GHOST SHIP Page 11

  “Yes, sir,” Data was glad to agree. “Our weapons attracted and agitated it.”

  “We do have to realize that there may be a difference between the hostile and the minds I am sensing, sir,” Troi pointed out.

  “But in any case,” Riker pointed out, “we have to deal with it. We can’t reason with it or frighten it, and there’s only a low chance of deceiving it. But the advantage is that we may be able to figure out its programming, as Data suggested.”

  “But not,” Picard pressed, “if it’s rational.” He placed his hands upon the bridge horseshoe rail and gazed up meaningfully at Deanna Troi. “If it’s rational, we may find ourselves impaled on the horns of Mr. Data’s logic.”

  Data stepped down to the main deck and stood beside his chair at the Ops station as though to draw strength from a companion. “I cannot decipher its program by its actions alone, sir. There would have to be some form of communication or interface. In deference to Counselor Troi, I suggest that though it is programmed, it is also fundamentally alive. It does sustain itself with a basic survival drive.”

  “If we can figure out that programming,” Picard followed, “we can thwart it much as we would draw a moth into a trap with a bright light.”

  Geordi chose this moment to step past him and take his post at Conn, muttering, “We’re gonna need one sucker of a butterfly net.”

  “There is a danger, sir,” Data went on, “in attracting its attention. We might inadvertently get its Irish up and lay an egg.”

  Picard had already started to comment, but instead he glowered at the android for a moment. “Yes, I’d already surmised that. Thank you. Mr. Riker—”

  “Sir?”

  “Prepare to separate the modules.”

  Riker jolted around. “Sir?”

  “You heard me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, but . . . ”

  “Do you have a question?”

  Riker straightened and changed his tone. “Yes, I do, sir. Saucer separation is ideally only for situations when we’ll be going into battle and can leave the saucer far behind, well out of the danger zone. If we separate in this situation, they’ll be completely helpless!”

  “Interesting way to put a question.” Picard eyed him foxily. “This isn’t the time to get cold feet about this ship’s capabilities. Lieutenant Yar, recount your statistics for the first officer.”

  Yar stood straight behind tactical, her cheeks flushed. “Aye, sir. We calculate only a fifty-fifty chance for the whole ship to escape, but if we separate and the battle hull distracts the thing, the saucer section may have as high as ninety percent chance of escape.”

  “And the battle hull?”

  She fidgeted. “About seventeen percent.”

  A vertical crease appeared over the bridge of Riker’s nose; he felt the tightness of his expression as he glared at her, saw a film of sweat break out on her face, though she withstood the force of his glare. He felt the tickle of a single lock of his dark brown hair, like an irritating thread over his left eye. His mind echoed Yar’s words, the spectacle they would bring. With them, he felt again all the implications, all the reasoning, all the trouble of having a ship that could do what this ship could do. All the problems of a battle-ready vessel that was also supposed to serve as home and hearth for families, and how awkwardly the two really went together. A battleship is supposed to plunge forward into adversity, a colony vessel to run from it. Both were honorable answers, but what happens when both are the same ship? And when one of them isn’t fast enough to run away?

  This Enterprise had only been separated once before, and that wasn’t even a shakedown test. And he himself hadn’t even been on board when it happened. He’d heard about it. An insane move, at full warp speed, only the captain’s prerogative. Not one Riker felt he would have chosen, but he wasn’t Jean-Luc Picard, either. In his mind he suddenly envisioned the starship breaking into two parts at lightspeed, imagined the stardrive section shooting on by as the saucer section abruptly fell out of the warp envelope and crammed down to sublight, an effect that must have thrown every one of its passengers to the deck.

  Passengers . . . damn this straddling.

  The captain’s words rang out. “All hands, prepare to transfer command to the battle bridge.”

  Picard evidently wasn’t interested in opinions on the subject. There would be no group decision this time, Riker saw. If he were captain, there never would be. Not even about whether or not the captain should participate in dangerous away missions. Not even that. But, as he told himself again, again, again—he wasn’t Jean-Luc Picard, wasn’t the man who now scanned the bridge crew and diplomatically said, “I’ll need a volunteer to command the saucer section in this crisis.”

  Riker wasn’t about to speak up. He clamped his lips and waited for someone else to volunteer. Tasha opened her mouth, then closed it, and seemed to hope the captain didn’t see. Worf never so much as considered the offer, that much was clear on his swarthy face. Data started to turn from his position at Ops, but thought again and swallowed his unspoken response. Geordi slunk down in his chair to the point of invisibility.

  On the upper deck, Beverly Crusher and Deanna Troi stood like mannequins, not daring to rupture the captain’s carefully phrased offer or the reactions it would bring. Troi stood especially still. She felt the quandary of each person here as the captain’s request flowed into each mind, stirred their consciences, and flowed out again.

  Picard turned in place, touching each of them with his gaze. He took this unlikely moment to shake his head almost sentimentally. “I’m very proud of every one of you,” he said.

  At bridge center, William Riker beamed at them, proud of the stock he had behind him.

  Picard touched the intercom on his command chair. “Engineering, this is Picard. Chief Engineer Argyle, report to the bridge to take command of the saucer module.”

  “Argyle here. Did I hear you right, Captain?”

  “You did. Get up here, and bring an adjunct bridge crew with you. We’re going to take some action.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll be right there, sir.”

  The captain turned forward now without the slightest pause. “Mr. Riker, you may begin.”

  His stomach churning so hard that he actually bent forward—he knew that Deanna saw the change if no one else did Riker faced the helm and forced out words that bothered him. A lot.

  “Mr. Data, activate the battle bridge power junctions so it’s ready when we get there. All hands, prepare to adjourn to the battle bridge. Go to yellow alert. Secure for saucer separation.”

  The mandolin jangles of starship noise jumped to life on the compact and utilitarian battle bridge. This was a darker place, in some ways a more private place, a place with its mind on its work. The viewscreen here was markedly smaller, as though to demand more focused attention.

  Enterprise’s command crew bolted from the turbolift and settled into their respective places. Tasha and Worf to the tactical and science stations, LaForge to the helm, Data to Ops, the captain to the command center, Riker to the place of all first officers—to the right and slightly behind the captain’s shoulder. There was something about that place. Even when a first officer was somewhere else, he was still always right here. And above them, far above, the vast saucer section would soon break away from its sustaining power source, leaving the stardrive section to its little seventeen percent chance of survival and the gratification of knowing what only self-sacrifice can provide to the human soul.

  Everyone was aware of LaForge’s fingers moving across his panel. Beside him, Data slid into his seat and fed in the corresponding internal adjustments—thrust to get the two modules away from each other as they hung here at full stop, careful limitation of energy surge, just in case the entity could pick up on their move, and myriad other tiny calculations required in what the naked eye saw as a simple maneuver. But this wasn’t like pulling apart a child’s toy. A million circuitry signals would have to be rerouted, and the energ
y to feed them would have to be ready. All the while, the creature outside moved along their starfield, glowing and snapping, hot on the trail of what it had so recently tasted.

  “On my mark,” Riker said, knowing perfectly well they could do it without him. In the corner of his eye he saw the cool back of Data’s neck, the muscles working there as Data pegged down to calculating this tricky maneuver, saw the efficiency of android fingers, and felt suddenly crude. “All systems at nominal. Energy feed at fifteen percent, allowing for a twenty percent surge on separation. Flight shields only, stardrive aft thrust at point-zero five sublight. All sections comply clearance of turbo-lifts and maintenance shafts.”

  The bridge lift opened. Riker’s concentration shattered.

  “Deanna, what are you doing here?” He actually stepped away from the captain toward the lift, so driven was he to ask this, to ask why she would expose herself to so puny a chance of living beyond today. But he saw it in her almond eyes as she met his scolding tone unyieldingly, and he felt it in the emotions she flung at him in the next few seconds. He drew up short, canceling what he was about to say—whatever it was.

  Even if he had spoken, the words would have been battered aside as Picard jammed his way in front of Riker. “Counselor Troi, damn it, you were ordered to remain with the saucer section. Explain yourself.”

  She had been completely ready for this, it seemed, for she remained the quintessence of poise. “Sir, I’m needed here. If there’s any chance of communication with those beings, I am the only person who can provide it. I’d like to volunteer to remain here.”

  “Yes,” Picard rasped. “And I notice you waited until the lifts were shut down rather than volunteering while we were still topside.” He pointed at her and ferociously said, “I’ll discuss this with you later. Providing there is a later for us.”

  Troi let her shoulders settle, and breathed, “Yes, sir.” Her legs ached with the tension and now the relief of knowing she would stay and bear this out.

  Perhaps she could evade the captain, but not Riker. Her gaze caught his, and he had that look on his face, that look with all the levels going back through it, back and back to the core of his being, and she could see all the levels as though looking into an infinity mirror.

  “Mr. Riker, we don’t have all day.”

  “No, sir, I know that. Mr. LaForge, Mr. Data. Effect saucer separation—now.”

  Every breath held. Every spine stiffened. A subtle hum of power came up from beneath them, up from the caverns of Enterprise’s gigantic power factory to the interlocking mechanisms in her neck. With a dissonant grind, the ship pulled herself apart. No level of mechanical perfection would ever diminish the power of that dividing moment, no matter how faint, no matter how insulated. They either heard it or thought they heard it—a husky clunk-chunk as couplings released, grippers let go like great claws, their pads sucking back from the ship’s yoke with a rubbery reluctance, pins and bolts, lashes and hasps came loose from their harnesses, and all the little pins, which had moments ago held the intricate circuitry that ran the ship, retracted. As though severed by the ax of a great woodsman, the ship became two. The saucer section, with all its families, was suddenly cut adrift.

  On the battle bridge, Picard and his command crew watched the stardrive section back slowly away. They seldom got this view of their starship—or even part of her. The saucer section was a wide plate with tapered edges, her frosty whiteness everywhere reflecting the rings of light from rectangular windows and energy-release points. Lights everywhere, like a glittering foil Christmas tree. A kind of pain cut through Captain Picard. He watched as the saucer’s impulse engines suddenly came to life and glowed a bright silvery blue. Starship captains were supposed to be decisive. Yet their decisions were like raw surgery to him. Why must there be such things in the universe? Why must there be snakes in the water?

  Riker watched the saucer section drift away, mesmerized. Hmm. Wasn’t so bad. Let’s hope everything else goes that well. When he could pull his attention away from the sheer beauty of the saucer, he looked at the captain.

  If he’d ever seen Jean-Luc Picard vacillate, now was that time. The captain looked as though he might suddenly call that disk back into place, gather all his charges beneath his robe. For several seconds Riker expected to have to give that order, even figured out what words he would use to keep the captain from looking too foolish.

  But Picard said nothing. In silence he bore out the courage of his conviction.

  “All secure,” LaForge reported. “Free to maneuver, sir.”

  “Acknowledged,” Picard murmured. The taste of commitment. “Maintain status. Send a low-band communique to Mr. Argyle. Tell him to maneuver behind that small asteroid belt on the other side of the gas giant. It may mask their escape.”

  “Aye, sir,” Worf said. “Dispatching.”

  They watched in silence as the saucer section’s impulse drive flared for those few moments, then faded back, providing the huge disk with just enough thrust to coast toward the dangerous parameters of the entity’s shrinking cage. For Riker especially, this terrible moment had its profundities. There were many kinds of civilizations that would never have provided him the chance to die here today, at least in a place of his own choice. The beauty of technology awed him. It was the freedom to build what floated outward before them, the freedom to strike toward greater goals and more profitable accomplishments, to have the resources to use the wealth of their healthy society to create marvels like the one he’d just seen, and it was the freedom to die in space if that was the turn of the day.

  He glanced once again at Captain Picard, and yes, it was there too. Awe. The captain didn’t seem afraid. More than anything, he looked a bit miffed at the entity for making him break his ship in two.

  Or is it something else? Riker wondered. I know him so little.

  Their trance was broken as Picard turned to Troi and bluntly asked, “Getting anything at all?”

  The black curls of her hair made her face seem pale, the dark eyes set there like onyx chunks. “Nothing yet, sir.”

  “Worf, any changes in its energy pattern?”

  Worf’s guttural response carried a distinct impatience. “Only the same flux and shift it’s been doing all this time, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Yar, you keep an eye on the locations of the saucer and that thing. I want to know if they’re about to run afoul of each other, and I want to know ahead of time.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and instantly bent over her glossy board.

  “On second thought, best we not wait. Mr. Riker, let’s make a noise in the darkness.”

  Riker nodded, never mind that it was a silly gesture. His throat was dry and he didn’t want to speak up until he’d swallowed a few times. Then he tapped the command intercom and said, “Riker to engineering. Do we have warp power?”

  Engineer MacDougal spoke up so quickly she might as well have been on the battle bridge with him. “Stardrive is still down, sir, but we should have it back on line soon. It was an electrical burnout and not a matter of power generation.”

  “I’m not asking for warp drive yet,” Riker said, watching Picard to see if this was what the captain had in mind. “I just need a flush of power through the tubes. Say, ten percent. Enough to keep its attention off the saucer until they’re out of the area. Be ready to shut down immediately so we can hide again too.”

  “I understand what you need, Mr. Riker, but warp power isn’t that easy to control. There has to be a grace period on either side of the flush.”

  Riker glanced self-consciously at Picard, who was watching him, and acknowledged, “Whatever works. And whenever you’re ready. Riker out.”

  Now they would make a noise. They would flip a coin in the dark warehouse and hope its tiny ring could be heard but not found.

  Up from the bowels of the engineering section, deep within the core matter/antimatter reactors that made a starship what it was, came a surge of raw power. Even that tiny surge, that t
en percent, could be felt.

  Then there was a change on the screen. The crackling infrared diffraction image of their pursuer suddenly paused in its search across the bottom of the viewscreen, and made a deliberate turn in their direction.

  “It’s coming after us,” Yar reported. She gripped the edge of her panel, refusing to look up at the screen. Instead she watched the two target points, starship and hostile, close toward one another. Her voice quavered. “Direct line.”

  “Point-three-zero sublight, helm,” Riker said, gripping the headrest of LaForge’s chair, “heading, two-two-four mark one-five.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Faster, LaForge.”

  “Aye, sir, executing.”

  “Lieutenant, is it following?” the captain asked, not turning.

  Yar nodded, even though he wasn’t watching her. “Aye, sir. It is.”

  “Speed?”

  “Point-four sublight.”

  “All right . . . ” Picard didn’t sit down in the command chair despite his movement toward it. “Let’s cast the pearls and see if the swine follows. Lieutenant LaForge, increase to fifty percent sublight.”

  “Point-five, aye.”

  The beheaded stardrive section, its energy-rimmed nacelles now its most prominent feature, slid around on an imaginary rail and cut diametrically across the entity’s search pattern, exactly opposite to the heading of the saucer section, away from the swirling gas giant, away from the tiny belt of asteroids that would someday pull together into a new planet and circle the proud little sun of this system.

  “Captain,” Worf said, breaking the concentration, “MacDougal reports we now have sufficient power for shields, but not stardrive and not much for weapons. She estimates just a few minutes for those.”

  Picard nodded without looking.

  “I think it’s working, sir,” Riker told him, his voice so low that it hurt his throat. He mentally ticked off the distance between stardrive and the saucer, and the time needed until the saucer section could be considered safe. “Good thinking, Captain.”