The Murdered Sun - Christie Golden [7]
"Ahead warp two, Mr. Paris," she ordered. "Mr. Kim, prepare to record a message."
"Aye, Captain," came the two youthful male voices, almost in chorus, as they set about following her orders. "Ready, Captain," said Kim an instant later.
Janeway did not rise, but she did sit up straighter. "This is Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager to any Akerian vessel in the area of this transmission. We come in peace"--for all mankind she thought, feeling a surge of pride at the remembrance of those powerful words that, even today, still graced the surface of Earth's moon--"and have no conflict with anyone in this sector. Please respond. Let us open a dialogue."
She nodded to Kim, who nodded his own dark head in acknowledgment.
"Message recorded, Captain."
"Broadcast every two minutes on all frequencies." She rose, sighed softly, and turned to Chakotay. "Commander, you have the bridge. Call me when we're within visual range of the wormhole.
I'll be in my ready room," she said, smiling slightly, "with a hot pot of coffee."
***
She wanted a Danish, too, very badly, but contented herself with a strong cup of hot black java. She inhaled the scent, sighed, and smiled. One needed the little luxuries every now and then, she had found.
Janeway took a sip of the hot brew and sat down at her desk. She recorded a brief log of the situation, citing their heading and incorporating images of each piece of debris that floated within visual range. Later analysis might prove useful.
She had finished the first cup and was debating splurging on a second when there came a beep at her door. "Come," she called.
The door hissed open, and Tuvok stood in the entrance, his hands folded behind his back, his impassive face betraying nothing.
Only the slight hesitation in his wording alerted Janeway to possible problems.
"We have reached the vicinity of the... concavity, Captain."
Concavity? thought Janeway. Nothing more specific? Not wormhole nor black hole? No time for a second cup now. Adrenaline would provide any energy she needed. Janeway hit her comm badge.
"Janeway to Neelix. Meet me on the bridge at once."
The first thing she perceived was that her crew was to a man, still and silent, staring at the screen--even Chakotay and Tuvok, who had, like her, seen many wondrous and fascinating sights.
lmost at once she froze in midstride as well, riveted by the awesome sight that greeted her.
The spatial distortion--to use Tuvok's carefully neutral and scientifically accurate term, the concavity--was enormous. It did indeed look like a black hole, but far and away the biggest one she'd ever heard of. It devoured almost half of the screen space--a huge pit of eternal, starless night, haloed by a gorgeous display of purple, red, blue, and yellow dust and matter that formed the swirling accretion disk. Every few seconds, there would be a bright eruption from the inside, a brief fountain of gaseous matter spewed out into space like a geyser.
A lively imagination might have anthropomorphized the concavity into a celestial monster, feeding on a flow of bright energy that it seemed to be sucking from the system's sun. The sun itself appeared to be in the later stages of its starry life. It was enormous, swollen, emanating an angry, orange-red hue--almost at the stage known as a red giant.
The eight planets that ringed it seemed pitifully small and vulnerable in comparison to the turgid, dying star.
Beautiful and awe inspiring, certainly, but Janeway quickly redirected her attention to more practical matters. "Distance from the accretion disk?" asked the captain, never taking her eyes from the screen.
"We are presently 0.8 light-years away from the concavity," replied Tuvok, his head bent over his console.
"Then I hope that I'm seeing a magnification here."
"Aye, Captain, four-db magnification."
"What kind of pull