Star Trek: The Next Generation™: Slings and Arrows Book 1: A Sea of Troubles

by J. Steven York

  A chirp came from his console. Data immediately turned and examined the panel displays. “Captain, I am picking up a solid object in a dust cloud six hundred kilometers from the Samson’s last position. Two meters in length, duranium hull. It appears to be the Samson’s data recorder. But it must be badly damaged. I am picking up no transmissions or energy output.”

  “Conn, move us to within transporter range. Data, beam the recorder aboard, and see what you can recover from it. I want to know what happened to the Samson.”

  Lieutenant Hawk headed for Ten-Forward at 1330 hours with the idea of having a cup of Vulcan spice tea and reviewing the main deflector schematics before his crew orientation.

  He wasn’t sure what to make of all the extra duty that Captain Picard was loading on him. He couldn’t decide if the captain was testing him in some way, or if he’d merely gone too far with his “plank-owner” speech, and this was Picard’s way of putting him in his place.

  It really didn’t matter. Either way, he’d give it his best, determined to prove himself to his new captain.

  Picard was a larger-than-life character to him, one he’d heard about from his earliest days at the Academy. The man was both legendary and infamous. Legendary because of his twenty-two-year mission on the Stargazer and his invention of the Picard Maneuver, and the shorter but even more historic mission of the Enterprise-D. Infamous because of his role as an assimilated Borg drone named Locutus, in the devastating Battle of Wolf 359. Under Locutus’s guidance, thirty-nine ships had been lost, and nearly eleven thousand crewmen killed.

  Subjectively, Hawk knew that the assimilation process left no freedom of will, and that upon his rescue, Picard had been instrumental in defeating the Borg. Still, he could understand the uneasy tone he’d heard in the voices of some older officers at the San Francisco Yards when they were discussing Picard.

  Either way, it was difficult to work for a legend, and Hawk was still trying to relate to the man underneath.

  He walked into the lounge—which, despite neither being on deck ten nor in the forward section, was referred to as Ten-Forward by the holdovers from the D—with a large engineering padd under his arm, and was almost to the bar when he spotted Linda Addison sitting at a table near the viewports. She was not looking out the windows as most of the other patrons were, but instead was quietly watching the watchers, a full cup of black coffee in front of her.

  Linda did not notice him as he placed his order and strolled over to her table, hoping to discover what had caused the rift between them. He stopped politely several paces short of the table before he spoke. “Linda?”

  She looked over at him, then smiled slightly when she recognized him. “Sean.” Her voice was warm, her tone welcoming. It was strangely at odds with the brusque dismissal she had given him earlier.

  “Can we talk?”

  She gestured at the chair across from her. “Please, sit down.”

  He slid into the chair, and they looked at each other for a bit, she still studying him with that curious smile.

  After several moments, he broke the uneasy silence. “Listen, if I’ve offended you in some way, maybe in that last message I sent…I don’t know how, but—”

  She raised a hand to interrupt him. “Of course you haven’t, Sean. I’m the one who owes you an apology.” For an instant, she looked unsure of herself. “I was unspeakably rude to you down there, and in front of Captain Picard no less. I just wasn’t expecting to see you there. I was nervous, and you caught me off guard, and then asking about Vulcan—Well, rock-climbing on Vulcan was not my finest moment. So I treated you badly in my clumsy efforts to save face and impress the captain.”

  Hawk was relieved, though a little surprised. Linda had always been unflappable at the Academy. He reminded himself that it had been a number of years since he’d seen her, and he’d changed significantly in that time. Although they had remained in sporadic contact, there were undoubtedly things he had missed. Who knew how she might have changed over time?

  She saw the look in his eye and sighed. “There comes a time when you run face-first into your own limitations. For me, it was Vulcan’s Forge. The heat, the high gravity, the thin air, the electrical storms, and the most treacherous terrain I’ve ever seen. There was an accident. I fell and was badly injured. The woman I was climbing with was killed.”

  Addison looked away, as though afraid she had revealed too much. They had been friends once, but Hawk sensed her hesitancy, the distance that had grown between them.

  He leaned back, sorry he’d pressed the matter. “I’m very sorry.”

  She smiled sadly. “Don’t be. I’ve learned to live with it. But things like that change a person, you know?”

  In fact, he didn’t. He’d spent most of his Starfleet career sitting in a shipyard playing nursemaid to an uncompleted starship. It was stupid to be jealous of what must have been a terrible experience, but Hawk felt his life had been sheltered and boring by comparison.

  A server brought over a steaming teacup and placed it in front of Hawk.

  While he was distracted with his tea, Linda glanced down at the padd, a general side-view schematic of the Enterprise displayed on its screen. “What are you working on?” She reached over, put a slender fingertip on a corner of the device, and slid it around so she could see. She sipped her coffee and studied the display. “Engineering schematics?” She tilted her head and ran her finger down the spine of the ship in a slow, sensual, sweeping motion. “The Enterprise is such a beautiful ship. The lines are so graceful, beauty through function. Not like the Samson. Miranda-class ships are so angular and clumsy, mismatched twenty-third-century parts all jammed together in ways that shouldn’t work. I don’t like them at all.”

  He frowned. “It’s not right to speak ill of the dead, even dead ships.”

  She looked at him, surprised by the sharpness in his voice. “Of course, you’re right. It’s just hard for me to believe it’s gone. I was on board the Samson just hours ago, and everything was fine. It just isn’t real.”

  He shook his head and glanced out the window at the nebula. Beautiful or not, it was hard to look at it the same way now, knowing how deadly it had become. The loss of the Samson, the helplessness of watching her disappear and not being able to do anything, weighed on him. Perhaps his attachment to the Enterprise-E made the loss of any ship more difficult.

  Linda reached over and tugged at his cuff. “Hey, let’s not get all maudlin. Things keep going wrong, but this should still be a happy occasion.” She raised her coffee cup in a salute. “To old friends.”

  Hawk nodded and sipped his tea.

  “Show me what you’re working on?” Linda slid the padd in front of her and began paging through the schematics. “It looks interesting.” Her voice was light, almost flirtatious.

  Hawk struggled to throw off his melancholy. The loss of the Samson and her crew had been a tragedy, but it was only a taste of what was to come. For now, he had a few moments of peace, and he should take advantage of them as best he could.

  He was happy to see Linda. She was an old friend, and he should have been enjoying their reunion, not wasting this precious respite brooding about an irretrievable loss.

  “You never showed any interest in ship design back at the Academy. In fact, as I recall, you always hated the engineering classes,” he teased.

  “I always thought they were for grease monkeys and plasma plumbers, and I never wanted to be one of those.”

  “Like me.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, just slightly parted. “I came this close to going into engineering before I realized I had a knack for piloting.”

  She laughed, and had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to call you a grease monkey. Plasma plumber, maybe, but not a grease monkey. Anyway, I’m the new chief of security, but you can’t defend a thing unless you know a thing, and nothing is more fundamental in knowing a thing than its shape and form. I’m trying to familiarize myself with the E in every way
possible.” She grinned. “Even if it means getting a little greasy.”

  He laughed. This is more like the Linda I remember. “So now I pilot the flagship of the fleet, but sometimes—” he tapped the screen, “—I still get to keep my feet in engineering. In this case, I’m working on modifying the main deflector to better allow the Enterprise to enter warp, even when surrounded by gas and dust clouds.”

  She continued to page through the schematics. “You think you can do that?”

  “We can make improvements, for sure. There are still going to be environments where warp travel isn’t going to work. The problem I’m having is that those schematics are inaccurate.”

  She looked up, a sharp question in her eyes. “Inaccurate?”

  “Those are the U.S.S. Sovereign blueprints, and yeah, the E is a Sovereign-class starship, but in practice, thousands of changes were made between the Sovereign prototype and the Enterprise. When the Sovereign was built, the Borg and the Cardassians were the primary threats. Now we’re just as worried about the Dominion. So running changes are made in the weaponry, defense systems, even propulsion and navigation. And even more changes are being made every day as we go through shakedown. The next Sovereign-class ship out of drydock will be even more different as they apply everything we’ve learned out here with the Enterprise.”

  “So, what? Nobody knows how the ship really works?”

  “Well, yes. And no.” He chuckled. “Every engineer knows that the real book on a starship’s operation and capabilities isn’t written at Utopia Planitia. It’s written by the shakedown crew. The shakedown logs record every design change, operational procedure, and performance evaluation.”

  Hawk felt an odd surge of pride as he talked about the shakedown cruise, about the development of the ship. Picard might be the captain, but the Enterprise belonged to him, in a way he was only beginning to understand. He pulled the padd back across the table, idly paging through the schematics as he spoke.

  “What I’m finding here is that there are a number of important differences between the Sovereign deflector and the one on the Enterprise. Which means that after all is said and done, I need to go down to main engineering and convince Geordi to let me have a look at the master log.”

  “You can’t just call it up from here?”

  He shook his head. “Security is tight on the ‘book.’ It can only be accessed from main engineering and command terminals on the bridge. Geordi watches over it like a mother hen.”

  “I suppose I should find that commendable, but there’s a new mother hen in town. I’d like to see it. As security chief I should. Why don’t I go with you after the orientation?”

  He hesitated. His day was already full, and he hadn’t been planning to check the master log until the next day’s watch.

  She reached out, and to his surprise, gently stroked the back of his hand. “Come on. It would be good to spend a little time together after all these years.”

  He stared at her hand, then couldn’t help but laugh as he pulled it away. “Funny, Linda. You know my sexual orientation better than anyone. You’re the one who once said we had the same taste in men!”

  She grinned slightly. “It’s always the way. The good ones are either gay or taken. Maybe in a mirror universe—”

  “Maybe in a mirror universe you’d be gay!”

  He glanced over at the door just as three more of the new officers arrived. It was nearly time for the orientation. He gulped down his nearly cold tea. Linda must have been joking, but her flirtation just seemed wrong somehow.

  What had happened to her on Vulcan? There had to be more to it than she’d said, but she seemed reluctant to talk about it. He had a few contacts on Vulcan. Tonight, before hitting his bunk, he resolved to make a few discrete subspace inquiries.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Picard entered the science lab to find the Samson’s data recorder fully disassembled on the large workbench in the middle of the lab. Several smaller components of the recorder were currently attached to a diagnostics console at the back of the room, where Data watched a rapidly flickering screen.

  At first, Picard thought there was some sort of problem, but as he moved closer, he realized Data had simply sped up the display rate to the maximum his android mind and senses could process, hundreds of times faster than a human could follow.

  Picard turned and examined the parts spread on the bench. The largest of these were the two halves of the cylindrical hull. He touched the outer surface, which was warped and pitted. He noted that the inner surface was warped and discolored as well. The data recorder itself had come within a hair’s breadth of being destroyed.

  Data paused the display and looked back at Picard. “The hull plates were completely fused. It was necessary to cut the data recorder open with a laser torch.”

  “But I take it you were able to recover the Samson’s logs?”

  “Actually, there was considerable damage. All of the storage chips were degraded, and approximately twenty-two percent were completely destroyed. However, thanks to the holographic file system used, I was able to apply error-correction protocols and reconstruct much of the damaged information. I have been reviewing all logs covering the last seventy-two hours in hopes of isolating the cause of their power failure.”

  “Have you done so?”

  Data turned back to his display, resuming his scan, though at a slower rate, while he replied. “Not precisely. The Samson’s chief engineer had not been able to identify the cause before the ship was destroyed, and I was faced with the same lack of information in my analysis. Unable to find a specific cause, I started with the observed failure and reverse engineered a probable scenario. I believe a trace contaminant was slowly introduced into the EPS power grid through the plasma itself. The buildup was slow enough that it had infiltrated the entire system before significant damage occurred. But when it reached some threshold level, it caused damage to key parts of the EPS system simultaneously, including EPS taps, plasma manifolds, and the plasma injectors in the warp drive. The cascade effect was sudden, and at some point, the plasma itself broke down and simply ceased to transmit power.”

  Picard looked over Data’s shoulder at the display, but the image flickered so quickly it made him feel slightly dizzy, and he looked away. “Why wasn’t this detected?”

  “Without knowing the precise nature of the contaminant, it is difficult to say with certainty. The traces may have been quite small, and it is difficult to routinely monitor the plasma itself because of the temperatures and energies involved. In any case, the system is sealed and under pressure. With any rupture or failure, the tendency is for the plasma to violently escape with a force that does not allow contaminants to enter. There’s no reason to continuously analyze the makeup of the plasma. However, protocols call for a plasma sample to be extracted from the system and analyzed every twenty-four hours. It is uncertain why the contaminant was not detected during the last sampling before the ship’s destruction.”

  “How did the contaminant get into the EPS system?”

  “The Samson had been extensively modified as part of her testing program. Pulse phasers adapted from the Defiant-class ships had been fitted, as well as a new deflector array system. It is possible that there was some unanticipated negative interaction of the old and new equipment.”

  Data stopped the display and reconfigured the components, swapping out a set of chips from the workbench. Picard took the opportunity to examine the scorched memory module now resting next to the hull. The high-tensile materials, designed to withstand extremes of temperature and pressure, were curled and blackened. They had come close to destruction in the heat and pressure of the plasma blast.

  “I was not satisfied with that answer,” Data continued as he resumed his scan. “So I continued to analyze the logs for any kind of anomaly. I found several, none of them directly related to technical issues or the EPS system. However,” Data’s voice rose, betraying the strain he felt, “six hours before
the Samson was destroyed, the computer shows tactical officer Ensign Zane Laumer asleep in his bunk, but at the same time, there is a visual recording of Ensign Laumer entering main phaser control. There are several other instances during the period I have investigated of duplicate personnel appearing on the ship.”

  Picard felt a cold dread run up his spine. “A Changeling infiltrator?”

  “It appears likely, Captain.”

  “Then the Samson was sabotaged!” Dread turned to anger as Picard recalled the image of the Samson, and the death of her crew.

  “That also appears likely. However, I do not believe a Changeling would have unnecessarily destroyed itself. It is possible the intent was not to destroy the Samson, but only to disable it. If one assumes deadly intent, however, then it is probable that the Changeling escaped the Samson before it was destroyed.”

  “Our intelligence reports indicate that at least some Changelings are capable of traveling independently through space by assuming the form of spaceborne life-forms. Could the Changeling be out there, hiding in the nebula somewhere?”

  “I do not believe that even a Changeling could survive the radiation this close to a Mira variable star. They would require the protection of a ship, at least until they could reach deep space. It is more logical to assume that the Changeling came aboard the Enterprise during our crew transfer. Since all cargo and baggage were subjected to routine phaser sweeps, it seems very possible that the Changeling arrived in the form of one of the transfer crew.”

  “They were all subjected to blood screenings. I observed it myself.”

  “Unfortunately, blood screenings are far from foolproof. Most such screenings use a simple visual inspection of a blood sample. If the sample were from a Changeling, it would revert to its protoplasmic form.” Data’s voice dropped, the faintest hint of an emotional reaction quickly suppressed. “However, if a Changeling were able to store a quantity of blood, or even a similar appearing liquid, inside its body, it could easily pass such a test. There are countless possible methods to fool a blood test.”