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“We have—”

“—allowed access—”

“—to all team—”

“—members—”

“—to all crew—”

“—areas.”

“Even the second team members?”

“Yes,” 110 said.

“All,” 111 said.

“Great work,” she said. She signaled for Vale to let the door close.

“Deck ninety-one,” Gomez said again.

“Deck ninety-one,” the computer said.

This time the door took seven seconds to reopen.

Vale poked her head out cautiously, scanning both directions with her tricorder, keeping her phaser out. Finally she said, “Clear.”

Gomez followed her out into the hallway. Here there was no soft surface, no art, just door after door on both sides of the hallway, leading off in both directions. At this depth, the hallways curved much quicker. And the gravity felt just a touch lighter than up higher.

“Crew’s quarters,” Geordi said, studying his tricorder. “But there are energy signatures coming from ten decks down. I think that might be a warp core I’m reading.”

She nodded and tapped her combadge. “ Da Vinci, are you with us?”

Nothing but silence.

“They will—”

“—be able—”

“—to track us,” the Bynars said. “But—”

“—they will not—”

“—be able to communicate—”

“—with us.”

Gomez nodded and turned back to Geordi. “Any idea what’s in the core of this thing?”

“Getting weird readings,” Geordi said, frowning. “It seems to be hollow, more than likely a nullgravity core of some sort, starting at deck one hundred and four. And it’s packed loosely with some sort of substance I’m not getting a fix on. We need to get closer.”

“So we head to the warp core area,” Gomez said, motioning for Vale to come back inside the lift.

“Deck one hundred and one,” Geordi said.

Five seconds later, the doors reopened.

“Still clear,” Vale said as Gomez and Geordi moved out, tricorders in hand, studying the large room in front of them. This one room seemed to extend and curve all the way around the ship, with only massive pillars holding the decks above it.

Gomez glanced at her readings, then at Geordi, wondering if he was as surprised as she was. The question of how this ship moved through space was answered. This entire deck level was one massive array of black-hole propulsion systems, all clearly designed to work in tandem.

She went to her left, glancing from her tricorder to the marvel around her. This ship was pushed through space by a drive that many races had tried and mostly failed with. From what she could tell, dozens of tiny black holes were dropped into subspace and then returned to normal space a slight distance away, shoving the containment, and thus the ship. From the looks of this, she would bet this ship could have reached speeds faster than the da Vinci could, and maintain the speed indefinitely.

“This is an engineering gold mine,” Geordi said. “We need to find an interface with the computer.”

“Agreed,” Gomez said. “But where do we—”

“Excuse me, Commander,” Vale said.

Gomez glanced over at the lieutenant. Her face was pale as she stared at her tricorder.

“I think you need to take a look at the core of this ship before we do anything else,” Vale said.

Gomez quickly set her scanner to check out what was below them. Beside her, Geordi did the same.

For an instant, she didn’t want to think about what she was reading. The core was clearly null gravity, and she guessed it was normally empty. With this kind of structure and drive, an empty core would be the most stable.

But, at the moment, the massive core of this ship was far from empty.

She looked up at Geordi and the shocked expression that covered his face.

“Humanoid bodies?” she asked.

Geordi nodded. Then, weakly, he said, “ Hundreds of thousands of them. All dead.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Oh, no,” Vale said, her hand over her mouth at the horror of it all.

“It seems—”

“—we now know where—”

“—the passengers went.”

Gomez glanced at the Bynars, then back at her tricorder and the impossible readings she was getting. What had happened here? They had seen no signs of a struggle.

Who had killed these people? How?

And why?

The overwhelming dread of what she knew she had to order next filled her.