Intellivore - Diane Duane [2]
The eagle went flapping low over the col, and immediately dipped down behind it, out of sight. At the same time, something nudged Picard from behind, in the lower back. He turned to see Rollo giving him an impatient look, and eyeing his jacket pocket.
Picard lifted an amused eyebrow and produced the last piece of carrot, letting the gelding finish it. Then, “Computer,” he said. “End program.”
In a blink it was all gone: the wind, the burning blue, replaced by dark walls and bright gridlines burning against them. “Store program Hauts-Alpes Two-A,” Picard said.
“Stored,” said the computer.
Picard smiled slightly—for there was still the slightest scent of vanilla orchid in the air—and went back out of the holodeck into the real world.
Captain’s log, stardate 48022.5. Pursuant to earlier orders from Starfleet Command, having relinquished the “upper” Beta Quadrant patrol run to our relief, U.S.S. Constellation, we have finally arrived at our designated rendezvous point near the former V843 Ophiuchi, now NGC4258.
Our new mission will involve us in several investigations which have been in progress for some time. This part of space is chiefly notable for its closeness to the Great Rift between the Sagittarius and Orion arms of the galaxy: it is a sparsely starred neighborhood, little investigated until the Federation assigned the pure science vessel Marignano to do a current-civilization and archaeological survey, while also examining various reported anomalies of stellar motion.
However, what should have been a quiet exploratory mission has been heating up somewhat. We have been reassigned to assist Marignano, and another starship, Oraidhe, has been reassigned to this mission as well. I have a feeling our purpose is to ride shotgun … and the kind of mission which requires two starships of our class to do so, this far out in “the middle of nowhere,” is one that gives me pause …
Picard stood on the bridge, looking at the main viewscreen. History lay spread out there in broad bright streamers and clouds of hot plasma, all burning gold and blue, the biggest bang that had been seen in these parts for nearly twelve thousand years.
On Earth, it was the evening of October ninth of 1604 when the astronomers of southern Europe went out to look with great interest at an unusually close conjunction of Jupiter and Mars. Altobelli took himself up into the hills above Venice, Clavius to a rise above the pines of Rome, Brunowski to the mountains near Prague, and they all waited for dark. It came, and Jupiter and Mars stood forth in the sky as scheduled … but so did a third body, brighter than any star or planet in the sky, swiftly growing bright enough to be seen even in full daylight. Clavius goggled; Altobelli stared; Brunowski ran back to his house and wrote a letter to Johannes Kepler. Kepler studied the star nearly nonstop until March of 1606, when it faded, and decided it was probably the same kind of thing as the nova stella or “new star” which Tycho Brahe had described a few decades before in 1572. He wrote a long learned paper on the “nova’, and the star was later often called “Kepler’s star” after him. Whether he ever sent Brunowski a thank-you note, no one knows.
It was, of course, not just a common, garden variety nova, but a true supernova, only the fourth to be observed over about a thousand years, the only one to happen inside the Milky Way.
Hanging there about a light-day from the epicenter of the ancient destruction—or rather, from the point to which that