“What is it?” she said. He muttered something, obviously believing he’d responded aloud, but he was too concerned with the sensor controls to correct himself. “Jaza?”
Ra-Havreii, no longer playing with his tune, suddenly occupied the space between the two flight cradles. He looked down at the HUDs, out through the forward plexi and then back at the readouts. He face was a mirror for Jaza’s.
“Any idea?” said Jaza.
“None,” said the engineer.
“But you can see it,” said Jaza.
“See what?” said Vale, squinting into the black. As far as she could tell, there was nothing there but the orb of the planet and the star-filled inky carpet behind.
“Only vaguely,” said Ra-Havreii, pensive. “An afterimage? A reflection of some sort?”
“I see it clearly,” said Jaza. “It’s neither.”
“What is it?” said Vale, still completely failing to notice anything unusual.
“Some kind of energy mass, Chris,” said Jaza, his fingers tapping new commands into the sensors as he spoke. “Vaguely spherical, very large, about…fifteen degrees behind the planet, moving in the same solar orbital path.”
“Why can’t I see it?” she said.
Jaza shrugged and said, “IDIC.” She understood. Humanoids all shared a great many surface characteristics, but despite the visual similarities, Trill were not human, who were not Bajoran, who were not Betazoid or Selenean or Efrosian. All were similar but not truly identical. Obviously, in this case, Bajoran and Efrosian vision encompassed a slightly wider spectrum than the others on board.
By now Troi, Modan, and Keru had moved in behind Ra-Havreii, all squinting to see for themselves and failing. Most of the ship’s sensors failed to see the thing as well, which was a little disconcerting.
Only those set to look for minute boryon distortions could detect anything at all, and that only barely. The mass was a very large ghost.
“I think we ought to fire a probe into it,” said Jaza at last.
“Is that wise?” said Modan. “Perhaps it is some sort of defensive device.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you could see it, Modan,” said Jaza. “It’s huge. Slightly bigger than Orisha, in fact. And it’s between us and the planet.”
“Any chance we can sidestep it?” said Keru.
Jaza shook his head. “Our course is preset and the sensors only evade what they can see. We’re going to pass through it, whatever it is.” Jaza looked to Vale as if to say, “What’s it going to be, Chris?” For her part, Vale glanced back at Troi, whose features betrayed some tension but not overt concern, not yet. In any case, until some actual diplomacy got going, Vale was running this show.
“Launch a probe,” she said at last. “If we’re going through, I’d like a little warning about what to expect.”
Jaza’s fingers danced for a few seconds. They all heard the noise of the torpedo launcher and then watched the tiny silver probe zip toward the unseen mass.
“There’s some distortion in the signal,” said Jaza, muttering over the display as the sensor data came back. “But it’s not detecting anything un-”
Before he could finish the sentence, several things happened at once, ensuring that it would never be completed. The probe crossed over the arbitrary point he’d set as the strange formation’s event horizon and vanished from his screens.
A strange shimmering halo of energy, quite visible to all of them now, coalesced around the invisible thing, giving it definition of sorts for those who couldn’t see it before. Static, loud and grating, ripped out at the team via the Ellington’s comm system, followed immediately by a voice.
“Interlopers! You have dared to approach the[ untranslatable] Eye! You will be punished for your[ possible meaning: blasphemy] !”This was followed by more of the harsh static-the UT’s unsuccessful attempt to decipher a large portion of the alien language-and then a very ominous silence.
“Orishans,” said Modan very softly after a moment.
“I’m guessing,” said Vale. So much for them not having space travel. If they survived this, they wouldn’t have to worry about violating the Prime Directive. “Mr. Jaza, we’re aborting the preset flight program. We don’t want to piss anyone off more than they are.”
“Already on it,” he said, his eyes steely as they tracked his hands dancing on the control panel.
“Keru, try and raise these people,” said Vale, not even looking to see how quickly the big Trill had dropped into the communication station to do as ordered. “I’d like to talk to them before-”
“Before,” said Ra-Havreii, “they blast us to cinders from their enormous spaceship.”
“Spines of the Mother,” said Modan in a tiny voice as she absorbed the sight.
There was a lot to take in. This time they all saw it very clearly; a massive cruiser of some sort, roughly twice Titan’s size, was in the process of shimmering into view before them. Despite its odd coloring-heavy scarlet streaks along the lower struts against a silvery material that could have passed for something woven-it was as deadly-looking as anything Vale had ever seen.
Its appearance was very much like that of a gigantic mechanical animal of some sort-a scorpion maybe, with tails above and below-and, as they watched it bear down on the Ellington’s position, it was clear the new vessel had none of Titan’s problems maneuvering in this region. That did not bode well if they meant to get aggressive.
“From their formerly cloakedenormous spaceship,” said the engineer. “How in the world were they able to pull that off?”
“You can ask them about it later, Commander,” said Vale, trying along with Keru to get some weapons up or partial shields at least. It was useless, of course. They had left from Titanessentially naked and defenseless, and so they remained.
She asked Troi if she was getting any kind of empathic hits off their new friends.
Troi shook her head. “No, Commander. I feel something from them,” she said. “It may be anger and it may be something like curiosity, but there are other emotions there that don’t correspond to anything I know. They feel we are not only alien but in some way sullying their space.”
“You are[ possible meaning: unclean] !”said the harsh alien voice over more static. “You will be[ possible meaning: purged] !”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Keru. “And I can’t raise them.”
“Looks like they’d rather talk than listen,” said Jaza.
“Get us out of here, Najem,” said Vale, tense. “Easy, if you can, but back us off now.” Jaza grunted something and continued to work with the controls at a fiendish pace. She understood his difficulty. They had modified so much of the shuttle’s works to facilitate even simple motion in this area that they’d sacrificed a good portion of direct control. It had been one of the riskier aspects of this mission, but deemed acceptable when weighed against the alternative. Now the risk might kill them. The computer was not making the switch back to manual an easy thing.
“Almost,” he said.
“ Titancan see them,” said Troi suddenly. “I can feel the crew’s attention on this.”
“Hell,” said Vale, picturing the Red Alert status that had to be under way on their home vessel. “ Ican feel their attention on this. Look at that monster.”
“They’re powering some sort of weapon, Commander,” said Keru. “Readings are distorted, but-”
“But?”