Hawk spared a moment to kneel beside the captain, and felt for a pulse in his neck. He found one, though it was weak and thready. He wondered what would happen to the captain’s artificial heart if he were to remain exposed to the damaged engine’s tetryon emissions for much longer.
But that’ll be moot in a couple of seconds,he thought, if I don’t do something about that warbirdnow.
Seating himself in the pilot’s chair, Hawk shut down the visual and audio alarms to help himself concentrate. One indicator, attached to the computer’s memory buffer, continued flashing in an irregular pattern, and Hawk didn’t want to waste any more time trying to shut it down; it was easy enough to ignore.
Almost at once, he thought of a way to address two of his most immediate problems. Recalling a command sequence that Admiral Batanides had shown him once offhandedly just before the raid on the rebel compound, Hawk armed the warp‑core jettison system. Firing a thruster to reorient the ship, he engaged the core launcher.
The scoutship lurched as it loosed the core into space. Hawk watched the screen, which showed the scoutship’s cylindrical, green warp core arcing quickly toward the approaching warbird. But moments before impact, the warbird’s forward disruptor banks vaporized it. The small singularity that powered the core abruptly spent its energies in subspace. The warbird’s paint didn’t even appear to have been scratched.
Too bad. But at least the tetryon problem is solved.
Hawk watched as the warbird’s forward guns began glowing a dull red as they began powering up for another salvo. Absurdly, Hawk found his attention wandering to the computer memory‑buffer light, which persisted in its mindless, rhythmic flashing.
So this is it. I’ll never see Ranul again.
Captain Picard groaned and began trying to sit up. Hawk went to his side. “Try not to move, sir.”
“I’ll take your medical opinion under advisement, Lieutenant,” Picard said, pulling himself into the copilot’s seat. Hawk offered him a steadying hand.
“Ship’s status?” Picard said, looking Hawk in the eye.
“The warp drive is . . . gone. Completely,” Hawk said, with a touch of embarrassment. But now wasn’t the time for overly detailed explanations; what’s done is done. “We have only minimal impulse power and life‑support. Shields are down as well.”
“Then I gather that Data’s attempt to move the cloaking buoys hasn’t worked.” The screen showed that in the depths of space beyond the rapidly closing warbird, the subspace singularity’s hellish aspect remained unchanged.
Hawk swallowed hard as he watched the warbird grow larger on the screen. Seeing death make such a close approach lent an air of unreality to the entire situation. “I’m not even sure Data was able to transmit the signal before that last direct hit crippled him,” he said.
Picard looked across Hawk’s console at the one light that was flashing there. Reacting to the captain’s quizzical expression, the lieutenant explained what it was, and that he couldn’t shut it down.
Picard sat quietly staring at the light for several seconds as it pulsated. Long flashes alternated with shorter ones, though Hawk could discern no obvious pattern. “You’re right, Mr. Hawk,” Picard said finally. “Data hasn’tsent his transmission. But he hasmanaged to load it into the transmitter’s memory buffer.”
Hawk was puzzled. “How can you tell?”
“Because he just told me. Those flashes–it’s an oldstyle radio code. Morse, I believe it was called. Data is saying ‘transmit buffer data now.’ ”
Hawk’s eyes grew wide as he grasped the idea. Data had assembled the command sequences necessary to move the cloaking‑buoy network and thereby trigger the singularity abort–but his injuries had forced him to dump the command into the memory buffer before he’d been able to take it all the way through his subspace link to the Romulan array.
Hawk’s hands moved quickly across the console. He sighed with relief when he determined that the subspace channel he needed was still open.
“Transmitting,” Hawk said, slapping the final touchpad with his palm.
“Forward disruptor tube is fully charged, Commander,” said the Gal Gath’thong’s weapons officer. T’Veren watched with quiet anticipation as the young woman’s hand approached the firing toggle.
From across the central control room, the grizzled operations centurion spoke up, the customary steadiness missing from his voice. “Commander, something is happening on the security network’s outer periphery.”
The weapons officer paused in mid‑keystroke, and T’Veren’s diagonal eyebrows went horizontal with puzzlement.
“Has the cloaking field malfunctioned?” T’Veren said.
“It appears to have gone into a maintenance shutdown mode, sir.”
“What?”T’Veren roared in outrage. He knew this could only mean that the Apparatus that held the subspace singularity in check was now decloaked and visible. Such a thing should not have been allowed to happen–at least not prior to the Federation’s legally binding withdrawal from the Geminus Gulf.
“The field‑generation pods also seem to be . . . moving,”the decurion reported, sounding perplexed.
T’Veren struggled to keep his voice level. “Moving in what manner?”
“Inward, toward the Core’s containment facility itself. They have remained in formation, and are on a fast approach vector, heading toward the defense‑pod network.”
“The defense pods are becoming active!” the helmsman said excitedly, the crippled scoutship now all but forgotten.
“Tactical!” T’Veren shouted. He wanted a clear picture of what happened as the middle‑level defenses protected the Core from this apparent systems glitch.
On the screen, a tactical diagram appeared, showing the outer spherical array of cloaking generators as it swiftly contracted. Inside that sphere lay a second, stationary globe, composed of hundreds of small but heavily armed defense pods. T’Veren noted that the synchronized collapse of the outer sphere of cloaking generators was accelerating.
T’Veren watched in mute astonishment as the two spheres merged briefly; a moment later, the shrinking cloaking array had contracted so much that it slipped insidethe stationary defense‑pod network. The cloaking devices continued moving in formation, heading even faster toward the Core Containment Apparatus itself.
“Defense pods are turning inward and acquiring target locks,” the centurion said breathlessly. “They are taking aim on the cloaking‑field generators!”
T’Veren felt a rush of cold terror rush up his spine as he realized the full implications of what was happening.
“They’re about to fire directly into the Core,” he said, feeling utterly numb and helpless.
Hawk pointed the scoutship away from both the warbird and the singularity, pushing the single impulse engine to the limit. He was mildly surprised to note that the warbird was not in pursuit; in the condition the scout’s propulsion system was in, they wouldn’t have been at all difficult to overtake.
On the forward viewer, Hawk saw several of the cloaking buoys streak by the scoutship, looking like stars as seen from a vessel passing them at high warp.
“Let’s have a look at Commander Data’s handiwork, Mr. Hawk,” Picard said. His voice was strong, though he looked pale and drawn; Hawk chalked it up to a lingering effect of whatever the engine core’s tetryon burst had done to the captain’s artificial heart.
Hawk switched the forward viewer to a reverse angle, displaying what now lay aft of the withdrawing scoutship. On the screen, dozens of vessels, most of them small scouts and shuttles, dived and swooped to evade salvos from the spherical formation of stationary weapons pods, which were unleashing uncounted fusillades of disruptor fire in the general direction of the singularity’s containment equipment. At the facility’s core, away from the worst of the fighting, the singularity’s accretion disk glowed with a preternaturally angry brilliance, like some ancient war god enjoying blood sports being staged in its honor.