Star Trek - TNG - 63 - Maximum Warp, Book Two

by Dave Galanter

  She followed his gaze and so also watched in awe... the warbird in the distance was twisting and turning--the entire ship--as if it were some child's pull toy that could be bent and bowed in the turns of small hands.

  "Sensor distortion?" Medric asked breathlessly, but he probably feared the answer.

  Folan glanced down at one of the small monitors near the command chair, just to be sure. She shook her head slowly. "No ... none."

  "We can't go--into that," Medric said.

  For too long a moment Folan said nothing, then finally, "Tractor beam? Can we pull that ship out of there?"

  "Sub-Commander..." The helmsman turned from his controls. "I cannot get a tractor lock, or a navigational lock, or--"

  "What is it, Centurion," Folan prompted.

  The man looked up at her, ashen. "SubCommander, I cannot be sure there is space there at all."

  WE

  Chapter Ten

  Of course there was space there. Space was everywhere. Wasn't it?

  Folan wondered. She'd seen the sensor data herself. It was more gibberish. It was meaningless, and told her there was no there there.

  No wonder, she thought ironically, the other ship couldn't escape. How does one escape from nowhere?

  "Commander, our sensors are overloading," called one of the younger officers who manned Folan's own science station when she was in the command chair.

  "Shut down active sensors," she ordered.

  "Shut down?" At first Medric's voice was loud and opposing, but he caught himself and rather than making a scene he stepped from his station down to the center seat. "We'll be blind," he whispered somewhat harshly.

  Whatever it was that pushed her within herself to be

  in command--anger, or hate, or lust for power--she wasn't sure what it was at first, but suddenly it felt like responsibility. To her crew, and to the position. "We'll be blind when the sensors burn out if we don't shut them down." She looked away from him and toward the main viewer--a tacit dismissal of not just his complaint, but of him. "Passive sensors will have to do."

  She didn't explain, and shouldn't have needed to, that active scans were doing very little good and Folan saw no reason to burn out circuits that were currently useless to her.

  When Medric didn't immediately return to his station, she turned to him and ordered it.

  He nodded once, and did so.

  "Centurion," Folan said to the woman at the engineering console. "Report."

  "Structural integrity is down twenty-three percent."

  At this, Medric began another move down to the command chair, but Folan heard him stir and so she spun around and stopped him with a glare.

  "Sub-Commander," he said after a moment. "I respectfully suggest we should back away. Our... the leadership on the planet--"

  She shook her head and swiveled slowly to the engineer. "Can you get a reading of the other ship's structural integrity?"

  "I cannot. But from our last good scan, we know it's not strong."

  Folan nodded. "And probably getting weaker."

  "As are we," Medric added, and while it almost seemed he was back to his old self, there was a difference

  in his tone from before. His tone was less defiant and more plaintive.

  She didn't have time to listen to either. Instead, she went to her old science station and added up what data she did have ... and then guessed at what she didn't. She remembered a theoretical formula from her training. Something about which scientists speculated and discussed, but the power necessary to prove it beyond doubt was out of reach even of a civilization that could harness the power of suns.

  "It's higher-dimensional," she said more to herself than any of the bridge officers. "The problem isn't that there's no space there, but that there is too much space there."

  "Too much?" The question might have been from Medric but she wasn't listening very closely.

  Rather, she was more interested in the simulations she was running. "Yes, too much. Trust me on this."

  "How can there be more space?" This time there was no doubt it was Medric asking. His voice brought her from her self-induced semi-trance and she looked up at him.

  "I don't have time to explain theoretical physics to you," she said, trying to maintain a kind, if harried, tone. "We need to send a warp probe into that... mess," she told the engineer.

  She bent over her controls. "Configuring now."

  Folan nodded and tapped at her own computer. "Use this matter-antimatter intermix."

  "Yes, SubCommander."

  In a few moments it was ready, and Folan ordered the probe launched. The warbird spat the mass of sensors forward and then the probe leapt into a flash of warp.

  "Commander, telemetry is garbled. I cannot keep a reading."

  Watching as the probe sped toward the other warbird, Folan tried to check the telemetry data herself. "Garbled" was understatement. The probe was winking in and out.

  "What's happening?" Folan asked. "Did the probe lose power?"

  "The probe is ..." The engineering centurion hesitated, perhaps unsure.

  Folan sympathized. She wasn't sure of much, herself. "Report," she prodded.

  "I believe it has fallen out of warp."

  Nodding knowingly, as if that was just one more piece of the puzzle, Folan ran yet another simulation through her computer. "The warp field collapsed," she mumbled. "That's why the warbird cannot escape. They can't generate a warp field."

  Suddenly she noticed Medric was at her side. "What do you propose?" he asked her.

  "Rescue them," she answered. "We'll need to pull it into our warp field."

  "We can't do that from here."

  She shook her head ruefully. "No, we can't." Rising past him, she made her way down to the command chair. "We've got to go in there."

  Medric's face soured. He was making it very clear he didn't like this course of action.

  Having switched some of the basic controls of the science station to the center seat, Folan checked the

  murky data on her monitor. "We need them to stop. Can we hail them?" she asked the comm officer.

  "I've been trying for some time," he said. "There is too much interference."

  Folan nodded. "Weapons officer, bring disrupters online. Can we target their sublight engines?"

  Stunned silence trampled the bridge. "You want to fire on one of the Praetor's ships, ma'am?" asked the weapons officer, the young man's eyes wide with probably both fear and surprise.

  "Yes," she snapped at him. "And we must hurry. Can we get a weapons lock?"

  Still taken aback, the centurion checked his board. "Uh ... I can lock for when we fire, but to our perspective the ship is moving instantly from one place to another, around and around. I don't know that we can confirm contact."

  "It's possible," Folan said, "that our fire will follow our sister ship on its odd trek--if we can angle it right."

  If the bridge had been tense before, it was ten times that after she'd given the order to fire on another Romulan vessel. Orders were fuzzy on this point for any crew. They were to remain loyal to their commander until the bitter end, and if they did not, their bitter end might come sooner than they'd hoped. By the same token, they were to remain loyal to the empire as well, and in just the same way.

  Once again, Medric was at her side. He'd been zipping up and down so often that Folan was ready to have him restrained into his seat.

  "Pardon my saying so," he whispered, or perhaps spat quietly, "but are you insane?"

  She looked up at him, his fiery, angry eyes, and wondered herself. She was begging for death. "There's a duty--" she tried to explain.

  "But if you fail--" he hissed.

  "I won't fail," she whistled past the graveyard.

  "If you do," Medric said, leaning into ear, "we're both dead." "If I do, everyone on this ship, and everyone on the other ship, is dead already."

  Folan turned away and Medric's retort never came, though she thought she might have heard him audibly g
ulp.

  "Sub-Commander, I might have a lock now."

  Pulling in a sigh, but trying to make it sound more like a deep breath, Folan almost decided against this path. Maybe she should seek orders first.

  And then she saw the other ship's structural-integrity reading again. This was what command was all about, and in making this decision she was proving that to herself, if no one else.

  "Fire."

  Bright green lances of energy plunged out from the Makluan and into the disjointed space before them.

  They didn't connect with the other warbird, and instead became bouncing parallel lines that danced one way and then another, dislocating themselves in a mess of power that eventually dissipated.

  "Again, fire," Folan ordered.

  And again, the result was the same.

  MAXIMUM WARP: BOOK TWO

  "It's not working," Medric said.

  Folan shook her head and tightened her fingers on the arms of her chair. "Again."

  Raw power forcing itself forward, more disrupter shots pierced into the mosh of disrupted space. Once more they boomeranged hither and yon until disappearing into oblivion.

  Cramming her eyes shut, Folan repeated her command. "Again!"

  Another dance of energy and light, but this time, followed by a gasp. Folan blinked and there was a clash of debris and electrical flame cradling the trapped warbird.

  "That's it!" She spun toward Medric. "Are they stopped?"

  "I--I believe so. They are slowing."

  "We'll need to act fast." Folan found herself standing, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Medric, be ready to extend our warp field."

  "We'll require a completely different field matrix."

  She leaned down and punched commands into the arm of her command chair. "I'm sending it to your console now." She tapped more keys. "Helm, plot this course." She wasn't used to giving all the command-she found herself doing half the work herself.

  "Plotted."

  "This will take us right to them?" Medric asked the helmsman.

  "I'm not sure. I hope so."

  "Stand by on tractor beam," Folan ordered. "Lock at point blank." She was bouncing again and tried to slow herself, if not stop altogether. "We can't slow down to

  verify a true sensor lock. I don't even know if a sensor lock would work."

  Lowering herself into the command chair again, Folan shared a glance with Medric. His eyes broadcast his thoughts: / hope you know what you're doing, they said.

  So did she.

  "Engage."

  Chapter Eleven

  Private vessel Loa-var Romulan space Sector 1D1

  "we've wasted a lot of time," Riker said, mostly to himself. He was irritated by circumstance and feeling useless without a specific task on Tobin's small bridge.

  When the "dead zone" turned out to be only a few burned-out power relays, there wasn't much time to celebrate. Riker knew they'd missed the rendezvous with Picard, and so he'd opted to not even attempt the meeting. If alive, Enterprise would have been on their way to the Caltiskan system by now--so that was where Riker was headed.

  Tobin's small bridge shuddered.

  "What was that?" Tovin asked.

  "Subspace shear," Data said, turning away from the scanner console and toward Riker. "Another spatial disruption, sir. Not a dead zone, but perhaps related."

  Riker nodded, and noted Tobin's worried glance. The Romulan had been very quiet on their journey. He'd stopped complaining, and even spoke briefly of Nien's courage, and how it had inspired his own. This wasn't what Tobin had expected at all, and Riker had offered to find an M-class planet to leave him on, reminding the Romulan that their mission now meant almost certain death.

  "As I understand it," Tobin had said, "if you do not succeed, that will be my fate sooner or later."

  He was right, of course. As the ship quaked around them again, pushed beyond its limits for hour upon hour, Riker wondered just how soon that fate would come.

  U.S.5. Enterprise, NCC 1701E Romulan space Sector 142

  "I don't know which sickens me more--that you work for such as him, or that your cowardly blood mingles with my own." Kalor's voice was weak, his bravado the facade a dying man might show both his enemy and his family.

  Lotre was not his family. "A coward is someone who chooses his own path?" he asked, from the bio bed next to Kalor's. The two Klingons were attached at a contraption that pulled blood from one, filtered it, and gave it to the other.

  "A coward is someone who works for a murderer," Kalor spat, probably using too much energy on a useless argument he could not win.

  Lotre was content to continue the debate, however, and let his opponent weaken himself more. "Of course, the Klingon heroes you worship never murdered anyone," he offered sarcastically.

  His hair rustling against his bed pillow as he shook his head, Kalor rasped, "You'd side with him--against your own people?"

  At this Lotre bristled. "The Romulans are my people. I was raised Romulan, and I live Romulan."

  Kalor seemed to attempt a chuckle, but it sounded more a cough. "And they accept you?" he asked facetiously. "They don't fear you?"

  "They do not fear me."

  "Liar," Kalor said.

  Such a charge stung, because it was somewhat true. There was no way to hide his genetic heritage, short of reconstructive surgery, and his parents had taught him that shouldn't be necessary. Adopted as a war orphan on a Klingon colony seized by Romulans, Lotre had very loving Romulan parents. He didn't remember any Klingon relatives, and didn't care to. On his own he rejected Klingon culture, and had always been satisfied with that decision. Most Klingons he'd met had not.

  That was, perhaps, a large part of his loyalty to T'sart. T'sart was one of those Romulans who saw Lotre as an individual, not a member of a genetic group.

  "I am saving your life," Lotre said finally, and knew

  his silence had acted as acknowledgment. "So why don't you just be silent and take the charity?"

  "You save my life only to save his." Kalor shifted, seemingly uncomfortable in his bio bed "You'd kill me as soon as look at me, otherwise." He then mumbled something so quietly that Lotre had to strain to hear it: "And I have been ready to die since my planet was lost."

  "That is the difference between us, Klingon," Lotre said, using Kalor's race--and his own--as an insult. "You would kill, but I would not. I can control my passions. I am a Romulan."

  "You're a mongrel like anyone. You lie to me, you lie to yourself, you lie to your blood. But your blood does not lie to me. I hear it, and it wants to kill me."

  Lotre sighed. Typical meaningless bravado. "If my blood wants anything, it merely wants you to shut up."

  "Very glib, brother, but racked with denial."

  "You're delirious." The osmatic suction on his forearm was itching again, as it seemed to periodically, and he thought about calling the nurse. It would be gone again soon, and he decided against it.

  Kalor smiled, and from their horizontal angles and in the dim light, he looked rather demonic. "I'm delirious because I suggest deep down you're truly loyal to your own? You should take it as a compliment."

  "I am loyal to my own. I am a Rom--"

  "Stop! I will not hear this!" Kalor rasped angrily and became suddenly animated, pushing himself up on his elbows. "If true you are an abomination! You are a cancer who dilutes his race by choosing water over blood!"

  Lotre couldn't resist the chance to bait Kalor further. "No. In fact, water is thicker than blood."

  "Your skull is thicker than anything."

  And then, as if deciding after a long moment, Kalor lunged off his bed and fell on the deck, pulling down the intricate equipment between himself and T'sart, as well as between him and Lotre.

  Looking down on the Klingon with more shock than anything, Lotre felt unusually strong fingers clamping his ankle and pulling him down to the deck as well.

  They wrestled there, grunting in weak combat. Well, Kalor was weak anyway. Lotre coul
d have killed him, and his hands had even found the Klingon governor's throat at one point. But he refrained. He would not become that which Kalor demanded he was. But it would have been so easy, and as he gritted his teeth and anger welled in him as well, he did want to express it physically. He did-Alarms were going off--the disruption of the medical equipment Someone sedated him--he felt the hypospray on his neck, heard the hiss.

  "He tried to kill me," Lotre said weakly.

  Through the fuzz of tenuous consciousness, Lotre heard some human woman say, "I'm only surprised it took this long."

  Sleep came quickly, coaxed by drugs and fatigue and the sheer accomplishment of goading Kalor into acting like the animal he was.

  But when he realized he was sleeping, he forced

  himself out, pushing back the darkness as he squinted into the probably still dim sickbay light.

  "T'sart?" he whispered across Kalor's bed.

  "Is the dog curled up and sleeping?" T'sart asked.

  Lotre smiled. "Yes."

  "Good. Come where I can see you."

  Gently guiding the tubes that connected him to Kalor, Lotre navigated around the bio bed and stood at T'sart's side.

  "I have failed."

  "Yes," T'sart said lightly. "You have."

  "There are no words for my sorrow." Lotre didn't feel he could look his friend in the eyes. Not only for his lackluster performance in taking over the Enterprise, but because it pained him to see T'sart so ill. The man was a second father to him. He would not see him die for anything.

  "You shall redeem yourself, my son." T'sart reached up and clasped his arm strongly. "I am in better health than one might think," he whispered, "... and we will make plans."

  "He's not as sick as he wants us to think." Beverly Crusher dropped the data padd on Picard's desk and huffed as she lowered herself tiredly into one of his ready-room chairs.

  "I imagined that might be the case." Picard swiveled the padd toward himself, glanced at it, then pushed it toward Spock, who sat in the chair next to Crusher's. "He's planning something," the captain said.

  "Why are we letting him talk to Lotre--someone he can plot with?"

  "There are guards present," Spock said.