Then, the connection was broken and the other mind faded once more into the maelstrom of energies, returning the Wanderer to her prison of solitude.
No!
Once more, there was nothing for her to do but wait. All she could bring to bear was her patience while preserving her limited strength and watching for an opportunity to act. She was certain that, sooner or later, her captors would have to reveal themselves.
Whoever or whatever they were, the Wanderer would destroy them.
12
Thomas Blair stopped himself from trying to force the turbolift doors to open faster, willing himself to stand still until they parted enough for him to exit the car and step onto the Defiant’s bridge. The first thing he noted was that the entire room was bathed in the harsh crimson lights that signified a Red Alert status. In keeping with Blair’s personal preferences, the audible alarm had been muted on the bridge as well as in turbolifts.
“Status report,” he called out, nodding to Commander Mbugua as the first officer vacated the captain’s chair. Rather than head for the center seat himself, Blair made his way around the upper bridge deck toward the science station.
“We’re approaching the coordinates of the sensor contact,” Mbugua replied, moving to stand in front of the helm and navigation consoles at the center of the bridge’s command well. Leaning back against the joint console, the muscled officer crossed his arms and nodded toward the main viewscreen. “Whatever was happening here before, it’s over.”
“Anything new with the sensor contacts?” Blair asked as he stopped behind Lieutenant Commander Nyn at the science station.
Without turning from her workstation, the science officer replied, “Nothing active now, sir, though I’m still picking up residual energy readings from what look to be particle weapons, Klingon disruptors in particular, along with something that could be Tholian.”
Blair frowned. “Could be?”
“It’s hard to be sure, sir,” Nyn said. “The Klingon energy signatures are pretty easy to pick out, and the readings I’m seeing as Tholian aren’t entirely consistent with what we have on record for the particle weapons normally installed aboard their ships.”
Perching himself on the railing opposite her station, Blair positioned himself so that he could divide his attention between Nyn and the viewscreen. “What about the ships themselves? Did everybody just bug out of here?”
The science officer replied, “Hard to say, sir. The area’s saturated with residual energy readings, making things tougher for long-range scans to make sense of it all. Whatever happened here, it at least included what looks to be one hell of a firefight, but if I had to guess? Whoever was doing the fighting is long gone, assuming their ship wasn’t destroyed.”
“But you’re not sure,” Blair said.
Nyn shook her head. “Not at all, sir.”
“Which is why we’re at Red Alert with shields up and weapons hot,” Mbugua added.
Nodding in approval at his first officer’s decisions and actions, Blair said, “Works for me. Restore normal bridge lighting, but let’s leave everything else as is for the time being.” He sighed. “Looks like we’re showing up late to the party again.” He had known that would probably be the case from the moment Nyn contacted him in his quarters to report her initial long-range sensor contacts of what she had described as a likely combat action taking place. The Defianthad been too far away for its scanning systems to record anything detailed, but Nyn still had acquired enough information to make an educated guess that Klingon and Tholian vessels looked to be taking part in the action. Her suspicions were only strengthened after Blair ordered a course change to investigate, since the fight—if indeed it was a fight—while taking place in an area of space that at present was not claimed by either the Klingons or the Tholians, was close enough to the Tholian border that the Defiant’s captain had to wonder whether the Klingons finally had rubbed someone the wrong way.
Blair’s attention was caught by an alert tone coming from the helm, and he turned as Lieutenant T’Lehr looked up from her console and reported, “We will be in visual range in less than ninety seconds, Captain.”
“Slow to impulse,” Blair ordered, rising from his perch on the red railing and stepping down into the command well to take his place in the center seat. Beneath his feet, he felt the reverberation in the deck plates as the Defiantdropped out of warp and the star-ship’s powerful impulse engines took over.
A string of indicator tones sounded from Nyn’s workstation, and the science officer turned to regard Blair. “Captain, I’m picking up four distinct signatures, all consistent with Tholian propulsion systems, heading away from this location on a direct course for their border.”
“Maintain alert status,” Mbugua said, as he moved from in front of the helm and took up a position to Blair’s left. “Just in case they decided to double back, or they have friends out there somewhere.”
Her attention once more on her console, Nyn called over her shoulder, “Definitely picking up traces of at least one vessel now, probably two. Configuration doesn’t look right, but the metallurgy suggests Klingon construction.”
“Let’s have it on screen, Nyn,” Blair ordered. As the image on the main viewscreen shifted, he saw a pair of indistinct shapes that might have been space vessels, though their silhouettes did not look familiar. At least, not at first.
“What the hell?” Blair asked, more to himself than anyone else as he pushed himself out of his chair. “Magnify that.” An instant later, the image shifted to bring the unidentified objects into sharp relief, and the captain could not help the gasp of surprise that escaped his lips.
“Oh my god,” Mbugua said, his voice low enough that Blair almost did not hear him. “Those are supposed to be … Klingon ships?”
Turning from her station, Nyn said, “According to our sensors, that’s what they were,sir.”
The pair of derelicts drifted in an expanding cloud of debris, one wreck tumbling end over end while the other was trapped in an endless roll. Despite the incredible damage inflicted upon the pair of vessels, Blair was able to make out the crushed shell of what had been the primary hull of one Klingon battle cruiser, its distinctive bulb-shape design still recognizable despite massive buckling and a number of missing hull plates. He was able to identify the other ship by the shape of one of its warp nacelles and the section of secondary hull still attached to it and bearing the bold trefoil of the Klingon military. There was very little beyond that to distinguish either vessel, which to Blair looked more like oversized fusions of scrap metal than spacefaring ships of any kind.
“What happened to them?” Blair asked, his gaze still trans-fixed by the ghastly image on the viewscreen. “Some kind of collision? Maybe an internal explosion?” Even as he posed the questions he knew that those were not valid explanations. Neither event was consistent with the type of destruction now on display before him, and it was an opinion that was only strengthened by his science officer.
Nyn replied, “I’m not detecting any residual energy traces that would be consistent with an engine overload, sir. Besides, given their proximity, if either of the ships’ warp cores had breached, the resultant matter/antimatter explosion would have been more than sufficient to vaporize both vessels.”
“What about collision?” Mbugua asked. “As crazy as I know it sounds, could this be the result of some kind of huge accident?”
Again, Nyn shook her head. “Doubtful, Commander. Such an event would require extreme neglect not only on the part of each vessel’s helm officer, but also in automatic evasion protocols and the ships’ deflector and shield systems.” She paused, nodding her head in the direction of her workstation. “There’s also one other thing, thanks to the computer having more time to chew on the sensor data we’ve been collecting. According to the readings I’m getting, something looks to have crushed the hulls of these ships. Stress fractures and buckling all along both vessels’ spaceframes indicate a massive force enveloping the entire ship and drawing inward. It’s almost as if they were squeezed by a giant vise.”