“Modan,” said Vale, sliding instantly to damage assessment and control. They weren’t nearly out of the rough yet, and she would need him. “Get aft and see what’s happened to Mr. Jaza.”
“Aye, sir,” said Modan after the briefest hesitation. She was unbuckled and sliding down the ladder in an instant. Good. She might not be dead weight after all. Keru was already back at his station, running diagnostics to see what, if anything, they still had to work with. The report was not the best. Emergency systems were all that was keeping them from the vacuum, and several of them had dipped to critical in the time it took him to check their status. At best they had been given a small reprieve. Still, the failure of their weapon seemed to have given the Orishans pause.
Let’s see if we can extend that feeling, she thought, staring at the ominous, vaguely insectile ship.
“Counselor?” said Vale, not taking her eye off the alien vessel. “Anything from the Orishans?” Troi shook her head. “Dr. Ra-Havreii, can you tell me anything? Why are we still here?”
The Efrosian seemed frozen in contemplation, his deep-set eyes far away, staring past Troi and Keru and Vale to the space that was visible through the forward viewport.
“Two warp fields,” he said at last. “I should have thought of it. The dissonance between the weapon’s warp frequency and that of this ship acted as a shield.”
“I thought it might work,” said Jaza, returning to the cockpit with Modan following close behind. He looked a little the worse for wear-there was a field patch over his left temple where Modan had bandaged what was obviously a wicked gash-but otherwise he was all right.
“You thoughtit would work?” said Vale in mock irritation.
“Yes,” said Jaza, wincing as Modan helped him into the pilot’s cradle.
“If we survive this, Commander,” said Vale. “You’re going on report.”
“Of course,” said Jaza with a smile.
“Commander,” said Keru in a tone Vale was sure she didn’t like. “Probe telemetry indicates a massive energy flux in the area of Mr. Jaza’s ghost field.”
“Let me see that,” said Ra-Havreii, nearly pouncing on the sensor controls. Jaza too made an effort to shift position for a look at the incoming data, but some hidden injury only allowed him to wince.
“This is bad,” said Ra-Havreii. “There is something inside the field, Commander. Something with mass and gravity. The readings are garbled. It’s as if there’s something there and yet-”
Again their conversation was shattered by the sound of alien static and that same grating, stilted speech of the Orishan representative.
“You have been[ possible meaning: judged] ,”the creature said. “Now you will face the[ possible meaning: wrath] of Erykon’s Eye.”
“Now what?” said Modan.
As if in response, the Orishan vessel broke off, shimmering back to invisibility even as it receded into the distance. Just as it vanished completely, “Uh-oh,” said Keru. Before anyone could ask what he meant, the Ellingtonwas rocked by a massive shockwave. Everything and everyone that wasn’t strapped down was flung against the port bulkhead.
Only Counselor Troi, still seated, still trying desperately to make contact with Titan, remained more or less undisturbed.
“Everyone strap in!” bellowed Vale, as if there was any need for the order. The others were already scrambling to the jump seats. “What the hell was-”
Again the ship was battered by a massive jolt, even more violent than the first. This time everything was rocked forward, as if a giant fist had taken hold of the ship and was dragging it into a new position.
Will!Troi sent with as much force as she could put behind the thoughts. Something’s happening here. We’re in trouble! Real troubl-
Outside the forward viewport, Jaza’s so-called ghost field was a ghost no longer. A massive spiraling, undulating chaos of light and motion the size of a planet was suddenly writhing there in the space ahead and, despite their efforts to break away, was pulling them inexorably in.
Worse, if worse was possible, the shimmering globe began to spit energy, great arching tongues of something unknown and deadly, kilometers wide and thousands long, in random directions. The Ellingtonwas being pulled into that maelstrom, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Vale bellowed commands, and Keru and Jaza moved to obey-any evasive measure, any shielding trick, anything to keep them from being drawn in. Nothing worked. Soon all they could see outside was the sea of boiling energies sucking them down.
“Set for collision!” yelled Vale over the noise of sparking machinery and computer warnings about energetic discharges.
Just as they were sucked down, the entire mass erupted at once, spewing its energies wide in a tsunami of force that had to be witnessed to be believed.
Waves of the weird multicolored energy leaped out in every direction, consuming or obscuring every scrap of normal space that had previously been visible.
Troi’s mind screamed out to her husband. Will! Get out of there! Get away! Now!She could feel him there, feel his distress as if it were her own as the great wave of energy swept toward Titanlike an ocean of fire. They couldn’t move. There was nowhere to run and no way to do it if there were. “Will! Imzadi!”
But it was useless. She could feel him, barely, but he couldn’t feel her, neither her panic nor her love, except as ephemeral echoes of what they should be.
Then even that spindly connection was suddenly gone, ripped away along with the sight of the stars and blackness of normal space. The wave of wild energy ripped outward, swallowing the tiny shuttle utterly, obliterating its connection with the space around it. She was alone for the first time in years, perhaps ever, absolutely alone.
“No!” she screamed.
“Deanna!” yelled Vale, fighting alongside Jaza to get some sort of manual control of the shuttle’s motion. It was useless. “Are you hurt?!”
“It’s Titan,” said Troi. “It’s gone!”
“Gone?” said Modan, nakedly terrified. “What does she mean, it’s gone?”
“I can’t feel them anymore!” said Troi in obvious distress. “I can’t feel any of them!”
Whatever empathic contact she had with her husband, whatever ebb and flow had normally passed between her and the three-hundred-plus members of Titan’s crew was gone, severed as soon as they were caught in the field eruption. Vale had no idea what such a severing might mean, but she was sure it couldn’t be good.
“Planetary impact imminent,”said the computer over the din. “Implementing automatic safety protocols.”
Planetary impact?thought Vale. What the hell? Orisha is hundreds of thousands of kilometers from here.
“There’s something in the field, Chris,” said Jaza as if reading her mind. “I don’t know how it’s possible, but it’s solid and it’s coming up fast.”
Those that could watched in astonished horror as the effects of the energy wave gave way to the simple clouds of the upper atmosphere of some unknown world. There were landmasses down there, a vast sparkling ocean of something both white and blue, and the sort of vegetation one generally only saw in nightmares. This world was like an enormous jungle, stretching from horizon to horizon in all directions. Mountainous leafy plants of impossible proportions, huge towering spires of turquoise or red that stood in clusters surrounded by hills and other plants that they dwarfed the way Izarian cityscapes dominated her homeworld.