The Red King - Michael A. Martin [81]
“The refugees are going to be very distraught, Will. They’ll need my help as well,” Deanna said, her dark eyes wide, her tone urgent. It occurred to him that the fear radiating from the planet must have been close to crippling. She soldiered on anyway.
Riker nodded and Troi rose, striding toward the turbolift, which Vale and Tuvok had already reached.
The doors opened, and Jaza stepped out onto the bridge, followed by Ensign Norellis and Dr. Cethente. The Syrath astrophysicist’s four baroquely jointed legs moved his tapered, tentacled, dome-headed body forward with surprising speed and grace.
“We may have finally found a workable solution to our Red King problem, Captain,” Jaza said, sounding almost ebullient as he handed a padd over the railing down to Riker. “It will involve taking action in the immediate vicinity of the spatial rift. And it will have to be done soon.”
Riker felt real delight at the genuine hope he perceived in the voice and manner of the science specialists. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but feel cautious just now about entire concept of hope. But as he glanced at the padd’s table of contents hope began to seize him in spite of himself.
And he couldn’t ignore the most immediate problem that faced Titan and her crew. “We’re nearly two days away from the Red King’s entry point at maximum warp, Mr. Jaza. Even if we were to head back there this minute—and that’s assuming your plan will work—the people stuck on Oghen now wouldn’t stand a chance of survival. Am I right?”
Jaza nodded, grim reality dialing down his earlier enthusiasm quite a bit. Norellis looked subdued as well.
“I agree,” Cethente said, in a voice like rows of tiny crystalline bells. “Our first priority remains rescuing as many people as possible from that planet below.”
Once again, Riker’s eyes drifted to the viewscreen. The irregularly shaped, shadow-cloaked satellite continued to grow larger.
And more familiar.
Turning toward Frane, Riker pointed at the approaching chunk of rock and nickel-iron. “Do you recognize that object, Mr. Frane?”
Still staring at the apocalypse, the Neyel seemed to have drifted into an almost catatonic state. He roused himself a moment later, only after Riker had repeated his name.
“That is Holy Vangar, of course,” Frane said in a near whisper. “The legacy of the Oh-Neyel People to all the Neyel who came after them.”
Though the object in question remained mostly in darkness, Riker saw a look of recognition cross Akaar’s features at that moment. Tuvok’s eyebrows lofted higher than Riker had ever seen them go.
“Vanguard,” both men said in perfect synchrony.
Of course, Riker thought. They were both aboard Excelsior when Vanguard was found.
He recalled from Excelsior’s reports that the lost O’Neill colony known as Vanguard—a self-contained terrestrial environment fashioned from a hollowed-out asteroid during the tumultuous first half of the twenty-first century—had been left parked in orbit about Oghen by the human ancestors of the Neyel. It was high enough so that its orbit had not yet been altered significantly by the long-term effects of upper atmospheric drag.
“Eviku. Tuvok. Scan that satellite. You’ll find that it’s hollow. I need to know if it’s spaceworthy.”
“It seems to be heavily shielded, Captain,” Eviku said. “There’s a lot of nickel-iron throughout the outer layers, as well as a fair percentage of other dense refractory metals, which make scanning difficult. But it appears to contain a significant internal atmosphere.”
One of the millennia-old aphorisms of Sun Tzu, whose works Riker had read thoroughly during his second year at the Academy, returned to him unbidden: “With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?”
Tuvok crossed back to the tactical station, which was positioned only a few meters from the turbolift doors. “The Vanguard colony is approximately ten kilometers long,” he said, his composure once again recovered and unassailable. “Its girth measures about three kilometers at its widest point.”
“Life signs?” Riker asked.
“None discernible