“How will they know that?” asked Dolores, already dreading the answer.
“We will have to pilot this uncloaked shuttlecraft back to unaffected space.”
Dolores shifted nervously in her seat. “But I’ve already told you, there are interphase generators lying all over the planet!”
“However, using phase-shifting will not be a viable test. To assure the admiralty that a normally equipped fleet of starships can fly safely to Myrmidon, we need to accomplish the feat in a normal craft.”
“But ... but if the residue is still active, we’ll be dead!”
“That is correct,” answered Data.
“Do you have a Plan B?” Dolores asked hopefully.
“No, I do not,” answered Data. “I suppose we could rescue a few more Starfleet personnel, five or six at the most, and wait until someone eventually contacts us.”
“And everyone on the planet will be dead?” asked Dolores.
“There will be a small percentage who find a way to survive,” answered the android. “Three-tenths of one percent, by my calculations.”
Dolores laughed with frustration and disbelief. “You know, I thought I would get used to your cold way of talking about this stuff, but I can’t. Don’t you care what happens to anyone? Even yourself?”
“I have an emotion chip,” Data said with some degree of pride. “Would you like me to activate it?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Once again, the android cocked his head slightly. His eyes widened in complete horror, and his frantic face went through every emotion known to humankind—joy, terror, rage, fear, hope, and about fifty more—in a few seconds. Dolores got exhausted just watching his rubbery face.
He turned to her with a look of complete panic. “What is the matter with you? We must save these wretched souls on Myrmidon! We must get help!”
Then Data trembled with fear. “But what if you are right? What if the effect has not dissipated? We will cease to exist. I am too young to cease to exist! You will have to make a decision!”
“First of all, turn off the emotion chip!” she cried.
“Done,” he answered with a nod, his becalmed self once again. “I apologize—I seem to have many pent-up emotions concerning this issue.”
“All right,” muttered Dolores. “Set your course. I never expected to live forever, anyway.”
“We should know very quickly,” Data assured her as he worked his board.
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“I want you to know that you have been very good company these last forty hours.”
“You, too,” said Dolores, “although I wish I could hear you play the violin once more ... before I go.”
Data glanced to the back of the shuttle. “I do not believe the Romulan replicator is equipped to produce Terran musical instruments, although it does offer Starfleet uniforms.”
“I’m wearing one,” said the geologist with a smile. “I’ll just imagine the violin music while we head off into space.”
“I could hum for you,” said Data.
“Just make it quick, like you promised.” The geologist stiffened in her seat and screwed her eyes shut. A moment later, she felt them banking as the shuttlecraft pulled out of orbit.
She waited stiffly, but she felt nothing unusual. Shakily she asked, “Tell me when it’s going to happen.”
“Nothing happened,” answered Data.
“We’re alive?” whispered Dolores. She opened her eyes to see nothing but a beautiful sprinkling of stars floating in the darkness. It didn’t look as if this sector of space had been ravaged by the Genesis Wave.
“Enough time has passed for the effect to have dissipated,” said Data, “although communications are still unresponsive. Our destination is the rendezvous point where we met the Romulans.”
The android rapidly worked his console, then reported, “Going to warp drive.”
Dolores Linton sat back and breathed her first relaxed breath in what seemed like weeks, but she didn’t feel relaxed. There were too many people in danger, too much to do, too much undone. People were spread out all across the quadrant, battling this scourge. Where were Geordi La Forge, Leah Brahms, Admiral Nechayev, Captain Picard, and all the others? She didn’t bother to ask Data, because she knew he didn’t know. Even if they had survived a risky gamble, they were still just two beings who had been left behind to witness a disaster. She tried to shake the fear that Myrmidon was a lost cause—a planet that should be left to fester and die alone.
“We have arrived,” said Data, pulling Dolores out of her melancholy.
With excitement, she sat up to look out the viewport, but all she saw was a nondescript array of stars and distant dust clouds. No ships.
Dolores looked down at her sensor readings, but Data was way ahead of her. “There are no ships in the vicinity. We will have to use delayed subspace to communicate.”
“Where the hell are they?” muttered the geologist, banging her fists on the console.
“Unknown,” answered Data. “If I were to make a supposition, I would say Earth.”
“Earth?” echoed Dolores. Feeling spent, she slumped across the console, her head resting on her brawny arms. “It’s hard to imagine Earth being gone.”
“Not for another twenty-three hours,” said the android.
“Are we going there now?” Dolores asked wearily.
“No, we could not reach Earth in time to be any help. We will follow the Enterprise and the D’Arvuk to the Boneyard.”
“What about all those people on Myrmidon?”
“We are one small shuttlecraft,” said Data. “I will send a report via subspace, but their fate is out of our hands.”
“Damn,” muttered Dolores, dropping her head back onto her arm. “This thing just stays messed up, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” agreed the android.
As seen from Earth, a band of bright stars and glowing nebulas swept across the night sky. Near the Southern Cross, this dazzling belt of light was interrupted by a jagged hole—a black nebula called the Coal Sack. Not a true nebula, although there were plenty of opaque dust clouds in its depths, the Coal Sack was a huge chunk of space that was relatively empty. Compared to the brilliant starscape surrounding it, the Coal Sack was a desert. It was a good place to put something you didn’t want, thought Admiral Alynna Nechayev.
Standing alone in the stellar cartography room aboard the Sovereign, the admiral had her choice of viewing any known object in the heavens, from any angle. She moved a tiny jump-stick on a device in her hand to enlarge her view of the Coal Sack. Her feet clacked across the raised platform as she inspected the contents of the dark nebula.
In its mysterious heart floated an even darker body—the Furnace. This opaque object was classified as a nonstandard quasar, as if there were such a thing as a standard quasar. Its pronounced redshift on the spectrum made early Terran astronomers think it was much farther away than it had turned out to be. It put out enormous amounts of radio and electromagnetic interference, and some said it should be classified as a pulsar. Whatever it was, the Furnace obliterated anything that came too close, including most varieties of light waves.
For Nechayev, it was the ultimate incinerator, and she was assigning the dirtiest garbage to it. That is, if the La Forge theory worked and their forty thousand starships did their job.
If the plan didn’t work, a certain planet named Earth would not exist—as anyone recognized it—by this time tomorrow. And they would probably be at war with the Romulans.
Nechayev tried never to second-guess herself, but she couldn’t help but wonder if she could have done anything differently. After all, she knew Carol Marcus had been kidnapped, and she should have been ready for some deployment of the Genesis technology. But she wasn’t expecting something of this immense scope.
Should she have sent more ships to find the source? Nechayev had thought the task force of Defiant-class vessels would be enough, but they had disappeared wit
hout uncovering anything. After that, her dependence on a defensive strategy of evacuation, shelters, and now the Ring of Fire had necessitated hanging onto all the ships at her disposal. She was still mired in the ramifications of that quick decision.
It was clear by now, thought Nechayev, they were fighting more than the Genesis Wave itself. There were signs of a ruthless, clever enemy behind all of this. By now, a dozen ships had reported back from the Boneyard, and no one had found anything unusual. The enemy had covered their tracks, as any sensible foe would do, and sending more bloodhounds wouldn’t be useful. By dealing with the wave, she felt they were attacking the most immediate threat to the Federation. If their homeworlds were wiped out, what did vengeance or justice matter?
After so many failures and partial successes, we finally have a plan to neutralize the wave, Nechayev assured herself. I still don’t see what I could have done differently, except to protect Carol Marcus better. As in so many games of war, the early mistake is often the most costly one.
The door whooshed open, mildly startling her. The admiral turned to see her main attache, Lieutenant Kelly, stride into the domed room.
“I have the latest dispatches,” he said.
She nodded brusquely. “Make it fast—we only have an hour.”
Her subordinate nodded and consulted his padd. “Commander Data has sent word that the forests of Myrmidon are on fire. He says the devastation is almost total. There’s a detailed report in your inbox, but the gist of it is that the survivors have set most of the fires themselves—in an attempt to drive out the moss creatures.”
The admiral’s face hardened, and she said nothing. Her subordinate cleared his throat and went on, “Commander Data requests aid for the survivors within the next thirty-eight hours, maximum. He says we can navigate the space around Myrmidon safely now—the effect is over.”
“That’s good,” Nechayev said simply. “Adjust the orders for the Klingons, so that they’ll go to Myrmidon as soon as we release them. Make sure all orders for the cleanup stage get out as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the young lieutenant said, making a note on his padd. “The Enterprise reports that it has almost reached the Boneyard, but sensors don’t find any sign of the Genesis Wave or its origin.”
“Not surprising,” answered the admiral. “Go on.”
Kelly glanced down at his padd, and a smile crept over his youthful face. “I don’t know what to make of this one. The mining colony on Protus says that they were invaded by Klingons.”
Nechayev laughed despite herself—an unexpected release of tension. Her face and tone quickly turned somber again. “I don’t see how. Every Klingon ship is here with us.”
“I know, sir,” Kelly answered, scrolling to the end of the report. “They haven’t furnished many details either, except that the commercial district and mining operations were destroyed.”
“I’ve been to Protus,” said Nechayev. “I don’t blame them one bit. Ask for more details—in triplicate. We are sending Klingons in that direction, so maybe they’re just repeating a rumor they heard.”
“That’s probably it,” agreed the lieutenant. She looked up and caught him gazing at her face, and he quickly diverted his eyes. Half of Nechayev’s face was wrinkled and full of character, while the other half was youthful and smooth—a result of having been treated with mutagenically active soil on Myrmidon.
She would get it fixed when there was time—until then, she was a walking billboard for the power of the Genesis Wave. As usual, Alynna Nechayev didn’t mind grabbing attention—that was how she got things done.
“Anything else?” she demanded.
“The Romulan third fleet reports that they’re in position,” answered Kelly.
“Good thing. They’re only an hour and five minutes behind schedule.” The admiral stared at a blazing ring floating in the middle of the three-dimensional holographic representation of the region. She had dubbed it the Ring of Fire—forty thousand starships, assembled from all the powers and fleets in the Alpha Quadrant.
“It’s an extraordinary feat,” said Kelly. “Just getting them all here.”
She scowled. “That’s just issuing orders and having them followed. The feat is yet to come. If I’m wrong, it will be the greatest failure in the history of the Federation, and Earth.”
Kelly started edging to the door. “I’ll be on the bridge. Are you ... are you going to stay down here alone?”
“For the duration,” answered Nechayev, regarding the celestial charts hovering in midair. “Do you remember my telling you that, as a commanding officer, you must never say ‘Oops!’ And you must never let your forces see you cry?”
“I remember that,” Kelly answered, forcing a smile.
“Well, I intend to heed my own advice. Just tell the captain to keep feeding data to my charts. Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.” The young man nodded, then bolted for the door.
After he left, the admiral’s shoulders slumped, and she let her guard down. Wearily, she walked away from her charts to sit at the master console, where a small viewscreen cycled through various views of the forty thousand warships under her command. Great Romulan warbirds, massive Klingon birds-of-prey, starships of every class and description, freighters, scows, and junks—it was the greatest fleet ever assembled. Like their enemy, they hoped to be victorious without firing a shot.
But the wave was now four million kilometers wide, and it took no prisoners and gave no quarter. The idea of stopping it with a ring of ships and a network of force fields was almost absurd. But it has to bend, she told herself. Everything has to bend eventually, doesn’t it?
Allowing herself the luxury of a yawn, Nechayev realized how weary she was. Stress, lack of sleep, and an abbreviated recovery period from her injuries had all led to bone-deep exhaustion. She would like to sleep, but she couldn’t—she had one more chore to do.
“Computer, take a memo. To Admiral Brud’khi, Chief of Starfleet Command, San Francisco.” She paused, thinking that there might be no San Francisco by the time this message was delivered. “Computer, correct address to fleet at large,” she went on.
“Admiral, with deep regret, I hereby tender my resignation from Starfleet, effective immediately,” Nechayev said, her voice cracking. “If you have received this, then our strategy to divert the Genesis Wave away from Earth was a failure. I take full responsibility, as I have from the beginning. I let the genie out of the bottle, and it was my duty to recapture it. I tried every way I could in the time allotted, but I made decisions that might have been wrong. If I have failed, then I have failed the uniform, the honor, and the purpose of Starfleet. Sincerely, Alynna Nechayev.”
She caught her breath, then went on, “Computer, hold this message for forty-five minutes, then send with my approval only.”
“Acknowledged,” answered the computer. Her viewscreen went back to revolving views of the ships waiting for action. Each was so distant from the others that the ring was indistinct—there was no video log big enough to capture it.
Nechayev glanced back at the holographic representation of the Ring of Fire—a massive circle of vessels and space stations, anything that could be towed or flown into position. Every vessel had to be capable of producing a force field or tractor beam. Young Kelly had been wrong—assembling the ships had not been me hardest part of the operation—matching the strength and synchronizing the timing of the beams had been the hard part. There was no room for error—if one ship was off, the entire network would fail.
She wondered if the Romulans and Klingons realized how vulnerable the Federation was at this moment. It was lying in front of them, its throat uncovered—but that was just one more leap of faith they would have to make. The admiral wished they’d had time for at least one test, but the last segments of the circle had just fallen into place. There was no dress rehearsal, only the real thing.
To her surprise, Nechayev actually drifted off to sleep—or at least she w
as in a drowsy state when she heard the voice of the captain addressing the ship. “To all hands, the Genesis Wave has been spotted and is still on trajectory with an ETA of twelve minutes, twenty seconds. It’s available on your viewscreens, and should be rather impressive as it passes through the Hag’s Head Dust Cloud in ten seconds.”
Nechayev shook her head with exasperation, thinking that captains always had to inject more drama into a situation than was already there. She had lived through the Genesis Wave once—barely—but she couldn’t remember a thing about that experience. With reluctance, she turned to her viewscreen.
Moments later, she was grateful that Alvarez had drawn their attention to the sight, because the Genesis Wave truly was a marvel to behold. Like a primal force, it came roaring through the big multicolored dust cloud, exploding it like a dandelion blasted by the wind. Just as quickly, the debris coalesced into an amorphous, pulsing body, trying desperately to become a planet. It succeeded in becoming nothing but a stomach-churning oddity as it twisted in the grimy detritus of the Genesis Wave. Nechayev found herself recoiling from the sight, even though it was just inert rock and dust being mutilated. The smooth side of her face tingled with the memory.
“Beginning ten-minute countdown,” added Captain Alvarez. “All stations, maximum synchronization.”
Nechayev gripped the arms of her chair, and she didn’t let go for the next ten minutes.
seventeen
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four—”
Admiral Nechayev rose to her feet and began to pace the stellar cartography room, unable to watch the moment of truth on the viewscreen. She also turned away from the holographic images on the charts floating overhead. She would know if they succeeded—she’d feel it in her soul.
“Three, two, one. We have contact with the intruder,” said the computer’s voice. Nechayev held her breath. Against her will, she looked at the Ring of Fire circling the wave’s target; at that moment, it illuminated brightly. Did the lights in the room dim, or was that her imagination? This ship, as well as all the others, was being taxed to its limits by the power demands of the force fields.
STAR TREK: TNG - The Genesis Wave, Book Two Page 18