Then darkness fell, and panicked screams drowned out everything else.
I.K.S. DUGH
“Captain!” Dekri shouted. Her voice strained to be heard over the violent thrumming of the Dugh’s overtaxed engines.
“Report, Lieutenant,” Tchev said, turning his command chair toward his de facto first officer’s station. His gauntleted hands gripped the arms of his chair as though he might be thrown loose from it at any moment.
“I am detecting variances in the tractor beams the Romulan fleet has attached to us,” Dekri said, sending an illustrative graphic to the bridge’s central viewscreen. It presented a wireframe rendering of the Dugh,tethered to perhaps a half-dozen straight lines attached to structurally strategic portions of the Klingon warship’s compromised hull. Some of those energy tethers appeared to be pulling more tightly than others.
“Do you see what they’re doing, Captain?” Dekri said, fear and anger coloring her words.
Tchev bared his teeth as he studied the torsions that threatened to pull the Dugh’s starboard impulse generator apart. “Lock whatever weapons we have upon the Valdore! Send all available hands to battle stations.”
The hull moaned, making a sound like Gre’thor’s massed hordes of Fek’lhr.
“At once, sir,” Dekri said, in tones that made it clear that she realized how hopeless the situation was. She knew as well as he did that the Dughwas in no shape for combat. But they would die in battle because of this order, at least technically. He prayed it would be enough to get him and his crew into Sto-Vo-Kor.
“Ensign Krodak! Get me Titan.Riker must be told what those cowardly Romulan petaQare trying to—” Tchev was interrupted by a sound as thunderous as an eruption of the Kri’stak Volcano on Qo’noS, followed by infinite darkness.
U.S.S. TITAN
“The Vanguard habitat has begun venting atmosphere, Captain,” Jaza reported, his manner calm but intensely concerned. “I’m reading unprotected bodies in space. That last spatial disruption evidently disabled at least one of our emergency forcefield generators and tore all the way through into the asteroid’s hollow interior.”
Damn!Riker thought, gripping the armrests of his command chair nearly hard enough to snap them off entirely. “How bad is the damage?”
Jaza remained intent on his console and the readouts that were quickly scrolling there. “The good news is that the outgassing is falling off quickly. I’d estimate from the volume of atmosphere vented that only one pressurized section has been compromised. They were fortunate.”
Except for the people who happened to be in that section,Riker thought. “Can the people in that section be beamed out?”
“Not without lowering our shields,” Jaza said, sounding stricken. “We can’t do that, and neither can any of the other ships in the convoy. Even if there were enough time, and if there weren’t so much refractory metal in the asteroid’s crust…” He trailed off, his meaning plain. Although there had been some documented cases of Neyel surviving for prolonged periods in a hard vacuum, everyone in the space-exposed section was sure to die.
Riker nodded slowly. “How many casualties?”
“It’s hard to say for certain, sir,” Dakal said, facing Riker from the forward ops station. “Upwards of ten thousand, I would estimate.”
Riker’s shoulders sagged as though he’d been dealt a physical blow. He tried not to picture the faces of the children, the elderly, the helpless. Not to mention Vale, Keru, Tuvok, Mekrikuk, and the medical and security teams still working among the Vanguard refugees.
The bridge shook and rattled as though Titanhad come under attack. Riker spun his chair back in Jaza’s direction. “Titanhas just crossed the phenomenon’s event horizon, Captain,” said Ensign Lavena, her gloved, webbed fingers entering commands into her console at a rapid clip.
“Shield status?” Riker asked.
“Shields at ninety-four percent and holding,” said Dakal. He sounded intensely relieved that the passage home was so much smoother than Titan’s accidental arrival in the Small Magellanic Cloud had been. At least so far.
“Convoy status?”
Dakal touched one of the control surfaces before him, bringing a tactical diagram up on the main viewscreen. A congeries of blips dutifully appeared, representing Vanguard and the Romulan fleet. The convoy blips were towing the Vanguard blip through a wireframe representation of the Red King and the interspatial corridor that ran directly through its heart. A large white icon that represented Titanwas taking the point, leading the way for the entire procession.
“Everything seems to be going according to plan, Captain,” Lavena said unnecessarily.
“Sensor web remains fully operational,” Dakal reported. “All navigational hazard telemetry links show green as well.”
“At least the Vanguard habitat doesn’t seem to be taking any further hits,” Jaza said. “Probably because we’re approaching the midpoint of the spatial rift.”
The eye of the storm,Riker thought. He fervently hoped they wouldn’t encounter still more trouble once they reached the other side, where Romulan space presumably awaited them.
“Crossing the midpoint…now,” Lavena said.
“The Valdoreis signaling, Captain,” said Dakal. “Twenty-nine of her ships have just jettisoned their warp cores, per our simulations. The crippled vessels are riding their own collapsing warp bubbles to the other side.”
Feeling a sensation of pins and needles in both his hands, Riker realized that he was once again gripping his chair arms far too hard. He released them with a conscious effort.
“Brace yourselves,” Jaza said. “The subspace shock wave should reach us in thirty-one seconds.”
Riker touched his combadge again. “Riker to Ra-Havreii.”
“Engineering. Ra-Havreii here.”
“This is the part where you earn your combat pay, Commander. The shields are your highest priority.”
“We’re ready for anything, Captain,”said the chief engineer, though the tremulous undertone in his voice didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. Don’t fold up on me now, Doctor,Riker thought.
“Something’s wrong,” Jaza said sharply.
Of course,Riker thought, rising from his chair and crossing to the railing that ran alongside the main science station. “What’s the problem, Jaza?”
The Bajoran shook his head in confusion, his nasal wrinkles spreading upward and onto his forehead. “It’s the Dugh,sir. I’m reading extreme stresses on her outer hull. Maybe she isn’t standing up to Donatra’s tractor beams as well as we thought she would.”
Oh, no.Riker paused to study Jaza’s readouts momentarily before turning his attention back to the main viewscreen’s tactical display. Please let me be wrong.“Cadet Dakal, hail Captain Tchev and try to warn him. And get me Donatra.”
“Aye, Captain.”
At that precise instant, the viewscreen blip that represented the Klingon vessel abruptly brightened, then vanished.
Ashen-faced, Dakal turned from his console to face Riker. “Captain, the Dugh’s hull has just collapsed. She was completely destroyed in the resulting reactor explosion.”
Deanna told me you were hiding something, Donatra,Riker thought, a white-hot anger searing the inside of his chest as he returned to his seat. And now I think I know what it was.The chair’s autorestraints gently snapped into place across his thighs as the final seconds before the shock wave’s approach ticked away.