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“Maybe in a mirror universe you’d be gay!”

He glanced over at the door just as three more of the new officers arrived. It was nearly time for the orientation. He gulped down his nearly cold tea. Linda must have been joking, but her flirtation just seemed wrong somehow.

What had happened to her on Vulcan? There had to be more to it than she’d said, but she seemed reluctant to talk about it. He had a few contacts on Vulcan. Tonight, before hitting his bunk, he resolved to make a few discrete subspace inquiries.

CHAPTER 4

Picard entered the science lab to find the Samson’s data recorder fully disassembled on the large workbench in the middle of the lab. Several smaller components of the recorder were currently attached to a diagnostics console at the back of the room, where Data watched a rapidly flickering screen.

At first, Picard thought there was some sort of problem, but as he moved closer, he realized Data had simply sped up the display rate to the maximum his android mind and senses could process, hundreds of times faster than a human could follow.

Picard turned and examined the parts spread on the bench. The largest of these were the two halves of the cylindrical hull. He touched the outer surface, which was warped and pitted. He noted that the inner surface was warped and discolored as well. The data recorder itself had come within a hair’s breadth of being destroyed.

Data paused the display and looked back at Picard. “The hull plates were completely fused. It was necessary to cut the data recorder open with a laser torch.”

“But I take it you were able to recover the Samson’s logs?”

“Actually, there was considerable damage. All of the storage chips were degraded, and approximately twenty-two percent were completely destroyed. However, thanks to the holographic file system used, I was able to apply error-correction protocols and reconstruct much of the damaged information. I have been reviewing all logs covering the last seventy-two hours in hopes of isolating the cause of their power failure.”

“Have you done so?”

Data turned back to his display, resuming his scan, though at a slower rate, while he replied. “Not precisely. The Samson’s chief engineer had not been able to identify the cause before the ship was destroyed, and I was faced with the same lack of information in my analysis. Unable to find a specific cause, I started with the observed failure and reverse engineered a probable scenario. I believe a trace contaminant was slowly introduced into the EPS power grid through the plasma itself. The buildup was slow enough that it had infiltrated the entire system before significant damage occurred. But when it reached some threshold level, it caused damage to key parts of the EPS system simultaneously, including EPS taps, plasma manifolds, and the plasma injectors in the warp drive. The cascade effect was sudden, and at some point, the plasma itself broke down and simply ceased to transmit power.”

Picard looked over Data’s shoulder at the display, but the image flickered so quickly it made him feel slightly dizzy, and he looked away. “Why wasn’t this detected?”

“Without knowing the precise nature of the contaminant, it is difficult to say with certainty. The traces may have been quite small, and it is difficult to routinely monitor the plasma itself because of the temperatures and energies involved. In any case, the system is sealed and under pressure. With any rupture or failure, the tendency is for the plasma to violently escape with a force that does not allow contaminants to enter. There’s no reason to continuously analyze the makeup of the plasma. However, protocols call for a plasma sample to be extracted from the system and analyzed every twenty-four hours. It is uncertain why the contaminant was not detected during the last sampling before the ship’s destruction.”

“How did the contaminant get into the EPS system?”

“The Samson had been extensively modified as part of her testing program. Pulse phasers