Collective Hindsight (Book 1) - Aaron Rosenberg [1]
“Well, I don’t know that this means much, but I don’t recognize it,” Bart Faulwell said. He glanced at the dark-haired woman next to him. “How about you, Carol?” But Carol Abramowitz just shook her head.
“I don’t either,” Sonya admitted. “Not that I’m surprised—we’ve certainly seen our share of new ships, and new species for that matter, on this ship.”
“One of the advantages to this job,” Gold pointed out gently. “Always something new to see.”
“We need to know what’s in its path,” Domenica Corsi pointed out.
P8 Blue waved an antenna. “Already on it. We’ve plotted its trajectory—easy enough, since it seems perfectly straight.” She touched her padd, and a map of the quadrant appeared on the conference room’s secondary screen. “Unless the ship changes direction, at least a dozen worlds lie directly in its path, three of them Federation members. And that’s just the most immediate area—we have no idea how far this ship might go if it isn’t intercepted.”
“Then there’s your job, people,” Gold announced. “Intercept it. As quickly as possible. I’ll get us near this thing, match its speed so you can study it. Just don’t take too long.”
At that cue, Sonya forced the S.C.E. leader portion of herself to take control. “All right, people. Tev, check our files—see if we have any data on this thing. Pattie, dissect that trajectory—we need to know how much time we have before it hits an inhabited world, or something near one. Fabian, start thinking of ways we might slow down this train. That’s it, people—let’s get to it.”
“Okay, the train’s a wreck.”
Sonya walked over to the science station on the bridge where Fabian had taken up residence. She saw the long-range sensor display, which was now showing their runaway train. “A wreck?” she prompted.
“Yeah, it’s taken a lot of damage. Worse, it’s putting out a ton of energy. Way more than anything that size should—except for maybe a bomb.”
“We’re looking at a bomb?” Sonya shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why fire a bomb this far from any possible target? And why make a bomb that big? More likely it’s something on severe overload.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.” Fabian levered himself back to his feet. “Oh, and the energy—it’s nuclear. Hydrogen and helium, most likely, though that’s just a guess for now.”
“Great, so now we have a runaway star instead of a train.” Sonya sighed. “Okay, keep at it.”
Tev was puzzled—and he hated the feeling. He liked to know what was going on, and usually did, but something was happening with this mysterious ship and he did not yet know what it was. During the briefing, he had been sitting across from Stevens and Blue, and had seen their reaction when Gold had put the image onscreen. The tactical specialist had paled and clenched his jaw, and the structural systems specialist’s antennae had begun to quiver. Something about that ship had prompted a reaction. And they were not alone. Abramowitz had avoided Faulwell’s question, nodding instead of speaking, which was uncharacteristic. Perhaps she was hiding something. Even the captain had seemed a bit more terse than usual. It was as if all four of them were in on some conspiracy.
The problem was, Tev couldn’t find anything in the library computer for them to conspire about. The search for matches on that ship had come up empty. He had checked the files for that particular ship configuration, and found nothing. Then he had looked for anything resembling it. Also nothing. Next he had searched for ships known to have shields of that distinctive color and design. Nothing. He had even looked for vessels that traveled by way of straight lines alone, and drawn a blank.
No one knew anything about that ship. Or at least, no one was admitting to it.
Tev turned his formidable intellect to the problem of the conspiracy. If he could solve that riddle, it would lead him to the actual information he sought.
Oddly, though the captain, Stevens, Blue, and Abramowitz seemed to be involved, Commander