Fifteen

TRAVIS CAUGHT a few hours of sleep and went to relieve Westerberg at the helm. It was ship’s night-normally, a quiet time on the bridge. A time when stations were manned by a minimal crew complement-helm, sensors, auxiliary control…. Even with the ship under Denari command, there were usually only a few additional soldiers on duty.

Tonight was different, though.

He entered the bridge to the sounds of an argument in progress between Cooney and several Denari crowded around the auxiliary engineering station. Peranda was in the captain’s chair, still on duty-a shock to Travis, who had never seen the man on this late before-looking every bit as angry as he had down in the crew’s mess. All stations-communications, sensors, weapons-were occupied, and the tension on the bridge was so thick that he could have cut it with a knife.

“-not sure what waiting around is going to gain us, Chief Cooney,” one of the Denari was saying. “It seems to me we should begin a thorough check-“

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Cooney interrupted. “Do you know what an intermittent problem is?”

“I know what an intermittent problem is, yes.”

“It doesn’t happen on a schedule,” Cooney continued, as if the man hadn’t spoken. “You can’t plan for it, you just have to be ready to diagnose it when it happens. And we’ve just spent the last few hours getting ready.” He spread his arms wide to indicate the increased crew presence on the bridge. “The next time the power fluctuates, we’ll know what’s happening. And why.”

“We’ve waited five hours for that next time to occur, Chief. How much longer are we supposed to wait?”

Cooney laughed. “You’re an idiot. Do you know what intermittent means?”

“Enough.” Peranda leaned forward in his chair. “We’ll wait. One more hour, Chief Cooney. If the problem does not manifest itself again, however, we will begin a full systems check.”

“It’s your time,” Cooney said. “Waste it if you want to.”

Travis walked past, as unobstrusively as he could, and stopped next to the helm.

Westerberg looked up at him and rolled his eyes.

“Good luck,” he said, standing. “I’ll see you in eight hours.”

“Anything I need to know?” Travis asked, taking his station.

“Stay alert,” the older man said. “That power fluctuation they’re talking about? When it happens-bam!” The man slapped his hands together. “Engine speed drops like that. You have to be on it, or the ship starts wobbling like a top.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Oh,” Westerberg smiled, “believe me, it’s all fun.”

Travis knew he was referring to more than the engine cut-out.

He settled himself at the helm and ran a quick systems check. They were halfway between Kota and Denari, he saw. That meant that sometime tomorrow, they’d be hitting the Belt. He and Westerberg had talked about it this morning, on the previous shift change. The course Peranda had laid in called for them to go through the asteroid field, rather than around it. That was not going to be fun at all.

In the same way, Travis suspected, that the rest of this shift was not going to be fun either.

“Colonel.” Travis turned and saw it was the Denari soldier at the communications console who’d spoken. “General Elson.”

Peranda stood up. “In there,” he said, nodding to Archer’s ready room. He strode quickly across the deck, then paused at its entrance and turned back to the group of engineers.

“Notify me if the fluctuations start again.”

Cooney looked up from his console. “Believe me, if they start happening, you’ll know.”

“Notify me,” Peranda snapped, and entered the ready room.

Cooney shook his head and turned back to work. Travis spun around in his chair and did the same.

Time passed. Peranda strode out of the ready room. Travis looked up quickly and, just as quickly, back down.

Peranda was ashen-faced and angry. Whatever this General Elson had said had clearly upset him, and Travis knew Peranda well enough to know that when the colonel was upset, the best thing to do was stay out of his way.

Peranda went to the communications console.

“The general wishes to speak to our passengers,” he said.

“I’ll set that up, sir,” the com officer said.

“Yes. You do that.” The colonel spoke slowly, as if afraid that speaking more than one word at a time would cause him to explode.

Travis wondered what “passengers” he was talking about.

He heard Peranda take the center seat-Captain Archer’s seat-again. “Nothing on those power fluctuations?”

“Not yet.” Even Cooney sounded subdued-seemed like he knew Peranda’s moods as well.

“Link is established, sir,” the com officer said.

“Good.”

All at once, the lights dimmed.

The ship lurched. Travis was on the controls in an instant. He boosted power to the aft thrusters, stabilizing the ship, and at the same instant cut their forward motion in half, to match the reduction in speed.

“There it is!” Cooney shouted triumphantly. “What did I tell you, there it is!”

Travis was too busy to turn around, but he heard the frenzy of activity the fluctuation had started. Every one of the Denari who had been, up until that instant, standing around waiting sounded like they were now in motion.

“Reactor output is at nominal,” one called out.

“Power grid stable.”

“Conduit integrity verified.”

“Got it,” Cooney said. “You tricky little bastard.”

“What?” Peranda snapped. “What is it?”

“Plasma flow,” Cooney said. “We’re losing energy through the exhaust manifold.” Travis could hear the note of puzzlement in his voice. “Sensors show the manifold is clear, though. I don’t-“

The lights came on, full intensity.

“Flow is back to normal,” Cooney said. “Huh.”

Travis had full power at the helm again. He pushed their speed up to full impulse.

A problem with the plasma exhaust. That sounded familiar to him, for some reason.

“Now that we know what the difficulty is, what do we do about it?” Peranda asked.

“We still have to figure out why it’s happening,” Cooney said. “Give us a minute to correlate all the data.”

“Colonel.” It was the communications officer again.

“Yes?”

“General Elson again.”

“Very well.” Peranda started back toward the ready room.

“Sir,” the com officer said, “he says now. Sir.”

Peranda sighed. “Very well.”

The star field on the main viewscreen cleared. A man took its place.

An older man-early sixties, Travis guessed-dressed in a simple black tunic, with a wave of silver-white hair that fell across his forehead. He looked exactly the way a general was supposed to look, and yet, there was a light in his eyes that struck Travis the wrong way. Calculation? Cruelty?

He couldn’t say what, but it filled him with an instant, instinctive dislike for the man.

Peranda moved to the center of the bridge and spoke.

“General Elson.”

“Colonel Peranda. Tell me you’ve solved the problem.”

“No, sir, not yet. But as you can see”-Peranda gestured toward the knot of engineers at the back of the bridge-“we’re working on it.”

“Work toward being here tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll check back in four hours. If it’s necessary to send another ship to fetch them”-Elson smiled-“we’ll have time to do that then.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t think it will be.”

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

The screen went dark.

Peranda sighed again and sat back down in his chair.

Travis tried to make sense of what he’d just heard.

Elson was pushing to have “them” there by tomorrow morning. Clearly, it was the reason why Peranda had been so worked up about first the warp engines, and now this problem they were having with the power fluctuating. The “them” the general had referred to was just as clearly-at least as Travis saw it-these passengers Elson had asked to speak with before. Passengers whose identity Travis had no idea of.

But he was certainly going to find out more about them.

The engineers returned, talking quietly among themselves. Peranda continued to sit and fume.

A problem with the plasma exhaust, Travis thought again. And again, that struck a chord with him. Why?

Well, if he couldn’t remember, maybe the computer could.

Travis checked space ahead of them-a few rocks, a comet on a very erratic orbit around Kota that had already passed as close to them as it was going to get…Nothing large enough to merit concern, or his attention, for that matter. All he had to be worried about was another power fluctuation cropping up.

He’d take the chance it wouldn’t in the next few minutes.

He set the helm to autopilot and, working casually, accessed the main computer.