Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [22]
Uneasily Picard turned to Data for confirmation.
“Yes, that is correct,” Data said, just as uneasily.
“Do we have photographs of them?” Riker asked.
Data glanced at him. “Possibly … let me run a search. Computer, show any available visuals of Reykov or Vasska.”
The computer settled into a long hum, but they didn’t have to wait long until its soft feminine voice said, “Only available visual on specified subjects is a news photograph shortly before launch of the Gorshkov. On screen.”
The screen did its best to focus a grainy photograph of some hundred or more uniformed men, apparently officers of the carrier, all standing together on the big flat deck. The figures were small and crowded together, but on the left two officers stood slightly apart and in front of the others, their faces blurred by the poor quality of the photo.
“There,” Riker said, pointing. “Computer, augment the two men in the foreground.”
Abruptly two faces appeared, somewhat blurred, yet their strong features and proud expressions quite clear on the screen.
“That’s him,” Riker murmured, pointing again, this time at the big man on the right. “That’s the man I saw in the corridor.”
Picard looked deeply into the Soviet officer’s strong eyes and murmured, “Reykov … “
As he said the name, he realized his reaction was instinct. No one had told him that this was the captain of the Gorshkov, yet somehow he knew. Somehow there was a symbiosis, something in the face that he, as a captain, understood.
He turned to Deanna Troi. “Counselor?”
She steadied herself, gazing into the faces on the screen. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Reykov and Vasska.”
“Data,” the captain said, “do you have anything more on these two?”
The android nodded and said, “A little, sir. Timofei Vasska was thirty-five, a longtime exec of Reykov’s. Records are incomplete, but a few articles on the incident speculated that the two men were friends and may have plotted together to defect with some new technology.”
“What technology?” Riker blurted, not caring if he was out of order. He felt the tightness of Troi’s exquisite body beside him and might have done anything at that moment to ease her fear. He felt it so strongly that he might as well have been the telepath.
Data was about to answer when the lift door parted and Wesley Crusher strode onto the bridge, his long legs going like wheel spokes, and he grated to a stop as all eyes struck him. The placid expression dropped away under a slap of surprise-why were they all bundled together around the science station?
He hovered in place for a moment, then waved clumsily and smiled. “Hi, everybody … “
The captain straightened. “What are you doing up here at this hour, Mr. Crusher?”
Wesley’s mouth dried up. Funny, but it all sounded so easy when his mother talked about this. “I … I, uh … “
“Well, never mind just now. Get to it and don’t interrupt us again.”
Self-consciousness roaring through him, Wesley went to the other science monitor and tried to fake work, though he couldn’t keep from glancing at what the others were doing.
“On with you, Commander,” Picard said sharply.
Data glanced at him and picked up where he’d left off. “Gorshkov was carrying a special device, an electromagnetic pulsor which could deflect incoming rocketry and aircraft. The science was new at the time, but the Soviets had pushed through the preliminary testing and gone straight to a fully mounted pulsor on a vessel.”
“Fine,” Picard barked, “but what happened to them?”
“Oh … yes. Apparently the ship was … pulverized. Unexplainably and utterly.”
“My God,” the captain breathed.
“There was very little left of the ship,” Data said, pausing then, “and absolutely nothing of the crew.”
Riker nudged forward. “Nothing? Not a single body anywhere?”
“That’s correct. Relations between major powers had been steadily improving since the early nineteen-eighties, but when analysis of the flotsam indicated a cataclysm from outside the ship rather than some problem with the ship’s reactors, for instance,