• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

On any project, a good editor can make a writer look great. For his help on this one, we salute Keith DeCandido, a god among editors. You know, not the smiley kind of god, with a robe and a white beard, but the cool kind. With tentacles.

CHAPTER 1

The U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701-E, sped through space. Long, lean, and muscular, like a hunting hound, she dodged and leapt through hedgerows of dust clouds and incandescent gas. As fast and nimble as she was graceful, her nearly seven-hundred meter length turned like a fighter as she threaded her way through the clouds of the vast planetary nebula that surrounded the bloated red star Pantera.

But this hound was the hunted, not the hunter, and though she could not see her pursuer through the clouds and sensor echoes, the volley of pulse-phaser bolts that cut narrowly above her saucer section offered ample evidence of its presence. Responding, the Enterprise veered hard to starboard and dove headlong into a streamer of glowing yellow dust large enough to hide a planet.

Sitting in his command chair on the bridge, Captain Jean-Luc Picard watched intently as his crew responded to the threat. They moved quickly in reaction to the readings flashing across their displays, without wasted motion. Despite the pursuit, the crew maintained their outward calm, their low tones a muted hum against the chirps and beeps of monitors relaying ever-changing warnings.

Picard could sense the underlying tension, as palpable as the low rumble growing in the deck beneath his feet. The ship’s deflectors struggled to handle the huge concentrations of dust at speeds their designers could scarcely have imagined.

“Status, Mr. Data.”

“The star’s radiation flux is increasing. Shields at eighty-seven percent and deteriorating, Captain. We are suffering minor hull erosion at the leading edge of the saucer section.” A slight quaver in Data’s voice served to remind Picard of the functioning emotion chip that Data now carried.

But Picard’s thoughts were more on the damage to his newly launched ship, and he couldn’t suppress a tiny, sad, flash of smile. We had to scratch the paint sometime. “Reduce to one-quarter impulse. Lieutenant Hawk, switch to evasion pattern omega two.”

“Aye, sir.” There was a trace of emotion in Hawk’s voice as well. Excitement. Pride. Most of Picard’s senior staff had not come to this newest Enterprise until after its shakedown cruise. But Sean Hawk was what had been known since ancient nautical times as a plank-owner. He’d been with the ship since its space-frame had been assembled at drydock. He knew this ship and its capabilities as well as anyone aboard. Damn the manuals-if Hawk said it could be done, it could be done.

Commander William T. Riker turned to look at Picard, his eyes narrow and intense. “No sign they followed us into the dust streamer-not that sensors do us much good here. Do you think we’ve lost them?”

“What do you think, Number One?”

Will grinned slightly, a brief flash of white teeth against his dark beard. He knew the outcome of this encounter, and therefore the safety of the ship, might depend on his evaluation, and though he relished the responsibility, he understood the importance of his decision.

“If I were them, I’d risk a few tenths of a second of warp straight up out of the star’s elliptic to give the sensors the best view back down into the nebula. Then I’d warp back in at the first hint of a sensor contact.”

Picard nodded. “They’ll be waiting for us on the other side. At most we’ll have a slight element of surprise. The question is, how to best use that to our advantage.”

The captain pulled up a tactical display of the region on his console. The Pantera Nebula was only a few thousand standard years old, the cast-off gaseous shell of a class-G star gone nova and the pulverized dust of its inner planets. It would last no more than a few more tens of thousands of years before it began to dissipate.

Metals in the dust made sensors unreliable, and the region was in constant flux, impossible to chart accurately for more than a few