, it’s threatening—a wave of threat to the standards and way of life we’re used to.” She looked at Reg and Voktra again. “It all has to do with how we see our own identities. Me as an individual versus me as a member of my society, crashing headlong into the alien as an individual versus the alien as a member of their society.”
“You mean when Reg thinks of the Romulans, they’re the enemy and he’s scared of them, but when he thinks of a Romulan—”
“That Romulan.”
“—he finds her exotic and attractive?”
Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic Page 34
