The Dark Veil

by James Swallow

  “Titan concurs,” said Riker. “Good luck to you, Commander.”

  “To us all, Captain. Othrys out.”

  The screen flicked back to the exterior view and Riker rubbed at his chin. “I’ll be damned. He was practically… reasonable.”

  “He’s also in violation of the Treaty of Algeron,” said Keru. “Just putting that out there, sir, but a Romulan warbird crossing the border uninvited is a massive red flag.”

  “My point,” said Vale.

  “Arguably, they were invited,” Troi countered. “By the distress call. The treaty does have some flexibility in such cases.”

  “If we all live through this, we can have that debate.” Riker shut down the conversation before it went any further. “I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, even if it is a Romulan one. For now, we deal with the problem that’s in front of us.” He dropped into the command chair. “Helm, take us back in toward the reclaim station, position us at optimal attitude to feed power to the warp shell.” The words had barely left his mouth before the worst shocks yet battered the Titan.

  Keru gave a yell as he lost his footing and struck his head on the tactical panel. He swore a Trill curse beneath his breath, his hand coming up to press against a cut on his forehead.

  “Ranul, are you all right?” Troi was half out of her seat, but the other officer waved her away.

  “Just rattled me a little, Commander. I can still see straight.”

  “The Othrys has acknowledged receipt of the matrix data, sir,” said Livnah. “We are powering up the warp nacelles for projection.”

  “Energy transfer status nominal.” McCreedy reported the readings from her station. “The Romulans are doing the same, modifying their containment field. We’ll be good to go in fifteen seconds, Captain.”

  “We’ve only got one more shot at this,” he told them, giving voice to what he knew his crew was thinking. “You know your duty. Stay on task.”

  “Can I just say, when I woke up this morning,” Vale said quietly, “this is not how I saw my day going.”

  * * *

  By now, Reclaim Platform Zero Four’s structural integrity had completely collapsed, turning the small spacedock and the remains of the tug vessel hull within into a clenched fist of tritanium, polymers, and other alloys.

  The gravity waves had ripped it into pieces, but the force of the spatial fracture kept the broken remnants in a strange kind of equilibrium, holding the wreckage in a sphere around the anomaly’s event horizon. The poisonous beating heart of the thing, bright as a dying star and spewing delta particles into the void around it, was visible through the storm of debris.

  With each new shimmering pulse wave, the diameter of the event horizon grew a few more degrees. Very soon, it would reach a critical mass and then nothing short of a stellar-level event would be able to smother it.

  The Titan moved to activation range and the starship rolled to present its underside to the fracture, reinforcing the ventral shields as the first streams of energy were emitted from the warp nacelles. On the opposite side of Platform Zero Four, the Othrys settled into its position and did the same. The Romulan ship spread its wings wide, the complex design of a hunting falcon visible etched across them. Lines of pale green fire swirled around the other vessel’s warp engines.

  Then as one, Titan and Othrys combined their efforts to bring the static warp shell into being. This time, the glowing orb of energy formed fully and completely in milliseconds, enveloping the ruined platform and the toxic anomaly at its core. Degree by degree, the shell began to contract, forcing the subspace radiation back on itself, robbing the fracture of the vital power it needed to stabilize.

  Clawing at the inside of its cage like a living thing, the fracture vented surges of exotic particles, but with nowhere to go, they built into a captive storm.

  The fracture’s final dissolution began. With just one starship against it, the anomaly’s incredible forces were too much to resist, but with two equally powerful vessels working in concert, the anomaly could not continue to exist.

  And then, at a point of no return, the torn-open singularity that had caused the disaster lost all dimensional cohesion and imploded.

  In subspace, the effect was like a star cracking open; here in this reality, it shattered the static warp shell in one final spasm of destruction, consuming the remnants of the Jazari space platform to fuel a last lash of violent energy.

  A feedback pulse shrieked into the engine nacelles of the Othrys with enough force to throw the Romulan warbird into a vicious spin. Warp plasma gushed from the ship’s wings in great streams of virulent green as it pitched away, out of control.

  Titan, already damaged from the first failed attempt to contain the anomaly, fared worse. Her shields were battered down in an instant and the final shockwave hit the bare metal of her hull. The starship’s structural integrity fields flexed and bowed, for one giddy second taking the spaceframe almost to the pinnacle of its material tolerances. Hull plates and support spars all through the vessel’s fuselage were put under incredible strain. A lesser ship would have been crushed like an empty beverage canister.

  Like the mythological beings that were the starship’s namesakes, Titan weathered the impossible and survived.

  But not without cost.

  * * *

  Major Helek picked herself up off the deck of the Othrys’s bridge, angrily pushing aside Decurion Benem’s hand as the Garidian attempted to help her to her feet. The wail of alert tocsins cut through her skull like knives and she grimaced as her eyes focused on the main holograph screen.

  Outside, the stars were tumbling wildly, and every few seconds the white mass of the Federation starship whipped by. The view made her feel light-headed and she looked away, finding Commander Medaka in a heap where he had fallen against his console.

  Helek made no move to assist him. Instead, she found Lieutenant Maian at the helm and barked an order in his direction. “Get this ship into a stable attitude!”

  “Report…” Medaka said thickly, pulling himself up the console. “Did it work?”

  “It did!” Sublieutenant Kort almost shouted the reply, as if he could not believe that they had succeeded.

  “How much damage was done to the Empire’s ship in the process?” Helek demanded an answer from Kort, but he hesitated before replying, looking to Medaka for confirmation first. “I asked you a question!” Helek snarled.

  “Evaluating,” said Kort, blinking at his readout. “Warp drive is offline. I think… the impairment is severe.”

  “You think?” Helek repeated, lashing him with the words. “Talk to the Reman engineer! Bring me facts, not your assumptions.”

  On the hologram screen, the motion of the starscape settled as the Othrys slowly reoriented to the plane of the ecliptic, and the Federation ship’s status became clearer.

  What there had been of the reclaim platform was now no more than a cloud of charged particulate matter, but a new slick of wreckage was drifting out behind the Titan. Glittering white bits of tritanium caught the light of the Jazari star and Helek could not stop herself from smiling. Seeing the Starfleet vessel wounded kindled a fierce, angry delight inside her.

  How does it feel? she wanted to ask them. How does that pain taste?

  Behind her, Medaka ran his hands over the command console, running a sensor scan. “The leviathan, the large craft filled with Jazari… It appears intact.”

  “No doubt they will laud the heroism of the Romulan fleet and be eternally grateful,” she snapped, but he ignored the comment.

  “Riker’s ship, however…” He sucked in a breath. “It appears they have taken the brunt of it.”

  “Oh?” Helek turned toward him and craned her neck so she could read the sensor returns. Even at this range, the scanners could detect multiple hull breaches, and what appeared to be a buildup of lethal toxins in the ship’s environment. “How tragic.”

  Medaka eyed her. “That could easily have been us.”

&nb
sp; “Let me guess. Now you want to give aid to the Federation?”

  “That would be the principled thing to do,” said the commander. “Cold space does not care about a starfarer’s origin. We are all equally at its mercy.”

  “Principled.” Helek had to stop herself from laughing out loud. She had been told that Medaka was practically antique in his thinking, beholden to old, fanciful ideals of honor and hidebound codes of morality. The Tal Shiar were far more flexible about such things. “We could let them all perish and then tow their vessel back across the Neutral Zone as salvage. I would be happy to affirm any claim you would make that we were providing assistance.”

  “Is that a serious suggestion, Major?” Medaka’s brow creased in a frown. “I find it difficult to tell when you are being flippant.”

  “My suggestion,” she said firmly, “is that we make sure our own vessel is safe before we look to any other. As we all know, Starfleet is quite capable of caring for itself.” Helek said the last with real venom, and it pleased her to note that both Maian and Kort nodded along with her words.

  * * *

  “Deanna?” Her husband’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance away. “Imzadi?”

  She blinked and took stock of herself, mentally partitioning her thoughts. “I’m all right,” she told him, but it was a half-truth at best. Her Betazoid ancestry was one of her greatest gifts when it came to the work of counseling the Titan’s crew or serving in a diplomatic role, giving her an empathic insight into the minds of those she was dealing with. But sometimes, it could be as much a curse as a boon. Troi had been caught unprepared by the final discharge from the collapsing singularity, unable to erect her mental barriers in time before the dying shockwave collided with the ship.

  In that brief instant, she felt the panic and fear of hundreds of people all at once as they experienced the same gut-twisting moment of impact. She had no words to describe the experience to a nontelepath; the closest analogy Troi could come up with was the roar of an atonal chorus, where each strident voice was the alarm cry of a single mind.

  Some of the mind-voices were clear because of proximity—those of Vale and the other members of the bridge crew, the officers on the deck immediately beneath the bridge—and others were loud because of familiarity. She heard Will give a silent shout as the Titan took the hit, but worse than that was the shriek that emanated from the mind of her son. Thaddeus, down in the refuge area on the civilian decks, cried out for her, and the psychic wail cut her heart open.

  She willed herself to project an aura of love and strength back to him, hoping that the boy’s part-empath mind would pick it up. We will be all right, little one, she thought, your father and I will get us through this.

  Riker had his hand on hers and he gave her a nod, as if he had heard it too. “You need me?”

  “The ship needs you more,” she told him. “Go to work.”

  “I could use some help up here…” At the engineering station, McCreedy was waving away clouds of smoke from blown EPS relays, frantically trying to reboot her console at the same time. Troi pushed out of her chair and crossed to her.

  “I’ve got it, Karen.” She grabbed a hand extinguisher from a locker in the wall and used it to douse the small electrical fire.

  “Thank you, sir.” The engineer tapped out a string of code and the panels lit up with a slew of crimson warning sigils. “Oh. That’s not good.”

  Troi saw an exploded deck-by-deck graphic of the Titan, sliced into horizontal pieces like the toy construction kits Thad sometimes played with. Dozens of sections of the ship were glowing red, like fire reaching up along the warp drive pylons and across the belly of the ship. Even as she watched, the glow was spreading.

  “I need a status report, Chief Engineer!” The captain called out the command from the midbridge, seeing McCreedy’s worried expression and knowing what it could mean.

  “I’m reading multiple plasma-coolant leaks on the lower decks, sir. Force-field barriers are spotty, they’re not stopping the flow. It’s rising up the turbolift shafts and the Jefferies tubes…”

  “Who’s down there?” said Riker, paling at the thought. The heavy, greenish gaseous material that kept a starship’s warp core from overheating was a class-one biohazard, acidic to almost all organic life. A single drop could burn right through unprotected flesh, and a serious leak would dissolve any living thing it came into contact with.

  “Unknown,” said the engineer.

  “Why isn’t it venting into space?” Riker’s brow furrowed.

  “Severe damage to the internal sensors,” said McCreedy. “It’s not registering! So the venting systems don’t know the plasma is there, and they’re programmed only to activate under the most extreme of conditions.”

  Troi stepped to the secondary damage-control station and set to work. “Information is coming in. Evacuation in progress,” she reported. “Main engineering, both mess halls, and sickbay have been abandoned…”

  Riker tapped his combadge. “Bridge to Doctor Talov, please respond.”

  A moment later, Titan’s chief medical officer replied. “Captain, I am rather busy at the moment.” The Vulcan was breathing hard. He seemed to be on the move, and Troi could hear other, frightened voices over the open channel. “We are in the midst of an emergency relocation. Please stand by.” The signal fell silent.

  “Sir, permission to seal off the contaminated sections?” McCreedy met the captain’s gaze. They both knew what that would mean. If anyone was still on those decks, they would be locking them in with a toxic atmosphere. But the longer the emergency hatches remained open, the farther the leaking coolant could spread.

  He gave a sigh. “Permission granted.”

  McCreedy set to work, and on the deck-by-deck monitor, blue indicators blinked on as the lockdown began.

  “Sir?” Westerguard called out from the navigation console. “Uh, Captain? I think I have an idea that could help!”

  “Spit it out, Lieutenant,” said Vale, moving toward him.

  “Well, uh, if internal sensors are out, we could try a reflection pulse from the external sensors? It’ll be noisy and definition will be poor, but it might be enough—”

  Vale nodded vigorously, catching on to the navigator’s train of thought. “Enough for us to map the leaks and locate anyone still in the contaminated sectors.”

  “Do what you can, mister,” said Riker, shooting his wife a look. “Deanna, how are our transporter systems?”

  “Operable,” she replied. “That’s something.”

  “Scanning,” said Westerguard. “I’ve got a reading! Six life-forms, all in one chamber off the secondary deflector bay!”

  “Good work,” said the captain. “Route their locations to transporter room two, get them out of there!”

  A moment later, Troi saw a message flag appear on the panel before her. “Transport is complete. All six recovered intact. The officer on duty reports they have severe burns and respiratory distress…”

  “Talov to bridge.” The Vulcan’s voice issued out of the air.

  Troi could imagine the statuesque, olive-skinned man in his usual pose, both hands folded across his chest, his piercing blue eyes taking in everything around him. Like Westerguard, Talov had come aboard a few weeks earlier, but unlike the lieutenant, the doctor seemed anything but pleased to be aboard the Titan.

  “Where are you, Doctor?” said Riker.

  “Shuttlebay two,” he replied. “I have already assembled a detail to convert a section of the space for use as a temporary infirmary. Does that present an issue?”

  “No.” Deanna’s husband gave her another sideways glance. In the short time he had been aboard, Talov had shown a tendency to act first and ask permission afterward, something made more irksome by the fact that he was usually making the right call. “I’ll have the displaced crew diverted there as well,” he continued. “Give me a casualty report, if you can.”

  “At present time I am aware of three deaths. Ensi
gn Scoville, Lieutenant Junior Grade Mazone, and Specialist Second Class Brote. All perished in the initial plasma leak event.”

  At Troi’s side, McCreedy stiffened. Scoville and Mazone were two of her engineering officers from the warp-core team. Troi laid a hand on her arm and the other woman gave a rueful nod.

  Talov continued. “The injured are largely suffering from toxin inhalation, dermal burns, and similar maladies. Severity ranges from walking wounded to borderline critical.” He paused. “Captain, I would like an estimation as to when sickbay will be vented so my staff and I may return there.”

  “You’ll get that when I do,” said the captain. “For now, carry on. Riker out.”

  “I’ve stabilized the ship’s attitude, sir,” called Cantua. “Reading the Othrys off our starboard bow at a distance of twenty kilometers. They’re venting drive plasma but they appear intact.”

  “What’s their posture?” said Vale. She was really asking, Are they going to take advantage of our situation?

  “Station-keeping, minimal deflectors, no weapons active.” The lieutenant read off the report in rapid-fire order. “I guess they have their own problems to deal with, if they took the same hit we did.”

  “What about the Jazari?” Vale glanced back at the main screen.

  “Negative contact,” said Cantua.

  “You’d think they might send out a rescue boat,” muttered Westerguard.

  “For what?” asked the Denobulan. “Their people out here got atomized.”

  If the captain was following the conversation, he didn’t show it. “Karen.” He crossed to McCreedy’s console once more. “What do you need to get us back up and running?”

  The engineer adjusted her spectacles. “The Jazari have still got a half dozen of those dock platforms out there. If we could use some of their facilities…”

  “Given their previous behavior, let’s assume not,” said Riker.

  “Ah. Thought so.” McCreedy took a breath. “Okay then. Give me ten minutes, sir, and I’ll spin up a full damage report for you.”