The Red King - Michael A. Martin [46]
Donatra shrugged. “Even if we were to accept this incredible story at face value, it would provide us with only one thing: yet another good reason to hasten our departure for Romulan space.”
Troi had to admit that the Romulan commander had just made an excellent point.
“If we understood the mechanics of emerging protouniverses better, I’d say you were right,” Dr. Cethente said, his synthetic, wind-chime-like voice slightly startling Titan’s guests, but only for a moment. “But we don’t currently understand this process very well at all. The damage this protouniverse will cause as it fully forms will no doubt be widespread.”
“Again, a damned good reason to get out of here,” Dekri said. “Now.”
Cethente chuckled, a sound like winter icicles falling from the poinciana trees at Lake Cataria. “And that might also be a fine way to spread that damage back to Romulan space.”
“And perhaps far beyond,” Jaza said.
“How can you possibly know that?” Tchev said, jabbing a thick finger toward the Bajoran. “You don’t witness the births of these so-called ‘protouniverses’ every day.”
“No,” Jaza said, his patient, level tone calming everyone somewhat. “But Starfleet personnel accidentally brought a very similar phenomenon into the Bajor sector from the Gamma Quadrant about ten years ago. That protouniverse threatened to destroy both Deep Space 9 and the Celestial Temp—” He caught himself, and paused for a moment before continuing. “—the Bajoran wormhole, until DS9’s crew safely relocated the phenomenon.”
Dekri threw her hands in the air. “Why don’t we simply do something like that? Transplant this thing. Hook on a couple of tractor beams and drag it back to wherever it came from in the first place.”
“I’m afraid this particular protouniverse is already at far too advanced a stage of development for that approach to work,” Jaza said, shaking his head sadly. “If we were to attempt to move it with a tractor beam, we might well accelerate its spread. Or create another chaotic energy interaction just like the one that brought us all here in the first place.”
“What if we had more power?” Will asked. “Say, the amount of power that could be generated by all of Commander Donatra’s missing ships?”
“That would give us considerably more options,” Jaza said. “With a couple of dozen warp fields operating in tandem, we might be able to coax the protouniverse back across the rift and into the same extradimensional space where it formed in the first place.”
“But we don’t even know where my ships are,” said Donatra. “We might or might not recover them. So unless it would somehow jeopardize our ability to use the rift to return home, we may well have no option other than simply destroying this thing.”
“Good answer,” Tchev grunted. Troi surmised that the Klingon captain took personally the severe damage the rift had inflicted on his ship, and that he wasn’t above taking a bit of revenge. “A brace of Titan’s quantum torpedoes ought to be ideally suited to the task.”
Jaza and Pazlar exchanged worried glances, and the Bajoran then busied himself by restoring the holographic image of the colorful spatial rift, its bright energy tendrils slowly rotating in the space above the center of the conference table in place of the defunct planet.
“Maybe, or maybe not,” Jaza said. Troi noticed that his emotional aura was growing increasingly jangled as he appeared to consider the risks of poking and prodding the phenomenon. “The truth is, we don’t know what effect destroying an emerging protouniverse would have on the rift itself. Or on the space that contains