“Damage reports coming in from all decks,” Darjil called out from where he had resumed his duty station. “System overloads and malfunctions are scattered across the ship.”
“Give me vital systems status,” Sarith ordered, moving her way across the bridge to the chair behind her small yet functional desk. As she slumped into the chair, she noted that the computer terminal was charred black, it too a victim of the rampant overloads plaguing the ship.
Darjil replied, “Life-support is operating on backup power systems, and warp drive is offline.” Looking up from his console, he added, “The engineer reports that the antimatter containment sphere was cracked and he was forced to eject the entire assembly.”
Sarith looked to Ineti as she absorbed the report, saw her own anxiety mirrored in her friend’s eyes. Both of them just as quickly buried their momentary emotional lapse beneath their professional façades for the sake of their subordinates on the bridge, all of whom were now regarding her with varying expressions of fear and uncertainty. There was no need for anyone to say anything more with regard to what Darjil had just conveyed.
To a person, all of them knew what the loss of the antimatter containment system meant. Without it, the Talon’s warp drive was useless. Unable to achieve faster-than-light velocities, the ship and its crew were centuries from Romulan space.
They would never see home again.
“What about communications?” she asked Darjil, for the first time noting that dark green blood was streaming down the younger man’s face.
“Partially functional,” the centurion replied. “Long-range communications are offline, but initial reports are that it can be repaired.”
Crossing the deck toward the central hub, Ineti asked, “What about the cloak?”
Darjil nodded. “Still functional, Subcommander.”
How propitious,Sarith mused with no small amount of bitterness. If we die out here, we still can do so with utmost stealth. Almost as soon as the thought manifested itself, she forced it away. There were always alternatives, even in the most desperate of situations, but unchecked emotion could blind one’s judgment and ability to see those options.
“Notify the engineer that communications and life-support are priority,” she said, sucking air through gritted teeth as the pain in her ribs began to assert itself with renewed force. She knew she would soon have to see the physician, but now was not the time. With the crisis they faced just becoming clear, her officers needed to see her maintaining her position of leadership and control over the situation.
Such as it is.
As if reading her mind, Ineti added, “Pass on to the crew that we’ll need to conserve power as much as possible.”
Sarith nodded in approval at the subcommander’s initiative. Without the warp engines to provide primary power, she knew that the additional strain on the impulse drive would force some shipboard systems to rely on battery backups until repairs were complete and power requirements assessed and appropriately redirected.
The bridge’s softer secondary illumination, coupled with the thin shroud of smoke hanging in the air, appeared to make the angled bulkheads loom even closer in the feeble, flickering light.
For an insane moment, Sarith was reminded of her childhood aversion to small, confined spaces, which had manifested itself one fateful summer when torrential rains had flooded caves littering the mining quarry near her family’s village. Naturally she and her young companions had disregarded parental warnings to stay away from the dangerous mines, a willful decision that exacted a tragic cost. It had taken several dierhato reach the surface in the dark, and only after one of her friends and playmates, a young boy whose name escaped her now, had been swept deep into the maze of underground tunnels by the onrushing water. His body was never recovered, and it was the last time Sarith ever would set foot anywhere near the quarry.
If only such a choice were available now.
Looking about the damage-stricken bridge, she could not keep her gaze from finding N’tovek. Even in death, she still could discern some of the same peace and vulnerability she had observed while watching him sleep. Once more she felt a pang of sorrow grip her heart, made all the worse from knowing that she never again would enjoy the pleasure of observing her lover in repose, to say nothing of the other joys the younger man had managed to bring to her otherwise lonely, duty-bound life.
“What happened?” she finally asked after a moment, looking to Ineti for guidance and answers. “Only massive tectonic stress could have destroyed a planet like that, but our sensors detected nothing? That’s ludicrous. How could Darjil or…” She shook her head as a sudden lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed it before continuing. “How could he or N’tovek miss something like that?”
“They didn’t,” Ineti said, moving around from the far side of the central hub, taking a moment to offer a paternal pat to Darjil’s shoulder before continuing over to her. “No sensor scans detected anything unusual about this planet, save for the Klingon presence. It’s only been in the last dierhathat we received indications of anything untoward occurring down there.”
Sarith nodded. The power readings, while significant and emanating from multiple points around the planet, had come as something of a surprise, particularly given Darjil’s original report, which showed the indigenous population as being a preindustrial society. The only technology in existence had belonged to the Klingon garrison that had usurped the native civilization, though that in itself also was a mystery.
While her initial assessment had been that the Klingons perhaps had claimed this planet to act as a base to support ship operations within the sector, even casual scrutiny revealed the problems with that theory. The Talon’s sensors had detected no hints of ship maintenance facilities, for instance, not so much as a lone orbital drydock. Likewise, there were no indications of planet-based refining or manufacturing installations.
“Those power readings,” Sarith said after a moment. “They were far above anything the Klingons could have generated with the equipment of theirs that we detected. Could they have found something else? Something unknown even to the local population?”
Pausing to consider the idea, Ineti nodded. “I suppose it’s possible.” Then he shrugged. “We’ll never know for certain, though.”
Tempted to chastise her friend for stating the obvious, Sarith instead grunted an acknowledgment of the subcommander’s observation before turning back toward the rest of the bridge. The ache in her ribs was announcing its presence with relish now, but she ignored it. Ineti must have seen the wince she could not hold in check, however, and leaned forward.
“Let me call the physician,” he said, concern swathing every word. “You do not look well.”
Sarith waved away the suggestion. “Later,” she replied as she saw Darjil turn from his station and look to her with what appeared to be an expression of puzzlement clouding his bloody, soiled features. “We have much to see to first.” To the centurion, she asked, “What is it?”
“Commander,” Darjil said, “before the planet exploded, our sensors were operating in both passive and active modes, at least so far as the cloak would allow. I missed it before, but it seems that the sensors registered a low-level energy signature connecting the different sites on the planet where we detected the unexplained power readings.”
Her brow furrowing in confusion, Sarith shook her head. “They were connected? Like a network?”
The centurion nodded. “Correct, Commander.”
Sarith’s eyes widened in disbelief. “A global, interconnected weapons system?” If true, it was an impressive achievement, unlike anything she had ever seen before. No race encountered by the Romulans had ever displayed technology on such a scale.