“There’s away, Madame Troi,” said Ra-Havreii as the music resumed its normal pleasant strains, “and there’s away. In either case, I assure you, I have myself, my baggage, and my demons well in hand.”
Why do they always lie?thought Troi. They have to know that I’ll know.
She could sense, despite his serene exterior, that he was hanging on to his composure by his fingernails. If anything, listening to this music seemed somehow to make matters worse.
“There’s no need to put up a front with me, Xin,” said Troi, trying to navigate another way into the Efrosian’s psyche. “You know I can feel when you’re-”
“Stop,” he said, rising. It was only when the music evaporated without returning that Troi realized he hadn’t meant her.
She watched as he gathered up his padd, tapped in some commands, and rose to go. Red emergency lighting spilled in from the corridor beyond, casting the engineer’s sinuous frame into a stark black silhouette.
“Are you coming, Counselor?”
“Commander Vale has engineering under control, Xin,” she said. “I think we should get to the bottom of what’s happening with you.”
“What’s happening, Madame Troi,” said Ra-Havreii, “is that I’ve just discovered precisely what knocked Titanout of warp and is currently running roughshod over her systems. I would like to inform the captain of my findings, as I’m sure he’d consider them to be of great interest. However, if you believe the ship and crew would be better served by my sitting here with you and discussing my feelings, I will be happy to oblige.”
Aside from Dr. Ree, who tended to be chipper even under the most trying circumstances, and thus eager as ever for small talk, the forward observation lounge on deck one was silent as a crypt. Vale studied the room’s occupants with interest as they awaited the captain’s arrival.
Troi sat to the left of the table’s head, directly opposite Vale. She seemed deeply focused on the activity of her hands, which were folded in front of her on the tabletop. No eye contact. No comment. No innocuous conversation. Whenever not focused on a task, it seemed, she withdrew into herself, storm cloud waiting to burst.
Beside her sat Tuvok, still tapping some last-minute input into his padd, his placid exterior betraying nothing of his inner workings. Next came Jaza, standing before the viewports, his back to the room, his hands folded behind him in apparent repose as he gazed out at the surrounding void.
At the foot of the table was Ree, cheerful Ree, burbling on about how the remarkable Dr. Bralik had missed her calling by going into geology.
“She has a bedside manner most physicians would eviscerate their own offspring to possess,” he said. “She hasn’t left Pazlar’s side since she arrived in sickbay.”
“She’s not underfoot?” said Vale.
“Far from it,” said Ree. “In addition to her own work, she has managed to be quite helpful as some of my staff were injured in the pulse. An exceptional creature.”
“Where is Captain Riker?” said Ra-Havreii. He too aped the appearance of someone in repose. His eyes were closed, his long fingers forming a pyramid in front of his face. Framed by his mane of silver-white hair, his face was grimly set. Xin Ra-Havreii the libertine was gone. This was Dr. Ra-Havreii, one of the Federation’s most apt pupils in the study of warp physics.
“The captain will be here when he’s ready to begin the meeting, Commander,” Vale said in a warning tone. The Efrosian nodded his head slightly and was quiet again.
She might have felt better about that small victory over the engineer, but the hairs standing at attention on her forearms told Vale they were about to be treated to another of Will Riker’s patented improvisations. Wonderful. Under these circumstances, that should go over about as well as a tribble at a Klingon wedding.
“The Prophets have deemed patience one of the five necessary aspects, Xin,” said Jaza, his back still to the room.
“Considering their relationship to Bajor, Mr. Jaza,” said the engineer, “that is small wonder.”
“Why would you say that?” asked Jaza.
“It seems reasonable to assume, when one party is sufficiently superior to another, the former must exert inordinate amounts of patience if only to maintain sanity.”
“The Prophets teach that there are no such things as superior and inferior,” said Jaza. “Only those minds that open and those that don’t.”
“Yes,” said Ra-Havreii. “That sounds exactly like something the superior would tell the inf-”
“All right, that’s about enough from both of you,” said Vale, her own patience having reached its limit.
“Your pardon, Commander,” Jaza said.
“My apologies,” said Ra-Havreii.
The silence was almost worse than the verbal sparring. It made the tension more palpable, if that were possible. Too thick for a thin blade, as her mother might have said. Much of the tension seemed to orbit Ra-Havreii, and after her recent duty in engineering, Vale could understand why. The man was infuriating. Genius could only deflect so much.
Vale wondered how she looked to them. Did any of her own disquiet show on her face? Was her anxiety over the slow, top-down dissolution of Will Riker’s grand experiment as obvious and powerful as it felt? She hoped not.
“All right,” Riker said as the doors parted and he strode into the room. He’d been on his feet for more than a day, coordinating departments, pitching in with repairs, ensuring that his ship and his crew were as secure as possible under the circumstances. You’d never know it to look at him. Best poker face in two quadrants. “Let’s get to it.”
There were two women with him-the taller one was a gold-skinned Selenean ensign. Her name was Eera Maren or Arda Oden-something like that. Vale had a vague recollection that she was in communications or a related department. The shorter female was an Antaran, thick boned and sullen eyed for some reason. She looked sturdy enough. Both ensigns wore service yellow. Why Riker felt their presence was necessary was a mystery.
She caught Jaza looking at the Selenean with the queerest expression on his face. He seemed to be trying to work something out. The ensign only smiled back at him politely as he took his seat.
“I trust you’ve had time to peruse my report,” said Ra-Havreii, coming out of his faux trance.
“ Titanwas hit by some kind of massive energetic pulse,” said Riker, taking his place at the head of the table. The ensigns, without available seats, were content to hover by the door.
“A massive warp pulse, to be precise, Captain,” said Ra-Havreii.
Jaza gave a derisive snort.
“You have a problem with Dr. Ra-Havreii’s findings, Mr. Jaza?” said Riker. There was ice in his voice that Jaza failed to notice. Even the captain was on the jagged edge of something and in no mood for squabbling.
“No, sir,” said the science officer, his tone betraying that his true meaning was the reverse. “But it’s a fairly large leap to classify all this as the result of a warp pulse-a warp pulse intense enough to disrupt Titan’s systems, no less-without any sign of the ship that created it.”
“It needn’t have come from a ship,” said Ra-Havreii.
“Unless there’s a secret trinary pulsar around here that no one has seen,” said Jaza. “It had to be someone’s version of a ship.”
“Perhaps the ship was cloaked,” offered Ree.
“No,” said Jaza, frowning. “Local conditions would disrupt a cloak just as they have all of Titan’s energetic systems.”
“In fact, there are a number of devices that could generate such a pulse,” Ra-Havreii said. “I’ve invented some of them myself.”
“There’s no ship,” said Jaza. “There’s no pulsar. There is nothing detectable out there that could have caused this. With Titan’s enhanced sensors, that means there’s nothing out there.”