Chapter 5: Ghost Ship Part 4

Angel, Buffy and Dawn stepped out of the turbolift on to the battle bridge. They saw that Picard and Riker, who Angel had persuaded to remain on the saucer section, had sent the majority of the bridge crew to man the battle bridge.

"On my mark," Angel said as he took the command seat.

"All systems at nominal," Data said. "Energy feed at fifteen percent, allowing for a twenty percent surge on separation. Flight shields only, stardrive aft thrust at point-zero five sublight. All sections comply clearance of turbo-lifts and maintenance shafts."

"Mr. LaForge, Mr. Data. Effect saucer separation- now," Angel ordered.

A subtle hum of power came up from beneath them, up from the caverns of Enterprise's gigantic power factory to the interlocking mechanisms in her neck. With a dissonant grind, the ship pulled herself apart. As though severed by the ax of a great woodsman, the ship became two. The saucer section, with all its families, was suddenly cut adrift.

"All secure," LaForge reported. "Free to maneuver, Admiral."

"Acknowledged," Angel replied. The taste of commitment. "Maintain status. Send a low-band communique to Captain Picard. Inform him to proceed as planned." The plan was for the saucer section to maneuver around the gas giant through the asteroid belt. They hoped it would mask the saucer section's escape.

"Aye, sir," Worf said. "Dispatching."

They watched in silence as the saucer section's impulse drive flared for a few moments, then faded back, providing the huge disk with just enough thrust to coast toward the dangerous parameters of the entity's shrinking cage.

"Buffy, Dawn?" Angel said as he turned his attention toward his friends. "Getting anything?"

Buffy shook her head. "Nothing, Angel."

"Worf, any changes in its energy pattern?" Angel asked.

Worf's guttural response carried a distinct impatience. "Only the same flux and shift it's been doing all this time, sir."

"Lieutenant Yar, you keep an eye on the locations of the saucer and that thing," Angel said. "I want to know if they're about to run afoul of each other, and I want to know ahead of time."

"Yes, sir," she said, and instantly bent over her console.

"Angel," Dawn said," maybe we shouldn't wait."

Angel thought it over and then nodded. "Battle Bridge to Engineering. Do we have warp power?"

Engineer MacDougal, who had replaced the chief engineering officer, Argyle, when Picard had ordered him to report to the bridge, spoke up so quickly she might as well have been on the battle bridge. "Stardrive is still down, sir, but we should have it back on line soon. It was an electrical burnout and not a matter of power generation."

"Understood," Angel replied. "Is it possible just send a flush of power through the tubes. Say, ten percent. Enough to keep its attention off the saucer until they're out of the area. Be ready to shut down immediately so we can hide again too."

"I understand what you need, Admiral, but warp power isn't that easy to control. There has to be a grace period on either side of the flush."

Angel sighed. "We need something, anything to distract it's attention, as soon as possible."

"Yes, Admiral."

Up from the bowels of the engineering section, deep within the core matter/antimatter reactors that made a starship what it was, came a surge of raw power. Even that tiny surge, that ten percent, could be felt.

Then there was a change on the screen. The crackling infrared diffraction image of their pursuer suddenly paused in its search across the bottom of the viewscreen, and made a deliberate turn in their direction.

"It's coming after us," Yar reported. She gripped the edge of her panel, refusing to look up at the screen. Instead she watched the two target points, starship and hostile, close toward one another. Her voice quavered. "Direct line."

"Point-three-zero sublight, helm," Angel said, "heading, two-two-four mark one-five."

"Aye, sir."

"Lieutenant, is it following?" Angel asked, not turning.

Yar nodded, even though he wasn't watching her. "Aye, sir. It is."

"Speed?"

"Point-four sublight."

"All right ... " Angel said. "Lieutenant LaForge, increase to fifty percent sublight."

"Point-five, aye."

The beheaded stardrive section, its energy-rimmed nacelles now its most prominent feature, slid around on an imaginary rail and cut diametrically across the entity's search pattern, exactly opposite to the heading of the saucer section, away from the swirling gas giant, away from the tiny belt of asteroids that would someday pull together into a new planet and circle the proud little sun of this system.

"Admiral," Worf said, "MacDougal reports we now have sufficient power for shields, but not stardrive and not much for weapons. She estimates just a few minutes for those."

"Thank you, Mr. Worf," Angel replied. "Be it known to everyone here, you are doing a fine job. If we survive this, I will see you all get commendations."

"Sir!" Tasha rasped, sudden horror in her voice. "It's-"

Angel frowned as he watched the viewscreen. They had lost the thing's attention. "Shields," he ordered.

"Powering up," Tasha said instantly. "Battle shields at full."

No matter how careful the plan, no matter the amount of hardware, the high-tech physics, the level of mathematics and detailed analysis- no matter any of that, mankind had never been able to second-guess, sideswipe, or overcome plain old bad luck. Who could know how long the thing had been roaming the galaxy, doing what it was doing today? There was no way to know what habits it had developed, what preferences, what impulses it had learned to follow. And who could know what it spotted?

A glint of light off the saucer's hull ... a tiny leak of subatomic particles from the impulse fusion reactor ... a high-frequency output from maintenance? These were things that would be completely ignored in the daily running of a starship. But somehow, something told the menace that this was the likeliest source of dinner. Its bug brain got stuck on the idea of that target instead of this one, and so it turned on the saucer.

Angel looked at Worf. "Anything?"

"No change, sir," the Klingon said clearly and fiercely. "We're putting out twenty times the energy being emitted from the saucer section right now, but it doesn't seem impressed."

"Can we get closer?" Dawn asked.

"Make a tight pass," Angel ordered.

Geordi LaForge fought to keep his hands from shaking on the controls at the idea of sweeping by the thing. The ship swung through space, doubling back toward the crackling energy field of its enemy. Now the saucer section was dominant in the viewscreen, and between them and it. A wall of blinding, snapping electrical tongues, a terrible prism to look through.

The entity stepped up speed to follow the saucer, and stardrive did the same, even faster. The ship tipped as LaForge swung it around in front of the enemy's electrical body. As they passed it they saw that it was indeed more flat than round, a gigantic field of computer fakery, yet somehow completely animated, somehow walking around in space without the screen it was supposed to be displayed on. Its electrokinetic bands sparked and erupted as the stardrive section plowed past it and swished off in the other direction.

"It's not interested," Dawn said.

"Worf?" Angel said.

"No explanation, sir," Worf boomed. "It's unrelenting on the saucer."

Data looked up and said, "Perhaps it is something more than an insect, Admiral." And as he said it, he looked across the small bridge at Buffy and Dawn, who stood beside Angel.

"Shark," Dawn said suddenly.

"Dawn?" Angel said as Dawn looked at him.

"It's a shark focusing on one fish in a school. It ignores tastier morsels for the one it focuses on."

"Angel." Buffy said. "We must draw it off. The saucer-"

"Battle Bridge to Engineering," Angel said. "Tell me we have warp speed."

"MacDougal, sir, and barely. I can give you up to warp three."

"Do so! And I want an emergency antimatter dump on my mark-"

"Sir!" Yar choked. "It's closing on the saucer! Burst of speed at point-seven-five-"

"Set course dead center on it, warp three and engage!" Angel said. "I know that order is one that is raising a few eyebrows. But if we don't get its attention somehow, then this plan is all for naught."

The stardrive section aimed its great cobra's head for the dead center and jammed forward at all the speed she could muster. The Enterprise crashed into the electrical wall at dead center, and erupted into pyrotechnics with a deafening crack. Voltage snapped throughout the ship, accosting every panel, every living body, a terrible concussion after concussion. Spasms racked through, each one accompanied by a blitz of senseless lights. And the ship burst out the other side- a shaken vessel, filled with shaken people, sucking a tail of spectral fire after it.

"LaForge, veer into the asteroids!" Angel ordered. "Engineering emergency antimatter dump on my mark- do you copy!"

"Engineering ... uh, we copy ... ready when-"

"LaForge, are we in those asteroids yet?"

Trying to push his hands through a snapping electrical field that still swirled around his panel, LaForge pecked the course into the helm. Each time he pecked, his fingers were assaulted by the churning voltage, but he kept on until the ship was driving itself into the dirty trail of preplanetary garbage between the gas giant and the star.

"Entering asteroids now, sir," LaForge called.

"MacDougal, dump the antimatter tank- now!" Angel ordered.

When the exhaust was triggered, it sounded for all the world like a giant toilet flushing. There was a swirl of sound, then a shudder crashed through the lower sections, and in a radical maneuver that was reserved for unexpected containment leaks, the ship regurgitated and dumped all the contents of her antimatter tank. Antimatter washed out from the nacelles and spewed into the asteroid belt. Wherever it struck matter in the vacuum of space, there was an explosion- a huge one. An explosion that whipped its tendrils of fire this way and that for thousands of miles, some hundreds of thousands. Each blow and its corresponding halo of smaller blows sent matter/ antimatter shock waves plunging across space, rocking the starship forward each time as she raced to get away.

The ship coursed through the asteroids and out the other side, but as soon as the antimatter was flushed the warp speed fell away and they dropped to an impulse crawl. "Keep the shields a priority," Angel ordered.

Then one last splatter of color and voltage ignited on the bridge and shocked each of them like a jolt from an exposed circuit. But it wasted no more time. Now it whistled around the bridge with a kind of finality, drew its vortex into a knot, and latched onto Data as though sucked there. It hit him with a stiff hand, knocking him right out of his chair. For every volt of electricity the others were now suddenly spared, Data had to take up the slack. He was dragged sideways and driven backward against the bridge rail until the force could push him no farther. A red-orange envelope formed around him, sparks flashing inside it, and shook him. Within it he shuddered and gasped, the bellows that served as lungs being squeezed along with the rest of him.

"No!" Geordi shouted.

"Remain at your post," Angel ordered.

"Angel's right," Dawn agreed. "Till the electricity is done with him, we could all be electrocuted if we come to his rescue." She turned towards Angel with an idea. "Angel, as long as its hitting Data the way it is, we might have a chance of talking to it."

"No! We've got to get him out of it!" LaForge objected.

"He's my friend too," Dawn said sympathetically. She looked at Angel who nodded. She then turned toward Data. "Data, can you hear me?" The crackling settled down suddenly. "Do you understand me?"

For a time, there was nothing.

Then, the tiniest "Yes ... I ... Sub ... circuit ... com ... com ... "

"Communication?" Angel asked.

"Yes ... "

"Can you talk to it?" Angel wondered.

"I cannot ... cannot transmit ... "

"Keep trying. Stay calm, everyone. No one move. Worf, report," Angel said.

Even the Klingon was driven to lower his voice in the presence of the vortex's assault on Data. "Still chewing the antimatter reactions in the asteroid belt, sir. No sign of changing course."

"Speaking to you ... " Buffy's voice was soft and Angel realized that he didn't recognize the inflection.

"Dawn?" Angel said as he looked at Dawn. He didn't know Dawn as well as he knew Buffy, but he could tell something was different."

"Your language," Dawn murmured. "I speak in."

"Are they both?" Yar wondered.

"I believe so," Angel answered. He looked at Dawn and Buffy. "Who are you?"

"All ... you end ... " Buffy answered.

"You ... can end ... it," Dawn said.

And when the statement was over Angel realized that the sisters were returning to normal. They noticed that the electricity disappeared from Data as well.

Angel glanced at Yar. "Condition of the entity?" he asked.

"Still involved with the asteroids, sir," Yar reported, "though going after the antimatter explosions very deliberately. It doesn't seem to understand what the disturbances are. Seems unclear about what it should do."

Angel nodded as he looked at the sisters and then towards LaForge. "While its distracted takes us toward the saucer section." With that he knelt beside Dawn and Buffy who rested on the floor unconscious. He could hear their hearts beating and smiled. He looked at the others. "Let Captain Picard know we are going to dock with them upon arrival."