The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  “The shuttles…” Cantua’s words were thick with shock. “Sir, both shuttles have been destroyed!”

  “Let’s be grateful they were on remote,” Riker noted. “Cut those sirens, I can’t hear myself think!” He glanced around as the noise abated. “Livnah, what hit us?”

  “A high-order subspace wave,” said the science officer. “Emission point corresponds with the location of the ship-breaker platform.”

  “It’s still there?” Westerguard peered at the screen and found the shimmering gem of warped light. “How is that possible?”

  “Unknown. I need to analyze the energy signature,” continued Livnah. “Give me a few moments…” She bent over her panel, the black lines on her face twisting as she scowled at the readout.

  “What about the generation ship?” Riker moved back to the lower bridge, wincing as he put his weight on the ankle he had twisted in his fall.

  “I can’t read much without an active scan…” began Cantua.

  “Do your best,” he told her.

  The Denobulan worked her panel. “I’m showing an eighteen-degree displacement from her previous position. Surface damage visible.” She paled. “Captain, I think they might have lost some of their smaller craft in the shock.”

  Riker turned back toward his wife. “Deanna, hail the Jazari. Ask their status and offer help if they need it.”

  She gave a nod and opened a communications channel. “Jazari generation ship, this is the U.S.S. Titan. We have suffered damage from… from the shockwave, but we are still intact. Titan stands ready to assist, if you require it. What is your situation? Please respond.”

  He expected that Deanna would need to repeat the message more than once, imagining that the Jazari would be dealing with their own aftermath of the chaos, but their reply was almost instantaneous—and given the situation, disturbingly even toned.

  “Good day, U.S.S. Titan. Your offer of assistance is appreciated but not required.”

  “They’ve closed the channel,” said Troi.

  Vale stepped closer, speaking in low, urgent tones. “If they don’t want our help, I advise we back off, sir. Get out of range of that shock effect.”

  But Riker couldn’t pull his scrutiny from the brightly burning ember on the main viewer, where the ship-breaker station floated in a cage of viridian lightning. Serrated arcs of unchecked energy lashed at the grid work of the spacedock with wild violence.

  “They might be telling us they don’t need any help,” he said, “but I’m pretty damned sure whoever is on that rig right now doesn’t feel the same way.”

  * * *

  Tarsin’s eyes went through an adaptation cycle so that he could manage amid the dazzling light-blaze of the deconstruction bay. He had already sloughed down to dermal baseline while working in Reclaim Zero Four, but even now he felt the seething radiation prickling at his epidermis, threatening to penetrate deeper into his body.

  He could sense another displacement shock building, and the deck beneath him trembled. They were fast running out of options.

  “We need to get away from here.” Sabem had to physically vocalize the statement at great volume just to be heard over the roaring of the energetic discharges.

  Tarsin found the other reclaimator engineer on the gantry above him, signaling urgently. “Where are the others?”

  “Assembling for egress, if possible. We need to join them if we hope to survive this. Remaining here means certain termination!”

  “Assent,” Tarsin called back. “But there is no guarantee egress will be possible. Please review the progression of the damage.”

  Sabem blinked as he took in the data. “That is troubling.”

  Now both of them understood. Leaving the transport sled’s damaged singularity module to continue to fracture would not only lead to the eventual destruction of Reclaim Zero Four, it was possible it would birth a far larger field effect that would become self-sustaining.

  “What do you propose?” shouted Sabem.

  “I will enter the deconstruction bay and attempt to seal the fracture.”

  Sabem grasped the plan immediately. “The muon projector.” Inside the bay, among the many tools that the Jazari reclaimator crew used to deconstruct their ships for the grand project, was a particle generator. In theory, a sustained beam from the device might have the effect of reversing the fracturing effect, but the percentage chance of success was marginal at best.

  Sabem did not need to communicate this, but still he did. They were friends and coworkers, after all, and Sabem had no wish to see Tarsin’s existence come to an unplanned end.

  “You must remain outside the bay to monitor radiation levels,” Tarsin told him, ignoring the warning. “I am entering now.”

  “Your termination would be unfortunate,” said Sabem as Tarsin passed into the airlock. “I would prefer you continue to exist.”

  “As would I.” Tarsin’s vocalized reply began to fade as the atmosphere drained from the chamber. “But these circumstances do not account for our wishes.” He wanted to say more to his friend, but there was no medium in place to carry the sound of his voice, and the radiation was too strong for any other form of communication. Instead, he gave a wave of farewell and walked out into the airless space beyond.

  The force fields enveloping the deconstruction bay had collapsed in the first few seconds of the accident, the decompression effect blowing six engineers out into the darkness. Tarsin was unable to determine if any of them had survived. The airless vacuum was relatively easy to deal with, but the first pulse shock would have had a terminal effect on any unprotected Jazari bodies.

  He had seen the two Starfleet shuttlecraft explode and known then that this was a far more serious problem than first believed. It was going to cost his life too, he determined, but if that was so, he needed to make the sacrifice a worthwhile one.

  Tarsin found the muon projector in its charging rack, still intact and ready to operate. Gathering it up, he moved out from behind one of the blast barriers and into the full and unimpeded force of the delta-radiation source. His skin began to cook off his face and arms, searing and cracking, blackening into ashy flakes that drifted about him in a cloud. He concentrated on the deed, forcing himself to block out the catastrophic waves of pain that screamed down his nerve endings.

  It was an incredible effort to raise the projector. The radiation was cutting through him, into his internal structures and skeleton. He felt himself stiffening as the horrific emissions ruined the muscles and joints in his limbs. He was burning from the inside out, consumed by the nuclear fire.

  Tarsin’s eyes filled with light as they were dissolved by the delta energy, and he tried desperately to activate the muon device. But his hands would no longer work, and with a terrible dawning realization, the engineer understood that he had miscalculated. The next shock pulse was coming, building far faster than he’d expected, and the bow wave of precursor radiation was moving before it, slowly disintegrating him on a subatomic level.

  Tarsin’s body turned rigid as he perished, and he became a statue.

  * * *

  Sabem sensed the death of his friend and diverted the sorrow that came with it, collapsing the emotion, putting it away to deal with later. He studied Tarsin’s frozen form through the thick, protective armor glass, allowing himself a fractional moment to dwell on the image of him.

  There was no way for anyone on board the platform to stop the cascade effect from within, not now. They were out of time.

  Sabem accepted that he too would soon perish, feeling the energy coming through the barrier, feeling it grow more powerful by the moment. There was only one possibility, one last act he could perform, and he hoped it would be enough.

  The Jazari engineer left the compartment and began the short climb through the access crawlways to the communications tower on Reclaim Zero Four’s uppermost surface, ignoring the calls from his crewmates as they begged him to gather with them.

  * * *

  Even with
the adaptive filtering on Titan’s main viewscreen, Vale still had to raise a hand to shield her eyes as the bright light from the ship-breaker throbbed and intensified.

  She had the horrible sense that she was staring at a bomb about to go off—a bomb that had already detonated once—and the commander’s every instinct was screaming at her to pull Titan out of there.

  The ship trembled around them, the lights of the bridge flickering alarmingly. Vale gave McCreedy a wary look.

  “Gravitational distortion,” explained the engineer. “Another pulse is building, and the magnitude is much higher than that first one.”

  “Shield status?” said the captain.

  “Restoration in progress, but we blew some EPS relays, so it’s slow getting it back up.” McCreedy blew out a breath. “I can give you sixty, maybe seventy percent if we divert power from nonessential systems.”

  “Do it,” ordered Riker.

  “Captain.” Vale stepped up to speak at his shoulder. “We might not be able to handle another hit. If we back off to a safe distance, we can regroup and let the Jazari deal with this.”

  “Look at that, Chris,” Riker replied. “Do you think they’re anywhere near dealing with it?”

  They both knew the answer to that, but Vale’s first instinct was to protect her ship and its crew. The more calculating part of her saw it in cold, precise terms: the Jazari were not Federation citizens, and they had refused Titan’s help. From any angle you viewed it, putting the starship in harm’s way was an unwarranted gamble.

  But another part of her was seeing it through Riker’s eyes. What kind of person could stand back and watch others perish when there was a chance to do something about it?

  “Captain.” It was protocol to do so, but Deanna Troi rarely addressed her husband by his rank, not unless the situation was of grave importance. Vale and Riker turned to see her looking up from her console. “A subspace message is being transmitted from the ship-breaker station on all channels.”

  “Let’s hear it,” said Riker.

  Troi tapped a panel and a garbled voice filled the air, riddled with screeching bursts of interference. “This is Sabem of reclamation platform Zero Four.” The words had the precise diction common to all the Jazari. “We are experiencing an ongoing critical damage event that exceeds our ability to contain it. To any craft receiving this signal, if you are able to render assistance to us, please approach.”

  “That sounds like a mayday to me,” snapped Riker. “Our obligation is crystal clear. Helm, take us in, all available power to the forward deflectors!”

  “I guess that answers that,” said Vale. “I hope we don’t regret this.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said the captain. “Deanna, inform all decks and divisions to secure for rescue operations. This is going to be choppy.”

  The deck rocked as Titan angled around in a sweeping turn, closing in on the ship-breaker. Vale grabbed her console for support, and felt the juddering vibration coming up through the framework. The closer they got, the shorter the gap between the gravity pulses became.

  On the main viewscreen, she could see green flashes of discharge where the exotic particles radiating from the platform were interacting with the leading edge of the starship’s deflector-shield bubble. It resembled atmospheric aurorae, but it was as lethal as it was spectacular.

  “Captain, I think I understand what has happened here…” Livnah spoke up from her station. “It’s not just a radiation leak. It’s much worse than that.” The closer they got, the more data the science officer had to work with, and Vale could see the concern writ large across her milk-pale face.

  As with most of her highly practical species, Livnah was not one for unnecessary overstatement, something Vale had always liked about the woman. So as she explained the severity of the situation, the first officer knew it was an honest and clear-eyed evaluation.

  “It appears that damage to an artificial singularity power source has caused a spatial scission inside the platform.” Livnah pointed toward the ship-breaker. “As an analogy, imagine piercing the crust of a planet and striking a pocket of pressurized magma beneath. The resulting outburst is deadly.”

  “They tore a hole in subspace,” hissed Westerguard. “And all that radiation on the other side is gushing through!”

  “The lieutenant is correct,” noted Livnah. “According to my readings, the fracture is unstable, and the dimensional aperture is varying wildly in size. But there is a good chance it will stabilize.”

  “And if that happens, we’ll be in the clear?” said Keru.

  “You misunderstand me, Lieutenant Commander,” said Livnah. “If the fracture stabilizes, there will be a catastrophic inversion pulse and it will become a self-sustaining phenomenon. Anything caught in the pulse’s radius will be torn apart and the fracture will remain open, bleeding other-dimensional radiation into this area at an incredible rate. Within days, this entire star system will be contaminated.”

  Vale felt the color drain from her face. “How long until that happens?”

  “Minutes,” said the other woman. “With each shock the fracture emits, it gains permanency—”

  As if to underline her words, a new surge of energy flashed out into the darkness, slamming into the Titan and knocking them all off their stride.

  “How do we close it?” said Troi.

  Livnah gestured to McCreedy. “If I can have the chief engineer’s assistance? Together, we may be able to come up with a solution.”

  McCreedy nodded. “Tell me what you need.” It was no secret that Titan’s senior engineer and the science officer didn’t play well together, but both women automatically put aside all of that in the face of a crisis.

  Vale left them to it, turning back to the captain. “Sir, we need to warn the Jazari.”

  “Put me through to them,” ordered Riker, taking a breath before launching in. “Jazari generation ship, this is Captain Riker of the U.S.S. Titan. We’ve analyzed the situation aboard your dock platform. You must remove all your vessels from this area immediately. I repeat, immediately. The gravitational shocks we are experiencing are the precursor events to a high-magnitude inversion pulse. It’s imperative you leave now.”

  Once again, there was no delay in reply. “That is not possible, Captain Riker. Regrettably, our great ship’s main drive is not operational. It will take several hours to bring it online. At this moment we are… stranded.”

  “Then evacuate whoever you can aboard whatever warp-capable craft you have!” insisted Vale. “In the meantime, we will attempt to assist your people on platform Zero Four!”

  “Regrettably, all life functions of the reclaimator crew aboard that platform have now ceased,” said the Jazari voice. “We suggest you remove your vessel to a distance of one light-year from this location. We estimate our great ship will be able to survive the pulse effect with eleven percent functionality intact. Titan’s survival percentage of the same incidence is calculated at zero.”

  “We’re not ready to give up yet,” said Riker. “Stand by.” He made a throat-cutting gesture and the comm channel was closed.

  For long moments, no one spoke into the silence that followed the Jazari’s candid estimation of Titan’s dire odds.

  Then something the captain had said back in his ready room drifted to the front of Vale’s thoughts. “So much for Nothing Interesting Happened Today.”

  Riker gave a nod. “Now all we need to do is survive long enough to make an interesting log entry.”

  * * *

  The captain watched his officers work, and in those seconds he could only step back and stand in the eye of the storm, trusting wholly in his crew. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that he had the right people on hand for this crisis, and Riker hoped that would be enough.

  Throughout his career, aboard the Pegasus, the Potemkin, the Hood, more than one Enterprise, and now the Titan, Riker had served among exemplary Starfleet officers. Every challenge they faced, they met without fear, no matter h
ow slim their chances might have been.

  But now he felt the weight of command more keenly than he ever had before. Is it because of Deanna and Thaddeus? Or is it something else?

  And then it came to him: Was this how it had been for Picard? Not just during the Enterprise’s missions, but when the Romulan crisis began? Knowing that they were about to put their all into a desperate gamble to save a civilization, with no guarantee that their endeavor would succeed.

  But it had to be done. To turn away would be unacceptable. He pulled free of the thought, catching Deanna’s eye. But before she could speak, Lieutenant Commander Livnah was addressing him.

  “Sir, we have conceived an angle of approach for our problem. If I may proceed?”

  “Lay it out,” he told her.

  “We can attempt to ‘cap’ the fracture using a static warp shell, projecting a field from the Titan’s engine nacelles.” Livnah glanced in McCreedy’s direction.

  “It’ll take every last spark of power we have, and then some,” said the engineer.

  Riker nodded. “Use whatever you need.”

  Livnah’s hands danced across her panel as a new set of shocks thundered around them. “We’re ready, sir.”

  Riker raised his hand and gave the order. “Engage!”

  * * *

  Spears of brilliant light flashed out from the starship and reached for the ship-breaker platform, enveloping it in a coruscating globe of energy.

  Within it, the riotous nonmass of the fractured singularity seemed to tremble, momentarily shrinking back toward the rip in spacetime. The blinding spark of radiation dimmed, shimmered, diminished.

  Every system aboard the Titan lost power as vital energy was rerouted. Heat, light, gravity, all of it faded to feed the warp shell, to constrict it ever tighter around the seething fire burning into this dimension from the depths of subspace. Degree by degree, the shell narrowed, forcing the fracture to contract.

  On the far side of the tear, raw inchoate energy the like of which was found only in the heart of stars churned and seethed, seeking the point of least resistance. It had no intellect, no guiding force behind it, only the unchained power of brute physics to drive it on. Like lightning seeking the ground, like a wildfire spreading over tinder-dry land, it pushed back.