The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [18]
“Yes,” Worf said. “Some cultures have called them that. Such weapons are specialized nuclear devices that are jacketed with a substance—sometimes cobalt—that pulverizes when exposed to the detonation of the parent device. The substance turns highly radioactive and disperses throughout the ecosystem of the target area. The radioactive agent has a very long half-life. The many such devices dropped on the planet in question were clearly intended to sterilize it.”
“But they didn’t succeed in ridding that world of all life,” Rikkadar guessed.
“Not entirely,” Data told him. “Some lower lifeforms did survive the bombardment. The planetary biosphere is stabilizing, but extremely slowly.”
“There are no people there, however,” Rikkadar said.
“No, sir,” Data confirmed. “There are no people there.”
“So how do you know what you say you know?” Kerajem asked.
“We analyzed those lower lifeforms quite thoroughly,” Picard told him. “Our studies showed that those lifeforms, and you, evolved from the very same source.”
“So we are really from the third planet of that star?” Klerran asked in wonder.
Picard paused, then carefully continued. “That is what we believe.”
Rikkadar’s eyes were wide and shining with tears. “The homeworld,” the old man breathed. “That third planet must have been the homeworld.”
“I wouldn’t want to draw any rash conclusions from this story,” Kerajem said.
“It is just as the ancients wrote,” Rikkadar continued, not hearing him. “‘The homeworld was cleansed by fire and storm in payment for sin, and few escaped.’”
“There must be some other explanation,” Jemmagar said uncertainly. “There must be.”
“Can we have been so wrong?” Rikkadar said, almost to himself. “Can we have been so desperately wrong about everything?”
Picard sneaked a look at Troi, who shrugged just enough for him to see. She looked as puzzled as he.
“We will speak more of this later,” Kerajem said distractedly. He looked out the window and saw that they were flying over the capital city. “I see we’re approaching Government House,” the First Among Equals said. “We hope you and your officers will feel at home, Captain.”
“I am quite sure we will, Kerajem,” Picard replied, and he tried very hard to sound as if he meant it.
The Enterprise bridge routine had settled back into something approaching deadly dull. Will Riker was in the command chair. As per Picard’s orders, he was maintaining yellow alert status, but everything that needed to be done about that had long since been done.
Ensign Ro was handling both Ops and Flight Control in Data’s absence. Aside from a visual and systems check every ten minutes, Ro was letting the automatics do their job of maintaining standard orbit. She was much busier doing something else. Sector by sector, almost cubic meter by cubic meter, Ro was directing the ship’s sensors in an almost unimaginably thorough and dogged sweep of the Ma’ak Indawe system. She was determined to find the source of the warp-field blips that had originally attracted their attention.
There was still no sign of what might have caused them. Instead, she found something else.
“Commander?” Ro called. “I have been going through recent sensor logs. Fifty-three minutes ago, we picked up a brief energy blip of some sort. I’m working on an analysis.”
Commander Riker rose from the center seat. “Where away?” he asked as he walked forward.
“Well outsystem from here, sir,” Ro said as her fingers flew across the Ops panel. “Somewhere just inside the orbit of planet five. I’m trying to narrow it down. I can already tell you the latest blip had nothing to do with warp-field generation, though. This is something else, something in another spectrum entirely.”
Riker stood behind Ro and leaned forward a bit to look over her shoulder at the Ops display. “Nothing out of the ordinary there now,” he said. “Let’s get a visual of the area in question.”
“Yes, sir.” Ro rapidly hit a series of controls, and the real-time view of Nem Ma’ak Bratuna from orbit swam dizzily and was quickly replaced by a static starfield. “That