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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are

either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is

entirely coincidental.

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This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.,

under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230

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POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

To Captain Frank R. Carey, U.S.M.C., I.R., for providing all the right

details. Thanks, Dad.

To Jack Lifton, my own private physical chemist and international intelligence

source. (By the way—Clive? Eat your heart out.)

To David Forsmark, for helping hammer out the tough ethical questions—the ones

with no easy answers—without which our books would be just more noise. Great

minds and all that.

To Nicole Harsch, expert in space psychology—you found all the right articles

and led us through them unerringly. Ever tried swordfighting?

And to Star Trek editor Dave Stern—saving the best for last. You make all the

editorial arm-wrestling easier to tolerate, and I appreciate you.

Gregory . . . you did it again.

These are the kind of people I’m talking about when readers ask me how I

manage to write scientific, military and philosophical passages with accuracy.

They are the people I mean when I cagily answer, “Oh . . . I have my sources.”

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the

universe.

—Alfred North Whitehead

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 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 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.

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.

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.”

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

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 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.

“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

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Thisbookisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,placesandincidentsareeithertheproductoftheauthor’simaginationorareusedfictitiously.Anyresemblancetoactualeventsorlocalesorpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.AnOriginalPublicationofPOCKETBOOKS?POCKETBOOKS,adivisionofSimon&SchusterInc.1230AvenueoftheA...

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