Ship of the Line Page 6

  “Coming in fast and high,” Wolfe warned. “Collision course!”

  “Great God!” Bush choked out as he looked straight forward.

  On the forward screen, the fractured sensor systems coughed up a view of the oncoming vessel—and it was no Klingon ship. It was a moving mountain! The thing in front of them was triple or more the size of Kozara’s ship and made the Bozeman rumble just from the proximity of its energy wash. God, it was big!

  Bateson plunged for Welch’s controls. “Emergency propulsion!”

  “Haven’t got it,” Perry said, gawking with an engineer’s eye at the monstrosity on the screen.

  Stunned, Andy Welch slumped back in his chair. “I got nothin’ . . .”

  Bush glanced at the captain; then they both looked at the forward screen and watched the massive creamy shape freight-training down upon them.

  “Brace for impact!” Bush shouted. “Everybody, brace for impact!”

  He held his breath and wanted to go to his knees. Agonizing. Impending collision and no way to move, no guidance, no thrust—lie here and take death like officers.

  The enormous oblong ship with something like low-lying nacelles and a sheen of dove-gray hull boomed at them, filling up the entire forward screen until he thought he was going mad with the size of it, close enough to touch. In this moment of final terror he actually reached out a hand, perhaps in defense, perhaps in relinquishment—he would never know.

  He would be able to contemplate that, for at the last moment the big ship suddenly tipped upward on a wing and surged hard off, angling directly over the cutter’s topknot and scratching by on the grace of what must have been raw inches. Inches!

  “Ahh—ouch!” Ed Perry gasped, apparently amazed that the cutter’s skin hadn’t been shorn off.

  “Holy J!” Bush shouted, actually bending his knees as if to duck. “They got my back teeth clean with that pass!”

  Mopping a cold sweat, Bateson wallowed back into his command chair, kneading the chair’s arm. “I can’t believe they missed us!”

  “They decompressed their loading bay,” Mike Dennis reported breathlessly. “At the last second, they blew their whole bay, including several cargo containers.”

  “Hope nobody was back there when they did,” Bush uttered, shivering visibly. “Look at the size of it! Gotta be seven hundred meters!”

  “Even bigger than the Excelsior design.” Morgan Bateson remained seated, apparently gathering his wits, for several seconds. He stared and stared upward at the shadowy underside of the unknown giant.

  “Mike, check out his emissions ratios,” Bush suggested. “John, analyze the structural materials.”

  “Aye, sir,” Dennis and Wolfe said at the same time.

  The captain was already into analysis mode. “Is that Starfleet design? At least in rudiments . . . but looks like its been puffed up and stretched out. Primary hull, conduit neck, lower hull, nacelles . . . can anybody read the I.D.?”

  “Not from this angle,” Dennis said. “Sensors aren’t working well enough. But the emissions ratios check out as Starfleet standard matter/antimatter enrichment, with some modifications I don’t recognize.”

  “I’m detecting some new materials,” Wolfe countered. “Reading some composites the computer doesn’t recognize.”

  Bush leaned toward the forward screen, as if that would help. “Can it be a top-secret development?”

  “It would have to be,” the captain said. “How did they know we were in trouble? The probe isn’t broadcasting yet.”

  “Six more minutes,” Perry supplied.

  Pivoting in his chair on the upper deck, Wizz Dayton said, “Captain, that ship’s hailing us.”

  Arranging himself a little in his chair, Bateson made a facial shrug and said, “Answer it.”

  Wizz worked his board, and through the clearing haze on the bridge the main screen shifted from a view of that big ship to a view of a huge, wide, bright room of some kind with lots of lounge chairs and people sitting in most of the chairs. In the middle of the room were three chairs and three people, one a woman.

  Humans, at least.

  The captain drew a slow breath, then did his thing. “This is Captain Morgan Bateson of the U.S.S. Bozeman. Can we render assistance?”

  As he watched, Bush experienced a wash of relief when it in fact wasn’t Klingons who appeared on the screen with a ship more than twice as big. Kozara hadn’t somehow switched ships.

  The screen now centered on a rather stately bald gentleman of medium build, wearing a black suit, standing at the center of the auditoriumlike room’s gold carpet. That gentleman was obviously the oldest of anyone there, and judging by his posture and position, he was also the most senior of rank.

  “Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise. We were just going to ask you the same thing.”

  Enterprise? Bush almost blurted an accusation. Liar!

  But Bateson chose for some reason to play along. “Captain Picard . . . your ship is unfamiliar to us.”

  After a pause of underlying challenge, the other man asked, “Have you any idea what just happened?”

  “Our sensors detected a temporal distortion. Then your ship appeared. We nearly hit you.”

  Picard seemed very reserved, even stiff. “The Enterprise has been caught in a temporal causality loop. And I suspect something similar happened to you.”

  “You must be mistaken,” Bateson told him. “We only left Starbase 12 three weeks ago.”

  Another pause. Bush didn’t like the pauses. Not a bit.

  “Captain Bateson,” the bald officer began again, “do you know what year it is?”

  Feeling his innards coil, Bush knew what that particular question meant.

  Bateson was remaining cool. “Of course I do. It’s 2278.”

  The men on the screen glanced at each other; then the one called Picard took a couple of steps forward. “Captain, perhaps you should beam on board our ship. There’s something we need to discuss.”

  For several seconds Bateson said nothing, then finally managed a by-the-book response. “Very well, Captain. I’ll be there shortly.”

  “We’ll be waiting. Picard out.”

  The screen flickered back to a view of the overwhelmingly large ship.

  Wincing, Bush stepped forward on his bleeding leg. “Morgan, you’re going over there alone?”

  Bateson took his arm and helped him down from the command platform. “I think I’d better. I want to have a look inside that ship. You’re bleeding, Gabe. You all right?”

  “Oh, it’ll fix,” Bush said with a pat on his thigh. “Feels better already.”

  “How’d you get cut like that?”

  “Guess I fell against that open panel over there.”

  “Are you fit to take the bridge?”

  “Wouldn’t leave now except feet first.”

  “Have a medic come up and tend that leg, at least. Even in this century we can still bleed to death.”

  “Aye, sir. I really don’t like this, you going alone over there and all. Could be a trick. We don’t really know what we’re looking at. Take some men with you.”

  Bateson held a hand toward the forward screen. “If that’s a Starfleet ship, it would be the height of indiscretion for me to beam on board with a security detail, even if we’ve never seen the design before.”

  “Or those black suits before either,” Bush pointed out. “We’d know if headquarters changed uniforms, wouldn’t we?”

  “Maybe. We’re pretty far out, you know. It wouldn’t be the first time they didn’t bother to tell us something.”

  “But uniforms?”

  “If it’s not a Starfleet ship . . . well, look at it. There’s not much we could do, is there? I’ll put on a sensor chip. You can monitor my whereabouts and physical condition. If I get hurt, zero in and beam me on out.”

  “Then what?”

  The captain hopped up the steps to the upper deck near the turbolift. “Who knows?”
<
br />   Chapter 6

  Year 2368

  The U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D.

  “This way, Captain Bateson. Right through here, sir.”

  A good looking man. Well-groomed, even elegant, and quick-witted, but with a raucous glimmer in his eye, something like a South American macaw until it started talking. Already he’d made several comments and even a joke. Something about how Daniel Boone would’ve liked all this “elbow room on a ship this big.”

  And those old-style uniforms certainly were striking—black trousers under the angular maroon jacket, the black belt, the white command-division collar, and that fold-over chest placket . . . less comfortable, maybe, but certainly more stylish than today’s leisure-fitted two-piece uniforms, no belt, no collar, no placket.

  “Captain.” Commander William Riker kept his opinions to himself and motioned to the ready-room door, behind which his own captain waited to speak to Bateson.

  Morgan Bateson hesitated where he stood on the port side of the starship’s bridge, gazing at the huge vision of his own ship on the gigantic forward screen. This bridge must look very strange to him, with its beige carpeting and its wide ramps, the high ceiling and bright shadowless lights. Certainly that ship on the screen, the humble Bozeman possessed nothing like the place its captain now stood.

  And Riker couldn’t help a few seconds of awe as he gazed at the Bozeman too. Something about old ships . . .

  There was visible damage on the cutter’s hull, and that caught both men’s eyes for a few lingering seconds. Then Bateson turned and came through the ready-room door at Riker’s side.

  The ready room was decidedly cooler than the bridge. Captain Picard liked it that way. He said he could think better.

  Jean-Luc Picard was pacing in front of his desk, and now came forward with a hand extended to Morgan Bateson. Picard wasn’t a large man, but he commanded a certain attention and had done so for as long as Riker had known him. He was less swashbuckler than magistrate, an old-line sovereign of a synthetic kingdom. Carrying with him little of the bravura of command, Picard instead seemed to treat captaincy as a pastorship, a trust rather than an adventure. Perhaps that was because command hadn’t been Jean-Luc Picard’s driven goal in life. Instead, he had simply risen to it as it came.

  As Captain Picard approached them, Will Riker wondered if he himself could ever be so regal, and to take moments like this with such marksmanlike calm.

  “Welcome aboard, Captain Bateson,” Picard offered amiably, and indeed Riker thought the tone and posture reminded him of someone greeting the next of kin at a funeral.

  “Captain Picard,” Bateson responded, taking Picard’s hand. “This is a Starfleet ship . . . isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes, it is, most certainly.” Picard motioned to the office. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I’d rather not just yet.”

  Picard glanced at Riker. “Yes . . . of course.”

  Looking out the wide viewports that graced the ready room for just another moment, Bateson turned and bluntly asked, “Will you please identify yourselves and your vessel now?”

  “I am, as I told you, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. This vessel is the United Federation of Planets flagship U.S.S. Enterprise.”

  As if he’d already been bracing for some kind of joke, Bateson looked at Picard, then at Riker, then back to the captain. “The Enterprise, Constitution-class NCC 1701, length two-hundred ninety meters, is under command of Captain Spock, currently flagged for Admiral James Kirk, and is at this moment on its way to a bogus border despute in the next sector. We just rendezvoused with the Enterprise less than one hour ago, and this ship . . . is not that ship.”

  “Ah, no,” Picard allowed, “this isn’t that ship. But this is in fact the Enterprise . . . Galaxy-class, L.O.A. six hundred forty-one meters, crew of one thousand four. Our number is NCC 1701-D.”

  Riker held his breath. The captain had been careful to put an inflection on the “D.” Bateson was no idiot. Starfleet captains weren’t. Well, most weren’t.

  A, B, C . . . D. That had to represent a lot of innovation and effort—and a lot of years. It also implied that the starship Bateson knew as the Federation flagship no longer existed, that something had happened, probably something bad.

  Bateson didn’t ask the obvious question. He just waited, looking at Picard with those slightly narrowed gray eyes.

  Rubbing his knuckles, Picard confirmed, “Yes . . . all right, I’ll try to explain at least what we know. It’s only been a few minutes since we stabilized our systems. We nearly struck you.”

  “I know,” Bateson said. “You blew your loading bay at the last second. Good thing you did, because we were completely stalled.”

  “It’s our shuttlebay. Mr. Riker’s idea,” Picard gallantly transferred. “We’d have all been destroyed otherwise. We’re pretty sure of that. You’ve been caught in a temporal causality loop, as near as we can figure it, Captain. We were caught in it also and kept repeating the collision between our two ships. Finally we figured out the survival alternative and put an end to the loop.”

  “I’m glad you did. We couldn’t move at all. For some reason our propulsion and guidance both went off line.”

  “There’s no reason for that to happen,” Riker interrupted. ldquo;They’re not tied in with each other.”

  “I know that,” Bateson answered.

  “Of course . . . sorry, sir.”

  Bateson ignored him and turned to Picard. “Get to the bottom line, Captain. What do you think is going on?”

  “Just what I told you,” Picard said. “Our ships are roughly ninety years apart in development. The causality loop has put us together.” He gestured at himself and Riker, then at the area around them. “We are from the year 2368.”

  Riker noticed that their guest instantly rejected the idea, then almost as quickly absorbed it, typical of commanders who had learned to distill situations in an instant. Bateson doubted what he heard, of course, but he also trusted the evidence of his own eyes. And he was gazing fiercely at Picard, as though the stare could make the liar break.

  Letting the surroundings speak for himself, Picard blue-bloodedly remained untextured and took the glare.

  “You’re sure about this?” Bateson asked.

  “We’re double-checking everything now.”

  “I’ll have to have confirmation, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  As Riker and his captain watched, Morgan Bateson crossed some line or other, and at least made a strong effort to participate in what he saw happening around him.

  He fanned his hands casually. “Well, Captain Picard, Mr. Riker . . . if all this checks out, I’ll do everything possible, as I’m sure Starfleet will, to make you and your crew comfortable in our time.”

  Riker actually winced. He was glad Bateson wasn’t looking at him right then.

  “This must be terrible for you,” Bateson went on to the captain. “Perhaps there’s some way to use this causality to return you to your own time.”

  “There isn’t,” Picard established. “We’ve been checking that more than anything else. The causality has a particular temporal flow that can’t be reversed by artificial means. In fact, it’s gone now. We think it’s subject to its own forces and it’s gone off to another era. Possibly another epoch. We can’t find it anymore.”

  While he talked, Picard threw a glance at Riker—a deeply troubled glance, even a desperate one. The moment of terrible truth was getting closer and harder at the same pace, and the captain’s silent eyes asked the ugliest question: Are we sure it’s not us?

  A chill ran up Riker’s arms. Trying not to draw attention, he slipped into a swivel chair before the captain’s desk and reached for the non-audio computer access tie-in. He fingered the controls, shutting off the vocal response mode. All he needed was for the computer to stupidly blurt out what it discovered.

  Local celestial bodies . . . position . . . status . . . stellar correlations . . . home in on the beacon
at the Linden Navigational Outpost, established only fourteen years ago . . . please be there . . .

  Yes. Loud and clear.

  He tilted his head, caught Picard’s eye beyond Bateson’s shoulder. Picard didn’t change expression, but maintained a perfect stage distance. Riker nodded with sad reassurance, then pointed quickly at Bateson. It’s him.

  “Mmm,” Picard uttered. “Captain Bateson, I’m deeply sorry, but we’ve confirmed this . . . the causality was apparently a forward time current.”

  Such a melodic voice when he wanted it to be. In the midst of the regret he was feeling now, Riker found himself admiring both that deep Shakespearean eloquence and how Picard could ease off on it when he needed to.

  Judging from the sudden pallor in Morgan Bateson’s face, Picard was playing the part of both doctor and paster—to inform of bad news and also comfort the quaking aftermath.

  Bateson slowly drifted down to sit on the couch—luckily he was standing right in front of it or he’d have gone down to the deck. Once down, he somehow continued sinking. His elbows rested on his knees and his hands fell limp. His head and shoulders slumped until he was staring at his own feet. His voice scattered out on the rag of a sigh.

  “Oh, no . . .”

  The ready room grew so quiet that the soft sounds from the bridge beyond the doorway, tiny beeps and breathy whirrs, actually came through the insulated door panel. It had to be pretty quiet for that. Usually there was classical music playing in here, or someone was talking to someone else. Riker never noticed before how quiet this office could be, or that the bridge activity could be heard at all.

  The tragedy for Bateson’s crew—going forward in time—was far worse than to go backward. Anyone finding himself in the past could at least contrive to send a message forward, let relatives know what had happened. There was separation, but no tragedy. For a whole crew, the chance of success was pretty good. One message might fail, but a hundred or more, each requesting that the whole crew’s families be notified, would surely succeed. Riker found himself mentally plotting out the process, just how he would do it, where to leave messages.