Reunion - Michael Jan Friedman [64]
“Got to go now. As you know, we get only so much time in these subspace packets. Love you. Miss you like crazy. And study hard, damn it-someday, I want to be able to turn around and see you standing there next to
me.
End of tape. Crusher sighed. Hearing Jack’s voice
had had the desired effect. She felt better-much bet-ter. Almost safe, in fact.
“There,” said Simenon. “That’s more like it.” Wesley frowned, visualizing the flight of his last toss before it sank beneath the surface of the lake. Two hops-not bad, but not great. The Gnalish had gotten as many as four without even trying. “Don’t stop to think about it,” Simenon advised. “Thinking has nothing to do with it. After all, you’re only throwing rocks-your ancestors did that with brains a good deal less developed than yours.”
The ensign chuckled and picked up another stone. Positioning it the way the Gnalish had taught him-the procedure having become second nature by now-he pulled back and let it fly. One hop, two. Three.
And it wasn’t done yet. With one last burst of energy, the stone leapt in a high fluid arc-the rock-skimming equivalent of a grace note.
Four. The ensign turned to Simenon. “Well?” he asked. The Gnalish puckered up his face and grunted ap. provingly. “Much better,” he said, studying Wesley intently. Something changed in his eyes, softened.
Wesley hesitated, then decided to say what was on his mind. It didn’t look like he’d get a better opportunity. “Professor? You said you’d tell me more about my father-about how he died.” Simenon nodded, cleared his throat. “I did, didn’t I? Very well, then.” The Gnalish switched his scaly, gray tail back and forth over the forest floor, as if gathering
himself. Then he began. “You’re familiar, I assume, with the problem we encountered?”
“The Nensi phenomenon,” Wes told him. “A ball of matter and energy thought to have its origin in a special category of supernova. Very rare, but very destructive-and almost impossible to distinguish from a rogue comet except at close range.”
“Exactly. Of course, back then we had no idea as to its origin-and neither did Nensi-considering it was the first time anyone had ever encountered the bloody thing. In any case, it all but stripped the Stargazer of her ability to defend herself. Shields went down. Sensors went down. Weapons went down. And we started to record an overload in the starboard warp field generator. Shutting down the warp drive stabilized the situation, but there was still a lot of energy cycling through the nacelle. We were afraid that the generator would just blow up-and whether it would take the rest of the ship with it was anybody’s guess. Remember, we had no shields with which to protect ourselves.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t just separate into two parts as the Enterprise can. But we had to disassociate ourselves from the starboard nacelle, and as quickly as possible. We batted the problem around until we were ready to chew one another’s heads off. Any moment, we knew, we might be obliterated in midsentence. Finally, your father came up with a solution. Someone had to get outside the ship and sever the nacelle from the rest of the Stargazer. his
Wesley had gone over this part in his head a thousand times. Going outside, cutting away the nacelle with phaser rifles, had been the only way. The Stargazer wasn’t set up to fire on itself, even if ship’s phasers had been working at the time. And to approach the project
through the power transfer tunnels was unthinkable-they were too full of energy seepage from the warp field generators. “Naturally,” Simenon said, “your father volunteered comx was his plan. Others came forward also-Ben Zoma, Morgen, Asmund, Vigo. Even Greyhorse. The captain didn’t like the risk involved. Hated it, to tell the truth. But in the end, he chose a team of two: your father and Pug Joseph. Both of them had had experience in hull repairs. Both of them knew how to negotiate the ship’s skin. And since the transporters had been damaged along with nearly everything else, that