The Red King - Michael A. Martin [40]
She wondered how long it would be before they actually met one of the Neyel, and if the Neyel had continued to evolve past what old Starfleet records had shown them to be eighty years ago.
Riker tugged at his beard absentmindedly, studying the numbers and graphics that scrolled down both sides of the main viewscreen.
He didn’t like to give up, but they’d been scanning for other vessels for almost a day now, and they hadn’t found any yet. The interspatial anomaly was still interfering with the ship’s sensors, and they’d found no trace of the Valdore or any of the rest of the missing Romulan fleet that Donatra had sought when she had requested Titan’s assistance near the phenomenon she called “the Great Bloom.”
“Ensign Lavena, let’s put another five hundred kilometers between us and the anomaly,” he said, “Mr. Dakal, continue scanning for other vessels. Maybe our sensors will be more effective once we’re out of range of the worst of its subspace interference.”
He turned to his right, where his executive officer sat. Vale looked up at him expectantly, lifting her gaze from the chair-mounted padd console on which she had been studying various readings.
“The bridge is yours, Commander,” Riker said. “I’ll be in my ready room. Call me when you have some good news.”
As he strode toward the doors of his sanctum, he hoped that his final phrase had sounded optimistic enough. Not “if” there’s good news. “When.”
He felt a familiar presence.
It was a warm red splashed across the dark canvas of his consciousness.
Other colors had been there before, but he subsumed them.
Turned them dark.
Pushed them away.
Solitude was comforting.
But the red splashed, again and again.
STARDATE 57026.4
Returning to the bridge after the recent accidental collision with the Reman ship had been a bit of an embarrassment to Aili Lavena. After all, the shielded face mask of her hydration suit had cracked when she’d been flung from her chair and onto the bridge deckplates. The resultant rupture hadn’t caused her any permanent harm, though the Selkie conn officer had been forced to spend almost her entire subsequent shift recuperating, first in sickbay, and later in her own water-filled quarters. Even now, the twin gill-crests that ran along her cranium ached slightly, though they steadily continued to heal.
The particular suit she wore now didn’t fit her quite as well as the damaged one had, and she found herself unconsciously fidgeting as she sat at her station. She hoped the others hadn’t noticed. Instinctively, she was aware that the loud sloshing sounds that her self-contained liquid environment made all around her as she moved were virtually inaudible even to those nearest to her. Still, the noises made her a bit uncomfortable and more than a little selfconscious at being the only water-breather living and working aboard Titan.
Quit gretzing, Aili, she thought, gently scolding herself. You wanted a bridge job, you got a bridge job. If you’re unhappy, go be a sepkinalorian, like your fourteen siblings. She shuddered. That job was mind-numbing, and she suspected she’d rather be a meal for Dr. Ree than return to Pacifica and its expectations of mundanity.
Seated at her immediate right, Cadet Zurin Dakal scowled down at the screen of his ops control panel.
“What is it, Zurin?” Lavena asked.
“I’m getting some strange readings here. Really strange.”
Lavena tapped her own console, and the screen before her filled with a myriad of numbers and sine-rhythms. She studied them for a moment, then turned back toward