Taking Wing - Michael A. Martin [137]
“You’re welcome,” Riker said to the screen before tapping his combadge. “Riker to bridge.”
“Vale here, Captain.”
“Change of plans, Commander. We have to make best speed for the spatial anomaly we observed on our way here. I want us under way in five minutes. Please coordinate our departure with Commander Donatra’s staff aboard the Valdore. They’ll be leading the way.”
“May I ask what this is all about?”
He tapped a string of commands into his console. “I’m sending the recording of my conversation with Donatra up to my ready room. Once you review it, you’ll know as much as Commander Troi and I do.”
“I’m all over it, sir. Vale out.”
He turned to face Deanna. Taking her hands, he said, “Seems to me we won’t be needed on the bridge until Titan reaches the rift.”
“And how long will that take?” she asked.
He performed a rough calculation in his head. “At least a couple of hours.”
With a sultry smile, she pulled him directly toward the bedroom.
The rift’s most striking feature, Riker thought, was its color. Or rather, its colors. Great loops of energetic orange and iridescent green stretched for hundreds of kilometers from the rift’s invisible core, twisting and entwining themselves about the phenomenon that Donatra had called the Great Bloom. On the bridge’s wide central viewer, Riker could see the sea-green hull of Donatra’s warbird limned in the glow.
“Keep us at station, Mr. Bolaji,” Riker said. “Five hundred klicks from the event horizon.”
“Aye, sir,” replied Chief Axel Bolaji, as he entered a string of commands into the conn station. He was helping fill in for Ensign Lavena while she recuperated in the aquatic environment of her quarters; Lavena had become dangerously dehydrated when her suit had ruptured during the battle over Romulus. “Keeping station.”
“I am still detecting tachyon emissions indicative of a nearby cloaked ship,” said Tuvok, who already looked a good deal healthier than he had during the recent Romulan-Reman skirmish.
“It must be one of Khegh’s ships,” Deanna said.
Riker nodded. “The Klingons certainly would have noticed the Valdore approaching us, even if they couldn’t eavesdrop on our conversation with Donatra. And our early departure from Romulus must have made them even more curious.”
“The Klingons must be counting on the rift’s energy discharges to help hide their presence from us,” Vale said. “Lucky for us they underestimated our new sensor nets.”
“There’s a terrific quantity of energy here, Captain,” said Jaza. When he had heard that Titan was going to get right up close to the rift he had until now been forced to admire from afar, he had come straight to the bridge, insistent upon relieving his gamma-shift counterpart at the science console. “And the intense background radiation signature I’m reading confirms the phenomenon’s probable origin: the detonation of the Scimitar’s thalaron device.”
“Can the sensors image anything at the rift’s center?” Vale asked, seated in the chair at Riker’s immediate right. She seemed as eager as Riker was to avoid dwelling on the thalaron weapon that had killed Data.
“Not yet, Commander,” said Cadet Dakal. “I’m going to increase the gain.” Dakal touched his console, entering a command.
Hell unleashed itself at that precise moment. The placid, glowing tendrils of energy that surrounded the rift’s event horizon suddenly crackled with agitation, like the tentacles of some legendary kraken preparing to strike at its prey. Then the viewscreen was awash in blinding light for an instant, just before the bridge was plunged into absolute stygian darkness.
For a timeless interval, Riker thought he had ceased to exist. The ship’s gravity seemed to have failed along with the lights, and he felt as though he were plunging in freefall through an infinite void.
His command chair grew comfortably solid beneath him, and the sensation of weightless disorientation gradually passed as the dim red emergency lighting kicked in. Alarm klaxons blared. Mercifully, Vale ordered them silenced.
“Ship’s status?” he shouted, then turned