“What theory?”
“Our standard scans are blunt instruments. Most of the time they are more than adequate, but every now and again they miss important information,” Bryce began.
“You’ve been in Starfleet how long, Bryce?”
“I’m three years out of the Academy, ma’am.”
Ma’am?
“Stick with Commander, Lieutenant,” Torres suggested none too gently. “And these blunt instruments are the product of millions of hours by the most capable scientists Starfleet has ever produced.”
“I agree completely, Commander,” Bryce said quickly. “I am in radical, violent agreement with that assessment.”
“But?”
“Our sensors aren’t optimized to function in the presence of quantum variances and theoretical particles, like the ones present here. They’re just… well, not. They default to known parameters and fill in any missing information according to what should be there, even if sensors can’t detect it. But in this case, a good sixty to seventy percent of what we are looking at is unknown.”
Torres considered this, detached herself from the personal umbrage she took to Bryce’s assessment of her sensors, and was finally forced to agree.
“Okay. So, you created an anti-tetryonic algorithm. And this is what it came up with? It’s clearly missing data. The ship is almost invisible.”
“Now watch this,” Icheb said.
Another handful of microseconds elapsed, during which the Galen appeared to vanish completely while a simultaneous conflagration ignited where its aft section had just been.
“What is that?” Torres asked, stepping closer to the display.
“Galen’s antimatter containment pods,” Bryce answered. “Or, more accurately, the absence of the containment pods. That’s just antimatter impacting normal space and doing what it does.”
Torres’s heart began to pound, and the heat that had been burning her heart began to move up her spine, spreading rapidly over her head.
“Where did the pods go?”
“Presumably wherever the rest of the ship went,” Bryce offered. “For whatever reason, they just couldn’t take the antimatter with them.”
“Run it again,” she ordered.
They did. When she had seen it three more times, and confirmed the atomic scans, she was convinced that Icheb and Bryce had just performed a miracle—resurrection.
Galen hadn’t been destroyed. It had been transported. The question was where.
7
GALEN
“Damn it,” Harry Kim shouted as Ranson Velth was spirited away from the airlock by a pack of unknown life-forms, to where, he knew not.
“Their speed is increasing,” Conlon said. “They’re almost a hundred kilometers distant from the airlock now.”
Kim started toward the turbolift. “I’m going after him.”
“What?”
Power hadn’t been restored to the lifts yet, but Kim slid through the gap between the turbolift doors before Nancy caught up with him. He had already opened the panel to the maintenance shaft he would have to descend to access the rest of the ship when she reached him.
“Get back here,” she demanded.
“I can save him, Nancy. I have to try.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Don’t argue with me about this. We can’t lose him.”
“He’s already gone,” Conlon insisted.
“No, he isn’t.”
Conlon stepped back, giving his rage a little room to vent itself. For nearly three days, without complaint or rest, Harry Kim had become the rock-solid center of those left aboard the Galen. Conlon hadn’t seen him raise his voice, let alone lose his temper, even once.
It was past time, and she knew it, even if he didn’t.
“It’s not your fault, Harry,” Conlon said softly.
Kim stood, one hand resting on the edge of the open shaft access panel, his head bowed and his breath coming in deep, quick spasms.
“I sent him out there,” Kim finally said.
“He volunteered. Because there was no other way to get the comm relay fixed. Because that’s what all of us are trained to do—whatever the hell it takes to survive and preserve the lives of those with whom we serve.”
Kim turned his head to look at her. “Does Galen have any shuttles?”
Conlon frowned. Whatever Kim had just asked, it probably wasn’t “Does Grandma needle munckle?” You’re tired, that’s all, she told herself. “Say again?”
“Shuttles? Do we have any?” Kim repeated.
“A small medical shuttle. Seats two, I think, with a little room in the back for supplies and a single biobed. Its systems were drained along with everything else and I haven’t even looked at restoring power to it. I need to make sure the rest of us are going to be able to keep breathing indefinitely before I even add it to the list of priorities.”
“How soon do you think you could…?”
Now it was Conlon’s turn to raise her voice.
“You’re not going out there, Harry. Velth is gone. His suit was breached even before the aliens got to him and his oxygen was already in the red. Velth is dead, Harry, and you know it. Stop pretending you’re about to pull some crazy miracle rescue scenario out of your ass. He’s gone. Accept it.”
Her words hit him like a gut punch. His legs seemed to give out and he landed on the deck of the lift, a small, weary bit of humanity broken under the weight of unimaginable stress.
Conlon slipped through the doors and came to rest on her knees beside him. Reaching out, she took his hands and held them as the emotions he’d been shoving down as deep as he could found release. He rested there, weeping and rocking, until, finally spent, he grew quiet.
It had been a long time since she had been close to him in this way. She was struck by how strange it felt.
Kim’s love for her had never really been a question. He’d spoken of it and, more important, shown it in so many ways large and small that there had been no room left to doubt its permanence. But circumstances had forced her to set that aside so that she could consider the choices before her about the baby and her illness rationally, logically, unclouded by emotion. She hadn’t wanted his feelings for her to be the most important factor
