Requiem - Michael Jan Friedman [21]
Damn.
Moments later, Geordi, Data, and Barclay filed into the room, with Beverly Crusher, Deanna, and Worf right behind them. They were right on time—early, actually. Riker nodded his approval. Until they knew the captain’s status for certain, they would have to assume that every minute counted.
He turned immediately to Geordi. “What have you come up with?”
The chief engineer got up and walked over to the monitor at the front of the room. “Computer, replay station simulation one.”
Immediately, the station appeared on the screen. It was already bright with light from the inside, as flashes of energy pulsed through a portion of the exterior structure.
“This,” Geordi continued, “is the station’s status at the moment when the away team reached the airlock—and the captain was locked out. And here is the shuttle’s approach.” He pointed out the small ship’s trajectory. “This is also about where ship’s sensors lost the landing party completely.”
The engineer went on as the screen focused on the slightly raised airlock door. “Worf was able to get us out through the opening airlock, but there was still too much interference to even get a reading on the captain. A moment later, the shuttle’s sensors got a flash of life signs when the inner door to the airlock opened.”
Riker leaned forward. “If that’s the case, then Captain Picard should’ve been thrown into space.”
“True,” Geordi allowed, touching the screen’s controls and turning it blank. “And that’s what the shuttle’s sensors seem to indicate was happening. But the interference went up exponentially here, and the shuttle lost its shaky sensor contact. It seems, though, that the captain was not ejected into space. Instead, he simply … disappeared.”
The first officer didn’t hesitate to ask the next question, even though he dreaded the answer. “Is there any chance that the captain was … disintegrated by the energy fluctuation?”
Geordi shook his head slowly. “It’s possible, but … I don’t think so. All known methods of disintegration leave certain particle traces and electromagnetic signatures. The signatures we found here were entirely different. The closest analogy we can make is a super-high-energy transporter field with a strong subspace component.”
“A transporter?” Riker asked.
The engineer nodded. “That would be consistent with some of our early analyses of the station’s technology. A lot of it seems dedicated to sophisticated and very powerful transporter circuits.”
Worf was scowling. “But sensors would have indicated if the captain had transported to any other site on the station.”
“That’s just it,” Geordi said. “We think he transported off the station—far off the station.”
Riker found himself vacillating between outright disbelief and budding hope. “But … there’s nowhere to go. The nearest planet is light-years away.”
The engineer shrugged. “The station had built up enough energy to transport the captain’s mass much farther than that. There’s something else, too.” He paused a moment. “There was a subspace component to that energy. Which makes it possible that the captain was transported through time as well.”
Riker heard Beverly gasp. “Is that possible?” he asked.
Geordi grunted. “We couldn’t do it. But then again, we couldn’t have built that station either.”
“All right,” the exec conceded. “But why, after thousands of years, did the station activate now?”
Geordi took his seat. “I think our transporter beams interacted with the station’s systems and activated them somehow.”
Riker nodded. “Then if we’re operating on the assumption that all of this is possible … where is the captain? And can we use their equipment to bring him back?”
The engineer sighed. “Difficult to say. Even if we could get it going, we wouldn’t know where to look.” He turned and addressed the computer. “Computer, run Picard parameters one.”
A three-dimensional star chart appeared with a glowing dot in the middle, surrounded by a large, shaded circle, inside of which were a huge number of stars.
Geordi continued. “By analyzing the power