“No wonder they haven’t sent any ships to harass us,” Riker said as the Neyel Coreworld displayed its many scars, most of which were apparently of very recent origin. The land masses on the planet’s night side had been dominated by countless fires as panic spread and the cities emptied. Columns of smoke rose like soiled pillars in the spreading daylight, reminding Riker of photographs he had seen of Earth’s Third World War.
Working at the aft tactical station, Tuvok pulled up enhanced images of the planet’s surface, displaying them as insets in the viewscreen’s corners, superimposing them over the view of the planet as seen from orbit. The Vulcan’s efforts yielded a dispiriting pageant of burning cities, panicked, fleeing crowds that looked like swarms of soldier ants, massive vehicular traffic jams, funnel clouds, floods and other extreme weather phenomena, and hasty spacecraft launches—many of which ended quickly in horrific, explosive crashes.
But the strangest sights were the intermittent, multicolored flashes, the angry reds and bilious greens of energy discharges released by the relentless unraveling of ever larger volumes of local space. The effects would vanish as the surrounding space rushed in to fill the spatial voids, like a tear in a curtain being obscured temporarily by pleats wafted in a breeze. Some of these explosions appeared to originate in volumes of space ranging from the size of a human fist to a large house; they were all violent, some of them occurring in the atmosphere, and some in space hundreds of kilometers above Oghen. A new one would blossom at random every few seconds, and the frequency of the energy discharges was slowly but surely increasing. If the latest models created by Titan’s science experts proved to be accurate—and Riker had no reason to doubt that they were—then those conflagrations would become a systemwide inferno that would burn itself out within two days’ time, but not before replacing more than a cubic parsec of space with an expanding, apparently sentience-bearing protouniverse.
Once again, Riker wrestled with the knowledge that his actions—as well as Donatra’s—might have greatly accelerated this growing catastrophe.
Titanrocked yet again beneath his boots. Grabbing the arms of his chair, Riker glanced to his left at Deanna, who seemed to be doing her best to appear composed. But he wasn’t fooled in the least. He quietly reached toward her and took her hand, which she squeezed hard.
“Try to keep her steady, Ensign Lavena,” said Vale, who was seated on Riker’s other side. She was leaning forward in her chair, her wiry body fairly vibrating with tension.
“Sorry, Commander,” Lavena said, scowling down at the conn panel before her. “But some of the waves of spatial distortion are taking us by surprise. The sensors are good, but they’re not perfect.”
“The world ends,” intoned a voice directly behind Riker. He turned to face Frane, who stood behind the bridge’s upper railing, his eyes fixed on the main viewscreen. Akaar and Shelley Hutchinson from security stood nearby, flanking him, though both were as intent as Frane was on the hellish vista unfolding down on Oghen. “Mechulak City. Founder’s Landing. The Great Hall of Oghen. All gone.”
Riker released Deanna’s hand, rose from his chair, and approached the young Neyel. For his sake, and for the sake of everyone else on Titan’s bridge, he tried to impart confidence to his voice. “We’re going to do everything we possibly can to save your people, Frane.”
Frane responded with a wan smile that Riker could only regard as the equivalent of a polite pat on the head. He’s right not to believe me,Riker thought, growing more and more glum by the second. Hell, I’m not sureI believe me. What the hell did I think I was going to accomplish here, anyway?
Frane looked down, apparently studying his large, gray hands. Then Riker realized that the Neyel was actually looking at the bracelet on his right wrist.
“It belonged to my father,” Frane said, raising his gray wrist so that Riker could clearly see the intricate weave of fabric, precious stones, beads, shells, and other less clearly identifiable objects. “And before that it belonged to his mother. Handed down through nine generations of Firstborn after leaving the hand of the revered Aidan Burgess herself.”
Riker’s eyes widened involuntarily. He gestured toward the bracelet, taking care not to touch it, since Frane had always seemed so disinclined even to show it; now the reason for the Neyel’s caution was becoming apparent.
“This used to belong to Ambassador Burgess?”
Frane nodded. “Ever since Aidan Burgess first gave it to Gran Vil’ja, each generation has added something new to it. A story, represented by new stones, or by new weaves of titanium thread. I had expected to bring it home someday. But I never dreamed that it would outlive that home.”
Glancing at Deanna, Riker saw that she was struggling not to weep as she regarded the increasingly despondent young Neyel. Frane seemed almost to deflate before his eyes, the hope the younger man had displayed earlier now fleeing in a great rush, like air escaping from a torn pressure suit.
Feeling fairly helpless himself, Riker resumed concentrating on the viewscreen and the carnage it revealed. The largest of Oghen’s several ancient, cratered moons, visible only as a faint and distant crescent thanks to the relative position of the sun, was beginning to drop below the horizon. Another rocky satellite, evidently much smaller and closer, rose nearby in an eccentric, retrograde orbit, white sunlight gleaming off the limb of its irregularly cylindrical shape.
“The most we can hope to do here is to beam a few hundred people up from the surface more or less at random,” Vale said. Riker saw only then that enormous tears stood in her eyes, though they seemed as motionless as boulders poised at a precipice. “Maybe we can save a couple of thousand, tops.”
Riker nodded, then returned his gaze to Oghen’s oddly shaped satellite as it continued to rise above the horizon. “If that’s really all we can do, then that’s what we’ll do. It’s better than nothing.”
“We are assuming,” Tuvok said, “that the spatial effects we are currently dodging will let us operate the transporters safely, and sufficiently often.”
Lieutenant Eviku looked up from the main science console. “The transporters should be fine. At least for the next few hours. But after that…” He trailed off meaningfully.
“But whichpeople do we rescue?” Deanna said, gazing forward. Her large, dark eyes appeared lost in the terror that was gripping the planet.
“I suppose it’s going to be the way Christine described it,” Riker said. “We grab as many Neyel as we can at random. Then we return to the spatial rift and try to get back home. Or at least somewhere clear of this Red King effect.”
Riker fervently hoped that someplacewould be clear of the phenomenon. What if it just continued to expand?
“But we’re not just talking about the Neyel here, Will. According to Excelsior’s records, there ought to be at least small populations of native species on this planet as well. What about them?”
Riker rubbed his brow and scrunched his eyes shut. He could feel a truly brutal headache coming on. Opening his eyes, he turned toward Eviku. “Scan indiscriminately with regard to species. Coordinate with Lieutenant Radowski and begin transporting as soon as you and the security and medical teams are ready. Mr. Tuvok, Mr. Vale, please see to all the security arrangements, and alert Dr. Ree of incoming injured.”
Tuvok and Vale chorused their acknowledgments while Eviku immediately got busy at his console.
“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.