Ghost Ship - Diane Carey [23]
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Picard murmured.
“But there was no proof that any nation had blitzed the ship. Add to that the appearance of seven Soviet naval aircraft from the Gorshkov which requested landing clearance on a United States carrier a short time later-pardon me, sir, I did not mean to be unspecific. The U.S. ship was the Roosevelt, and was hanging out in a nearby sea when the Soviet planes arrived in their airspace some sixty-nine minutes after witnessing the demolition of their own ship. Those pilots swore no missile had come in to cream the Gorshkov. Historians had theorized that if it hadn’t been for those pilots’ testimony so soon after the incident, international relations might have dissolved and World War Three started on the spot. Adding, of course, the blessing that the pilots were Russians themselves and could appeal to the outraged Soviet government without the baggage of racial distrust. Had the witnesses been American or British, we might not be here today. As it was, the issue was a canker between major powers for decades and a real pain for diplomacy.”
Picard frowned and murmured, “Mmm … thank you, Data.” He took Riker by the arm and pulled him to one side, then leaned toward him. “Why’s he talking like that?”
Riker blinked, but that blink cleared his eyes not on Picard, not on Data, but on Deanna Troi, who was in turn holding her breath and staring at the helm-at Lieutenant LaForge. Her face was frozen in astonishment as sensation flowed from LaForge to her.
Instinct rippling, Riker shot his glare to the helm.
LaForge was rising from his chair, slowly, like a sleepwalker, his hands pressed flat on his control board. He rose so slowly, in fact, that he was drawing attention to himself.
By the time Riker stepped away from the captain and came to the ramp, everyone else had noticed and was tensely watching, unable to look away. LaForge’s mouth hung open and he bent like a man punched in the ribs. His hands remained flat on his console, his legs stiff and slightly bent. Of course the visor hid his eyes, but from the set of his body, his face and lips, Riker could imagine what a seeing man’s eyes would show. Shock.
Wesley stepped toward the ramp, his reedy young body all knots. “Geordi?”
Riker snapped his fingers and pointed. “Wesley, stay where you are.”
But Wesley’s movement had nudged Riker into taking over that movement toward the helm.
LaForge breathed in short gasps. He didn’t respond, but stared-or seemed to stare-forward and slightly starboard of his position. He turned his head further in that direction, then twisted partially around to look across the entire starboard side of the bridge.
Riker came around in front of the helm. “Geordi?”
“Sir … ” LaForge continued turning, resembling more than anything a music-box doll on a spindle.
Before him, all around the starboard curve of the bridge, human forms were milling. Far different from the warm mannequins of the regular crew, these forms were flat, glowing, staticky yellow, striated with jagged impulse lines-but unmistakably human. Not humanoid-human. There was something in the way they moved, the way they turned and walked and gestured, that made him certain of it.
“Sir … somebody’s here … “
Riker moved a step closer, his shoulders drawing slightly inward as a shiver assaulted his spine. “But there’s no one there.”
“They are here, sir!”
Riker held out one hand in a calming gesture that didn’t work. “All right … tell me what wavelengths you’re tuned in to right now. Help me, Geordi. I want to see them too.”
Geordi moved choppily backward, bumping Riker, bumping his own chair, trying to avoid the unseen entities as he moved toward the science station on the upper bridge, but he never even got close. He bumped the bridge rail with one shoulder and couldn’t move anymore, but stayed there trying to convince himself he wasn’t going out of his mind.
“Geordi, just describe it,” Riker said, glancing at Picard for reassurance. “What are you seeing?”
LaForge trembled. “I don’t know … “