The Red King - Michael A. Martin [120]
“Aye, Captain,” said the Pacifican conn officer. She turned her chair toward Riker and fixed him with an alarmed expression. “However, the phenomenon is expanding toward us quickly. It’s propagating directly through subspace at high warp—and it will overtake our present position in approximately three minutes at our present speed.”
“Noted, Ensign.” Riker spun his chair toward Jaza. “How about it? What will happen to Titan when this thing gets close enough to give us a good-morning hug?” he asked, though he already felt certain that lingering here was far from his best option.
“Unpredictable, Captain,” Jaza said, shaking his head. “But it’s definitely not an experiment I’d advise anyone to try.”
So I have slightly less than two minutes to decide whether or not to cut and run, Riker thought, facing forward and once again staring into what might have been the very maw of Hell itself. “Maintain present speed for now, Mr. Lavena. Mr. Jaza, Convoy status?”
The Bajoran answered with another glum shake of the head. “There’s no sign of them yet, Captain. There’s been no response to our hails, even on the navigational hazard data channel we’ve been maintaining with them since our departure from the Oghen system.”
The faces of friends and colleagues flashed unbidden before his mind’s eye. Chris. Keru. Tuvok. Frane, his friends, and some two million of Frane’s people and their former slaves.
Riker silently upbraided himself. Now wasn’t the time for grief, personal or otherwise. Even if the worst had befallen both Vanguard and Donatra’s escort fleet, there were still nearly three hundred others aboard Titan whose lives would depend on whatever he did, or failed to do, next.
He tapped his combadge. “Riker to engineering.”
“Ra-Havreii here, sir,” the designer-turned-chief-engineer said. He sounded utterly weary, but Riker couldn’t spare the time to ask him why.
“Commander, please tell me your engines can still give me warp six or better at a moment’s notice.”
“It was touch and go there for a while during the passage through the rift, Captain. But at the moment my warp drive is, as you humans sometimes say, willing, ready, and able.”
Riker heard a note of cheer enter Ra-Havreii’s voice, and it buoyed him. “That’s music to my ears, Commander. We may need to leave in a hurry, and very soon. Riker out.”
He stared at the main viewscreen, gazing into the roiling, expanding depths of the inexorably approaching Red King.
“ ‘May’ need to leave, Captain?” Akaar said, his voice a low, almost subterranean rumble.
Riker shot a hard glare at the admiral. “As Mr. Dakal just said, we don’t know what will happen if and when the Red King reaches us. But we also don’t know whether or not we’ll have another chance to recover the convoy, or even to find out what the hell happened to them, if we leave now.” Turning toward Dakal, he said, “Auxiliary power to the sensor web, Cadet. Mr. Jaza, keep searching every cubic meter of that energy cloud’s interior.”
“Understood, Captain.”
“Two minutes until contact,” Lavena said, sounding at least as nervous as she had on that long-ago evening in the embassy swimming pool on Pacifica. Riker realized then that he had to be more than a little overwrought himself, to be recalling that particular incident now, of all times.
The turbolift hissed open, drawing Riker’s attention long enough to allow him to see a weary-looking Deanna Troi step out onto the bridge. She quickly crossed to the chair at Riker’s left.
“You should be resting, Commander,” Riker said quietly, noticing the dark circles under her eyes. “Dr. Ree’s orders.” Now that the fate of Vanguard and everyone aboard her lay in the lap of the gods, he felt acutely guilty about the sense of relief he’d experienced when Ree had persuaded her to return to Titan.
She smiled crookedly, crossing her arms across her chest. “I tried, Captain. I only came up to complain about all the noise. What did