GHOST SHIP Page 8

  “What?” she prodded, very careful of her tone.

  “Nothing.” He stood up abruptly, committing the very crime he was hanging himself for. Even as he began to turn toward the door he realized what he was doing, and he paused, balanced on one foot. He tipped his shoulder back toward her and thought about turning. “We aren’t . . . we aren’t showing—”

  “Commander Riker, to the bridge immediately. Yellow alert, all hands, yellow alert. Commander Riker, report to the bridge—”

  “Something on the edge of sensor range, sir.”

  Tasha Yar’s voice gained a sudden rock-steadiness as she raised her volume over the yellow alert noise.

  Picard stood resolute at bridge center, glaring at the viewscreen, very aware of Counselor Troi beside him. “Scan it.”

  “Scanning.”

  “On your toes, everyone. And where the devil is—”

  “Riker reporting, sir. Sorry for the delay.”

  Picard turned toward the turbolift and said, “I want you one hundred percent available the next twenty-four hours, Number One. We don’t know what we’ve stumbled upon and I don’t like riddles. Until we discover what’s going on—”

  “At your service, sir, no problem.” Riker landed in his place between the captain and Troi with a faint thud on the carpeted deck. Troi caught his eyes for just an instant, and each had to work hard to keep from speaking out-of-place reassurances to each other. Forcing himself to look away from her, he noticed Yar working more furiously than usual at her tactical station and demanded, “Fill me in, Lieutenant.”

  Her pale brow furrowed. “Scanning something on the periphery of sensor range, Mr. Riker, but I can’t get a fix—wait a minute—that . . . that can’t be right. I’m not getting anything back. No, that can’t be right.”

  Picard spun. “Nothing at all? No reaction to the scan at all?”

  “No, sir,” Yar complained, “not even readings of surrounding space debris or bodies—” She broke off and slapped her control board like an errant child. She straightened decisively, absolutely sure of what she was seeing on her instruments. “Sir, far’s I can tell, it’s absorbing the sensor scan.”

  Picard’s face took on an arrogant disbelief. “That’s the most curious damned thing I’ve ever heard of. Corroborate it with the space sciences lab immediately.”

  “They’re already tied in, sir,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Same report.”

  He swung about and bumped his fist against his thigh. “Well, damn that.” With an imperious stride, he approached the starfield before them, his eyes going to slits. “Boost the sensors.”

  Yar looked up again. “Sorry?”

  “Yes. Put out a high-energy sensor burst over the nominal sensors.”

  Yar’s hand leaned ineffectually on her board, and she looked with helplessness to Riker. Her mouth formed her silent question: Boost them?

  Riker felt the weight slam onto his shoulders. At least a foot shorter now, he approached Picard. “Sir, could you refresh us on that procedure?”

  To everyone’s surprise—relief—Picard merely glanced at him and said, “Of course.” He stepped to the Ops station, where Data had been sitting in silent vigilance all this time, and put one hand to the small tactical access panel on the Ops console, pecking the controls carefully. “It’s more or less an unofficial skill, not something Starfleet engineers approve of . . . somewhat radical. If it’s done too often it can cause quite a burnout. We’ll have to key in the computer sensors, readjust the energy output for tight-gain/ high-energy bolt, ask for a momentary scan so all the energy is contained, and tell the computer to fire when it’s ready. There you are.”

  His hand fell gracefully away from the instruments, leaving them with a surprising clue to his rogue side. Within seconds, sure enough, there was a flush of energy from the bridge sensory systems, and the scanning burst was off, crossing the distances of space with the unfettered speed of pure energy.

  “Sir!” Yar jolted at her station. “Definitely reading something now! God! It’s heading directly at us out of interstellar space—it homed in on us! It’ll be here in seventy-eight seconds!”

  The captain snapped, “Visual!”

  LaForge kept his voice laudibly calm as he reported, “Sir, for visual of these readings, the sensors’ll have to be adjusted twelve points into the gamma-ray spectrum—”

  “Just do it, Lieutenant!” Picard roared.

  The young blind man grimaced behind his visor, punched in the code, and nailed the engage button, then held his breath as the ship’s systems whined their strain back at him. But the readings began coming in.

  “Sensors at maximum output—draining their sources, sir,” LaForge reported over the energy shriek. “Almost got visual—there!”

  The starfield blurred before them, sizzled, and reformed into a new pattern—and suddenly the bridge was walled with a gigantic glassy false-color image, undulating and fluxing as it raced at them through open space. Its aurora borealis colors were chaotic, its luster blinding, its electrical nature obvious as it crackled across the huge screen.

  Geordi instantly brought a hand up to shield his visor. “Chrrrrist—”

  The fireworks blazed across their faces and ran amuck on their fears. It was a thing utterly alien, and struck panic in all their hearts—it looked like fire, like electricity. Like the face of hell itself.

  Suddenly Troi came to life behind Riker and the captain, her horrified expression even more horrifying as the fulmination from the screen glared on her skin and in her eyes.

  “Stay away from it! Don’t let it get near us!”

  Picard was beside her as though appearing out of nothing. “Counselor?”

  Her slim hands clamped on his arm like talons. “Captain! Do not let that thing come near us!”

  “I can’t just—”

  “Do not let it!” she repeated. “Captain, what am I doing on this ship if you do not take my counsel? If I’m wrong, I’ll resign my position! If I never do anything worthwhile in my life again, I’ll have done this! Captain, please!”

  The purplish veins of light played ugly patterns between them, glowing as though to hammer out Troi’s words and the conviction in her eyes.

  The captain held her by the arms and bored through her with eyes that were doing something other than questioning her veracity. At once he sucked in a breath and his voice gripped the bridge. “Raise shields! Go to red alert status.”

  “Red alert!” Riker echoed instantly, flashing the words toward Tasha. “Speed and ETA?”

  “Warp six now! Sixty-one seconds ETA!” She flinched under the prismatic light from the screen. Her blond hair sparkled orange, then amethyst, then blue, then a cruel white. Her arms moved among the fireworks, and the ship whooped into alert. Lights of their own flashed now throughout the starship, and all around the vessel, high-energy defensive shielding buzzed to life around the great hulls and nacelles.

  Picard pressed Deanna Troi behind him, back toward the three lounges that were their command places in better moments, and shouldered his way into the glaze of lights. “Lieutenant Yar, fire phasers across its bow. Make our intentions absolutely clear. Warn that thing off”

  Behind him he heard Troi whisper, “Weapons . . . no!”

  But it was too late.

  Without acknowledgment, Yar played her controls and before them long-range phasers lanced space, thin as needles, their power twisted into threads so slim that they could strike even at this distance and be felt like solid blades.

  “Captain, it’s accelerating!” she shrieked then. “It’s put on a burst of speed—warp ten now . . . warp twelve! Warp fourteen-point-nine!”

  “LaForge!”

  The captain’s roar bombarded the bridge.

  LaForge smeared his palms over the controls, jamming the starship into emergency warp. The change of speed was so abrupt that even sophisticated Starfleet equipment couldn’t compensate for the stomach-sucking effect.

  The starship
wheeled in space and bolted into a sudden warp five, but there was no warp fifteen in its vocabulary. Before the ship could maneuver more than one light-year’s distance, the thing was upon them.

  St. Elmo’s fire blanketed the bridge as the new Enterprise was given the shakedown of the millennium. A billion tiny firecrackers erupted across the heavy-duty shielding. Electrokinetic jolts fanned through the ship, through every person’s body, through every bone and nerve, every circuit, every conduit, every skin hair, and crackled through every inch of stuff, living or mechanical.

  Troi felt a short scream squeeze out of her as she crumpled against an enemy she somehow recognized. All around her, jagged voltage profaned the bridge with ugly blue fingers and left sparks wherever it touched. She saw her crewmates falling, writhing, fighting. She heard the whine of the ship’s gallant battle against this electrical storm, and knew the Enterprise, like her crew, was defying the attack.

  The weight of a thousand minds crushed into her head and she forgot the ship, forgot everything but the pain of it. They were screaming at her, shrieking the reedy noises of zombies and wraiths, the graveyard shrill of things Picard had ordered she not consider. She struggled against the sharp piercing clarions and tried to cling to that order. Her fingers were electric blue as they clawed at the air before her, her eyes frozen open no matter how she tried to close them.

  The effect squealed around her, and as it sought her brain and all the parts of her that reacted to her telepathic self, it released her muscles one by one and she sank to the deck, still staring, still wrapped in the blue lightning.

  Riker saw her fall, and tried to reach for her. But he too was being beaten by the attack. The ship might as well have been impaled on a lightning rod. Fiery blue veins accosted every panel, and beneath them the deck itself tossed and bucked as energy crashed through it. As the seconds dragged past, the effect sank away from Troi and left her lying on the deck as it scouted the bridge for whatever it wanted and couldn’t find.

  Riker was trying to reach Troi when the chair beside him moved abruptly and Data was dragged out of it and thrown across the Ops console on his back, and mauled by the electrical pistolwhipping. The ship shuddered one more time before the silvery blitz dropped away from its attack on the whole bridge, converged to a single point from all over the bridge and settled on Data, wrapping around him and his Ops console and effervescing there.

  “Data!” LaForge plunged toward the android, only to be knocked to one side by Riker’s shoulder.

  “Don’t touch him!”

  Chapter Five

  RIKER SHOUTED OVER the crackle. “Nobody touch him!”

  LaForge shoved against the first officer. “It’s killing him!”

  Riker had to twist around and grab him in order to hold him off. The navigator continued to push his way toward Data, his hands biting into Riker’s arm, but Riker simply refused to let him through.

  Quivering, Data lay across the Ops panel in a skein of light threads, and his mouth began to work as though by an invisible hand. “Ship . . . con . . . tact . . . con . . . kill . . . ”

  “Is he in communication with it?” Picard shouted over the awful electrical din. “Data! Are you in contact? Are you in contact! Data!”

  The ship began to settle as the effect fell away, leaving only the snaps and fizzes of frenzied equipment. Data was the last to be released. The iridescence had its fill of him and dropped off, seeping down into the Ops panel and leaving only a confused flicker behind on the board. Data slipped down the console and flopped to the floor, catching hold of the console’s edge and managing to land on his knees. His face had a very human glaze of panic, and he was trembling.

  Geordi shoved his way past Riker and skidded to one knee, giving Data his arm to lean on. Riker let him go, and they crossed by each other as Riker dropped to Troi’s limp form on the deck, lifting her with one arm and using the other hand to tap his comlink. “Sickbay, emergency!”

  “Shut down all systems!” the captain said at the same moment. “Passive sensors only. Do not hit it with active sensors!”

  “Aye, sir, passive sensors,” Yar confirmed, her voice cracking. Her features, spare as a porcelain doll’s, worked as she fought for control.

  “Where is it?” Picard demanded.

  “Moved off, sir,” Worf boomed. “Now hovering approximately two light-years distant. It’s not doing anything but just roaming there snapping at us, working some kind of a pattern.”

  “It’s moving?”

  “Yes, sir. Random turns and coasts along a cube pattern. I think it’s looking for us, Captain.”

  “Ship’s status?” Picard scanned the bridge all the way around once, noticing the shimmying electrical quirks and vibrations that still flashed here and there.

  “Shields drained seventy-nine percent, sir,” Worf reported angrily. “Systems blown out all over the ship. Stardrive is down. Communications are out. Sensors are unstable. Most disabled are the shields, and they’ll take the longest to recharge.”

  “Condition of the saucer section?”

  “Intact, sir. They were shook up, but not as badly as the bridge and as the stardrive areas were. Looks to me like it focused on high-energy areas of the ship.”

  “What was that thing?”

  Worf puckered his lips in a Klingon kind of shrug and glared at Tasha.

  She fidgeted. “Evidently a bombardment of pure antimatter,” she said, casting a nervous glance at Geordi and Data, still huddled on the floor. “Engineering reports the thing absorbed the energy from our shields and about half the systems on board, mostly the ones on the outer parts of the ship. The computer core itself is still intact, sir, but I doubt we could stand off another attack of that level.”

  “Seventy-nine percent drain? I should think not.”

  Now Riker looked up from where he knelt holding Troi and said, “I never saw such a burst of speed before. What happened? Why did it move off?”

  “For the moment,” Picard said steadily, “only it knows.”

  He stooped down and helped Riker lift Troi into her chair. Her eyes were crescents, and she was shaking even harder than Data. When two orderlies charged out of the turbolift, Picard directed them to her and stood to one side as they gave her a quick check.

  “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . . ” she quavered.

  “Can’t imagine why,” Picard said gently. “If not for your warning, we wouldn’t have had our shields up. I shudder to think what might’ve happened in that case. I want you checked out in sickbay. No, no arguments, Counselor.”

  Riker stood straight and said, “The antimatter would’ve ripped the ship apart.”

  “But the weapons,” Troi choked, “I should’ve warned you . . . I didn’t remember . . . ”

  “Remember what?” Picard prodded. “What are you talking about?”

  “I knew . . . I knew the weapons would—Captain, I’m so sorry—”

  “You knew the weapons would draw that thing’s attention? Is that what you’re saying?”

  She fought to stay upright in the chair as her arms and legs shook, but she managed a very distinct nod.

  “Get her to sickbay,” Picard said, impatient to have her back to normal. “This subject is not closed.”

  “Yes, sir,” she murmured, and let herself be led from the bridge by the two orderlies. She knew Riker was watching, knew he wanted to come with her, but there was so much cluttering her mind—so much. . . .

  “Captain,” Geordi interjected, and waited for this attention. “According to my spectrographic analysis, it was basically the same visual structure as those beings we saw walking around on the bridge.”

  Picard glowered at him. “Are you telling me it’s a big ghost?”

  “Sir?” Yar looked up from her readout screen.

  “Go ahead,” the captain said.

  “I’m getting analysis from engineering now. The thing’s peppered with antimatter, but it isn’t made of antimatter alone. When it enveloped the
ship, we became a million tiny explosions all over, wherever the bits of antimatter hit the shields. If it had broken through them, we’d—”

  “Keep all systems shut down until further notice. Stabilize within that context.” Picard tightened his fists and strode toward the Ops position. He tipped downward to get the attention of the floor brigade. “Data? You functional?”

  Looking more like a threatened child than an android as he knelt shivering and holding on to Geordi, Data dragged back what little was left of his energy and looked up at Picard. “F-functional . . . sir . . . ”

  “Were you in contact with that thing out there?”

  “With something . . . sir . . . conclude that must have been the case . . . ”

  “Anything to report?”

  “Nothing clear, sir; there was no . . . no sense to the contact.”

  “On your feet, then. Can you?”

  “Captain?” Lieutenant Yar seemed to really hate interrupting him again, and with more bad news, but she stiffened and pressed against the tactical station as Picard turned. “The thing’s energy output is up thirty-one percent from before it hit us.”

  Riker shook his head. “Great. That’s our energy it’s got.”

  From below, Geordi was driven to comment, “And we sit here like a log on a pond while Irving the Entity out there digests three-quarters of our power.”

  Suddenly aware of Geordi again and feeling a renewed obligation, Riker said, “I’ll bet a starship qualifies as extra spicy. I wonder how long till it’s hungry again.”

  “Colorfully put, Number One, but not much help,” Picard wryly said as he hauled Data to his feet. He held Data’s twitching arm, and Geordi the other arm, while the android regained his equilibrium.

  “No, sir,” Riker admitted, “but if it zeroes in on energy outlay, we might be able to hide from it.”

  Picard looked impressed. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Sir?”

  The captain craned his neck around. “Now what, Yar?”

  She braced herself, but plunged on with her report, because it was too bizarre to keep to herself. She bent over her readout screen and tried to disbelieve what she saw. “Sir, I think our passive sensors might not be working properly. Or I’m not very good at reading them . . . ”