Flashback - Diane Carey [25]
"This is a science station, isn't it?" she asked, cooperating with his demeanor.
"Yes," he said. "I am one of several junior science officers."
He sat down and started pecking at the controls.
"Tuvok," Janeway persisted, "why doesn't your
service record reflect any of this? I thought your first assignment was aboard the Wyoming."
His jaw tightened, and he frowned but didn't look up. "It is a ... long story. Suffice it to say this was my first Starfleet career. I was twenty-nine years old."
First Starfleet career? What was that supposed to mean? Was he a dentist in between?
All right, he didn't want to talk about it. So she'd file it away with all the other stories she was determined to get out of him someday, and she went on.
"So what's happening? Are we about to encounter the Klingons?"
"Not exactly." Tuvok kept his voice low, and gazed at his monitor as if seeing into a crystal ball. "The Klingon moon Praxis is about to explode."
"Praxis . . ."
"During this period, it was the primary source of energy for the Klingon homeworld."
"Praxis," Janeway repeated, as if chanting. "Yes. Its destruction would have lasting repercussions throughout the quadrant. And it led to the first Federation-Klingon peace treaty."
"That is correct."
Yes, of course it was correct. Janeway noted Tuvok's discomfort again. He wasn't just confirming, but stating the incredibly obvious. He was trying to help, but they weren't getting anywhere.
Praxis. Janeway scoured her memory. History had never been her academic strength, exactly. Overmin-ing, bad safety standards-a reactor exploded, a
massive chain reaction that rocked the homeworld and contaminated the atmosphere. Violent weather changes nearly decimated agriculture over the long term, on top of a big loss in energy production and dilithium, which everybody and his mother needed for space travel at hyperlight speeds. The Klingons started lobbying for a treaty with the Federation. For the first time in their long and rocky history, the spiteful, aggressive Klingons had to admit that they just plain needed help. They simply couldn't afford to remain hostile.
So the Federation had sent-aha! another link- Captain Kirk and the Enterprise to reach out to the Klingon chancellor as a symbolic gesture.
But what were the years? Sulu wasn't on board the Enterprise by then. Was "then" .. . now? Right now?
Janeway glanced around, troubled. "But what does all this have to do with the girl on the precipice?"
She started to say something else, but instinct overruled her thought. A faint vibration through the carpet under her feet-very faint, but distinctive. Not the kind of vibration a ship makes from its own power sources.
She stiffened her legs and paused, trying to read the hieroglyphics of experience and instinct.
Suddenly the vibration became stronger, and visible. The whole ship started shaking, as if attached to an automatic sifter. The captain's teacup clattered on its saucer and began a skittering walk across his tabletop.
The captain and crew looked around-nobody else knew what was happening, either. What could make a starship tremble?
The teacup skittered, dumped over the table's edge, and shattered on the deck, but Captain Sulu wasn't paying attention to it anymore, not even to the scalding tea that splashed across his forearm. Now the vibration was so violent that everything around Janeway had a visual blur.
From another science console, Dimitri Valtane shouted, "I have an energy wave from two-four-zero mark six port-"
Sulu stood up. "Visual."
The bridge was abruptly washed with ghastly lights as a wave of superheated gas and inflamed debris flushed toward them out of deep space, as if someone with a flamethrower had made a wide arc. There wasn't any end to it that Janeway could see, but only a burning silvery disk of pure energy rioting toward the ship.