“You’re the White Wolf,” the Klingon reminded him. “Any Starfleet captain would give his soul to bring you in.”
“No doubt.”
“But none of them ever will. Whoever’s come hunting us will go home empty-handed.”
“Like all the others.”
“And there have been many of them.”
The White Wolf grunted softly. “You make it sound as if the outcome has already been determined.”
Turgis grinned, exposing knife-sharp teeth. “Hasn’t it?”
And they laughed, the bridge of their ship ringing loudly with the sound of their defiance.
Chapter Fifteen
IT SEEMED LIKE JUST A FEW YEARS AGO that Picard’s mother had warned him about looking directly at the sun. Now, it seemed, he did nothing but look at suns. Of course, the one that burned on his viewscreen at the moment wasn’t any ordinary dynamo of nuclear fusion. It was one that would test the mettle of Picard’s ship, Picard’s crew . . .
And, of course, Picard himself.
The hour that he had given his command staff was about to elapse. Everyone was in place, every piece of equipment checked and rechecked. All he had to do was set things in motion.
But before Picard could open his mouth to do that, he heard someone say, “Captain?”
He turned to Ulelo, who was at the comm console. “Yes?”
“I have a message, sir. It’s from Admiral McAteer.”
From McAteer? “On screen,” Picard said, and leaned back in his chair to see what the man wanted.
A moment later, the admiral’s image stretched itself across the forward viewscreen. When he spoke, his tone was as unctuous as ever. “Greetings, Captain. I trust all is going well.”
Picard didn’t reply. It was just a message. At this distance from Starbase 32, two-way communication simply wasn’t a viable option.
“I’ll get right to the point,” McAteer promised. “After dicussing the matter with Doctor Ibwasa of Starfleet Medical, I’ve been convinced that the cargo stolen by the White Wolf deserves a higher priority than I first assigned it.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” said Ben Zoma, who was standing alongside the captain.
“Nor do I,” Picard agreed.
“Due to the increased urgency of your mission,” said McAteer, “I’ve sent out three other captains and their crews to assist you.”
But Picard hadn’t heard the word “other.” To him, it sounded as if the admiral had said “real.” I’ve sent out three real captains and their crews to assist you.
Clearly, McAteer had decided that the Stargazer couldn’t handle this assignment anymore. The conclusion left a bad taste in Picard’s mouth.
A bad taste indeed.
“Help is on its way, Jean-Luc. In the meantime,” said the admiral, “do your best. McAteer out.”
And his image vanished from the viewscreen, giving way to the glory of Beta Barritus.
“Do your best,” Ben Zoma echoed mockingly, just loud enough for his friend to hear him.
Picard scowled. “We’ll do more than our best, Gilaad. We’ll snare the White Wolf—and we’ll do it without anyone’s help.”
His first officer glanced at him, a spreading smile on his face. “Now you’re talking.”
The captain took in his bridge crew with a glance. Everyone seemed intent on his or her console, unperturbed—at least on the surface—by the delicate nature of what they were about to attempt.
Satisfied, Picard turned to his helm officer. “Ready, Lieutenant?”
“Aye, sir,” came Idun’s reply.
The helm officer didn’t have much to do anymore. Her real work, and painstaking work it had been, was already done.
Idun had programmed the warp engines to accomplish a feat no flesh-and-blood helm officer could hope to duplicate. They were to operate for precisely 0.0035 seconds—not enough time to breathe or swallow or even blink, but ample time for a vessel proceeding at warp one to clear an obstacle a thousand kilometers deep.
Picard could feel the muscles clench in his jaw. Even the slightest miscalculation could mean their doom. But he trusted Idun not to have made that miscalculation.
Ignoring the trickle of cold sweat making its way down his spine to the small of his back, he turned to the viewscreen again and pointed to the spectacle of Beta Barritus. Then he spoke a single word, eloquent in its simplicity: “Engage.”
It was more than a command. It was a gesture of defiance, an announcement to himself, his crew, and the universe in general that he would accomplish his mission or die trying.
Because that was what Starfleet captains did, he reflected—the best of them, anyway. They did whatever it took to achieve their goals. They found a way.
And he would do the same.
At the helm controls, Idun tapped a single blue stud, and the Stargazer shot forward at the speed of light, her quartet of nacelles wildly spilling light as they carved a path through the mysterious realm known as subspace.
And then, with chilling suddenness, it was over. The warp engines were cycling down, their labors complete.
Picard released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He felt his heart pumping blood through his body, just as it had done before he gave Idun the order to go to warp. He saw the bridge and his officers, all whole and uncompromised.
But where are we? he wondered. Where they had hoped to be, or somewhere else?
The viewscreen showed the captain the baleful eye of Beta Barritus, surrounded by a soft, pearlescent glow with bright, sharply defined tendrils of color pinwheeling through it. But it didn’t tell him a thing he wanted to know.
“Report,” he said, leaning forward in his chair, his voice echoing throughout the bridge.
There was a pause that seemed to stretch on forever. Finally, Gerda responded to his exhortation. “We made it, sir. We’re on the other side of the debris field, approximately eleven hundred kilometers closer to Beta Barritus.”
A cheer went up on the bridge among the officers at the aft stations. Picard didn’t take part in it, but by the same token he didn’t feel the least bit inclined to rebuke those who did.
Even Ben Zoma was grinning from ear to ear. Glancing at the captain, he nodded his approval.
Picard nodded back. So far so good, he thought. “Scan for the White Wolf,” he told Gerda.
“Aye, sir.”
They weren’t able to look very far. As they had been warned, the proliferation of gases and ion activity in the system made it impossible for their sensors to operate according to specs. But thanks to Simenon’s enhancements, they were able to search a wider area than the ships that had come before them.
Not that it availed them anything. There was no sign whatsoever of the pirate. Of course, he hadn’t gone unchecked and unfettered for so long by making it easy for his pursuers to find him.
“Chart a course based on his ion trail,” Picard said. “Then we will proceed at one-half impulse.”
“Aye Captain,” Gerda told him, and set to work.
“One-half impulse,” Idun acknowledged.
The captain settled back into his center seat. At last, he thought, the chase is on.
Gerda Asmund frowned as she studied her navigation console. She didn’t like what she saw.
“It’s getting worse,” said her sister Idun, who was sitting next to her at the helm controls.
Gerda nodded. “So it would seem.”
In fact, it had been getting worse for the last half hour, but now it was getting worse more quickly.
Not that it came as a surprise to Gerda. The reports they had read, filed by the captains who had approached Beta Barritus before them, clearly indicated that the sensor situation would deteriorate—that once they got past the debris field, the conditions inside the system would gradually make data gathering more difficult.
Of course, there was no way of knowing how difficult, because none of those captains had penetrated as far into the system as they woul
d have liked.
Gerda had thought of suggesting the use of instrumented probes to expand their sensor horizon, but that would have been a bad idea from a tactical standpoint. Though such probes might help them locate the White Wolf, they might also alert the White Wolf to their presence here.
And they didn’t want the pirate to know they were after him until it was too late.
“What is it?” asked Commander Ben Zoma, who had assumed the center seat in the captain’s absence.
“Sensor range is decreasing,” Idun told him.
The first officer nodded. Then he looked up at the intercom grid in the ceiling. “Ben Zoma to Mr. Simenon . . .”
Ben Zoma listened to the end of his chief engineer’s long and impassioned speech. Then he said, “So what you’re telling me is you can’t do any better.”
“What I’m telling you,” Simenon rejoined impatiently, “is it’s not possible to do any better. Our sensors are better tuned than any sensors in the history of Starfleet. They’re operating at absolute peak efficiency. No—above peak efficiency.”
“I see,” said Ben Zoma.
“There is no way in the universe that I or anyone else could improve on their performance.”
The first officer nodded. “So you’ve indicated.”
Simenon’s eyes narrowed. “Then why,” he asked, “do you have that look on your face?”
“I have a look?” Ben Zoma asked.
“You certainly do. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess you were going to ask me to enhance the sensors even more—even after I’ve told you that it can’t be done.”
“You know me that well, do you?”
Simenon scowled. “I’m afraid I do.”
“And—just hypothetically—what if I did ask you to enhance the sensors, however unreasonably?”
The engineer’s nostrils flared, an indication that he was growing increasingly annoyed. “Why bother to speculate? Having heard me say it can’t be done, you would never ask.”
“Yes,” said Ben Zoma. “Of course. But . . . if I did?”
Simenon glowered at him, then took a deep breath and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
The first officer watched him return to where some of the other engineers were standing and apprise them of their latest assignment. To their credit, they didn’t grumble. They just got to work, no matter how daunting their objective.
And Ben Zoma went to tell his friend Picard that they had a problem—even if Simenon did manage to do the impossible and squeeze a little more out of the sensors.
* * *
“I see,” said Picard, leaning back into the chair behind the desk in his ready room. “And what do you recommend?”
Ben Zoma, who was seated on the other side of the black plastic desk, frowned and shook his head. “Simenon has probably done all he can. If we’re going to make any strides from here on, they’ll have to come from the science section.”
“From Lieutenant Valderrama?” Picard asked.
“That’s right.”
It wasn’t normally the responsibility of the science section to work on engineering issues. However, the captain could appreciate his first officer’s logic.
If they had come as far as they could with what they had—and it seemed that they had—they needed a new approach to the problem. They had to devise a way of “seeing” that transcended EM flux scans, neutrino imaging, and graviton spectrometry.
The ship’s science personnel would have the greatest understanding of this environment. If anyone could devise a new strategy for obtaining information under the conditions imposed by Beta Barritus, it would be the people serving under Valderrama.
Part of Picard couldn’t help wishing Cariello were still with them—that she were still available to solve problems like these. He knew what Cariello could accomplish, but Valderrama was still a question mark in his mind.
Unfortunately, Cariello was no longer an option. Now it was Valderrama’s turn to show what she could do to justify the faith Picard had shown in her. With luck and encouragement, perhaps she would come up with what they needed.
“Speak to Lieutenant Valderrama,” the captain told Ben Zoma. “Let her know what we require of her.”
“Will do,” his friend assured him. However, he didn’t leave to carry out the order.
“What is it?” Picard asked.
“If we’re going to ask something this important of Valderrama, we should provide her with all the help we can.”
The captain nodded. “Agreed. Tell Valderrama that she can have as many bodies as she needs. She has my approval in advance.”
“Immediately,” said the first officer. Then he got up and headed for the exit.
Suddenly Picard got an idea—a way to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
“Number One?” he called.
Ben Zoma stopped and looked back at him. “Sir?”
“Let’s include Ensign Jiterica among the crewmen assigned to the science section.”
Picard didn’t see the Nizhrak catching on in a demanding environment like weapons or engineering—not when she had had so many difficulties in less problematic environments. Perhaps she would have an easier time of it under Valderrama.
“Will do,” Ben Zoma told him, and left the captain’s ready room the way he had entered it.
Jiterica moved her containment suit in the direction of the double doors at the end of the corridor. As the doors slid apart for her, they revealed a hallway beyond.
There were three people standing in it. Only one of them looked the least bit familiar to Jiterica. That was Lieutenant Valderrama, whom she had seen in the corridor near sickbay the day before.
As the lieutenant caught sight of the Nizhrak, she gave her companions some additional instructions—enough to send them on their way. Then she met Jiterica halfway.
“Ensign,” she said in a warm, welcoming voice. “I was just informed that you’d be joining us.”
Jiterica didn’t know what to say to that. In the end, her response was simply, “Yes.”
“We can use all the help we can get,” Valderrama told her. She gestured for the ensign to follow her. “Come on. We’ll find you a workstation and get you started.”
“All right,” said Jiterica in her tinny, artificial voice.
But she was far from optimistic that she would be of any use to Valderrama or anyone else on the ship. She also doubted that this latest assignment would change anything.
She simply didn’t fit in here. Clearly, she would have to remain onboard for the duration of this mission. But the sooner she left, the better it would be for everyone concerned.
Nikolas looked around the hexagon-shaped space in which he found himself. It had pretty much the same dimensions as the main security facility through which he had passed a moment earlier, though it was equipped completely differently.
Wherever bulkhead met deck there was a sleek, dark computer terminal, its monitor alive with one graphic or another. The ensign counted twenty-four of the terminals in all, though none of them was anywhere near as elaborate as the multiscreen console in the other room.
“As you know,” said Lieutenant Joseph, drawing the attention of Nikolas and the other dozen crewmen collected there, “we’re hunting someone called the White Wolf. Unfortunately, we need meaningful sensor information to do that, and it’s getting tougher for us to get that information the closer we get to Beta Barritus. Both the science and engineering sections are working on the problem now. But in the meantime, the captain wants more eyeballs on our incoming sensor data—so we don’t miss any leads that do materialize.”
“Which is where we come in,” speculated Joe Caber, who was standing beside Nikolas.
“Exactly,” Joseph confirmed. “You’re our eyeballs. You’ll be scanning from the time you get here to the time you leave—or the time you drop, whichever comes first.”
It’s a tedious job, Nikolas reflected archly, but someone’s got to do it.
“Any questions at this point?” asked the security chief.
Naturally, Caber had one. “Exactly what kind of data are we looking for, sir?”
“I’d say an ion trail,” Joseph told him, “but the odds of finding something like that are decreasing as we speak. Check for thermal hot spots, EM surges, unusual particle concentrations . . . anything that looks the least bit suspicious. And don’t be afraid to waste the time of whoever’s in charge of your shift. You never know what kind of reading might prove useful to us.”
Caber nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
“Find that pirate,” said Joseph, “and I’ll be thanking you, Ensign. In fact, we’ll all be thanking you.”
That inspired a chuckle from the assembled crewmen.
“To whom will we be reporting?” asked a woman with curly, dark hair. The markings on her uniform identified her as a med tech.
The security chief seemed to hesitate, as if the question involved something more than a simple answer. Then he said, “He’ll be arriving at any moment. His name—”
As if on cue, someone made his way into the hexagonal enclosure. Someone short and awkward looking in his crimson tunic, whose walk strongly reminded Nikolas of a duck’s waddle.
The ensign bit his lip to keep from uttering an expletive. The crewman in charge of this shift—
“—is Obal,” Joseph finished.
Nikolas saw a grin spread over his friend Caber’s face. Perfect, he thought. Just perfect.
Chapter Sixteen
NIKOLAS TAPPED OUT A COMMAND on his keyboard and called up another graphic. This one was supposed to show him neutrino concentrations at a distance of a thousand kilometers or less, each concentration represented in red on a black background. As it was, all the ensign saw was the black background. No red, no neutrinos. Or rather, they were there, but the sensors weren’t strong enough to identify them that deep into the system.
And it was getting worse, Nikolas told himself.
Every few minutes, sensor range dropped in one key area or another. If they didn’t come up with something soon, the Stargazer would be rendered blind—unable to “see” anything at all in this mess of ionized gases and subtle radiation fields—and therefore incapable of navigating. Then the captain would have no choice but to call off the hunt.
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