Chapter 7: Ghost Ship Part 6

Angel and Picard stepped onto the bridge, noticeably somber, and into the audience of expectant faces. Buffy – stood next to Yar, Dawn – manning Data's station with Worf standing over her, LaForge. Troi. Wesley Crusher, manning the helm with LaForge standing over him.

"I'm glad you're all here," Angel said ceremoniously, approaching the command chair. "I want to know what you've concluded, what our options are, how we can best deal with this situation."

"We're going to chase it down?" LaForge asked.

"Yes, Lieutenant," Angel said. "We are going to chase it down. Send the entities somehow on to the afterlife and if we can, possibly put an end to the ship's ability to capture anymore people, human or not."

Picard turned, and standing on the dais in front of his command chair with the whole blackness of space as his backdrop, he addressed the faintly lit bridge. "All right, what do you have?"

"Sir," Worf began immediately, "we've concluded that it backed away from its first attack on us because it reached its absorption capacity. We've calculated its drain on us at the point it moved off, and think it's possible to overload it."

"Risks?" Angel asked.

"We would have risk if we had possibility. Our phasers simply can't put out enough power to do what must be done. It dissipates its energy faster than we could pump it full."

Behind Picard, voices buzzed, annoying him as flies annoy a horse. Geordi and Wesley, arguing. An exchange of whispers, grating on Picard as he tried to dig out a miracle solution, and finally he spun around, demanding, "Have you two got something to add or not?"

Both Geordi and Wesley flinched, and Wesley's cheeks flared red. "Oh ... no, sir."

"Yes, sir," Geordi contradicted.

"But it doesn't work," Wesley hissed, tugging at Geordi's sleeve.

"Data told you how to make it work."

"But what if it doesn't?"

"When you're going to die, a one-in-a-million chance is better than nothing, Wes!"

"By the devil!" Picard roared. "What are you talking about?"

Wesley dropped into self-conscious silence while Geordi fought with himself and won. He approached the captain and said, "Wes has an idea how to increase the ship's energy output through the phaser systems, sir."

"All right," Picard said then, "I'm listening. Keep it short."

"Wesley, tell him."

Wesley licked his lips and brought his narrow form up beside Geordi. "Well, sir, it's a phaser intensification system that pulls more firepower with less base energy by breaking down the first phasing cycle into increment frequencies, then reintegrating the phasing all at once in the final cycle. Mr. Data gave me some clues that should make it work, and Geordi thinks we can-"

"The point is, sir," Geordi interrupted, speaking just as fast as Picard had asked for, "if we could modify the ship's phasers to this theory, we could fill that thing up with about five times the energy it got when it-"

"I may have a way of piercing it in every dimension it inhabits," Dawn said, "assuming this works that is."

"Are you sure, Dawn?" Angel asked. "I thought you were adamant that the Key was gone."

"With how the entities have been affecting me, I may still have the Key," Dawn said. "And if I did what the Traveler had me do. I may be able to access it again."

"Alright," Angel said. "Bridge to Engineering. Assemble a team in the engineering briefing room in three minutes. Ensign Crusher, I want you to describe your theory to the engineers and let them decide if it can be implemented."

"Sir," the teenager blurted, "I can build the crystal focusing system myself just as well as any of them."

Angel smiled as he looked at Dawn. "You had to rub off on him, didn't you?" Dawn shrugged. He looked back at Wesley. "You will be assisting them, Ensign. In fact, you will be in charge of the team. And tell them if anyone has a problem taking orders from someone your age, they can come to me."

"Yes, sir," Wesley said as he beamed with pride. He stood and left the bridge as LaForge sat down in his vacated seat.

"Admiral?" Picard said.

"He may not be a seasoned officer. But he came up with the idea," Angel said. "Besides this will give him the experience he needs to succeed in his career." He turned to Dawn. "What do you need?"

"Silence," Dawn said as she motioned toward the Ready Room.

"Go," Angel said as Dawn and Worf changed positions and she walked into the ready room.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

An hour passed and Wesley had returned to the bridge stating they were reading with the upgrade. It was just in the nick of time as the entity phased back into the dimension and was searching for them again.

"It's using this new pattern to find us. It knows we're here somewhere within a specific radius, and it's surrounded the whole area, gas giant, asteroids, and all. It's closing in on us. Obviously, it's a lot bigger than we first perceived," Picard said as he looked at Angel.

"It would have to be," Angel said. "To operate in the any multitude of dimensions." He looked at Worf. "Size?"

Worf straightened up from where he still sat at Data's console. "Roughly three-point-one AUs in diameter, sir, and contracting."

"My God," Picard snarled. "Worf, estimation. Can we fire on it?"

A terrible scowl came over Worf's already fierce features. He hated his own answer as he said, "Not while it's in this form, sir. It dissipates energy in direct proportion to its surface area. We couldn't pump enough energy into it fast enough to overload it."

"I think I can solve that for you," Dawn said as she stepped out of the ready room.

Dawn stepped between the two consoles at the front of the Bridge her eyes on the other ship as energy began to surround her.

"On my mark," Angel said.

"Shields up," Yar said shakily. "Maximum energy available for defensive-" She stopped, glaring at her readouts, and almost instantly had to gasp, "Sir, it's moving in!"

Across the Enterprise's shields crashed the punishing force of the phenomenon. It knew where the starship was, but discovered it had found two things- a starship, and a being with powers to breach dimensions similar to its own. The being was forcing it to contract back in upon itself.

"Now!" Dawn said.

"Fire phasers point-blank!" Angel ordered.

The ship spewed energy. Rocked by each shot, the Enterprise endured the punishment as the radical new phasing system dragged energies apart that wanted to be together, then shoved them into each other at the last instant. The entity bucked in the assault, shaking the ship.

"Shields draining ... " Yar shouted from her post above them.

"Keep firing!" Angel responded.

"The thing's output is becoming unsteady, sir!" Worf shouted over the electrical shriek. "It's working!"

Suddenly the ship trembled so deep in her core that everyone felt it through his feet, and the phasers stopped.

"What happened?" Angel asked.

"Complete phaser meltdown, Admiral!"

"Angel," Buffy said.

"Fire photon torpedoes," Angel ordered as he looked at the viewscreen and saw a nearby gas giant. "At the gas giant."

Glowing photon torpedoes broke from the ship's primary hull and crashed down through the gas giant's atmosphere into its active heart, forcing it to release its energy. Bolt after bolt careened downward, drilling into the compacted energy, which spewed back out in great volcanic blasts. And still the ship didn't relent. It continued sending fully charged photon torps deep into the planetary reactor and forcing explosion after explosion, until finally the greatest of all disruptions came. Half the planet's violent core erupted and shot out into space.

The concussion sent the Enterprise catapulting through open space. The ship turned in space, gravity gone to hell, tossing its people about like dolls, and finally settled a quarter million miles from the gas giant.

Angel and Picard staggered to their feet. Around them, the crew grabbed for their control boards and tried to accept the fact that they were still alive- really alive. They both saw that Dawn was crumpled on the floor and Buffy was next to her. "Buffy?" Angel said.

"Whatever she was doing, drained her," Buffy said. "She's in a coma."

"Riker," Picard said as he looked at his first officer.

Riker stood and walked over to Buffy and Dawn and picked Dawn up. He quickly exited the bridge near the closest turbolift.

"Report!" Angel ordered.

Yar's voice trembled. "Shields down ... main reactors unstable. The phasers are completely totally fused."

"Report on that thing?" Picard barked.

"Dissipated, sir," Worf announced. "No central mass any longer." He looked at Angel directly now and said, "You did it, Admiral."

"Buffy?" Angel said.

"I can't feel them, Angel, not anymore," Buffy replied.

Angel smiled as he turned back to Picard. "The ship is yours."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

LaForge sat at the helm with depressingly little to do. The ship couldn't move until the warp engine core was stabilized, and couldn't leave the vicinity anyway, at least not yet. As soon as the immediate danger had blown itself to bits, their duty as a main Federation extension kicked in and they were obliged to make sure the area was secure before they even thought of moving on.

He was one of only five people on the bridge now. Worf and Tasha occupied the upper deck, feeding through the intricate readings that correlated the first repairs on the phasers.

The bridge was ominously quiet now. The pit at the center of his soul wouldn't fill. No matter how many of the helm's light displays flashed and hummed to tell him things were being rapidly put together belowdecks, Geordi merely watched dispassionately. They'd been attacked once before, and engineers were quick learners. This repair would go two times faster than the previous ones. The ship and her complement would proceed to her mission, only slightly bruised from this incident, perhaps even stronger for it, but they would in the end simply move on. Such was sometimes the cost of winning. No real changes.

Except for the empty place beside him, which someone would fill, someone else.

Bitterness filled his mind. What tribute would be made for an android's sacrifice? What memorial would there be for Data? A burial in space, befitting a Starfleet hero, for the body lying empty and pulsing in sickbay, a body not yet dead, never to be reclaimed?

Geordi slouched in the chair, one elbow braced on the helm, and felt emptier still. He hadn't realized how lost he'd become in his own thoughts until a hand dropped onto his shoulder. Someone wanted his attention, and only the discipline of Starfleet training brought him up through the murk and made him straighten and look.

When he looked up he saw … Data. He spun out of his chair and knocked the helm console aside.

"Data ... "

Data caught his arm and kept him from tripping over the Ops lounge.

Behind him, Angel, Picard, Buffy, Dawn, Crusher and Wesley were watching the unexpected reunion as they too came away from the turbolift toward Geordi. Riker was speechless as he broke away from Troi, whom he had been talking to and came toward them.

"Data!" Geordi gasped again, clasping Data's cool hand and looking deeply into the android's eyes to see if it was indeed Data- and not just some weird new science nobody had told him about that could make the body walk around. "How?"

"We're not sure," Crusher said with a one-shouldered shrug. "He just slowly came back and started looking around. He was disoriented for a while, but as you can see ... "

"Do you know what happened to you?" Angel asked.

"No, Admiral. "I do not know what happened to me or why I returned. I can only surmise that when the creature got in trouble, it had to release those it was carrying and try to fight for its own existence. Of all the millions of life essences, I alone had a place to come back to. Of course," he added, "I am only guessing."

"Angel," Dawn said as she motioned around them. They all looked over the large expanse of the bridge- a bridge crowded with human forms. A hundred human forms, all in uniform. Sailors. Command officers from a time past. Some uniforms were blue, some green.

At the center of the rows of naval officers from an age gone by, Arkady Reykov and Timofei Vasska stood together in ghostly silence and gazed at Captain Picard.

Buffy smiled as she made her way to Reykov. "You're free," she said and he nodded. "I'm glad."

Slowly then, from each end, the crescent of sailors began to disappear, one by one.

Author's Note: Next chapter returns back to normal TNG episodes.