by Dayton Ward
“You’re needed here.” He clapped Riker on the shoulder. “Inform Captain Aadnalurg he can expect us shortly.”
Provided they got there at all . . .
The battle bridge was located on Deck 8, at the top of the stardrive section. Its basic configuration resembled that of the main bridge in the saucer, but it was smaller and more streamlined, stripped down for combat and other hazardous situations. There were fewer workstations and less elegant decor. The conn and ops stations were positioned closer together. The captain’s chair sat alone on an elevated platform at the center of the bridge. The tactical post was confined to a single compact console instead of the sweeping rail that graced the main bridge It was lean and mean, like the bridge of an old Constitution-class starship.
La Forge hurried onto the battle bridge and took his place at the aft engineering station. He noticed that Doctor Crusher had joined the rescue mission as well. Her usual post in sickbay was back on the saucer, but he recalled that there was an auxiliary medical facility elsewhere in the drive section. No doubt she and her staff would be busy once they reached Rorpot. According to Snollicoob, many of the Pakleds were in need of prompt medical treatment. Beverly nodded at Geordi as he arrived on the bridge. Counselor Troi was seated nearby, behind a plain metal guardrail. Like the rail, the overall look of the battle bridge was stark and utilitarian. It had not been designed with aesthetics in mind.
“Slow to impulse,” the captain commanded Ensign Wruum. It was a shame that they had to reduce speed again, if only temporarily, but separating from the saucer at warp speed was against all the rules. They had done it before, in the most dire of emergencies, but they would be pushing their luck to try it again. “What is the progress of the evacuation?”
Even at full alert, it took time to transfer all nonessential personnel to the saucer. On his way to the battle bridge from engineering, Geordi had personally witnessed the orderly stampede going on in the corridors and turbolifts right now, as hundreds of crew members and their families rushed for safety aboard the saucer, leaving the drive section to the designated duty staff. Geordi had placed Miles O’Brien in charge of engineering in his absence. Keiko and little Molly had hurried past Geordi en route to the saucer. He hoped they were secure in their own quarters by now.
“Evacuation complete,” Data reported. “Linking turbolifts sealed and retracted.”
“Very good, Mister Data.” Picard supervised the operation from his chair. “Proceed with separation.”
Eighteen docking clamps, made of diffusion-bonded tritanium carbide, disengaged as the saucer lifted off from the top of the drive section. Onboard computers and inertial damping systems ensured a smooth transition, so that only a slight shudder was felt aboard the battle bridge. All eyes were fixed on the viewscreen as they watched the massive saucer sail away on impulse power; the saucer lacked warp capacity, but could rendezvous with another starship should anything happen to the drive section. La Forge felt a twinge of unease at the sight of the departing saucer. As chief engineer, he knew he would not entirely relax until the Enterprise was back in one piece again.
He had to imagine the captain felt the same—and then some.
They waited until the saucer was safely distant before engaging the warp drive once more. “Warp speed six,” Picard instructed. “Maintain Yellow Alert.”
The headless starship quickly left the saucer behind, accelerating into deep space. Geordi impatiently tracked their progress; even warp six seemed far too slow given Rorpot’s extreme jeopardy. Despite his past experience with the Pakleds, he no longer anticipated any treachery at the end of this voyage. There was no way they could have staged everything poor Snollicoob had gone through, nor would they have sacrificed their warp core just to lure the Enterprise into a trap. He had bonded with Snollicoob, engineer to engineer. All he was worried about now was making sure Snollicoob and the other Pakleds were okay. His skeptical attitude had done a complete turnaround.
Imagine that.
Long hours passed without incident until a sudden bump rocked the Enterprise. Geordi almost slipped from his seat. Deanna caught hold of the guardrail to keep from falling. The lights flickered briefly. Worf snarled at the disturbance. Ensign Wruum hooted shrilly.
Picard reacted promptly. “A filament?”
“Yes, Captain,” Data confirmed. “A glancing blow off our starboard nacelle.”
“Damage?”
“Shields holding, sir,” Worf stated. “Hull integrity intact.”
Damage reports started coming in from all over the ship. “Minor fires and ruptures in engineering and elsewhere,” Geordi informed the captain. “Nothing too serious . . . yet.”
“No major injuries,” Doctor Crusher added. She scanned her display panel for casualty reports. “Although sickbay is standing by.”
Deanna stared at the viewer. “But I don’t see anything.”
“You would not, Counselor,” Data said, “but it is clear that we have entered the midst of the filaments.”
Worf glared at the deceptive emptiness. His fingers were poised over the weapons controls. “Can’t we just blast our way through?” He made a slashing gesture, as though blazing a trail with a machete or bat’leth.
“That would be inadvisable,” Data stated. “The resulting quantum energy discharges could be formidable. It is uncertain if our shields could withstand them for long.”
Picard’s face grew even grimmer. “Reduce speed to warp four.”
Damn, Geordi thought. We just can’t get a break!
“The Pakleds are hailing us again,” Worf announced with more than an touch of irritation. “They are being most insistent.”
“If only we had better news to tell them,” Picard said. “Put them through.”
Aadnalurg was in bad shape. His lips were blue and his teeth chattered. A heavy blanket was draped over his stocky torso in a desperate attempt to preserve his body heat. Snollicoob could be glimpsed behind him, still wearing his insulated spacesuit, minus the helmet. The engineer hugged himself to keep warm.
“You are too slow!” Aadnalurg accused them. He gasped for breath. “Our air is thin. We are freezing!” He reached beneath his blanket and pulled out what looked like a lifeless lump of slug. “Look! See how cold it is! Snirgli has gone to sleep! It thinks it is winter!”
Geordi gathered that the oversized mollusk was hibernating, not dead.
Too bad the Pakleds couldn’t do the same. . . .
“Wait!” he blurted. “That’s it.”
Picard turned around. Worf muted the transmission. “What is it, Mister La Forge?”
“Let them freeze,” Geordi suggested. “Shut down all the heating on Rorpot and turn the entire ship into one big cryosatellite—like that sleeper ship we ran into way back when.” Six years ago, during one of the Enterprise’s earliest missions, they had stumbled onto an ancient Earth vessel holding three cryogenically frozen human beings from the late twentieth century. Much to La Forge’s astonishment, the specimens had been revived by Doctor Crusher after three hundred years of suspended animation, despite an almost total lack of life support. “If we lower the Pakleds’ metabolisms enough, there might be enough oxygen left aboard Rorpot to keep them alive until we can get there to revive them.”
In other words, the Pakleds could save themselves by taking a long nap!
“A bold idea.” Picard looked at Beverly. “Doctor, your thoughts?”
She thought it over. “It’s risky, but doable, I suppose.” Her tone was none too enthusiastic. “They’ll need to be thawed out carefully, under controlled conditions.”
“It may be their only chance, Captain,” Geordi entreated.
Picard made his decision. “Very well.” He returned his attention to the screen, where Aadnalurg and Snollicoob anxiously awaited any sort of hopeful tidings from the tardy starship. “Mister La Forge, I believe you have already established a good working relationship with the Pakleds. Would you care to explain your plan to them?”
“Uh-huh,” Aadnalurg wheezed. Both Pakleds nodded eagerly. “You are smart. Tell us what to do.”
“It’s easy,” Geordi said. “You just have to go to sleep for a while. That’s all.”
The Pakleds grinned.
“We can do that.”
Warp four felt like a crawl.
At this rate, we’ll never get there, Geordi thought. Data had warned, however, that the subspace distortions around them were only increasing. The seemingly empty space was aswarm with invisible currents and subatomic particles.
A second jolt eliminated any possibility that the first collision had been a freak event. The Enterprise jerked to one side, as though the port nacelle had caught on something. Straining shields crackled and hissed. Sparks arced across Crusher’s control panel, forcing her to jump backward to avoid being shocked. Thrown to one side, La Forge whacked his elbow against the edge of his workstation. It stung like disruptor fire.
“Full reverse!” Picard ordered “One-third speed!”
“Aye, aye!” Wruum chirped.
The bridge stabilized as the ship backed away from the filament that had snagged them. Automated fire-suppression measures kicked in; a force field generator mounted on the ceiling projected an airtight containment field around Crusher’s burning console, cutting off its supply of oxygen. Thick white smoke swirled inside the field, defining its borders, until the trapped carbon dioxide suffocated the blaze. The field remained in place for several minutes, to ensure the fire was fully extinguished.
“Full stop,” Picard commanded. The Enterprise came to rest, still nowhere near Rorpot. The captain’s frustration could no longer be contained. “This is intolerable. Even without the saucer, it’s like trying to weave through a Tholian web blindfolded!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Wruum said. “I wish there was some way I could avoid them.”
“It’s not your fault, Ensign,” he assured the avian helmsman, who looked like she was on the verge of molting. “We just need a means to chart a safe course through this minefield.”
Geordi lifted his gaze from his controls and gauges. He turned his VISOR toward the viewer. His brow furrowed. Was it just his imagination, or could he almost see something out there . . . at the outer ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum? A faint, almost infinitesimal shimmer?
“Captain, call me crazy, but I think my VISOR might be picking up something the sensors are missing.” The sophisticated optical prosthesis, which operated on a subspace field pulse, allowed him a much wider visual range than most humanoids. In the past, he had even managed to detect neutrino emissions invisible to ordinary sensors. Geordi squinted into the blackness of space. “Maybe some indication of the filaments?”
Picard gave Geordi his full attention. “Enough to navigate by?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It’s awfully faint. More like a ripple than anything else.” The mysterious shimmer seemed to waver in and out of view. “Or a mirage.”
“Is there any way to enhance your vision?” Worf asked. “Perhaps by linking your VISOR to a tricorder, as you did on Galorndorn Core?”
La Forge had a better idea. “The interface unit, the one I used to control that probe.” Just a few weeks earlier, he had tested an experimental new telepresence process that had linked his VISOR inputs to a remote probe, allowing its sensory data to be transmitted directly to his cerebral cortex. The interface connection had been instrumental in the rescue of a Federation starship trapped in the crushing depths of a gas giant. “Suppose we use that technology to hook my VISOR directly to the primary sensor array? That might amplify what I’m seeing. Or what I think I’m seeing.”
“I don’t know, Geordi,” the doctor objected. “That interface provoked an unhealthy degree of neural stimulation. And remember the feedback problems?”
La Forge hadn’t forgotten. The interface had let him experience everything the probe had encountered in a very tactile way, to the extent that he had been physically burned when the probe had passed through a fire. He glanced down at his palms. Thanks to Doctor Crusher’s expert ministrations, they were no longer scarred, but the searing pain was still fresh in his memory. Did he really want to risk getting hurt like that again? Or worse?
What other choice is there?
“Please, Captain. Let me do this.” Geordi called up the specs for the interface unit. “Like you said before, lives are at stake.”
Picard nodded. “Make it so.” He looked over at Beverly. “Doctor Crusher, I want you to monitor Mister La Forge very carefully.”
“Count on it,” she promised.
Thankfully, the interface apparatus was stored in engineering and not in the saucer. Data and Ensign Wruum worked quickly to assemble the equipment, which resembled a portable metal cage, around the conn station, while Geordi changed into a full-body, matte-black VR suit, composed of overlapping sensor pads, that covered him from the neck down. Multicolored cables were strung along the outside of the suit like exposed veins and arteries. Wireless antennae connected his VISOR to the conn terminal. He sat down at the helm.
Just like old times, he thought once more. It had been a long time since he had served as pilot, but regular practice simulations in the holodeck had kept him fully certified. Ordinarily the Enterprise’s flight controls were heavily automated, so that the conn officer was mostly overseeing the computer’s piloting, but he switched to full manual control. He eased the ship forward cautiously, just to refamiliarize himself with the controls. The starboard nacelle felt a little sluggish, probably from grazing that filament earlier. He’d have to compensate for that.
“All right,” he said. “Patch me into the sensors.”
Beverly hovered nearby, brandishing a medical tricorder. “You let me know the minute it gets to be too much for you,” she instructed. “This technology is by no means bug-free.”
“Understood, Doctor,” Picard said. “Proceed with implementation, Mister Data.”
“Yes, sir.” The android had resumed his seat at ops. La Forge found his lack of trepidation encouraging, even though he knew intellectually that Data was incapable of fear or anxiety. “Linking interface to primary sensor array.”
La Forge braced himself for the transition, but it still blew him away. There was no way to prepare for the astonishing new vistas that opened up before him. As the sensors merged with the unique neural properties of his VISOR, Geordi literally became the eyes and ears of the Starship Enterprise. Subspace fluctuations and gravitational tides coursed before his eyes in all the colors of the rainbow . . . and beyond. Solar winds, wafting across the cosmos from distant stars, brushed against his skin. He could see for light-years in every direction. He heard the music of the spheres. Goosebumps sprouted beneath the suit. His pulse raced at the wondrous sights and sounds and sensations.
“I don’t like this,” Crusher declared. Her tricorder beeped in his ear. “His neural activity is already climbing.”
“I can handle it,” he insisted. Any ordinary human would have been overwhelmed by the awesome sensory overload, but he was used to coping with more visual input than other people. He declined to mention that his eyes were already throbbing. “Just give me a moment to adjust.”
“What about the filaments?” Picard asked urgently. “Can you see them?”
La Forge tried to make sense of the myriad shapes and colors. Coruscating silver strands emerged from the background like a thicket of hanging vines. As thin as cobwebs, they were deceptively delicate in appearance . . . and worryingly plentiful. They pulsed with quantum energy, throwing off subatomic particles like sparks.
“Yes!” he reported. “They’re all around us.”
Picard stared at the viewer, unable to see for himself. “Can you make you
r way through them?”
“Just watch me,” Geordi said.
Despite his bravado, navigating the threads was a nerve-racking challenge. The densely packed threads offered little margin for error. As he wove through the tangles, cruising at warp five, he was grateful that they had left the colossal saucer behind; this was tricky enough as it was. Perspiration beaded on his forehead and glued the inner layer of the interface suit to his back. His mouth went dry. Sweat seeped beneath his VISOR where he couldn’t wipe it away. The cumbersome metal prosthesis could be a real pain sometimes. Maybe, when this was over, he needed to look into getting some of those new optical implants. . . .
Still, at least they weren’t flying blind anymore.
“Neutrotransmitter levels elevated,” Beverly reported ominously. La Forge recognized her worried tone; he had sounded just like her while monitoring Rorpot’s unstable warp engine. “Heart rate and respiration beyond recommended parameters.”
His eyes were burning, too, but he wasn’t going to admit it. A pounding headache squeezed his temples, right where his VISOR inputs were surgically implanted. It felt like stem bolts were being driven into his skull.
Work through it, he thought. The VISOR had always hurt a little; he was accustomed to pain. Snollicoob is depending on us.
A thick clump of filaments forced him to take a frustrating detour. Even now that he could see them, the lethal strands were still slowing them down. Trying to make up a little lost time, he cut a corner too close. The stern of the drive section brushed against a vibrating strand, causing the ship’s shields to flare up at the point of contact. The Enterprise was tossed about like on old-fashioned sailing ship atop a stormy sea.
A feedback loop seared La Forge’s nervous system. Crying out in agony, he toppled from his seat onto the floor. Spasms shook his body. Blisters formed on his face and hands.
“That’s it!” Beverly announced. “I’m pulling the plug.”
“No!” La Forge blurted. The convulsions abated, and he scrambled back into his seat before the anxious doctor could intervene. “I can do this. Just a little longer!”