“Secure for manual core ejection,” he bellowed to the room. “On my mark!”

  Bodies leaped to do as they’d been ordered. With her still-working arm Kanenya waved down from the uppermost tier that she was set. Someone had grabbed up poor Torvig and was in the process of hauling him away when the Choblik’s rear appendage whipped out, latched onto the doorframe, and held fast.

  “No!” he said. “No, I can help. With the core.”

  “You’ve got twenty seconds,” said Rossini.

  “Tuvok!” shouted Will Riker, pulling himself back into the captain’s chair. Like everyone else on the bridge, he’d been hurled to the floor as the massive wave of energy hit. “Status!”

  Somehow the Vulcan managed to maintain poise even in this circumstance, though the message he related in his calm baritone was less than reassuring.

  “Shields are buckling and down to thirty-one percent,” he said. “Failure is imminent. Artificial gravity and basic life support have failed on decks eight and thirteen. Titan’s warp core is cycling toward inversion.”

  Riker heard the casualty reports flooding in from everywhere. Dr. Ree obviously had his work cut out for him. There were people with shattered extremities and cracked skulls; at least a couple of the telepaths were incoherent. None of the children had been hurt, thank God. Only scared out of their minds. Riker knew how they felt.

  “Computer,” he said. “Initiate warp core ejection protocol. Authorization: Riker-Beta-One-Zero-Two.”

   “Unable to comply. Ejection system offline,”said the computer. The ship lurched again, violently, and he had the horrible notion in his mind of Titanrolling end over end in the darkness until the core finally killed them all.

  “Captain,” said Lavena, struggling to keep not only her seat but also what little control she had of the helm. “I’m getting massive torque readings on the port nacelle strut.”

  “How bad?” he said.

  “Bad, sir,” she replied. “Too much more of this and it will definitely splinter.”

  “Bridge to engineering,” he said and was quickly answered by a very tense-sounding Ensign Rossini. “Where is Baars?”

   “Down, sir,”said Rossini. “Along with about twenty of the shift.”

   My God, he sounds young, thought Riker. And scared to death. “I need you to perform a manual core ejection, Ensign.”

   “Yes, sir,”said Rossini, obviously unhappy about it. “But there’s just one thing.”

  “Now, son,” said Riker. “No time for any alternate plans.”

  “ But, sir, I think,”came Rossini’s voice, a little stronger maybe, a bit more firm. “I think we fixed the problem.”

  Riker was about to ask the young engineer what the hell he was talking about when, all of a sudden, the lights stopped flickering, Lavena gasped as her helm control returned, and Riker could feel his stomach properly seated inside him, which signified that the artificial gravity was no longer a problem.

  “Well done, Ensign,” said Riker, sweeping his gaze around the bridge to take in the damage.

  It seemed minimal. Tuvok was at his station, hip-deep in incoming data. Lavena grumbled over her helm but in a way that seemed less frantic and doubtful than it had in the previous minutes. Bohn and Kesi were back at navigation and science, respectively, and while the ship continued to lurch in the throes of the alien energy storm, it did so with considerably less violence. They were all right for the moment. Titanwas all right.

  “Tuvok,” he said, dreading the response. He had felt Deanna’s flash of panicked warning just before the wave had exploded at them apparently from nowhere. He had felt the sudden and absolute absence of her presence in his mind. He had felt it like an icy spear ripping through him, and now he felt the ache of the wound. “What about the shuttle?”

  “Sensors are unreliable, sir,” said the Vulcan, clearly having difficulty. “I am attempting to recalibrate.”

  “Aili,” said the captain. He couldn’t think about them now. He couldn’t think about her. “What’s the status on the port strut?”

  “Nominal for now, sir,” she said, obvious relief in her voice. He could see the same expression on her face even through the distortion of the water in her drysuit. “But I don’t recommend any more shakes like that last one.”

  “No promises,” said Riker. “Good work, Rossini.”

  “ It wasn’t really me, sir,”he said. “It was Torvig.”

  At first sight, main engineering looked as it had for the last few days: battered and patched as if it was under perpetual repair, which, of course, it was.

  Access plates hung off the walls; cables and chipsets hung from the openings as if some impossibly gigantic octopus had been trapped behind the paneling.

  The engineers themselves looked only slightly better than their domain. The humans were bruised, bleary-eyed, and spotted with the lubricants that had belched free during the recent unpleasantness. Riker wasn’t sure what the normal state of some of the nonhumans was, but if drooping antennae and orange-ringed eyes were any indication, they had been pulled through the same wringer.

  Worse than the sight of the engineers, worse than the ongoing pitch and roll of the ship as it continued to be battered by the forces outside, was the vision of Ensign Torvig splayed out on the floor beneath the main control console mumbling to himself as if in a trance.

  Riker had always found the ensign to be more sturdy than his appearance might imply. The Choblik’s seeming delicacy had always been offset by the many cybernetic enhancements he bore. Now it was those very mechanical bits that drew attention to just how frail and helpless Torvig was without them.

  Data cables ran from the control console to exposed nodes on every one of Torvig’s cybernetic parts. Some were translucent, pulsing with light at intervals in time with the convulsions of the ensign’s body.

  “What is he doing?” asked the captain at last.

  “He’s talking to the computer, sir,” said Rossini.

  “Is he,” said Riker, stopping as another shudder ran through the ensign’s body. “Is he all right?”

  As if in response, all the overhead lights blinked once, briefly but distinctly.

  “That means ‘yes,’ sir,” said Rossini, looking a bit sheepish. “Until he’s done, that’s the only way he can respond.”

  It seemed, after Torvig had been laid low by the effects of the initial pulse, his backup processors had kicked into high gear, rewriting the codes that allowed his body to interface with its cybernetic parts.

  It had never occurred to the little engineer that those same codes could be used to help Titanreestablish communications between its own systems. It hadn’t until the second destructive wave had washed over them and sent him plummeting to the floor.

  “It is sound,” said Tuvok, looking up from his analysis of Torvig’s code modifications. “Ship’s systems are returning to normal.”

  “Shields?” asked Riker, happy to have even the smallest amount of good news. “Weapons?”

  Tuvok shook his head slowly. “No, sir,” he said. “The same local conditions are still in effect. However-I believe, after seeing Mr. Torvig’s solution, that there may be a way to modify the shields as well.”

  “But not the phasers?” Riker hated to harp on the same subject, but the phasers were more reliable than either form of torpedo. If there was martial trouble, they could swing outcomes in Titan’s favor.

  “No, sir,” said Tuvok. “That is currently beyond my abilities.”

  Riker quickly calculated the number of torpedoes, quantum and photon, in the ship’s armory. He then began bringing to the front of his mind all the battle scenarios involving phaserless combat between starships.

  Though it had been closer to the source of this destructive wave, there was no guarantee that the alien vessel that had been menacing the shuttle had not also survived.