Intellivore - Diane Duane [30]
“So far I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary. Attenuation seems appropriate for the projected speed and time. However—” He examined his panel, worked at it for a moment. The schematic of the ion trail’s route through space appeared on the main viewscreen, corkscrewing off into the distance. Near the end of it, faint, enhanced by the computer graphic, was an abrupt faint segment of straight line, intersecting with the visible end of the Boreal’s trail and fading away.
“About fifteen minutes to the primary,” Data said.
“Acknowledged,” came Clif’s voice from Marignano. And then, after a moment, “Enterprise, would you check some data for us, please?”
“Certainly, Captain.”
Marignano’s science officer said, “There was certainly another ship through here, sirs, though I think ship may be the wrong word. Vessel, perhaps. I almost wouldn’t know what to call it, to judge by the warp flux residues it’s left.”
Picard, his eyebrows up, had to agree. “Boreal’s trail,” he said to Data. “Could that be what we’re seeing?”
Data’s hands danced over his console for a moment, but then he shook his head. “After its enclosure by the larger field,” he said, “it fades out rapidly.”
“But no sign of its destruction—”
“No, Captain. None.”
“Nasty,” Ileen’s voice said. “Swoop down, pick up the ship whole, take it somewhere else to pick its bones …”
“Captains,” Picard said, “may we have a brief conference in private?”
“No problem,” Ileen said, and Clif said, “Right away.”
Picard got up, gestured toward his ready room. ‘I’ll take it in there, Mr. Worf.”
The door closed behind him. He sat down at his desk, and the desk screen obligingly split its image to show him Maisel on one side, Clif on the other.
“Captain,” said Clif, “you’ll be thinking the same thing I am, I suspect. Do we have enough firepower, even among the three of us, tactically, to take on a vessel engined this way?”
“Just because it’s got big engines,” Ileen said, “doesn’t necessarily mean it’s got big weapons.”
Picard put his eyebrows up in amusement at the sound of Ileen’s eternal eagerness. “All the same,” Clif said, “this far out in the middle of nowhere, I feel less than usually inclined to give the universe, or an unknown species, the benefit of the doubt. Even though we have no positive proof that this vessel’s intentions are belligerent—for all we know, the Boreal may have been in some kind of distress—I’d still bet on it.”
Ileen sighed. “I’d have to agree with you there. And as for whether or not we have the firepower to take on this other vessel, should it prove to be belligerent, I don’t think we have a choice. They’re our people. We have to go after them.”
That, Picard thought, was Ileen all over. He just hoped they would be able to back her certainty with force. “Agreed,” he said. “Not that that was ever really in question, I think. But no matter how superior an advantage this vessel might have in weapons, we still have a strategic or tactical advantage. We are three. It is only one—as far as we can tell.”
Clif nodded, then turned his head. “Captain,” his helm officer said from behind him, “longrange scan is showing something.”
“The big ship?”
“No, sir. It might be Boreal. The size looks right—it’s about three kiloparsecs out.”
Ileen looked faintly outraged and glanced over her shoulder at her exec. “Now, why didn’t we see that first—” she started saying, just as her exec said, “Captain, we’ve got it, too—”
“Never mind,” Ileen said. “Let’s go, gents.”
The other two captains broke the link. Picard went out onto the bridge.
The viewscreen was already showing the tiny chip of light, more an example of wishful thinking in the computer’s “mind” than of any real image, so far out in the dark. No single star was near enough to cast much light on the subject; the computer was enhancing galaxy shine and other background light to produce even this much image. Riker and Troi were in their seats, watching the screen; Worf was at his position, scanning attentively; and Data never took his eyes off the screen at all.
“Anything