Star Trek_ Generations - J M. Dillard [12]
The three hurried to the turbolift as Demora said, Main Engineering reports fluctuations in the warp plasma relays.
Scott was on his feet before she finished speaking. Bypass the relays and go to auxiliary systems, he said, moving quickly toward the helm. Kirk gave him a swift, bemused glance that said, Werent you jabbing me in the ribs not two minutes ago …?
Scott wasted no time acknowledging it.
Sir. A skinny young lieutenant fresh from the Academy turned from the aft console with an air of panic. Im having trouble locking on to them. He gazed back at his board and shook his head with an expression of pure puzzlement. They appear to be in some sort of … temporal flux.
Scotty? Kirk called, but before he could turn to face his former engineer, Scott had left the helm and was standing beside the young lieutenant, frowning down at the console.
He let go a hiss of amazement. What the hell?
Kirk strode over to stand beside him; Scott angled his face toward his former captain without taking his gaze off the perplexing readout. Their life signs are … phasing in and out of our space-time continuum.
Phasing? Kirk asked. To where? He stared down at the board, but the data made no more sense than Scotts words.
Scott did not answer, but moved in to work the controls as the lieutenant gratefully moved aside.
Sir! the navigator cried, in a tone as electrifying as the sight on the screen. Their hulls collapsing!
For the second time, the energy tendril engulfed the doomed ship, like a great dazzling python squeezing its prey. As Kirk watched, the Lakul erupted into a fiery hail of spinning debris. He turned at once to Scott, whose eyes held the haggard, defeated look Kirk had come to dread so long ago.
I got forty-seven of them, Scott said softly, though in the sudden silence his words seemed to fill the entire bridge. His gaze dropped. Out of one hundred fifty.
No time to react with sorrow; the floor beneath Kirks feet heaved, hurling him against Harrimans chair. Somehow he managed to hold on, somehow reacted instinctively to the sound of shrieking metal by shielding his face with his forearm against the sudden rain of sparks and bulkhead fragments.
And then it was over just as quickly, and the ship righted itself with an abrupt hitch that almost made him lose his balance again. He lowered his arm and took in his surroundings; a scorched bulkhead, but no hull breach, as hed feared. No serious injuriesexcept the navigator, who lay sprawled across the console with terrible limpness, his eyes open, his head bloodied, his neck at such an impossible angle that Kirk did not need to check to know that he was dead.
Beside him, dull grief in her eyes, Demora sat stiffly, holding on to her console with white-lipped intensity.
Report! Kirk shouted over the klaxons howl, as Scott gently moved the dead man aside and took his place.
Demora drew in a visible, gathering breath. Were caught in a gravimetric field emanating from the trailing edge of the ribbon.
This time, Harriman needed no prompting, no advice.
All engines, full reverse!
THREE
Seconds earlier, aboard the Lakul, Tolian Soran sat cross-legged on the deck of the crowded passenger cabin and stared blankly up at the viewscreen, where the blazing ribbon thrashed through the night of space.
Unlike the others beside him, some silent with shock, others murmuring, weeping at the news that their sister ship had been destroyed, Soran did not fear the ribbon. Indeed, he welcomed it.
Since the first day he had been rescued by the Lakul, he had been gathering the strength to end his own life. He had been trying to do just thatsteering the lifepod into the Borgs death beams when he realized that Sadorah City, his home, Leandras home, was destroyed. His wife and children were dead, killed as he had watched, in safety and horror, from an off-planet observatory.
By pure chance, the fleeing Lakul had detected him, and beamed him aboardquite against his will. He was dead inside already of grief; he wished merely for his body to join his mind and family. But he had not been permitted.