Encounter at Farpoint Read online

  “Lieutenant Worf is right, sir. As security chief, I can’t just stand here—”

  “Yes, you can, Lieutenant,” Picard snapped.

  Tasha wanted to protest. He could see it in her eyes. If he were still a security chief, he would want to protest as vigorously as she did. All her instincts were to fight back, to deal with this intrusion on a physical level, even if it was clear the alien was far more than he appeared to be. But he was captain now, and that was a different set of responsibilities.

  Tasha lowered her eyes. “Yes, sir.” The captain was right, of course. Wait and see. But Tasha didn’t have to pretend she liked it.

  The 21st-Century soldier form of Q pulled out a slender tube attached to his uniform and turned it so he could sniff something from it. Then, taking a deep breath, he murmured, “Ah, yes . . . better.” The drug seemed to take hold almost immediately, and Q smiled sarcastically at Picard. “Later, of course, on finally reaching deep space, humans found enemies to fight there, too. And to broaden those struggles,”Q swept a hand around to indicate Worf and Troi, “you again found allies for still more murdering. The same old story all over again.”

  Despite himself, despite his training, Picard found his anger rising. Who was this pompous posing popinjay? By what right did he intrude and accuse? If his manners were any indication, Q had no claim to moral superiority at all. Picard stepped toward the being, allowing some of his anger to show. “No. No. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no sense of who we are at all. The most dangerous ‘same old story’ is the one in front of me right now. Self-righteous life forms who are eager not to learn but to prosecute, to judge anything they don’t understand or can’t tolerate.”

  Q cocked his head to one side, eyeing Picard sharply. He laughed. “What an interesting idea. Prosecute and judge?” He took a step or two away from Picard, pondering the idea, then he turned back. “And suppose it turns out we understand you humans only too well?”

  “We’ve no fear of what the facts about us would reveal.”

  “The facts about you? Oh, splendid, splendid! You are a veritable fountain of excellent ideas.” He flashed a pleasant smile at Picard. “Well, now—we can proceed. Of course, there are preparations to make, Captain, but I promise you, when we next meet, we will proceed exactly as you suggest.” He made the short, curt salute of the 21st-Century troops. The thunder roll and flare of blinding light carried him away.

  Chapter Two

  THE INCREDIBLE LIGHT faded quickly, but it was several moments more before the bridge crew fully accepted that the alien being was actually gone. They looked around with both confusion and relief.

  Picard’s stomach was churning. Too soon. This was happening too soon. He didn’t have a first officer. He hadn’t had a chance to drill his crew and get to know them. It wasn’t fair. Deep space wasn’t fair.

  Picard touched his neck to check his pulse. It was racing. Fear? Excitement? It didn’t matter. He knew what was needed now—before anything else—was the appearance of self-control. Fake it till you make it, Picard said to himself. The crew looks to the captain as the source of all well-being on the ship. So be it.

  Picard glanced around the bridge calmly, “Everybody all right?” There were uneasy nods of assent. “Good.” He eased himself into his command chair and looked at Data. “Any readings on the alien?”

  Data shook his head. “Bridge sensors picked up nothing. Either he wasn’t here or he blanked them out. As we all seem to agree on what we saw, I would assume that the alien blanked them out. Let me also suggest a third possibility: the being might not have been physically present at all. He might have been a projection or an illusion of some kind. But again, that would require some kind of blanking effect on the bridge sensors. A fourth possibility: the being may have been a telepathic projection and therefore not detectable by the bridge sensors. A fifth possibility—”

  Picard held up a hand. “Thank you, Data.” As always, Data not only answered the question, he practically beat it to death with alternative possibilities.

  “Sir,” Worf stood up before him. “I respectfully submit that our only choice is to fight.”

  Tasha stepped down off the horseshoe to stand next to Worf. “I agree, sir. We fight or try to escape.”

  Picard held up a hand to them and turned to Troi. “Did you sense anything, Commander?”

  She shook her head. “Its mind is much too powerful, sir.” She paused and then added, “Recommend we avoid contact.”

  “Interesting,” Picard said. “Very interesting.”

  He considered their remarks, turning the situation over in his mind. There was something they could try. It might not work, but it was a fair chance they could take Q by surprise. He looked up at his people. “All right. From this moment, no station aboard, repeat no station, for any reason will make use of signals, transmission or intercom. Confine all communications to hardcopy only. My personal comm line will be reserved as the only active signals line in use. Let’s see if we can take them by surprise. Lieutenant Worf, inform engineering to make ready for maximum acceleration and we’ll find out what a Galaxy-class starship can do.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Worf was already on his way to the forward turbolift as Picard turned to Data. “Records search, Data. Results of attempting battle configuration at high warp speeds.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” Data seemed honestly confused.

  “You heard me. It’s theoretically possible. I want to know if anyone has succeeded—or will we have to be the first?”

  The android looked unhappy with the question, but he considered it, seeming to draw in on himself as he searched his internal memory banks. Then he looked at Picard impassively. “It is inadvisable at any warp speed, sir.”

  “Search theoretical. What are the odds?”

  Data did another quick scan and lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “It is possible, sir. But there is no error margin. Therefore I cannot compute the odds.”

  “I see. Thank you, Data.” Picard considered his idea again. It was dangerous—much more dangerous than he liked. Certainly it was much too much of a risk to ask the crew’s families to accept. But . . . they were already at risk from Q—

  A rock and a hard place. That was the dilemma.

  Picard sighed as he examined the plan’s faults and virtues one more time. It was an argument he knew he couldn’t win, because he was arguing against himself. Logically, he knew what he had to do. Emotionally . . . that was another question.

  Picard made a choice. He nodded to himself and stood. He raised his voice and said, “Now hear this!” The crew turned toward him, expectantly. He waited until there was silence on the bridge and all eyes were on him. “Using printout only, notify all decks to prepare for maximum acceleration. Maximum, you’re entitled to know, means we’ll be pushing our engines well past their safety limits. Our hope is to surprise whatever that thing is out there and try to outrun it. Our only other option would be to put our tail between our legs and return to Earth as they demand.”

  Lt. Worf could hurry without running. He had a stride that was near-legendary among those who had tried to keep up with him. He strode into the huge Engineering section of the Enterprise and paused, looking around for the officer in charge.

  The great injector core dominated the center of the two-story area, driving through it from floor to ceiling. This was the heart of the Enterprise, as the bridge was her brain. Streams of matter were injected from the top of the core, antimatter from the bottom, to converge on the dilithium crystal, nature’s wondrous gift which made warp speed possible.

  Despite Klingon advances in interstellar drive technology, Worf still stood in awe of Starfleet’s warp drive. It had more sustaining power and thrust than any other drive system in the combined Federation/ Klingon Empire space and had been one of the key bargaining chips in the negotiations that had made them allies twenty-five years before. Klingon strategists often speculated on what would ha
ve happened had the two great powers not united. Indeed, it was a common theme of tactical games at home. Generally, the assessment was that the alliance of Federation and Empire had proven beneficial for both—and in some very surprising ways. But still, Worf liked to imagine what the Klingon Empire could have been had they had access to engines like these twenty-five years ago. It was a pleasant, if slightly illicit, thought.

  Chief Engineer Argyle stepped in beside him quietly. “Help you, Lieutenant?”

  “Captain’s orders. Make ready for ‘max.’ ”

  Argyle’s eyes flickered and he frowned. “Maximum?”

  “All the way. On the signal ‘engage.’ ”

  The chief engineer looked unhappy. He resented anyone abusing his engines. “He’d better have a damn good reason.”

  “We’ve encountered an alien force. We don’t know what it is—what they are. Captain’s going to see what they’re made of.”

  “Uh uh. Captain’s going to see what we’re made of.” Argyle turned toward his engineers working at their consoles. “All right. Engineering alert. Stand by. We’re powering up to go to maximum warp in one jump.”

  Several of the engineering crew snapped around to stare at him in surprise and alarm, but he kept his face blank and noncommital. Going to maximum in one jump was hard on the ship, hard on the engines; but it could be done. They had done it in drill, they had done it in simulation. They had even once done it as part of the ship’s shakedown.

  Still . . . it wasn’t considered a good idea. There was too much likelihood of phase blowout. But the crew knew their jobs, so Argyle wasn’t worried about that. What was alarming was the situation that forced them to do it. “Engagement will be on captain’s signal from the bridge. Blake, I’ll want a maximum charge on the reserve cells.”

  Worf grinned wickedly and headed back to the main bridge. As the doors to Engineering hissed closed behind him, he heard the low-pitched whine of standard warp power ascending quickly to a high shriek.

  Picard stood behind Data at the conn, studying the alien grid that glittered on the viewscreen. Whichever way they turned their viewer cameras, the grid barred their way—except behind them. Picard was pinning his hopes on what his ancient sporting forebears would have called an “end run.”

  Worf burst back onto the bridge from the forward turbolift, half running toward his operations station. “Engine Room standing by, sir.”

  “Thank you, Worf. Data?”

  “The board is green, Captain.”

  The captain stepped back to his command chair and settled easily into it. “Reverse heading, 180 mark 2. Stand by.” His eyes flicked over the bridge and the crew poised in readiness at their various stations. He tapped the communication tab on his left-hand panel. “Engage!” The entire bridge shuddered under a scream of power as the warp engines leapt to their full strength.

  Picard imagined for just the briefest of instants that he could feel the acceleration as the Enterprise leapt forward. Of course, he could not. He’d have been smeared across the back wall if the inertial gravitational adjustors had not been in sync with the warp drive. Nonetheless, Picard imagined that he could feel the acceleration. Every ship captain did.

  The Enterprise shot forward, held in control like a tightly reined horse under Data’s navigation, and then—peeled off in a stomach-churning sharp left turn! They passed perilously close to the shimmering alien grid, but then they were beyond it and still pushing their warp envelope upward.

  Still under Data’s tight control, the starship angled her nose beyond the grid and raced free. Behind them, the grid wavered briefly, its glow dimming. It suddenly shrank in size, coalescing into a brightly colored spinning shape that swiftly settled into grim pursuit of the Enterprise.

  Picard ignored the steadily rising thrum of the engines and listened to his officers as they reported. “Warp nine point two,” Worf reported, grinning. He didn’t approve of running from any fight—but he did understand the value of a “strategic withdrawal.” Particularly a strategic withdrawal that demonstrated both strength and cleverness. After all, didn’t the Earthers have a saying? “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day?” Or was it, “—lives to run another day?” Never mind.

  “Heading, three-five-one, mark eleven, sir,” Data reported from the conn.

  “Steady on that.”

  Tasha spoke up from the Weapons and Tactical console behind Picard. “The hostile is giving chase, sir. Accelerating fast.”

  Worf stirred at his console and studied his screens. “We are now at warp nine point three, sir.”

  “Thank you. Let me know when we pass the red line.”

  “We are passing it now at warp nine point three five, sir.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Inform engineering to maintain maximum power.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Continue accelerating,” Picard said evenly. He looked over at Troi and half-smiled. “Counselor, at this point I’m open to guesses about what we’ve just met. What did you feel about it?”

  She bowed her head a moment, her dark hair shadowing her face as she pondered, analyzing the sensations she had felt when Q was on the bridge. “It . . . it felt like something beyond what we’d consider a ‘life form.’ ”

  “‘Beyond?’ Clarify?”

  “Very, very advanced, sir. Or . . .” Troi considered it and then nodded firmly. “Advanced or certainly very, very different!”

  Worf turned in his chair to interrupt. “Sir, we’re at warp nine point four.”

  “Hostile is now beginning to overtake us,” Tasha chimed from behind Picard.

  “Hostile’s realized velocity is warp nine point six, sir,” Data added calmly.

  “Are you sure?” Picard regretted the words even before he finished speaking them.

  Data did not bother to look back at Picard. He accepted rhetorical questions as a matter of human habit. “Of course, sir. Hostile is now within viewer range. Shall I magnify the image?”

  “Do it.”

  The forward wall of the bridge shimmered, and the blinking point of light that had been at the center of it suddenly jumped forward to become a spinning shape, shimmering and undefinable.

  Tasha tensed, reading her console. “Hostile’s velocity now at nine point seven, sir.”

  Picard leaned forward in his chair, keeping his eyes on the screen, tabbed his communications line open. “Engineering?”

  Argyle’s voice came back instantly. “Sir—I have to caution you—”

  “Caution be damned, Engineer. We need more speed.” Picard snapped off the communications line. “Go to yellow alert.”

  Data touched a control on his console and the yellow alert alarm began to clamor loudly. Picard turned to Tasha. “Arm photon torpedoes. Stand by to fire.” He was aware of Troi’s alarmed glance, but he ignored it.

  “Torpedoes to ready, sir.”

  Suddenly the ship shuddered. It was felt as a tremendous tremor throughout the bridge, and several of the crewmembers had to grab quickly for their consoles to steady themselves—and there was a sound, as if some great beast slumbering on the bottom of the blackest ocean had been troubled in its sleep, a beast better left unawakened.

  Troi glanced around quickly. She felt the pulse of fear and alarm from some of them. Then the temblor eased away as suddenly as it had begun.

  At the forward console, Worf was hastily punching up commands on his console. He had minored in the design and engineering of starships in his Academy days. He’d never experienced a primal shiver first hand, but that great shuddering groan couldn’t have been anything else. It was a bad sign. Warp stress could rip the drive core apart.