TNG - 1 - Ghost Ship

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Star Trek - TNG - 1 - Ghost Ship.txt
Chapter One
The SERGEI G. GORSHKOV moved through the water as though the sea had been made
solely to carry such ships. As every sailor knew in his deepest soul, there had
been no ocean before there were ships, and the ocean had only gotten so large
because ships of such bulk came to chase its farthest shorelines, to push its hem
forever back, to conquer its lengths and breadths with their intrepid spirit. The
ships, ever bigger, ever more powerful, ever more majestic, were the badge of
spirit for mankind.
At least . . . sailors think so.
For bakers, it’s the bread that rises in their ovens that mankind should pay
attention to.
Point of view.
Arkady Reykov unbuttoned the dark blue overcoat of the Soviet navy and shook the
heavy outerwear from his shoulders. His petty officer was there to catch the coat
and store it away. Reykov did not acknowledge the service, but simply strode onto
the bridge, coatless, authority intact. Today the eyes of the Politburo were on him
and this vessel.
His executive officer met him immediately, with a dogged reliability that Reykov
found slightly annoying but somehow always welcome. The two men nodded at each
other, then turned at the same moment and the same angle to look out over the
stunning
landing deck of the Soviet Union’s second full-deck carrier. The shipbuilding
facility at Nikolayev was far behind them. Before them lay the open expanse of the
Black Sea. Around them in a several-mile radius, the carrier support group plunged
through the sea, barely out of sight. There were four heavy cruisers and six
destroyers in the carrier group. The tanker force would catch up tomorrow.
Reykov was a large man, straight-shouldered and inclined to staidness, the type of
Soviet man that appears in comedy-dramas when typecasting is necessary to the
story, except that he didn’t have the obligatory mustache. Executive Officer
Timofei Vasska was thinner, fairer, and younger, but both were handsome men—which,
truth be told, didn’t come in very handy in their particular vocation. But at least
it was easier to get up in the morning.
One wanted to look good when one piloted a ship like this, this nuclear mountain
upon the sea. It had taken a long time to store up the expertise to build a
carrier. No one could become a naval architect just like that, and even if he
could, where would he get the economic structure to support his knowledge? It takes
a vast technology, ideas, factories, machining, measuring, weighing, thinking,
knowing, production, and counterproduction even to make a ballpoint pen. And a
carrier is a little more expensive.
Reykov was proud of this Lenin-class Gorshkov. She was big, and the Soviets liked
big. And she carried a weapon that was the first and only of its kind. Their pride
and joy. Something even the Amerikanskis didn’t have.
Reykov inflated his chest with a deep breath. His ship. Well, he could pretend it
was his.
He felt the pulses of the five thousand men in his crew, throbbing with metronome
steadiness beneath him as he stood on the bridge in the carrier’s tower.
“Approaching maneuver area, Comrade Captain,” Vasska said, his voice carrying more
lilt than those words required.
Reykov acknowledged him with a quick look. “Signal the flight officer to begin
launching the MiGs for tracking practice.”
He felt a little shiver of thrill as he gave that order, for it was the first time
the new MiGs would be launched from an aircraft carrier during an actual
demonstration for dignitaries. Until now, only military eyes had seen this. The
Soviet Union had finally learned how to work titanium instead of steel, and now
there was a new class of MiGs light enough to be used on carriers. For years the
motherland had sold its titanium to the U.S. while Soviet planes were still made of
steel. Too heavy, too much fuel. It was with great pleasure that Arkady Reykov
watched as the MiGs sheared off the end of the flight deck and took to the sky, one
after another—seven of them.
“Have the fighters go out fifty miles and come in on various unannounced attack
runs at the ship. Prepare for demonstration of laser tracking and radar to show we
could knock out each of the fighters as it appears. And advise the political
commissar to get the dignitaries out of their beds. They’ll want to be red instead
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of green today for a change.”
Vasska put up a valiant fight as he dictated these orders to the appropriate
stations, but despite himself his cheeks turned rosy and his shoulders shook. “They
have been green, haven’t they, Comrade Captain?” he muttered toward Reykov, keeping
his voice low and his eye on the other bridge officers.
The captain smiled. “And tell them to be sure to get dressed before they come out
on deck. Those American satellites can count your leg hairs.”
“Haven’t you heard the latest intelligence?” Vasska tossed back. “Bureaucrats have
no leg hair.”
Reykov leaned toward him in a manner so natural it had almost become unnoticeable
after their years together. “They should put the bureaucrats in a gulag. Then
things might get done.”
Vasska smirked at him and gave him a delicate glance. “You used to be one of
those.”
“Yes,” the captain said, “and they should’ve gagged me. Perhaps by now you’d be
captain and I’d be on the Politburo.”
“I don’t want to be captain. When all the shooting starts, I like somebody to hide
behind.”
Reykov turned up one corner of his mouth. “That’s all right. It’s my secret desire
never to sit on the Politburo. Are the drone targets operational for the tests?
Have they been checked?”
“Several of them. We sent out two this morning, and one malfunctioned. Let’s hope
we have better odds for the demonstrations.”
“In the old days,” Reykov commented with his usual dryness, “there would’ve been
self-destructs on the targets. Just in case we missed.”
The two men shared a chuckle.
“The Teardrop missiles have been checked and rechecked. This batch is probably
going to fire as it’s supposed to, I hope. All this target practice and nothing to
shoot at,” Vasska said as he watched the sea crash past Gorshkov’s vast prow.
“Mmmm,” Reykov agreed, his lips pressed flat. “You know, Timofei, I’ve served
almost thirty years and I’ve never been fired at even once.”
Vasska straightened, his boyish face tight with a restrained grin. “Then how do you
know you won’t break under attack?”
“You’ve met my wife.”
Vasska clasped his hands behind his back and lowered his voice again. “What’s the
situation with Borka?”
“I talked to him . . . I got him alone.”
“Did you make progress?”
Reykov bobbed his brows and shrugged. “He can’t be watched every minute. It’s those
times he’s out of sight that make me worry.”
“What have you tried?”
“Reasoning . . . threats . . . rewards . . . nothing works. I’m afraid the time is
coming for severe action.”
Vasska nodded sympathetically. “Be firm, Kady. I wish I could be there. This is
what comes from too much permissiveness. Rebellion. Time will take care of it,
though. Borka will eventually make his own decision, and then you can proudly say
your grandson isn’t wearing diapers anymore.”
Even as he said it, Vasska fixed his eyes on his captain’s thick dark hair with its
tinge of silver just over his left brow, and had difficulty imagining Arkady Reykov
as a grandfather. The captain’s face was almost unlined, his eyes every bit as
clear and vital as the day Vasska first saw him eight—or was it nine?—years ago,
while Vasska was still a pilot and Reykov was flight officer on the small carrier
Moscow. It hadn’t been a bad eight years, at least not after the first two, when
they finally believed they could speak candidly to each other. That is a day which
in many relationships never comes at all.
“Be sure there are no other aircraft in the area, Comrade Vasska. Launch the target
aircraft and let’s proceed with this performance before we all get hungry and can’t
do our jobs.”
“Shall we wait until the political commissar notifies us that the dignitaries are
watching?”
A reed-thin smile stretched across Reykov’s face as he measured and tasted each
alternative several times before finally narrowing his eyes on his privilege as
captain. He leaned toward Vasska for another of those private exchanges. “Let’s
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not.”
Vasska’s cheeks tightened as he imagined the dignitaries hitting the ceilings of
their staterooms when the gunnery practice began. He made his back straight and
firmly announced to the duty officer, “Signal tracking maneuvers, Comrade
Myakishev.”
The performance with live fighters went shiningly well, primarily because it was
all “on paper.” There was no firing of weapons until the unmanned drones were
launched to circle out wide across the expanse of the Black Sea and come back to
harass the Gorshkov as had been carefully arranged and rearranged. The dummy
missiles were bombarded with a hail of depleted-uranium slugs whose weight alone
would be enough to press off an attacking missile if it hit at sufficient distance.
There were dignitaries on board, and nothing was being left to chance. There were a
few misfires, a few misses, and a few false starts, but while not a perfect
performance, it was a performance that could be interpreted as perfect, if the
right language were used. Reykov was certain the language would be selected as
carefully as a mother clips her infant’s fingernails.
That immutable fact about Soviet coverage was little comfort, however, as Reykov
turned to Timofei Vasska and quietly spoke words that chained them to their seats.
“Prepare demonstration of the E.M.P.”
With the last hour’s weapons’ displays still booming in his ears, Vasska’s skin
shrank from the order, though he let none of his apprehension show. Such a device.
The first of its kind to be mounted on a moving unit. Even the stationary ones
prior to this one had been nothing more than a few isolated test guns. This one was
real, mounted permanently at the center of Gorshkov’s gunnery shroud. E.M.P. . . .
controlled electromagnetic pulse.
“Signal the Vladivostok to begin firing dummy Teardrops. And
Vasska,” Reykov added quickly, raising a finger, “be sure they only fire one at a
time and give us forty seconds to reenergize the pulse.”
Vasska shook his head and said, “Won’t it be wonderful if our enemies are so
cooperative as to never fire more than one missile at a time?”
Reykov shrugged his big shoulders and said, “We’re working on it. It’ll be good
enough if we can scramble the guidance systems one by one. Let’s not ask for
trouble. Just don’t make fools of the designers.”
Vasska nodded to Myakishev, who relayed the order out into the distance.
“Inbound,” came the dry announcement a few moments later. “One Teardrop missile,
heading four-zero true.”
“Visual range?”
“In six seconds, sir.”
“When it becomes visible, we’ll fire the E.M.P. on my order.”
“Yes, Comrade Captain. Visibility in three . . . two . . . one . . . mark.”
They squinted into the crisp blue atmosphere and saw the incoming dummy missile.
Hardly more than a silver glint against the sky, even the dud caused a hard ball in
the pit of every stomach. Reykov imagined the dignitaries’ skin crawling right
about now.
“Fire the E.M.P.”
Myakishev touched his control panel, and below them on the tower a twelve-foot-wide
antenna swiveled toward the inbound. They all flinched when the pulse fired—
There was a near-simultaneous snap and a white flash. At first it seemed the snap
came first, but now that it was over they weren’t sure.
In the distant sky, the Teardrop skittered on its trajectory, corkscrewed
corkscrewed to one side, and plunged into the sea far off its mark, victim of a
fizzled guidance system.
The bridge broke into cheers.
Reykov pumped a sigh of relief from his lungs. “Reenergize the pulse, Comrade
Vasska.”
“Recharging now, Comrade Captain.”
“Good boy, good boy . . . ” Reykov inhaled deeply and tried to make the sensation
of trouble go away. He wasn’t really nervous, but for some reason his hands were
cold.
“Comrade Captain . . . ” Myakishev bent over the officer’s shoulders at the radar
screen.
“Comrade?” Reykov prodded, his hands dropping to his sides.
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Vasska, having heard something in Myakishev’s tone, was also bending over the radar
station.
“We have an inbound . . . and it’s not one of ours.”
Vasska dove for the TBS phone and had it to his ear as Reykov barked, “Contact the
Vladivostok.”
“Sir, Captain Feklenko reports they did not fire. They did not fire on us.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is it? Is it American?”
“Doesn’t appear to be.”
“Then what? Is it French? Is it British? Albanian? Do the Africans have missiles?
Whose is it?”
“Sir, there’s no log of this . . . I’m not even certain it’s a missile,” Vasska
said, snapping his fingers to other manned positions in silent orders.
Reykov pressed up against Myakishev’s shoulder. “Billions of rubles for you
geniuses and you can’t tell me what it is. I want to
know whose it is. What is coming in?”
“It’s headed directly toward us!”
Reykov straightened, his eyes narrowing on the distant sky. For the first time in
his life, he made the kind of decision he hoped never to have to make.
“Turn the E.M.P. on it. Fire when ready.”
The wide rectangular antenna swiveled like the head of some unlikely insect, and
once again the terrible snap-flash came as the electromagnetic pulse pumped through
the atmosphere with scientific coldness.
It should have worked. It should have scrambled the guidance controls on any kind
of missile or aircraft, any kind at all.
Any kind at all.
“It’s homing in on the beam—accelerating now!” Myakishev’s voice clattered against
his throat.
Vasska whispered, “Even the Americans don’t have anything like that . . . ”
Reykov twisted around and plowed through the bridge crew to the chilly windowsill.
He stared out over the Black Sea.
There was something there. It wasn’t a missile.
On the horizon, making child’s play of the distance between itself and Gorshkov,
was a wall.
An electrical wall. It sizzled and crackled, made colors against the sky, shapeless
and ugly—the phenomenon looked, more than anything, like an infrared false-color
image. Colors inside colors. But there was no basic shape. It was crawling across
the water, the size of a skyscraper.
Behind him, Myakishev choked, “Radar is out. Communications out now—we’re getting
feedback—”
Reykov gasped twice before he could speak. “Full about! General quarters! General—”
His voice went away. Around him, every piece of instrumentation went dead. As
though molasses had been poured over the bridge, all mechanisms failed. There
wasn’t even the reassuring sound of malfunction. In fact, there was no sound at
all.
Then a sound did come—an electrical scream cutting across the water and swallowing
the whole ship as the false-color bogey roared up to the carrier’s starboard bow
and sucked the ship into itself. It was three times the size of the ship itself.
Three times.
Reykov’s last move as a human being was to turn toward the radar station. He looked
at Timofei Vasska, who straightened up to stare at his captain, both hands clasped
over his ears, and the two men were locked in a gaze, frozen, held. It felt as
though all their blood were clotting at once.
Reykov’s last perception was of Vasska’s eyebrows drawing slightly together as the
two men shared the wholeness of that final moment before obliteration.
Then Vasska’s face was covered with the false-color image, and Reykov’s mind,
mercifully, stopped operating.
The false-color phenomenon drenched the aircraft carrier in its electrical wash.
Within moments, there were no more life-forms on board. The immense vessel had been
wiped clean of organisms, from the horde of humans to the smallest cockroach hiding
in the cook’s shoe. Even the leather on the seats in the captain’s stateroom was
gone.
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There was only steel and wire and aluminum and titanium and the various
fabrics—tarps and uniforms—that were recognizable as inert. The Gorshkov sat on the
open water, empty.
The hull and the airfield it supported began to rumble, to vibrate.
Ripples shot out from the hull at the waterline, creating patterns on the sea, and
with every passing second the intensity of these vibrations mounted until Gorshkov
was actually creating waves on the Black Sea.
The ship shook like a toy, shuddered, and was ripped in half as though made of
chocolate cake. The shriek of tearing metal blared across the entire sea. Each
piece of the ship became an individual explosion, a splotch of color inside the
electrical vortex, and blew up like so many fragmentation grenades.
Ninety thousand gross tons of scrap metal rained across the waters of the Black
Sea.
* * *
“Captain’s on the bridge.”
The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) churned through the sea at the center of the
six cruisers and seventeen destroyers that made up its carrier group. From where he
came to a stop beside the navigation station on the bridge, Captain Leon Ruszkowski
could easily see two of the Aegis cruisers plowing along at a distance of four
miles off their forward and port beams.
“Nice,” he murmured. “Blue sky, warm day, waters of the exotic Mediterranean
beneath, and a song in our hearts. Ah, to be in Paris. Or Athens . . . hell, pick a
city.”
“Will coffee do?” Executive Officer David Galanter appeared, and sure enough the
mocha scent of coffee, sugar/no cream, came with him.
The captain took the china mug and said, “Dave, you’ll make a hell of a headwaiter
someday. We’ll all retire and open up a Greek restaurant in east L.A. Admiral
Harper could be maître d’ . . . Annalise can cook. . . .”
Air Wing Commander Annalise Drumm broke off her enchantment with the flattop and
looked his way. “Do I get free breakfast?”
“Poached octopus on whole-wheat toast, our specialty.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes. “After a while we could replace the octopus with
those little pink erasers that come on the tops of navy pencils. Nobody’d know the
difference.”
“We’d probably get a write-up in Connoisseur. Dave, what’s that blip?”
“Sorry, sir . . . one minute. Compton, check that.”
The captain moved closer, squinting. “Gone now. What was it?”
Galanter shook his dark head and frowned. “Not sure, sir. All stations, verify
integrity of the area.”
A very subtle change came over the bridge. Highly trained crewmen moved into action
so smoothly that the series of exercises was barely distinguishable from what went
on when they were doing nothing.
Then the radar officer calmly said, “Picking up six blips, skipper . . .
correction—seven blips. Seem to be fighters.”
“Fighters from where? Annalise, you got hardware in the air I don’t know about?”
Annalise crowded him at the monitor, suddenly possessive of their airspace. “No,
sir, all fixed-wings are in.”
The captain’s brows drew closer. “And the Dwight Eisenhower’s three thousand miles
away. Get an ID, Compton.”
“They seem to be seven MiGs, sir. Signature radar says configuration is MiG-33B,
Naval Version.”
“Are we under attack?”
“No, sir. Their missile radar is not on.”
“What are MiG-33s doing here? What happened? Who speaks Russian?”
“I do, sir,” Compton said without taking his eyes from his screen.
The captain didn’t hesitate. “Get on there and find out what’s up.”
“Uh, yessir.” He bantered into his comm set in Russian, and within seconds came
back with, “Skipper, Soviet CAP is requesting permission to land on our flattop.
Says they’re out of fuel. Coming in at high warble. Very agitated.”
Commander Drumm and the exec crowded the captain as he frowned and muttered, “Seven
MiG-33s want to land on a U.S. CVN? Must be some bitchin’ reason. I don’t suppose
we better wait for a note from Mother on this one.”
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Galanter agreed with a cautious nod. “Out of fuel’s out of fuel.”
The captain watched the status boards and said, “Tell the Soviet squadron leader to
dump all their missiles and bombs and empty their guns completely. Annalise,
scramble four Tomcats to escort them in.”
“Aye, skipper.” She dashed for the exit so fast that they almost didn’t notice her
leave until she was gone.
But the captain knew—he didn’t even bother to look. “Sound general quarters.”
Galanter’s voice got stiff. “Aye, sir. Bos’n, sound general quarters.”
“General quarters, aye.” The bosun immediately went to his broadcast intercom,
pierced the ship with an alert whistle, and sent the deceptively calm order booming
through the two thousand airtight chambers on the carrier. “General quarters.
General quarters. Man your battle stations. This is not a drill. Man your battle
stations. This is no drill.”
Captain Ruszkowski didn’t wait for the stirring announcement to stop, because that
would take several minutes. Throughout the ship, thousands of trained men and women
were streaking toward their
posts, all blood running hot with a thrill that inevitably comes from hearing those
words over the intercom. No matter how awful or how dangerous, there was always the
thrill. It was part and parcel of the voodoo that made things work on a military
vessel.
Ruszkowski kept quiet just a few more seconds until he heard the distinct
kksshhhhhhhoooooo of F-14s peeling off the flight deck in succession so quick it
was scary. That was a good sound, and he started breathing again. “Scan for any
vessels in a thousand-mile radius. I want to know if this is a fake.”
Compton turned in his chair. “Sir?”
“Go, Compton.”
“Russian wing commander says three bags full, sir. They’ll comply with dumping
their arms and anything else you want.”
“Ask the squadron leader what kind of arresting gear he has, then tell him what
we’ve got and see if they’re compatible. We’ll have to know if their tailhookers
are up to speed or if we have to rig a barricade.”
Galanter straightened. “Should we tell them that? I mean, isn’t that classified?”
“Yeah, but I don’t really care. And signal our picket destroyer that they might
have to go in after the MiGs if we can’t hook them and they have to ditch.”
“Soviet CAP leader says he’s willing to comply unconditionally on all counts, sir.
He sounds pretty shook up.”
“Signal they have permission to land, Mr. Compton. Dave, let’s bring those pilots
in.”
It had never in all the history of the universe been so hot. An eerie yellow light
flashed on and off, picking up the roundness of tiny beads of perspiration on the
woman’s ivory skin. Some of the
beads caught on the ends of her long black eyelashes as she lay there with her eyes
tightly shut. The glow was spasmodic, on, off, on, off.
Her eyes shot open. Her hands gnawed the edges of the mattress. Her back was
suddenly stiff from sitting up so quickly, yet she had absolutely no memory of
having sat up. Beneath her uniform, perspiration rolled down between her breasts,
as though someone had dumped a beaker of glycerin over her shoulders.
“Don’t fire . . . shut down all systems . . . Vasska . . . Vasska!”
She was gasping. Several seconds thundered by under the terrible flash of the
yellow light before her eyes focused on the delicate floral arrangement on her
dresser.
“Yellow alert . . . yellow alert . . . ”
She turned her head, blinking tears from her eyes, and undone black hair moved on
her shoulders, reminding her of who she was. She tried to catch at her identity as
it slipped in and out of her mind, to draw it in, cling to it—
“Yellow alert . . . yellow alert . . . Counselor Troi, please report to the bridge
immediately. Counselor Deanna Troi, report to the bridge please. Yellow alert . . .
yellow alert . . . ”
Chapter Two
“FIRE PHASERS.”
Captain Picard’s precise enunciation gave the order a theatrical tenor. It was
followed almost immediately by the thunder of weapons powering through the big
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ship. A slim, magisterial man of thrifty movement, Picard stood the deck without
pacing as most would, watching the latest of a series of rather tedious scientific
exercises.
In the corner of his eye he saw the yellow alert light flashing, and it reminded
him that stations had been manned and any quick shifts in orbital integrity could
be handled without surprise now. “Orbital status, Mr. LaForge?”
As he spoke, Picard crossed the topaz carpet to bridge center and glanced over the
shoulder of Geordi LaForge, ignoring—through practice—the fact that the dark young
man had a metal band over his eyes that made him appear blindfolded. There was
something ironic and disconcerting—to humans—about trusting the steering of a
gigantic ship to a blind man.
LaForge’s head moved, downward slightly and left—it was their only signal that
visual tie-in to his brain was working at all. “An orbit this tight is tricky since
gas giants have no true surface, sir, but we’re stable and holding. I guess the
Federation’s going to get all the information it wants whether we like it or not.”
Picard moved quietly to the other side of LaForge and placed his hand on the young
officer’s lounge. “When I want an editorial, I’ll ask for it, Lieutenant.”
LaForge stiffened. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
The captain imperiously guarded his own opinion. Though the huge new starship was
supposedly on an exploratory mission, the Federation was dragging its feet in
letting the Enterprise get on with it. The ship had yet to push into truly
unexplored space, and Picard was annoyed by the giant gas planet turning on the
room-sized viewscreen before him. All right, it was an anomaly. Yes, it was unique.
Yes, it was large. But if the Federation Science Bureau wanted to study it, surely
the planet wasn’t going anywhere. They needn’t take up an entire Galaxy-class ship
to have a look at it.
“Mr. Riker, secure from yellow alert. Go to condition three.”
William Riker came to life up on the quarterdeck. “Condition three, aye, sir.” He
started to look toward the tactical station, where the order would be funneled
through, but at the last instant left it to the officer in charge, for his own gaze
was fixed on Jean-Luc Picard.
The captain regarded his bridge and its people and their task with the stateliness
of a bird on a bough. Not a bird of prey, though, this captain. This one could soar
in any direction, whichever way duty demanded. Not a large man or even an imposing
one—a task he left to his first officer—the captain was at times unobtrusive, the
bird hiding in the foliage, watching, never seen until those great wings suddenly
spread. Those around him knew this could happen at any moment, this sudden peeling
off across the bridge panorama like a lean sky thing. Even in repose, his presence
kept them alert.
I wish I could do that, Riker thought, a little wince crossing his broad features.
He tried not to watch the captain while the captain
was watching the bridge, but it was hypnotic. As usual, Riker’s back was hurting as
he stood to starboard, too rigidly. He wished he could shake the habit of prancing,
born of deep-seated little insecurities that nagged at him constantly as though to
keep him in line. Later he always wished he hadn’t moved so punctiliously as he got
from here to there. Horrible to risk the captain’s thinking he was being
deliberately upstaged. Next selection: “First Officer on Parade.”
But worse . . . if the first officer appeared diffident. Wasn’t that worse? There
was no middle ground, or at least Riker hadn’t found it. He wanted to be a bulwark,
but not one the captain had to climb over.
It was tiring, pretending to be completely one with a commanding officer whom he
simply didn’t know very well on a personal basis. Yet they faced the prospect of
sharing the next few years at each other’s side. Could that be done on the plane of
formality that had set itself up between them?
Riker tried to pace the bridge casually yet without appearing aimless. That was the
tricky part. It actually hurt sometimes—his back, his legs, aching. Like now. If
not done right, the movements became pompous and ambiguous. He would become victim
to the plain fact that the first officer actually had conspicuously little to do on
the bridge. He worried about that all the time. Good thing he generally had command
of away teams; at least he had that to make him worthwhile.
Picard had it down. Quiet authority. Dependable not-quite presence. They could
easily forget he was on the bridge at all. He would simply watch from his bough.
Riker forced himself to look away from the captain’s coin-relief profile before he
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was entirely mesmerized.
“Something wrong, Mr. Riker?”
Caught.
Riker turned and drew his mouth into a grin that must have looked forced—another
mistake—and said, “Not at all, sir. Everything’s fine.” He felt his eyes squinting
and didn’t want the grin to get out of hand, so he pursed his lips and pretended to
be very interested in the tactical display.
Good—the captain was looking away. Relax, Riker. Down with one shoulder. Now the
other. Good soldier.
A casual turn told him no one was looking at him. Everyone was busy with the giant.
A moment later he was hypnotized again, but this time it was not by the subdued
presence of Captain Picard. Now the gas giant caught him, held him, cradled in its
unparalleled blueness as it roiled before them on the wide ceiling-to-floor
viewscreen.
Ah, that viewscreen. It was the only thing on this ship that truly conveyed the
size of the vessel and its technological grandeur. Dominating the bridge, the
screen was half a universe all by itself.
The other half was over Riker’s shoulder: the new Enterprise. Barely broken in,
swan-elegant, she spread out behind him like the wings of the bird.
Birds. Everything’s birds all of a sudden, Riker thought, and he glanced at
Jean-Luc Picard.
“Condition report, Mr. Data,” the captain requested then, directing his gaze to the
primary science station aft of tactical.
Riker turned aft in time to see a slender humanoid straighten at the science post.
The face was still startling, its doll-like pyrite sheen softened only by its
sculpted expression. Data’s expression, when there was one, always carried a
childlike naïveté that eased the severeness of his slicked-back hair and the
cartoon colors of his skin.
For the hundredth time, Riker involuntarily wondered why anybody smart enough to
create an android so intricate was too stupid to paint its face the right color or
put some tone on its lips. If his builders filled it with human data—pardon the
pun—somewhere in the download must have been information that the palette of human
skin types didn’t include chrome. It was as though they went out of the way to
shape him like a human, then went even further out of the way to paste him with
signs that said, “Hey, I’m an android!”
Data’s brushstroke brows lifted. “Readings coming in from phaser blast echoes now,
sir. Absolutely lifeless—high concentrations of uncataloged chemical compounds,
very compressed . . . extremely rare reactology, Captain. This information will
prove valuable.”
“Is there a margin of safety to attempt probing through to the gas giant’s core?”
Picard asked.
Data’s face was framed by the black mantle of the slenderizing one-piece
flightsuit, its color picked up again by the breast panel’s mustard gold, a
standard Starfleet color since the Big Bang. “A wide margin, sir. I recommend it.”
Riker pressed his arms to his sides. There was something unreal about Data’s voice.
More human than human, the words were rounded and spoken with an open throat, as
though it was always working a little harder than necessary.
“He.” Not “it.” For the sake of the rest of the crew, think “he.” No sense
rupturing the trust others might have by accidentally pointing out the fact that
he’s an instrument, even if he is. Riker shook himself from his thoughts as he
sensed Picard’s glance, and in that moment he collected the authority he needed to
carry out the captain’s unspoken order.
He cleared his throat. “Increase phasers to full power. Let’s see what’s at the
heart of this beauty.”
“It is beautiful, isn’t it? You don’t stumble on one of these every day,” Beverly
Crusher commented. Folding her long arms, she sat on the bench just port of the
counselor’s seat, exercising a ship’s surgeon’s traditional right to be on the
bridge when she didn’t feel like being anywhere else. Dr. Crusher was yet another
stroke of color against the bisque walls and carpet. Over her cobalt-and-black
uniform her hair was a Cleopatra crown of pure terra cotta—and there was just
something about a redhead. She was reedy and quick, smart and graceful, and
inclined toward sensible shoes in spite of her narrow-boned loveliness. Riker liked
her. So did the captain. Especially the captain.
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Star Trek - TNG - 1 - Ghost Ship.txt
“Yes,” Captain Picard murmured, using the conversation as an excuse to move a few
steps closer to her, “and it’s twice the size of common gas giants. Fire phasers.”
The muted phhhiiiuuuuuu hummed through the ship again, and on the screen an energy
bolt cut downward into the surfaceless swirl.
“Reading various concentrations of gas,” Data reported, “merging to liquid . . .
compressing into solid masses in some areas . . . logging the compounds now, sir.”
“Excellent,” Picard responded. “I’m sure—”
The forward turbolift beside the captain’s ready-room door opened, and Deanna Troi
flew out onto the bridge, so unlike herself that she drew all eyes. She was a
wreck—about as opposite her usual demeanor as she could get without mud-wrestling
first. Her hair, usually knotted up in a style so tight it made other people’s
muscles ache, was a black mass, spilling over her shoulders and around her pearly
cheeks. Her eyes, extra large with their touch of alienness,
obsidian as eyes that looked out from a Greco-Roman fresco, were skewed by some
terrible calamity. She was breathing hard. Had she run down every corridor?
Riker plowed through the bridge contingent to the space just below her platform.
“Deanna . . . what’s wrong?”
She panted out a few breaths, her pencil-perfect brows drawn inward to make two
creases over her nose. “Why . . . why is there a yellow alert?”
Even now she spoke softly, her words touched with that faintly alien Betazoid
accent. She was working hard to compose herself, but something was obviously
pressuring her.
Riker moved a step closer, hoping to reassure her. “We’re attempting close orbit
around that.” He made a gesture toward the viewscreen, but his mind wasn’t on it
any more than hers was. He parted his lips to say something else, but Data was
interrupting him.
“We’re firing into its atmosphere to get feedback readings. Even though its core is
unignited, the planet is putting out three times the energy it should, mostly in
long-wave radiation. We have to be on alert in case of shock waves or gravitational
recoil—”
“Data,” Riker snapped, wishing there was an off switch. He silenced the android
with a sandpaper look, then turned back to Troi. “I should’ve told the computer to
bypass standard procedure and not call you up here. It’s my fault.”
She put out her hand in what began as an appeasing gesture, but as she spoke it
turned into the kind of move a woman makes when she wants to steady herself.
“No . . . it isn’t your fault. . . .”
The captain floated in at Riker’s left. “What’s bothering you, Counselor?” he
asked, gently but with an edge of impatience.
Her kohled eyes narrowed beneath those drawn brows. “I heard something . . . in my
mind . . . ”
“Can you describe it?” Riker asked. A twinge ran up his spine. Her muted telepathic
talents always made him nervous. It wasn’t exactly disbelief, because no one could
dispute the existence of Betazoid mental traits, but it was a kind of distrust.
She backed up a step. “I’m sorry . . . ” She blinked, took a deep breath, and
pretended to recover. “Captain, I’m sorry for the interruption. I didn’t mean to
disturb your tests. Please excuse me.”
Before either of the men could speak, she made a quick and nervous exit.
Riker stared at the lift doors. “I’ve never seen her act that way,” he murmured.
Data rose and came a few steps toward the ramp. “Is Counselor Troi ill?”
“It’s something else,” Riker decided quietly, more to himself than to Data.
“She behaved abnormally.”
Now he drew his eyes from the lift and struck Data with a look that would have
bruised had it been a Ghost Ship blow. “I don’t think you’re anyone to judge,” he
barked.
Picard tilted his shoulders as he turned, saying, “Permission to leave the bridge,
Number One. Temporarily.”
“Thank you, sir,” Riker said. “I won’t be long.” He had to restrain himself or he
would actually have bounded for the lift. He cast one more acid glare at Data
before leaving the bridge.
Picard smoothed the moment with a calm extension of the science tests. “Continue
phaser bursts at regular intervals.”
Data drew himself away from the stinging, confusing reaction Riker had given him
and settled into his usual station at OPS on the forward deck. “Science stations
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Star Trek - TNG - 1 - Ghost Ship.txt
are receiving continual information from the planetary core now, Captain.” He
lowered his voice as
he had often heard humans do, and to LaForge said, “Commander Riker is annoyed with
me.”
LaForge shrugged. He glanced at the android, but saw not what human eyes would see.
The android’s bodily heat was unevenly distributed throughout the high-tech body, a
body far denser than that of a human body of equal volume. The sections of infrared
were localized into hot spots, more defined than the infrared blobs in a human
body, and LaForge could easily discern the places where organic material was fitted
in to intricate mechanics. Data gave off an electromagnetic aura, but he wasn’t
exactly a toaster oven.
“You could try being a little less stiff,” LaForge suggested. “Learn some slang or
something.”
Data’s lips flattened. “Slang. Colloquial jargon, nonstandard idioms, street
talk . . . it’s often inaccurate. I have tried to incorporate that speech into my
language use, but it does not seem to flow.”
“That’s because you use it as though it still has quotation marks around it. You
use individual words instead of the whole meaning of the phrase. You’ve got to try
to use slang more casually.”
“What purpose does it actually serve?”
LaForge leaned toward him and delicately said, “It makes you approachable. Give it
a swing.”
As his lips silently traced that last word, a perplexed expression overtook Data’s
features. Unlike the times when he worked too hard at his expressions and ended up
looking like a vaudeville clown, these moments made him look much more human than
any he could force, these moments when unexpected emotion simply popped up on his
face. “Swing . . . a child’s toy, a sweeping maneuver—oh! An effort. A try. Yes,
swing. I’ll swing. Computer, show me all available dictionary and dialect banks on
Earth slang, rapid feed.”
The computer came to life on the panel before him and its soft
feminine voice, in a delivery much more at ease than Data’s own, asked, “What era’s
slang would you like, and what language?”
Geordi LaForge settled back into his lounge and mumbled, “I always thought you
needed a hobby.”
Abruptly there was a sound on the quarterdeck, something akin to a growl, but as
quickly it was gone and replaced by the resonant bass of Lieutenant Worf as he
stared at his monitor.
“Not possible!”
Captain Picard drew his attention away from the blue giant and approached his own
command chair, behind which the horseshoe rail arched upward and across the
tactical console. Past that, Worf stood with his back to the bridge, staring at his
status monitor as though his dissatisfaction could bore right through it. Of
course, with a Klingon, that might very well be the case.
Pulling up the automatic extra measure of calmness he found himself using with
Worf, Picard urged, “Lieutenant? Something?”
“I’m not sure I saw it,” the Klingon spat.
But Security Chief Tasha Yar twisted her toned body without taking her hands off
her tactical console and told him, “I saw it too.”
“Saw what?” Picard demanded.
“An energy pulse, Captain.” The girl pushed back a lock of her boy-cropped blond
hair. “A huge one. Across the entire solar system.”
Only one step carried Worf all the way forward to Tasha’s side. “Very sharp and
powerful, sir, a refractive scan. Like an instant sensor sweep.”
“It was too quick-fire for sensors,” Tasha shot back.
“Then what?” Worf boomed. “There’s no trace of it now.”
Picard used their argument to cloak his movement up the ramp to tactical, where he
peered over the controls. There was nothing
showing. “Could it have been an aberration? Feedback from our experiments?”
“Sir, it came from outside the solar system,” Tasha said, her throat tightening
around her voice as it always did when she let herself get excited.
“Track it.”
“Nothing left to track,” Worf said coarsely.
Picard raised his head. “Don’t use that tone with me, Lieutenant. There is no
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