• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Gold liked the bold plan being presented by his officers. Given a choice between actively seeking a way out of their predicament or simply waiting for their power systems to deplete themselves, he preferred the more aggressive option. He had never been one to sit idly by and wait for fate or luck to visit him, not when he had the opportunity to fashion his own course of action.

Besides, he wasn’t ready to abandon the Defiant just yet, not while any chance of salvaging her still remained. He knew that the ship held a political powder keg in its cargo hold, but he refused to accept that, after all they had ultimately sacrificed, the deaths of the men and women aboard the Defiant would amount to nothing more than the spark to ignite an interstellar war.

Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.

The thought came unbidden, catching Gold by surprise. Did it mean what he thought it meant? Could he bring himself to destroy the evidence the Defiant’s crew had recovered and tried to bring home when fate had cruelly intervened?

It would be so easy to do, ordering the ship to travel deeper into the rift. Maybe they’d tumble into the other universe, forever lost to any recovery attempts from their own side of interspace. He could give the necessary orders, and he was confident that his crew would understand his reasoning. The greater political good would be served.

But not Captain Blair and his people, Gold reminded himself. They wouldn’t be served at all.

No matter the consequences, it would do the Defiant crew a tremendous disservice to cover up the details of their last mission for the sake of political expediency. Therefore, he would do everything in his power to see the vessel, and its crew, returned safely home.

Dismissing the troubling thoughts, Gold said, “Let’s get started, then. Gomez, take Blue and Lense to assist you. Soloman and I will remain here and guide the ship to the edge of the rift.” He smiled grimly at his team. “Work quickly, people. Time is most definitely not our ally today.”

“Like it ever is,” Lense said as she donned her helmet in preparation for the journey down to engineering.

Gomez smiled to herself as she added, “It just wouldn’t be an S.C.E. mission without a time crunch.”

CHAPTER

6

The last time Duffy had sat in the da Vinci’s briefing room, he had been thankful for Captain Scott’s words of advice. He’d also been buoyed by the captain’s attempts to buy them the time they needed to salvage their mission and come home from Tholian space with a lost starship, or at least with every member of the da Vinci’s crew. Now all Duffy could think was that the veteran leader of the engineering troubleshooters had wasted his efforts.

Within half an hour the six Tholian ships they had detected would be here, bringing with them their massive energy net and looking to snare anything in their collective path, most notably the da Vinci.

It wouldn’t have mattered now if ol’ Scotty had bought us a year. If we’re not out of here before long, we’re done for.

He shook off the thought and focused his eyes once again on the briefing room’s main viewer and its projection of the tactical image that had burned itself into his mind not more than thirty minutes earlier. “Okay, let’s go over it one more time. Run it again, Fabian.”

Stevens entered a series of commands into the keypad next to the viewer and the image reset itself. Six cones representing Tholian ships en route to the da Vinci’s current position now glowed a threatening red in the screen’s upper-left corner.

Amid the cones was an amber-colored grid, seemingly innocuous on the screen but representing the potential to destroy the da Vinci in one fell swoop. Just below and to the right of the screen’s center was a soft blue dot for the da Vinci, which Duffy’s ever-wicked mind underscored with the caption “You are here,” just to lighten his mental load. To the virtual da Vinci’s right was a field of blue, a computer-simulated haze marking the