Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea (19 page)

“No need to be
rude!
” the doctor snarled, knocking the phaser aside faster than Ogawa could see and striking Pava down with a sweep of his large, elongated muzzle. “Apologies, but I cannot spare the time!” he called back as he resumed his flight down the corridor. “Alyssa, see to them, will you?”

“We’re fine!” Denken gasped. “Go after them! Do…something.”

Alyssa hit her combadge. “Ogawa to transporter room. Beam the security team at this location directly to sickbay.” She looked them over briefly before resuming the chase.
Sorry, but I have two other patients to take care of. Maybe three.

But there was one thing she had to take care of first. Tapping her combadge as she ran, she called, “Ogawa to Noah Powell.”

“Noah here,”
came the reply after a moment.
“Mom, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, honey. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m not hurt, Mom. We’re with T’Pel—Totyarguil and me. He was crying, but she calmed him down. She’s good at that.”

“That’s good.”

“Mom? You sound like you’re running.”

“I’m…pretty busy right now, Noah.”

“I understand. You probably have people to take care of. You should go do that.”

Her eyes stung. “I appreciate it, sweetheart. You keep yourself safe, okay? I love you.”

“You too, Mom. See you later.”

“I promise, honey. Ogawa out.”

She wanted to say more, but there was no time. Ree had led her to the shuttlebay, and she caught up with him at the entrance of the
Horne
:
Titan
’s new
Flyer
-class heavy shuttle, a midsized craft based on the
Delta Flyer
design created by the crew of
Voyager
. Ree confronted her at the hatch, apparently having already strapped Deanna in. “Stay out of this, Alyssa! I will do whatever I must to protect this child.”

Despite Ree’s fearsome dinosaur-like aspect and predatory habits, Alyssa had never once been afraid of him—until now. For the first time, she looked into his eyes and knew that he could kill her without hesitation.

But she had patients—she couldn’t hesitate either. She met his gaze evenly and held up her medkit. “If you’re going to deliver her safely, you need a nurse,” she said in a voice remarkably free of tremolo.

Holding her gaze for a moment, he then stepped back and let her in. Her thoughts were of Noah as she entered; she hated herself for leaving him. But he was in good hands, and he was wise beyond his years. He would understand.

If I come back,
she answered herself.
If I don’t…if he has to go through that again…
She forced the thought down.
Well, I’ll just have to make sure I come back.

She saw that Ree had torn out the pilot’s seat to make room for his large, nonhumanoid frame. “Make sure she is secured in the aft compartment,” he said as she entered. “Our departure is likely to be turbulent.”

“Can you prevent the launch?” Vale demanded.

Keru’s heavy fingers worked his console. “The systems are still too damaged, but I may not have to. The door mechanisms are still…” He broke off as a faint shudder went through the deck.

“Report!” Vale snapped.

“That was the shuttlebay depressurizing. He shot his way out. He’s clear.”

Vale knew that
Titan
would be in no condition to go to warp for days. “Send the shuttles after it.”

“The
Horne
’s the fastest shuttle we have,” Keru said. An indicator on his console bleeped, and he looked down at it and sighed. “And it’s just gone to warp.”

At times like this, Christine Vale hated Will Riker for fast-tracking her into a first officer’s post. It was so much easier when she was just a lieutenant waiting for Riker and Captain Picard to make the decisions and tell her what to do. They made it look so easy.

But now, half her ship’s systems were failing, its orbit was unstable, the ship’s CMO had just abducted the captain’s wife and unborn child, and the captain himself was missing in a planet-sized ocean with no safe harbors. Which absolutely urgent crisis took priority over the others?

No—Vale knew that wasn’t the problem. The priorities were actually quite clear. Living with them would be the hard part.

“We must go after them.” It was Tuvok, just back to the bridge from sickbay and still looking rather shaky. She doubted Onnta had released him voluntarily, but only Ree
had ever been able to keep him in sickbay when he was determined to leave. Obviously not an option now. “Ree must stop somewhere, sooner or later. He is seeking a safe haven in which to deliver the child. He cannot do that while piloting a shuttle at high warp. Once he stops, we can catch him.”

In fact, Tuvok’s sentences were not delivered in a single block like that, but interpolated between Vale’s rapid-fire orders to the engineering and repair crews, squeezed in when she paused for breath. Sure, every instinct in her body, as a woman and former cop, was screaming at her,
Save that baby at all costs!
But she had three hundred and fifty other lives depending on her right now, including two other children, one not even old enough to walk. And those three hundred and fifty lives needed their captain.

“We need the shuttles to search for Riker and Lavena,” she told him when she could spare a moment.
Titan
’s sensors would be useless even if they weren’t damaged; the impact had sent a shroud of dust and vaporized ocean spreading over the planet, and the minerals in the dust still blocked sensors as well as they ever had, an effect made even worse by the intense static charges in the cloud. And the haze made optical imaging from orbit useless as well.

“What about the captain’s skiff?” Tuvok pressed.

“Its drive and shields were overtaxed in the deflection effort. It couldn’t handle warp, and could never go fast enough if it could.”

“It does not need to. Assign it to the search for the captain and let me take a shuttle after Troi and Ree.”

She realized he was right; the
La Rocca
’s engines
would not be unduly taxed by a planetary search-and-rescue effort, and what shields it had left could handle wind and residual radiation better than high-velocity space debris. “I’ll send a team in the
Armstrong
,” she said. “But not you. Get back to sickbay.”

“I am fine. Merely dazed.”

“No offense, Tuvok, but after all that’s been done to your head in your career, I’m not willing to take chances after you got it slammed into a wall.”

He moved closer, lowering his voice. “Commander, I need to go.”

“Look, I understand that you of all people need to protect that child right now—”

“It is more than that.” She was startled that he didn’t deny his emotional stake in this. But then, he was in no more mood to waste time than she was. “From what I…perceived, I believe Ree’s irrational behavior was somehow triggered by Commander Troi’s extreme fear of losing her child, coupled with her perception of the danger to her spouse. And…” He looked away for a moment. “She was counseling me just before this. I believe her fears were amplified by my own…experience of loss. I am partly responsible for what has occurred. I must take responsibility for resolving it.”

“Tuvok—”

“
Please
, Commander.”

She had reservations about his objectivity, but she had no time to argue. Besides, maybe a Vulcan who admitted his own emotions to himself and spent every moment working to manage them would be more objective about them than most Vulcans, or humans, for that matter. At
least, she was satisfied to pretend for now that that made sense.

She nodded. “Go. Bring them back safe.” She caught his arm, halted him as he started to depart. “Including Ree—if you can.”

His eyes showed nothing but determination. “If circumstances permit.”

TITAN, STARDATE 58541.2

“I
t’s been thirty-six hours,” Keru told the others in the observation lounge, fighting the weariness in his voice. “All available shuttles have searched the area as thoroughly as possible, above and below the surface. All we found is the capsized, empty skiff.” He took a slow breath. “We’ve dropped hydrophone probes, sending out hailing signals to catch Lavena’s attention or hear her calls if she’s down there trying to reach us. But the ocean’s still too disrupted from the impact to have a stable deep sound channel. Even so, the squales don’t appreciate the noise pollution—they’ve been knocking out the hydrophones.”

“What about…what about the squales?” asked Kuu’iut, filling in as tactical officer in Tuvok’s absence. “We know they’ve interceded when our people were in trouble before. Could they have taken them somewhere?”

So many absences,
thought Vale. It was odd looking around the table and seeing Kuu’iut sitting there for tacti
cal, Huilan filling in as diplomatic officer, Onnta representing medical…
and me. I shouldn’t be in the big chair. Not this way.

“Where?” Pazlar countered. In contrast to the past few months, she and Ra-Havreii were sitting as far apart as possible and hadn’t even looked at each other since entering. Even they weren’t the same anymore. “We’ve imaged every floater and seaweed island within a thousand kilometers of the skiff’s location,” the Elaysian went on. “The squales couldn’t have taken them that far in that amount of time. And they would’ve had problems of their own after that impact.”

“And that’s something we have to face,” Vale said. She understood the crew’s desire to see a miracle happen; it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had occurred. She shared their hope, their refusal to give up on the captain and Lavena. But as acting commander of
Titan
, she couldn’t let her crew dwell on scenarios they could do nothing about. “We’ve done all we could to find our people…and we’ll keep looking for as long as we can.” It wouldn’t be easy, with the shroud of dust and haze still blinding orbital scans. The thorough survey Pazlar had mentioned had been achieved only through the efforts and exhaustion of many shuttle pilots, determined to find one of their own and their captain as well. “But we’re not the only ones hurting. We couldn’t prevent the impact, but maybe there’s something we can do to mitigate its damage.”

“It’s possible we already did, just slightly,” Pazlar said, her voice subdued. “Normally in an impact event, the vacuum chimney effect sucks a great deal of the dust into the stratosphere, where it can linger for months, blocking the
sun and cooling the planet. But because we broke the asteroid into pieces, the successive impacts disrupted the chimney effect, and so the majority of the dust was splashed out into the lower atmosphere, and it’s already precipitating out. The sky should clear within weeks.”

“But what about all those heavy radioisotopes suddenly injected into the biosphere?” Onnta asked. “We could be seeing mass die-offs as a result.”

Chamish, the ecologist, answered the Balosneean doctor. “Actually that does not seem to be a concern. Keep in mind that impacts of this type are relatively common on Droplet. The biota have evolved sophisticated methods of DNA repair that protect them against radiation damage and heavy-metal poisoning, at least in limited amounts.”

“And this stuff is dense,” Pazlar said, “so it’s sinking pretty quickly—or rather, the water that it dissolves into is sinking quickly. If there’s any cause for concern, it’s that all that surface water suddenly sinking might disrupt circulation patterns, drag nutrients out of reach of the life that needs them.”

“But presumably the biosphere has adaptations to that as well,” Chamish said.

“Maybe. In any case, the stuff that’s radioactive—or still charged with residual energy from our weapons and tractors—is sinking pretty quickly out of the inhabited levels of the ocean. It should settle down all the way to the ice-seven mantle, or at least the hypersaline layer just above it. It shouldn’t be a lasting problem for the biosphere.”

“Can we assume that?” Vale asked. “The whole reason this planet is a mystery is that metals somehow remain in
the biosphere even though they should sink out of it like you say.”

“But most of them do—hence the hypersaline layer.”

“But is it enough? We shouldn’t assume anything. We need to continue to observe the situation on Droplet.”

“With respect, Commander,” asked Kuu’iut, “shouldn’t our priority be to pursue Doctor Ree and Counselor Troi?”

“In what, Ensign?” Ra-Havreii asked. “I can’t repair the engines any faster just because it would be convenient.”

“Tuvok’s team has that matter in hand,” Vale said. “Until we can get
Titan
up and running, our job is to stay here and monitor the situation on Droplet. And…to continue the mission of exploration that Captain Riker set for us. That Aili Lavena threw herself into with her whole being—literally. That’s what we owe them. To keep looking for them…but also to keep looking at Droplet on their behalf.

“Because that’s what we do. We explore. Sometimes it seems pointless, trivial. But let’s remember, people, it was our pure exploration that found the Caeliar and saved the whole damn Alpha Quadrant. And…and Beta. You guys from Beta know what I mean.” She cleared her throat. As a motivational speaker, she needed practice. She would’ve rather left it to Riker. “So let’s get out there…and get the job done.”

SOMEWHERE ON DROPLET

A sensation of warmth is the first thing to impinge upon his consciousness. Warmth, and a gentle pulsing sound…or is it a feeling? Is it from without or within?

Where is without? He tries to open his eyes but fails. Or is it that his eyes are open but there is no light?

He seems to be totally immersed in fluid. A part of him feels alarmed, tries to struggle, but his muscles do not obey. Besides, he has no trouble breathing. Indeed, to some deeper part of him this feels perfectly natural.

How did he get here? What came before? Noisy, turbulent memories clamor distantly, impinge on what little awareness he has, flash at him uncomfortably before dispersing back into the miasma of his mind. He barely thinks. All he knows is that he inhabits a warm, dark, pulsing place immersed in life-giving fluid.