Their computer had filtered the bulk of the alarm klaxons out of the message and drastically dampened the rest, but Riker knew a Yellow Alert when he saw one.
“Answer her,” said Riker.
“We have been trying, Captain,” said Tuvok. The distortion in this region…”
“Is the Orishan vessel aware of them?”
“No, sir,” said the Vulcan. “They seem entirely focused on destroying Titan.”
“Catastrophic shield failure in one hour, fifty-five minutes,”said the computer. Though they weren’t ignoring it exactly, the computer voice counting off the time until their demise in five-minute intervals had quickly become little more than background noise.
“What’s Charon’s location?” said Riker.
“Local conditions prevent our getting an exact fix,” said Tuvok. “However, she appears to be in close proximity to the space once occupied by the planet Orisha.”
Suddenly, as they watched, the image of Charon’s bridge flickered spasmodically, cycling through the color spectrum and spitting out a burst of static over the audio channel. When the image righted itself, things had changed on the other ship.
Charonwas at Red Alert now, with emergency warnings screaming and flashing all around and her entire bridge suffused with the same scarlet glow.
“Tuvok,” said Riker. “What the hell just happened?”
“Unknown, sir,” said the Vulcan. “ Charonis close to the center of the flux effect. It is likely these conditions are more pronounced there.”
Captain Fortis, unaware that she was still broadcasting, gave precise unemotional commands to her officers, commands Riker found distressingly familiar.
“We’ll have to eject the core manually,”she said to someone unseen. “And send casualties to the auxiliary medical bay on deck five. Those systems are still up.”
“Brace for another wave,”said the big Orion, and before anyone could react, it hit. As the bridge crew held on for dear life, several of the visible control stations exploded or went dark.
Captain Fortis was knocked to the floor by the body of one of her officers who had been too slow to anchor herself. Casualty and damage reports flooded in, and Fortis fielded each one with an almost Vulcanesque resolve as she climbed to her feet.
Riker felt his respect for her increase exponentially as he watched her calmly but firmly prod her people to keep focused, to do the necessary work to get the ship to safety.
“I don’t care if you have to blow a hole in the bulkhead and shove it through, Matis,”she said to her very distressed chief engineer. “Get that warp core off my ship before-”
She was cut off by another flickering of the screen, another cycling through the color spectrum. Riker wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear someone screaming under the static.
It was horrible enough not being able to let Charonknow her sister vessel was close and could see her predicament if nothing else. Being forced to impotently sit and watch their distress was intolerable to Will Riker. His mind raced. There had to be something they could do to help.
“Forget about talking to them,” he said, nearly coming out of his seat. “Narrow-cast Titan’s shield and code modifications directly to their main memory core.”
“Attempting to comply, Captain,” said Tuvok. “Local flux conditions prevent-”
“Deep water!” Lavena’s gasp cut off the rest of Tuvok’s complaint, and as the image on the screen resolved itself, the rest of the bridge crew knew why.
Charon’s bridge was in a shambles, a destroyed mirror image of Titan’s own. The only illumination came from three monitor screens at the science and tactical stations behind the captain’s chair. The screens themselves displayed only fields of static. The dark silhouettes of the dead or comatose members of the bridge crew lay draped over consoles, slumped unnaturally in the turbolift entrance, or pinned beneath a piece of exploded equipment.
For a moment nothing moved, and Riker began to suspect that the emergency broadcast had only been triggered by some barely active section of the ship’s dying computer system.
Then, with an ugly, gurgling moan, Charon’s captain lurched into view, hauling herself back into her chair and fixing the viewer with her frosty blue gaze.
“This is Captain Bellatora Fortis, of-”she stopped, the breath seemingly obstructed by something broken in her chest. “Of the Federation Starship Charon. We have encountered a-we don’t know what it is-a region of extreme temporal flux and randomized-”She coughed into her fist, and there was blood on her hand when she moved it away again. “My crew are mostly dead. Evacuation protocols were ineffective. Charon is being consumed, torn apart, by the conditions in this region. My science officer-”
Fortis glanced off to her left at something not visible from this angle. For a moment her mask of perfect calm shattered and her terrible grief showed through.
“Me paenitet,”she said softly. “Formidolose me paenitet.”
In addition to everything else, the translation matrixes were obviously malfunctioning. No one on Titanneeded the help. Charonwas done. Fortis knew it and so did they.
The image spasmed as Charonwas hit by another powerful jolt. Fortis winced, grimacing as she was forced to grip the arms of her chair to maintain her upright position.
When the shaking subsided and she turned back to the viewer, her mask had returned. If one could ignore the blood on her face and the carnage all around her, it was easy to see the slender patrician woman taking her ease in some lecture hall or at the symphony instead of captaining the graveyard her ship had become.
“I am using the time we have to broadcast the required warning messages to prevent this happening to another ship,”she said. “Our nearest sister vessel isTitan, captained by William Riker. I ask that any sentients who receive and understand this message communicateCharon ’s fate to him. We believe this dangerous phenomenon to be expanding. If so, the consequences for any life-forms in its path are…”She faltered again and recovered. “This was not the result of an attack or any hostile action by any species known or unknown. It is simply our fate. I am Bellatora Fortis, daughter of Atheus and Cerisan. Parata mori sum. Fortunam meam complexo.”
There was another rainbow flash, accompanied by a short burst of static, and then the screen went black. It seemed an eternity of silence followed, during which time on Titanstood still.
“Catastrophic shield failure in one hour, fifty minutes,”said Titan’s computer.
“ Charonis gone, sir,” said Tuvok. “I cannot establish a sensor lock.”
“What was that we just saw?” Bohn asked, trying to come back to the situation at hand rather than dwell on all those deaths. “Some sort of time-delay glitch in the broadcast?”
“I don’t think so,” said Lavena slowly. “I think it was live.”
“It was, Ensign,” said Tuvok.
“But how can that be, sir?” said Bohn. “We came here looking for Charon, didn’t we? She only just got here.”