“I threaten you, Doctor!” It was Pava sh’Aqabaa, whose phaser was drawn. “Now put the commander down so I can shoot you, throw your fat tail in the brig, and talk this out reasonably.”
“No need to be rude!” the doctor snarled, knocking the phaser aside faster than Ogawa could see and striking Pava down with a sweep of his large, elongated muzzle. “Apologies, but I cannot spare the time!” he called back as he resumed his flight down the corridor. “Alyssa, see to them, will you?”
“We’re fine!” Denken gasped. “Go after them! Do…something.”
Alyssa hit her combadge. “Ogawa to transporter room. Beam the security team at this location directly to sickbay.” She looked them over briefly before resuming the chase. Sorry, but I have two other patients to take care of. Maybe three.
But there was one thing she had to take care of first. Tapping her combadge as she ran, she called, “Ogawa to Noah Powell.”
“Noah here,”came the reply after a moment. “Mom, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, honey. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m not hurt, Mom. We’re with T’Pel—Totyarguil and me. He was crying, but she calmed him down. She’s good at that.”
“That’s good.”
“Mom? You sound like you’re running.”
“I’m…pretty busy right now, Noah.”
“I understand. You probably have people to take care of. You should go do that.”
Her eyes stung. “I appreciate it, sweetheart. You keep yourself safe, okay? I love you.”
“You too, Mom. See you later.”
“I promise, honey. Ogawa out.”
She wanted to say more, but there was no time. Ree had led her to the shuttlebay, and she caught up with him at the entrance of the Horne: Titan’s new Flyer-class heavy shuttle, a midsized craft based on the Delta Flyerdesign created by the crew of Voyager. Ree confronted her at the hatch, apparently having already strapped Deanna in. “Stay out of this, Alyssa! I will do whatever I must to protect this child.”
Despite Ree’s fearsome dinosaur-like aspect and predatory habits, Alyssa had never once been afraid of him—until now. For the first time, she looked into his eyes and knew that he could kill her without hesitation.
But she had patients—she couldn’t hesitate either. She met his gaze evenly and held up her medkit. “If you’re going to deliver her safely, you need a nurse,” she said in a voice remarkably free of tremolo.
Holding her gaze for a moment, he then stepped back and let her in. Her thoughts were of Noah as she entered; she hated herself for leaving him. But he was in good hands, and he was wise beyond his years. He would understand.
If I come back,she answered herself. If I don’t…if he has to go through that again…She forced the thought down. Well, I’ll just have to make sure I come back.
She saw that Ree had torn out the pilot’s seat to make room for his large, nonhumanoid frame. “Make sure she is secured in the aft compartment,” he said as she entered. “Our departure is likely to be turbulent.”
“Can you prevent the launch?” Vale demanded.
Keru’s heavy fingers worked his console. “The systems are still too damaged, but I may not have to. The door mechanisms are still…” He broke off as a faint shudder went through the deck.
“Report!” Vale snapped.
“That was the shuttlebay depressurizing. He shot his way out. He’s clear.”
Vale knew that Titanwould be in no condition to go to warp for days. “Send the shuttles after it.”
“The Horne’s the fastest shuttle we have,” Keru said. An indicator on his console bleeped, and he looked down at it and sighed. “And it’s just gone to warp.”
At times like this, Christine Vale hated Will Riker for fast-tracking her into a first officer’s post. It was so much easier when she was just a lieutenant waiting for Riker and Captain Picard to make the decisions and tell her what to do. They made it look so easy.
But now, half her ship’s systems were failing, its orbit was unstable, the ship’s CMO had just abducted the captain’s wife and unborn child, and the captain himself was missing in a planet-sized ocean with no safe harbors. Which absolutely urgent crisis took priority over the others?
No—Vale knew that wasn’t the problem. The priorities were actually quite clear. Living with them would be the hard part.
“We must go after them.” It was Tuvok, just back to the bridge from sickbay and still looking rather shaky. She doubted Onnta had released him voluntarily, but only Ree had ever been able to keep him in sickbay when he was determined to leave. Obviously not an option now. “Ree must stop somewhere, sooner or later. He is seeking a safe haven in which to deliver the child. He cannot do that while piloting a shuttle at high warp. Once he stops, we can catch him.”
In fact, Tuvok’s sentences were not delivered in a single block like that, but interpolated between Vale’s rapid-fire orders to the engineering and repair crews, squeezed in when she paused for breath. Sure, every instinct in her body, as a woman and former cop, was screaming at her, Save that baby at all costs!But she had three hundred and fifty other lives depending on her right now, including two other children, one not even old enough to walk. And those three hundred and fifty lives needed their captain.
“We need the shuttles to search for Riker and Lavena,” she told him when she could spare a moment. Titan’s sensors would be useless even if they weren’t damaged; the impact had sent a shroud of dust and vaporized ocean spreading over the planet, and the minerals in the dust still blocked sensors as well as they ever had, an effect made even worse by the intense static charges in the cloud. And the haze made optical imaging from orbit useless as well.