Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic (12 page)

As everyone filed out of the briefing room, La Forge ended up following Qat’qa through the door back onto the bridge. “I wonder how impossible surviving a slingshot through a black hole would really be with current technology,” the Klingon pilot said thoughtfully.

“Personally, I’d rather never find out, if it’s all the same to you,” Barclay volunteered as he walked past them, before disappearing into the turbolift.

Qat’qa continued, “I understand the mechanics of the slingshot effect, and I’ve studied its use in the past. It’s quite rare, but effective.”

“How rare?” La Forge asked as they walked down to their stations.

“Captain Scott has survived the process half a dozen times or so. I believe that’s still a record.” Her eyes took on a hungry gleam. “I have set many flight records in the Empire, but one such as that eludes me.”

“But you’d like to try?”

“Or to make an achievement of equal stature. An elusive achievement is a challenge, and I have always risen to challenges.”

“I’m glad to hear it, I think.” As La Forge cast an eye over the status displayed on the ops console, Scotty tapped
him on the shoulder and nodded toward the ready room door. Geordi followed him through, and Scotty sat behind his desk. La Forge was amused to note that where Picard used to have a fish tank, Scotty had a shield and a couple of claymore swords.

“Don’t worry about Qat’qa,” Scotty began. “She’s ambitious, stubborn, and, well, you know how Klingons are about takin’ on a challenge—but she’s not stupid, and she’s not crazy.”

“I’ve seen her piloting,” Geordi said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t so sure.

“Ye don’t get to be the most decorated test-pilot in anyone’s service by being stupid or crazy. Aye, ye need to be crazy enough to want to fly untried contraptions in the first place, but you also have to be stable and professional enough to take note of everything, and to take a ship to its limits without wrecking it and wastin’ all the time and effort that was put into making the beastie to begin with.”

“She’s the most-decorated helm in the Empire?” La Forge was suitably impressed.

“Test-pilot, yes. I dare say there are a lot of other Klingons with more decorations for service in battle, but none for trying out new vessels and new maneuvers.”

“So how did you manage to get her into the exchange program? I’d have thought she’d be too valuable to the Klingons, and have too many state secrets in her head.”

“I expect she does, but I have a little influence with one of two Klingon families on the High Council. Maybe not as much as Captain Picard, but I’ve done my bit. I was there at the Khitomer Conference. As a matter of fact, I shot the would-be assassin who was trying to shoot Chancellor Azetbur.”

La Forge nodded. “I remember reading about that.”

“Her house still remembers me. And then I also ran into Qat’qa’s paternal grandparents once or twice, and their House has this view that, while the
Enterprise
crew might have been enemies at times, we were worthy and honorable enemies.”

La Forge thought of Worf’s attitudes, and found himself nodding again. “I understand.”

“Right, now let me see what I can find out about G-231 . . .”

When La Forge had gone, Scotty keyed his companel and hailed another engineer/captain. After a few moments, a very pretty black-haired Hispanic woman appeared on screen, sitting in the center seat of a starship’s bridge. Scotty put on his most winning smile. “Captain Gomez, it’s always a pleasure.”

She grinned.
“Likewise, Scotty.”

“Sonya, I was just wondering whether you’re free to do me a wee favor?”

“How ‘wee’ a favor did you have in mind?”

“How soon d’ye think the
da Vinci
could reach star system G-231?”

Sonya Gomez looked behind her, to where a stocky Tellarite was consulting a screen.
“About eighteen hours,”
the Tellarite said.

“That sounds good enough, lass.”

“What did you have in mind for us to do there?”

“I need a full subspace scan of the whole system. Look for anything . . . odd.”

“It’d help if you could define ‘odd’ a little more specifically.”

“Wormholes, subspace distortion fields, gravimetric distortions . . . Anything that might indicate the use of slipstream technology—”

“Okay, that’s pretty clear—”

“—two hundred years in the past.”

Her eyes widened.
“Two hundred years? You must be joking.”

“Everythin’ leaves a trace o’ something, Sonya. I just have the suspicion that if there’s anything there, you’ll know it when you find it.”

“All right, we don’t have anything that’s a priority, and you did put me in this seat. I’ll get back to you when we arrive at G-231.”

“Thanks, lass. I owe you one.”

“Single malt this time, Scotty.
Da Vinci
out.”

The
Challenger
dropped out of warp ten thousand kilometers from the buoy that the
Enterprise
had left behind to mark
Intrepid
’s position, and sailed the rest of the way on impulse power.

Everyone who could think of a reason to be on the bridge was there for the first sight of
Intrepid
. Ogawa stood out of the way in a corner, while Barclay kept trying to look over people’s shoulders at what they were doing. Even Vol had squeezed himself into a turbolift and come up on the pretense of running a diagnostic on the bridge’s engineering console.

Qat’qa turned in her seat. “We are at the location marked by the
Enterprise,
Captain Scott.
Intrepid
is fifteen kilometers from the marker buoy.”

“Right, then,” Scotty said. “Let’s have a look at the grand old lass, eh?”

Beside him, Hunt touched a control on his armrest, and the main viewer switched to a closer view of the NX-class vessel. La Forge had already seen it, but he got a thrill out of seeing Scotty’s expression react to the sight. “There she is, just the way I left her.”

“Ah, she’s a beauty to be sure,” Scotty breathed. “It’s fair enough to go to the fleet museum and see one of these,
but out here . . . Out here it’s a whole different ball game, isn’t it?”

“Kind of makes you feel that you’re part of that era,” Geordi agreed. “It’s like the difference between seeing a rare animal in captivity or in its natural environment.”

Brahms stood and walked over to the main viewer, resting a hand on the back of La Forge’s seat. “We’ve no idea how long it might take to get life support back up on
Intrepid,
or even if it’s actually possible at all. So we’ll dock our runabouts and shuttles at the other airlocks to use as base camps for the work crews, as well as a source of power for any systems we can get working.”

Geordi nodded. “Once the breaches are repaired, we should be able to use a shuttle’s life support system to re-pressurize the
Intrepid.”

“That’ll be useful,” Hunt agreed. “The sooner the away team doesn’t have to be wearing EV suits, the happier—and less clumsy—they’ll be.”

“Exactly what I’m thinking,” Leah added.

“First things first,” Ogawa said. “We need to recover the remains of the crew before life support is restored.”

“That could take a while.”

“It could, but it’s going to be easier and more hygienic to remove the remains before an atmosphere can act as a biological or bacterial vector. When that happens, the material adhering to the wall will begin to decay, and, leaving aside any issues of contamination, it will stink.”

“We’ll send the runabouts
Clyde
and
Thames
to the main locks on either side of the saucer,” Hunt said. “We’ve already swapped out the standard mission modules for workshops.”

Leah nodded. “And if we can get
Intrepid
’s power grid to where it’ll actually carry an energy supply, we can use the warp cores from the runabouts to start it up.”

Ogawa came around to address Scotty. “Captain, if the medical forensic team can make use of one of the runabouts . . .”

“Agreed,” Scotty said. “Use the
Clyde,
Doctor. Concentrate on recovering the remains from the bridge and engineering first. That’ll help Mister La Forge and his team get to work sooner.”

“That sounds most sensible to me anyway. The three locations with the most jumbled up remains will be the bridge, engineering, and the crew’s mess. The biomatter from those locations will need the longest time to separate out into individual remains. The remains in the cabins should belong to no more than four people per room.”

“Right, then, the crew mess will be your third priority. We shouldn’t need to use it at all, of course, so it’s less of a priority from an engineering viewpoint.”

Ogawa nodded, and left to prepare to go across to the other ship. La Forge looked up at Brahms. “She’s a pretty sight, isn’t she?”

“Pretty, but very out of date. Just look at what passes for her nacelle radiators. . . . It’s a product of a bygone age that’s rightfully bygone.”

“Oh, come on, Doc,” Vol protested. “Those are classics. Proper, solid, hardwired technology.”

“Which broke down as often as not. It belongs in the museum that we’ll put it in, where we can look at such primitivism in a safe environment.”

“And be relieved that starship construction and design has moved on since that one was built,” Hunt added.

In Nelson’s, Guinan stood by the huge forward windows and looked out on the
Intrepid.
It was an era through which she had lived, but the ship wasn’t one she had any
familiarity with. That said, she tended not to take too much notice of the exteriors of ships, and the interiors tended to blend together after the first couple of centuries.

She heard a wistful sigh a few feet away, and turned. There were only a couple of other people in the lounge area, mostly looking tired after finishing a long shift, but one person was leaning forward, his hands pressed against the windows. He was looking at
Intrepid
with the expression of a man who had returned to his childhood home and found a favorite old toy still in a corner. It was a mix of amazement, wonder, and infinite sadness at what had been lost or left behind.

She slipped closer to him, and he didn’t notice. “You must be Rasmussen.” The man started, looked like he was about to snarl at her, then caught himself.

“Uh, yes. Berlinghoff Rasmussen’s the name. Have we met?”

“On the
Enterprise.
Nobody else would be looking at
Intrepid
with your expression.”

“Nostalgia, eh? It’s a wonderful thing.”

“Actually I wasn’t thinking nostalgia. Nostalgia’s a good feeling that people like to seek out because it reminds them of the good times. You look more . . . sad. As if you’d lost something.”

Rasmussen turned his gaze upon her, and flashed a very charming smile. “You’re a very perspicacious lady, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind at all.”

“Oh!” Rasmussen brightened, and gestured toward the bar. “Maybe a drink for the lady . . . ?”

“I have one already.” It was a long time since a criminal offered to buy her a drink, and that was another nostalgic feeling. “I do have a certain nostalgia for the era, though.”

“Oh, you’d have liked it, I think. It was a good time back on Earth.” He seemed to realize something. “Are you from Earth yourself?”

She shook her head. “But I’ve been there a lot. Not during the twenty-second century, though. I was busy elsewhere.” His expression momentarily froze, so she breezed past the moment by asking, “You must remember a lot about the missions of these ships.”

“Well, not the classified material, but I remember the news reports, yes.”

Guinan looked across to the door as La Forge entered Nelson’s and made a bee-line for Rasmussen. “I’ve been looking for you,” he began, then caught himself. “Do you remember any news reports about the disappearance of the
Intrepid
?”

Rasmussen shrugged. “I was a civilian, after all, and not really a party to Starfleet’s logs and records. At least not until they were released to the public.”

“So, what did they release to the news services? What did they report?”

“To be honest, I tended to tune out during the reports. When the first warp five vessel was launched there was a lot of interest, but after a while, public interest waned, just as it did with the Apollo moon landings and the space shuttle, and the Mars-Venus project, and all the rest of it.”

“You wouldn’t think something as important would become so—”

“Boring?” Rasmussen offered.

“I was going to say ‘commonplace.’ ”

“That’s human nature, Geordi. Something is unusual only until it becomes usual. Then, very quickly, it becomes commonplace, and then boring.”

“When you think of the effort it took to get out here . . . the technological advances . . .”

“Yet once we’re out here we’re just . . . here. How long have you been chief engineer of the
Enterprise
?”

“Nineteen years, on two
Enterprises.
Why?”

“How often do you stop and think, ‘Wow, I’m off of humanity’s homeworld, in a starship crossing the universe?’”

“I’m always aware that—”

“How often do you think, ‘Hey, it’s time to clock in for my shift in engineering,’ or ‘When I get off work I’ll go and have some dinner?’” La Forge didn’t need to reply. His expression spoke volumes. “Exactly. It’s everyday, boring, humdrum.”

“It’s more than that! I had to work my butt off at Starfleet Academy, and—”

“And now it’s your everyday job. Don’t feel bad; like I said, it’s human nature.”

La Forge nodded toward the window. “Is that commonplace to you?”

Rasmussen glanced at Guinan again, and she knew it was anything but. “Not anymore,” he said at last.

A
lyssa Ogawa led the first forensics team, in the runabout
Clyde.
It docked with the
Intrepid
’s starboard lock, and the pilot, a bluff New Zealander named Carter, remained aboard to make sure that the transporter and replicator were fully functioning while docked with the dead starship. He would also look after the stasis modules as they were returned to the runabout. When enough were aboard, he would fly them back to
Challenger,
rather than risk mixing up the remains’ already delicate molecular state by transporting them. Two med-techs
were carrying the stasis modules off the runabout, which thankfully weren’t too hard to carry in the zero gravity aboard
Intrepid.