The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [27]
“Excellent,” Picard said. “Let’s see them.”
The view of the Krann armada disappeared and was replaced by a visual of a single ship. “This is full magnification, sir,” Worf said.
The ship was a vast, spindly looking cage, inside of which were contained a large number of spinning spheres of various sizes. Each sphere was rotating on an axis attached to the cage. There was an array of conical shapes on the sunward side of the cage.
“It looks like a bunch of big balloons caught in a net,” Riker said.
“A clockwork starship,” Picard said. “Incredible. Each sphere must represent an independent environment.”
“Why are they spinning?” Troi wondered.
“Artificial gravity, I should think,” said the captain. “It’s an old idea. The acceleration of spin on the inside surface of each sphere would substitute nicely for a gravity field.”
“This ship is fifteen to twenty times larger than we are,” Worf reported, “and it is the largest ship I can detect. Those conelike objects to sunward appear to be engine outlets. They are putting out large streams of hot ions. That must be how they decelerate, Captain.”
“The outlets are up front?” Troi asked.
“That’s where you’d expect to see them on a ship of this type during deceleration, Counselor,” Picard said. “The outlets would be opposite the direction of flight.”
“I can see what must be radiative fins here and there,” Riker commented. “There are a good many of them. They must carry internal heat away from the core of the ship and allow it to leak very slowly into vacuum. All the heat is wasted to space. This suggests that the Krann can’t do anything about entropy except to succumb to it. I’ve seen designs like this—ancient ones that were drawn up before the development of warp drive. It was back when the old Earth nations were contemplating sending colony ships to the star systems nearest Sol. They came up with kludges like this one.”
“The hull seems to be festooned with gadgets,” Troi said. “Those over there look very much like sensor dishes.”
“I’ll bet that’s just what they are,” Riker said. “The sensor dish is about as basic a design as you can get. Related designs go all the way back to the nineteenth century on Earth. Mr. Worf, let’s see some other ships.”
“Aye, sir,” the Klingon replied. The view shifted, and three smaller Krann vessels appeared on screen.
“The same thing,” Troi observed, “only smaller. Fewer spheres inside the cages.”
“There are much smaller ships as well,” Worf told them. He worked the Tactical panel for a moment, and the scene changed yet again. Now framed in the center of the screen was a small, boxy spacecraft that looked not unlike a Starfleet shuttlecraft of the previous century. “This one appears to be a personnel transport vessel, Captain—small, chemically powered, not much in the way of energy reserves, and no detectable weaponry. I’m reading a complement of seven aboard, and all bear the same life signs. With your permission, Captain, I will provisionally log these readings as representative of the Krann race, and I will add them to our database.”
“Make it so,” Picard said, “and put the long-range view back on screen. Ro, how far are the lead Krann vessels from Nem Ma’ak Bratuna?”
“I’m sorting the forward vessels out, sir—ah. The lead wave of the Krann fleet is presently located eight hundred million kilometers from standard orbit at Nem Ma’ak Bratuna. That’s just outside the orbit of the fifth planet in this system, sir. These leading elements of the Krann fleet are presently traveling at a speed of just under four thousand kilometers per second and are decelerating under power at a constant one gravity of boost. They will arrive at Nem Ma’ak Bratuna in four days, sixteen hours. Elements of the fleet toward the rear seem to be changing course and speed, however.”
“Where are they going?” Picard asked. “Worf?”
“They are forming an attack pattern, sir, to center on Nem Ma’ak Bratuna,” the Klingon replied. “It is similar to the classic Brunckhorst pincer movement, but the Krann are going about forming the pincer very slowly.