The others on the upper tier, intent on their original tasks, quietly buzzed among themselves. Dakal listened to them passing data, comparing hypotheses-if the distortions were the result of a signal of some sort, could their effect be scrubbed from the original darkling scans, thus salvaging their month of work?
Even aMershik, all four of his digit clusters gesticulating wildly, now seemed filled with uncharacteristic optimism. He and Pell, their habitual enmity forgotten, were running a tandem simulation to describe the parameters of the distortion. Hsuuri and the rest were engaged in similar activities.
Attack the new mystery, Dakal thought, watching them all approvingly. But save the old if you can. Something to remember.
What he didn’t understand was why they were all so frantic about it. Whatever the effect was, it had been progressing for weeks. Indeed the distortion had grown stronger over that time, allowing the latest effect to be seen by Pazlar in real time. Why now all this haste to ferret its secrets?
He returned from his musing to find Jaza staring at him with the queerest expression on his face.
“Back with us, Cadet?” he said. Dakal nodded. “Good, because I need you to run the probe for me.”
“Sir?”
“Everyone here is checked out on the TOV rig, but the others all have their hands full,” said Jaza, half pulling the stunned cadet toward the central dais. The various control stalks rose silently from the floor around him as the central ring lit up. “Except Roakn. Anyway, his head’s too big for the VISOR.”
“Yes, sir, but, I mean, wouldn’t you prefer-”
“You’re elected, Cadet,” said Jaza, grinning now. And, in that grin, Dakal saw what he was up to.
“Sir,” he said. “I appreciate this, but I am not the appropriate person for this duty. I don’t even know exactly what all this talk about quantum rippling means. Why do you think it’s some kind of signal?”
Jaza spoke quickly as he adjusted the control harness and the TOV for Dakal’s slightly smaller dimensions. “There are two ways to get around relativity when it comes to communications, Dakal,” he said. “One is subspace, which every world in the Federation uses to keep in contact with the others. The other is quantum broadcasting, which Starfleet uses for long-range emergency beacons and in limited fashion with sensor probes.”
If the TOV was too small for Roakn’s giant Brikar body, it was a bit loose on Dakal’s slender frame. The helmet in particular seemed to sit precariously on his head, threatening to fall off and shatter against the deck with his every slightest movement.
“There are only two sources of quantum rippling in nature,” Jaza went on, pulling the straps of the harness tight. When he was done Dakal looked as if he’d been transformed into some sort of enormous marionette, his cut strings sagging onto the circular platform. “Wormholes and pulsars. Both create a regular ripple or distortion in the quanta. They never, ever, shift or increase. So, either our distortion is caused by some sentient-made device, or…”
Jaza let the sentence dangle until Dakal realized he was meant to pick it up. “Or it’s something we’ve never seen before,” he said.
“Exactly,” said Jaza. That made sense to Dakal, but it was clear his presence in the TOV gear still did not. “I don’t believe in dunsels, Cadet. Never have. Never will. Now get to work.”
On Titan’s bridge, two men pretended. Captain William Riker pretended not to be pacing back and forth, and Commander Tuvok, his chief security and tactical officer, pretended not to notice.
Tuvok hadn’t served with the captain long, but he’d made tentative assessments about his personality that, thus far, had been borne out.
After witnessing his behavior in multiple mission scenarios ranging from military to exploratory, Tuvok had found Captain Riker to be courageous, decisive, and intelligent (for a human), with an exceptionally flexible and improvisational mind.
Despite his large size and proficiency at hand-to-hand combat, Riker was at his core a thoughtful being, serene in his sense of self, confident in bearing, and jovial in disposition. He was not one to pace. Yet, at Tuvok’s count, the captain had crossed, recrossed, and crossed again the bridge’s deck twenty-three times since coming on duty that morning.
Riker did a passable job of concealing this activity from the rest of the bridge crew-pretending to peer over the helmsman’s shoulder (“A little tighter on those arcs, Aili. Impulse engines need a firm hand.”) or to move in on the main viewer for a closer look at the screen (“Amazing. There’s an entire stellar system sitting right there, and it’s completely invisible to the eye.”).
None of it fooled Tuvok for an instant. Something was occupying a good deal of the captain’s attention, and it had nothing to do with their current mapping mission or its recent odd permutation.
“You seem irritated, Mr. Tuvok,” said Riker, moving in beside him at tactical control. “Mr. Jaza’s hijinks getting to you?”
“Not at all, sir,” said Tuvok, projecting the appearance of complete focus on the task before him. “Even if irritation were not an emotion of which I am incapable, sudden modifications to established mission parameters are, as humans say, the nature of the beast.”
“Modified probe approaching target coordinates,”said Cadet Dakal’s voice.
“Acknowledged,” said Tuvok, his brow knit ever so slightly as he methodically recalibrated one system after another. “Patching universal translator into probe control.”
“Thank you,”said Jaza’s voice. “Probe will be in position in five seconds. Three seconds. One.”
The countdown finished and nothing much happened. Titancontinued forward in its gentle ellipse, Ensign Lavena deftly navigating the ship between the invisible and intangible darklings.
Riker drifted away from tactical, taking a position at the vacant science officer’s station, where he could watch the proceedings without a filter.
Displayed before him was the telemetry from Jaza’s modified probe, now set to scan for and isolate the incredibly diffuse signal the team in the sensor pod had discovered.
Riker hadn’t had a chance to try out the TOV harness yet, but watching the probe’s lifelike dips and spins as Dakal adjusted its positioning, he made a promise to add himself to the pilot roster the next time the probes were needed. Captain’s prerogative.
Could have used that distraction now, he thought, running one hand slowly through his beard. This thing between him and Deanna had grown to elephantine proportions in only a few weeks. Their schedules had kept them mostly apart lately, but when they were together, things were increasingly frosty between them.
He would press- Deanna, you know I’m right about this-and she would evade or dig in- Dammit, Will, let it go-and little by little, their ability to talk had dwindled almost to nil.
After years of nearly complete openness about every subject or emotion, the growing chasm between them might actually do what all the maniacal conquerors, apocalyptic phenomena, and interstellar warfare had been unable to accomplish.
The worst thing was that they both knew his attempts to press her were ultimately benign. The manifestation was unpleasant, friction making, but he just couldn’t seem to stop.
“Signal acquired,”said Dakal’s voice. He sounded almost giddy. “Uploading to pod.”
“Scan under way,”said Jaza. “Hold steady, Cadet. You’re bobbling.”
Hundreds of lines of coded data began to dash across Riker’s monitor. At first it was all hash-random symbols denoting as yet unknown information-but once the UT really sank its teeth in, the chaos began to resolve.