The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  A stream of smaller craft were passing through an open bay in the big vessel’s flank, hundreds of them moving in a steady train. Coming ever closer, Riker saw glassy environment domes in the side of the giant, with glimpses of dark desert sands visible in some, lush greenery in others.

  “What’s the purpose of all this?” He had to tear himself away from the incredible sight.

  “Departure,” said the lieutenant. “The great ship is in the final stages of preparation for exodus. All Jazari have gathered to complete the work, and you have brought the last of my kind home, Captain.” He bowed slightly to Riker. “I want to thank you personally, sir. You and the crew of the Titan. You have been good to me.”

  Zade offered the padd he had been holding to Troi, who took it. “What is this?”

  “A message from the Jazari Governing Sept for the Federation Council, explaining what is about to happen,” he said. “If you could please deliver that to them, it would be greatly appreciated.” Zade reached up, and delicately removed the arrowhead combadge from his breast and the rank pips from his tunic. “You will also find the formal notice of my resignation from Starfleet, effective as of this stardate.” With care, he placed the items on top of the helm console. He was silent for a moment as the bridge crew took in the import of his statement; then he continued, his manner briefly becoming less formal. “Sir, it has been my honor to serve on board this vessel. The conduct of Titan and her crew is precisely why my people chose to have you carry back the last of us.”

  A chime sounded and Keru glanced at his panel. “Message from shuttlebay one,” he said. “The Jazari delegation has assembled and they’re ready to disembark.”

  “By your leave, Captain Riker,” said Zade, “I will join them.”

  Riker was momentarily lost for a reply. It was within his power to refuse the lieutenant’s resignation, but what value would that serve?

  “Exodus.” Troi echoed the word. “That term has weight, Mister Zade. It speaks to the migration of an entire population. Is that what is happening here?”

  Zade looked down. “It is.”

  “But why are you doing this?” Vale frowned, unable to grasp the scope of it. “Where are you going to go?”

  “Do not be concerned, Commander.” Zade moved toward the turbolift. “This quadrant, these stars… They are no longer a place where my people feel welcome.”

  THREE

  Troi took her seat in the Titan’s midbridge, her attention split between the words on the padd that Zade had given her and the activity all around.

  Over the intercom, she heard Lieutenant Commander East report in from the shuttlebay. “Security here. Shuttles are away. The Jazari are officially off the ship.”

  “Understood.” Vale leaned against her console, and Troi could sense she was too tightly wound to sit down. “Jonathan, take a team and do a sweep of the quarters they vacated. Just for the sake of thoroughness.”

  The Irish security chief gave a low chuckle. “Already under way, sir. You’ll be the first to know if anything irregular comes up.” Troi had often noted that East and Vale had a similar mindset when it came to matters of shipboard security, even if by her reckoning they veered a little too much toward the paranoid.

  “Steady as she goes,” said her husband. Riker stood behind the flight control and operations consoles on the lower bridge, watching the bright dots of the smaller craft zoom away in perfect formation.

  “All systems nominal, Captain.” Lieutenant Cantua kept her eyes on her panel, and the Denobulan helmswoman’s thick fingers moved deftly across the slaved controls from the two shuttles.

  “Hold us at station-keeping, Mister Westerguard.” The captain gave the nod to the young, ochre-skinned human at the operations manager post. Westerguard was a recent transfer from another ship, and was as eager to perform well as he was nervous.

  “Aye, sir,” said the ops manager. “Holding at this marker.”

  Troi paged through the padd’s contents, frowning as she read on, then she paused to check something in the Starfleet database. She could feel Ranul Keru watching her from the nearby tactical station.

  “I can’t believe Zade just quit like that,” the Trill said quietly, offering the thought to the air. “He never said anything.”

  “You knew him socially?” said Vale.

  “We got on okay. He played a few hands of tongo with our regular Friday-night card game. He never seemed that into it.” Keru sighed. “But you would think he might have mentioned something about resigning.”

  “I get the feeling this is much bigger than we know,” said Vale.

  “Zade wasn’t alone in what he’s done.” Troi nodded to herself as the data from Starfleet confirmed what she had suspected. “According to this, there were six Jazari officers on active service in the fleet, and every last one of them has resigned their commission in the last two months.”

  “No one picked up on that?” said Vale.

  “I suppose it wasn’t deemed important,” she replied. “They all left under amicable circumstances.”

  A tone sounded from the science station across the bridge, and all eyes turned toward the alcove where Lieutenant Commander Livnah stood. Titan’s senior science officer was a tall, ash-white humanoid woman from a nomadic species, long limbed and willowy, possessing a fierce intellect. She habitually wore an aural relay module in one ear, accenting the black tattoos down her face, and now she toyed with it, listening as her console fed her raw data. “I detect energetic discharges in the vicinity of that Jazari behemoth. A lot of power they’re putting out.”

  “Any hazard to us?” Riker took a step toward the science station.

  “Not at current range or magnitude,” said Livnah.

  “I thought we’re not supposed to be scanning them?” said a terse English voice. On the opposite side of the command deck, Chief Engineer Karen McCreedy pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes and adjusted her spectacles, using them as additional data readouts along with her console. “Isn’t that one of their privacy guidelines?”

  “No rules are being broken, Lieutenant Commander.” Livnah’s reply was stiff and haughty, as if the engineer were somehow impugning her conduct. “Passive sensors are in effect only, but with the noise the Jazari are generating, it’s hard not to hear.”

  “Confirming the science officer’s readings, sir,” added Cantua, her heavy brow furrowing. “I’m getting interference on subspace bands with the shuttle control signal. I’m compensating, but it’s definitely there.”

  “Do we need to recall our boats?” said the captain.

  “No, sir, I’ve got it,” said Cantua. “As long as it doesn’t get any thicker…”

  McCreedy mirrored Livnah’s reading to her own station. “That energy pattern, it’s a phased-tetryon waveform.” Troi sensed the engineer’s immediate apprehension. “That’s potent stuff, Captain. A ship of that mass using a tetryon matrix as a power supply…” She trailed off for a moment. “I wouldn’t want to try it!”

  “They’ve built a generation ship,” said Troi, the term coming to her from a half-recalled lecture during her days at Starfleet Academy. “A giant colony vessel, designed to seek out a new world and populate it.” She held up a padd. “According to the message from the Jazari, they are forsaking their home planet and Federation space, and they intend to make a voyage to the far side of our galaxy.” It was an unimaginable distance, and she found it hard to hold the idea in her mind.

  “Even at high sustained warp, that would take hundreds of years,” said McCreedy.

  “My people’s first interstellar explorers had their crews sleep in suspended animation,” noted Livnah. “The Jazari may intend the same. Their population is small, a few million individuals at most.”

  “It’s their world and their species,” said the captain. “And it’s their right to go wherever they want.” He shook his head. “It just seems like such a wasted opportunity. We’ve never really been able to learn anything about the Jazari, to kno
w them. And now we never will.”

  “Shuttles are docked with the main ship,” reported Cantua. “Passengers are disembarking.”

  “Counselor, do they say why they’re leaving?” Westerguard cast a quick look back over his shoulder. “I mean, they must have a pretty strong reason to gather up their whole population and light out for the deep sky.”

  “Do they know something we don’t?” Vale added darkly.

  Troi read aloud from the statement from the Jazari Governing Sept. “We no longer wish to be a small domain amid larger galactic powers, whose manner grows increasingly hawkish and insular as time passes. There is no place for us here.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Vale’s tone was immediately defensive. “They’re judging the Federation for being guarded about our own interests? For protecting ourselves? They could have been part of that if they wanted to. They chose to stand separately from us.”

  “I think that’s the point, Number One,” said the captain. “The Jazari have always charted their own path and they believe that course and ours no longer intersect.” He met Troi’s gaze. In the privacy of their quarters, both of them had quietly shared similar thoughts about the changes affecting their society. “Starfleet and the Federation have had to make a lot of hard choices over the past couple of years,” continued Riker. “I believe wholeheartedly in the ideal of the United Federation of Planets, and I know everyone on this ship feels the same. But we’re moving in a direction that could take us away from our core beliefs, if we don’t keep an eye on the winds that are pushing our sails.”

  The bridge fell silent, save for the soft beeps and chimes of the control panels. Riker had everyone’s attention, his words coming from a place of honesty and sincerity. But his wife was the only one who heard the regret that marbled them.

  He went on. “I believe we’ll course-correct, in time. The Federation and Starfleet have a duty to everyone who lives under our aegis, whatever world they come from, whatever species they are. But that’s never been the sum of it. We are also dedicated to reaching beyond the boundaries of what we know. Our first, best impulse should always be to hold out the hand of friendship. Not close our doors and bar the gates.” He indicated the huge alien ship on the main screen. “The Jazari see us doing that, and for now they’re right. And if they don’t want to wait around until things change, then we bid them farewell and hope to meet again one day.”

  “No one wants to be where we are right now,” said Vale, after a moment. “But it’s not like fate has given us much of a choice.”

  Troi nodded. “It’s a pity we couldn’t have this conversation with Zade’s people. We might have convinced them to stay.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely,” said Keru. “Look at that vessel they’ve built, and those ship-breaker platforms. Look at what they’ve done to their planet. The Jazari had to have been planning this for a long time. Like Commander Vale said, they’ve made their choice.”

  “Shuttles are clear,” said Cantua. “I’m bringing them home.”

  Livnah’s panel sounded a tone and she made a negative noise. Riker caught it immediately. “Something else, Commander?”

  “Unclear,” said the science officer, glaring at her console as if it were defying her in some way. “There’s an intermittent radiation pattern centered on one of those… what did Keru call it? Ship-breakers. But I can’t get a clear reading, not with passive sensors at this distance.”

  “Is this an effect from the tetryon matrix?” said Troi.

  Livnah shook her head. “No, this is something else. It’s delta-wave energy, coming in random pulses.”

  Everyone on the bridge hesitated at the mention of delta radiation. It was a particularly virulent form of energy that was lethal to almost all sentient life-forms.

  “Captain? If I may?” Lieutenant Cantua raised a hand, as if she were a child in a classroom. Off a nod from her commander, she went on. “I could easily extend the return course of the shuttles by a few degrees, take them on a wider arc that would pass closer to that platform. The Holiday and the Coltrane are both running passive sensors, but they’re closer—”

  “I could tie their readings in with Titan’s,” said Livnah, catching on. “That would work.”

  “And technically it wouldn’t break the Jazari’s privacy rules,” added Keru.

  “Proceed,” said Riker. “But gently does it.”

  * * *

  Out in the dark between the vessels, the Holiday and the Coltrane executed a leisurely turn that briefly brought them prow-on toward the nearby Jazari dock platform. The unoccupied shuttles moved in perfect synchrony, their automated systems keeping the craft in close formation, as onboard computers channeled the readings from their sensors back over subspace to the Titan. For a moment, the auxiliary craft became substitute probes, taking in all the readings they could from their closer proximity to the ship-breaker.

  The information streaming back showed the delta-wave output with damning clarity. Whatever was happening aboard the Jazari dock, the lethal radiation was growing in intensity, coming in jagged, irregular pulses.

  Inside the empty cabins of the shuttles, red caution indicators blinked on screens and warning tones began to sound as alert subroutines activated.

  * * *

  Livnah’s dark eyes widened as she watched the telemetry from the shuttles overlap with the readings gleaned from Titan’s passive sensor grid. “McCreedy,” she snapped, shooting a look across the bridge at the engineer. “Are you seeing this?”

  “Bloody hell.” The other woman cursed quietly as she read off the same data. “Confirming, a massive d-wave buildup on the breaker platform. What are they doing out there?”

  “Captain, I think we’re seeing an accident in progress.” Livnah stared at the rising numbers on her screen. “Strongly advise we raise deflectors now!”

  Riker didn’t hesitate. “Shields up, yellow alert!”

  “Can we reach the Jazari?” Vale looked to Counselor Troi, indicating the communications panel at her side.

  But the message would never be sent. “Something’s happening…” Westerguard pointed at the viewscreen, where a mote of brilliant, searing green-white light had appeared amid the skeletal frame of one of the Jazari spacedocks.

  As the lieutenant spoke, the numbers on Livnah’s panel suddenly spiked, far beyond the red line into the critical region, and a human epithet she had learned in her cadet days fell from her pale lips. “Oh, shit.”

  Then the light came and hit them like a hammer.

  * * *

  Starship warp drives were intricate and complex systems that operated at a level where the laws of physics became fluid and malleable. Devices built to project into the fringes of spacetime, where dimensional membranes were at their thinnest, where energies of catastrophic scale collided, barely held these forces in check so that star-faring races could travel across the void in days rather than millennia.

  So when those systems malfunctioned, it was rarely without ruinous results. Ships could be consumed whole in matter-antimatter reactions, dragged across event horizons into lethal subspace domains, or obliterated by the brief incursion of forces that should not have existed in this reality.

  Inside the Jazari ship-breaker platform designated as Reclaim Zero Four, the last work on deconstructing a cargo sled’s warp nacelles was under way. But a previously undetected anomaly in the artificial singularity that powered the sled was cascading, outpacing the ability of Zero Four’s crew to damp it down.

  Before they could stop it, the singularity tore free of its restraints, releasing an initial blast of subspace energy that rippled through the sled, the platform, and out into the vacuum.

  The shockwave expanded outward in a perfect sphere of crackling emerald lightning, striking the Holiday a split second before hitting the Coltrane. The energy tore into Titan’s unprotected shuttles, overloading the onboard systems. Holiday spun out of control, colliding with its sister craft, and both vessels wer
e lost as their micro–warp cores exploded.

  The wave slammed into the Jazari generation ship with enough force to rock the mammoth craft like a sailing ship in a heavy swell, causing thousands of system failures across the entire length of the kilometers-long starboard side. Then milliseconds later Titan took its brunt, and the Starfleet ship’s spaceframe rang like a struck bell.

  * * *

  There was a giddy moment when Titan’s synthetic gravity envelope went away and everything on the bridge gave a sickening lurch.

  Riker felt himself leave the deck, saw the overhead racing to meet him with frightening speed. Then the gravity came back and he dropped hard. He fell into a painful stumble and caught himself on the engineering console, finding McCreedy clinging to the edge of it for dear life.

  “Hold fast, Karen,” he told her.

  “Aye, sir,” she managed, wide-eyed behind her glasses.

  Riker had still been half-dazzled by the flash of light when the shockwave had hit the ship and spent itself again the shields. Had Livnah’s warning been a few moments later, they wouldn’t have been ready to take the blow on the chin, and he dreaded to think of what might have happened.

  “Damage report!” Across the bridge, Vale was picking herself up, snapping out the command as she rose, her voice carrying over the alert sirens.

  Riker fought down the impulse to go to his wife’s side, and silenced the immediate worry for his son. Troi gave him an I’m okay look, and he knew she was thinking the same thing. But Thaddeus Riker was just one person on a ship of over three hundred and fifty souls, and every single one of them was his personal responsibility.

  “Shields are down to twenty-three percent,” said Keru, unable to keep a growl from his voice. “All decks reporting in… No hull breaches.”

  “I have red flags on a dozen subsystems,” said McCreedy. “Damage-control parties are being deployed.”