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  She chuckled.

  “It’ll be fun. I’m sure it will do you good to get you out of that uniform for a while.” He realized what he’d said, and blinked.

  She grinned. “You know, you turn kind of blue when you blush.”

  He grinned sheepishly. “Aquamarine, actually.”

  To her own surprise, she didn’t say an immediate no. “We’ve got a navigation hazard to clean up in the Lokak system. It should be quick, but I don’t know. Let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you when I have a better idea how long our mission will take.”

  “You’ll call back soon though? Promise?”

  “We’ll be there in the morning. I’ll scope out the situation, then call you back as soon as I get time.” She stretched, feeling the pull of tired muscles across her shoulders and down her back. “Now I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

  “Good night, Sonya.”

  The screen went blissfully blank.

  She lay back in her bunk and closed her eyes. Sleep, however, was not forthcoming.

  Domenica Corsi signed off her shift and headed for her quarters. She paused along the way and tapped her combadge. “Computer, locate Fabian Stevens.”

  “Crewperson Stevens is in the mess hall.”

  She turned back to the turbolift, rode up a deck, and emerged a few steps from the mess hall door.

  The mess hall was deserted at this hour. No odor lingered from the evening meal, and chairs were squared neatly under the tables.

  Fabian sat alone at a table near a window, his head silhouetted by the blue glow emitted by the port warp nacelle. He sat slumped in his chair, long legs stretched out and feet crossed in front of him. A half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich sat neglected on his plate. His nose was buried in a padd.

  He glanced up and waved at Corsi when she entered the room. She stopped at the replicator to pick up a cup of herbal tea, then strolled over and joined him. She leaned over and gave him a peck on the lips, enough to be fun, not enough to distract from his coming shift. “You’re up early,” she said.

  “Pre-mission jitters. I’m anticipating blowing this thing up.” He glanced at her. “You’re working late.”

  She sat down and sipped her tea. It was good, but had a faint replicated aftertaste. She dumped in two sugars and made a mental note to pick up some real tea on her next shore leave. “Powers is still in sickbay after Phantas 61, so we had to juggle the shifts a bit. I did tell you about that.”

  He stared at his padd and grunted. “I suppose you did.”

  “Besides, I like the gamma shift when we’re cruising at warp. It’s usually quiet, like having the ship to yourself.” She reached over and pulled down the top of his padd, so she could see the screen. “What’re you reading?”

  He shrugged. “A Starfleet Intelligence white paper on Breen tactical systems. Not very informative, and dry as a bone.”

  “I’ve got gossip.”

  He tossed the padd on the table and reached for his coffee cup. “Yeah?”

  “I got a call tonight from that freighter captain. The one we rescued from the holographic ship? The green one?” She watched his face for a reaction, some trace of jealousy. She’d made no secret during his visit that she found “Pappy” Omthon very attractive.

  Fabian looked at her with a perfect poker face, not rising to her tease. “He was a first officer, not a captain.”

  “He’s a captain now. He bought the ship from his old captain.”

  “Well. Good for him.”

  She frowned. “That’s not the gossip. He called to ask about Commander Gomez. He’d been calling her, and she’d been avoiding him.”

  “That’s her right.”

  “With respect to a superior officer, she’s an idiot. Omthon is a great guy. It’s time she let herself have a life again.”

  Fabian looked thoughtful. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He nodded.

  “So, I totally abused my security clearances to help him ambush her when she returned to her quarters. I probably violated about a dozen regulations. I could be court-martialed. Proud of me?”

  He gave her a sidelong glance. “She’s the first officer. You could be court-martialed.”

  “She’ll thank me later.”

  “Yeah, but she’ll court-martial you now. What,” he said in mock horror, “were you thinking?”

  She frowned and stared into the teacup cradled in her hands. “I was thinking, life is too short to waste it.”

  Fabian leaned forward, his face serious, his eyes troubled. “Is something bothering you?”

  Corsi hesitated. It was one thing to talk about Gomez, and what she should do. Talking about herself was another matter. “I’ve been thinking about our little talk in the turbolift after Phantas. And I’m wondering—what would you do if you knew it was the last day of your life?”

  He grinned. “Kick Bart out of the cabin, tell you to cancel your shift, and come right over.”

  “I’m serious.” She frowned at him.

  Fabian’s grin faded, and he reached for her hand. “I am being serious.”

  Her hand rested lightly in his, but Fabian could feel the tension in her fingers. She looked out the window, watching the star-streaks traveling by.

  “It’s part of the job,” he said, stroking her fingers. “We live with it.” He tried another grin. “Hell, you shoot people for a living.”

  Her mouth twisted into an approximation of a smile, and she sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I just worry that she’s going to completely close herself off, like—” She cut herself off.

  Fabian put his finger against her lips. “I know.”

  They sat in silence for a while after that.

  Chapter

  3

  Gomez arrived on the bridge as they were ready to drop out of warp. Stevens was at one of the aft stations. Lieutenant Commander Tev stood next to Captain Gold’s chair. “Good morning, Captain. Tev.”

  Tev’s deep-set eyes gave her a sideways glance. His snout wrinkled slightly and the corner of his mouth twitched down a bit, all of which seemed to say, “I’ve been up for hours. Where have you been?”

  She grinned slightly. She was learning to let the Tellarite’s natural arrogance roll off her. He seemed oblivious. She had to admit that, as his superior officer, it helped to know she could simply order him to behave himself. It wasn’t her style to actually do it, but knowing she could provided an escape valve.

  Now, if she could just improve his relationships with the rest of the crew, she’d be getting somewhere. The only person with whom the Tellarite was in any way friendly was Bart Faulwell. Gomez wondered what the linguist’s secret was.

  “Wong,” said Gold, “take us to impulse.”

  The ship dropped out of warp, and the stars on the screen changed from moving streaks to diamondlike points.

  “One quarter impulse, sir.”

  “Haznedl, where’s our derelict?”

  The alpha-shift ops officer’s strawberry blond hair was drawn into a tight bun, an imitation of Corsi’s severe style, in an attempt to counter her youth and small stature. She tapped at her console. “I show it three hundred twenty kilometers ahead, sir.”

  “Visual and magnify, on screen.”

  “Aye.”

  Gomez stared. The ship wasn’t a disk at all, it was a dark-colored torus. Its surface was a complex pattern of gray and black, with glinting highlights of silver, and occasional splashes of caramel brown. Small projections spaced evenly around the rim might have been thrusters or emitters of some sort, and other small projections were even less identifiable. It was hard to make sense of it all because the whole thing was spinning, and quite rapidly.

  She tried to fix her eye on one of the projections and count seconds as it spun. “That’s what, about eight revolutions per minute?”

  Tev leaned over the ops console, studying the sensor displays. “A fraction over seven RPM, actually.”

  Gold grinned slightly. “It looks
like a bagel.”

  Gomez grinned back. “A five-hundred-meter bagel.”

  “That,” he said, “would need a lot of lox.”

  Tev snorted, a sound of disgust, at the casual banter between the captain and first officer.

  “Captain,” said Haznedl, “scanners are having a hard time reading the interior. The ionizing radiation and some exotic alloys in the hull are interfering. I’m detecting no life-forms, but there is a pressurized space occupying about thirty percent of the interior volume. Helium, argon, various trace gases, including a heavy concentration of radon.” She tapped more controls. “Neither the atmosphere nor the technology matches anything in the Federation database. This is a total unknown.”

  “Well,” said Gomez. “Looks like we have ourselves another puzzle. Tev, what’s your analysis?”

  “It’s a ship or probe, probably unoccupied. There’s no indication of warp capability. I suspect those projections on the rim are primitive impulse thrusters.”

  She nodded. “I’d say you were right about everything except about its being unoccupied. There, you’re dead wrong.”

  Tev glared at her. “It doesn’t have the characteristics of a ship designed to support life.”

  “On the contrary, it has a characteristic that leads to no other conclusion. It’s spinning.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Maybe Tellarites don’t suffer ill effects from prolonged exposure to microgravity, but many other species, including humans, do. Some of our early space station and spacecraft designs used centrifugal force to simulate gravity for long space voyages.”

  Tev snorted. “How stunningly primitive.” He considered for a moment. “Clever though.”

  “I suggest,” said the captain, “there will be plenty of time to study this thing. What say we save a planet first? This is your show, Gomez.”

  She nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  She pulled out a padd and checked her calculations. She’d plotted an orbit that would take the spinship safely past the Lokra homeworld, having adjusted for the mass, configuration, and now the rotation of the derelict ship, based on their more refined sensor readings. After double-checking her final check, she transferred the final results to the ops console.

  “Susan, lock on tractor emitters two and three. Songmin, stand by thrusters. Full astern as soon as we have lock.”

  Emitters two and three were among the many da Vinci upgrades that originated with Duffy’s “U.S.S. Roebling” S.C.E. dream ship, made when the ship was being repaired following Galvan VI. Located at the far edges of the saucer section, the long baseline separating them allowed for precision manipulation of objects at a distance. Their locations allowed them to connect directly into the same structural spar that tied the warp nacelles to the ship, and to hook directly into the ship’s main EPS power conduits.

  “Aye,” said Haznedl, “we’ve got lock.”

  On the main viewscreen, Gomez watched a pair of converging blue beams lock on to either side of the ring-shaped ship.

  “Thrusters full astern,” said Wong. Even before he finished speaking, a note of hesitation crept into his voice. He frowned at his console. “Captain, I’m getting some anomalous firing of the attitude thrusters. The automatic systems are throwing in a roll component, but our attitude is stable.”

  Gomez glanced at the viewscreen for the oldest kind of confirmation. The stars remained in fixed positions. But if the roll thrusters are firing—

  Gomez reviewed her calculations. She’d compensated so there would be little or no coupling of the derelict’s spin back to the da Vinci. Maybe there was an unrelated malfunction in the automatic stability systems.

  “Captain,” said Wong, tension creeping into his voice, “thruster quads one through four and eleven through fourteen are reaching maximum output. We can’t maintain thrust astern.”

  Gomez stared at the screen. This couldn’t be happening, but this wasn’t the time to be guessing at what was going on. “Shut down the tractor beams! Back us away!”

  Haznedl tapped the ops console, her voice thin with strain. “I’ve cut power, but the beams are still active.”

  On screen the tractor beams were clearly visible. More disturbing, the stars were rotating, like the second hand of an antique clock, and they were getting faster.

  Gomez ran to the engineering station and pulled up an EPS status panel. “The plasma relays may have fused. I’m going to cut the main EPS conduits feeding the system. We’ll lose phaser power too, but—”

  Tev came and looked over her shoulder, staring at the master display as she located the master plasma cutouts and activated them. She glanced back at the screen. The damned tractor beams were still active!

  “Where are they getting power?”

  Wong tapped frantically at the helm. “I’ve lost attitude control. Thruster quads one, four, eleven, and fourteen are reaching critical overheat. I have to shut them down before they blow.”

  “Wait as long as you can,” shouted Gomez, looking for any other way power could be reaching the tractor beams. The thrusters would slow their accelerating rotation and might buy them critical seconds to shut down the tractor beams. Plus, it was only a matter of time before the acceleration itself started to cause problems.

  “Inertial dampers and structural integrity field systems are showing the strain,” said Haznedl.

  “Our roll rate is fourteen RPM and accelerating,” Wong said. Their mass, relative to the derelict, was quickly accelerating their spin rate.

  “The news just keeps getting better,” muttered Gomez. She could hear the ship groaning from the strain, feel a slight lean to the deck that the inertial dampers couldn’t compensate for.

  She couldn’t understand it. The tractor beams were isolated from any power source, yet they kept operating. She triple checked the EPS schematic. The tractors and main phasers were isolated at the end of a major EPS feeder. There was no way they could be getting power, unless—

  “It’s got to be some kind of feedback loop. The beam interaction with the derelict is generating power, not dissipating it. It’s feeding power back through the beams. That’s what threw my calculations off!”

  She was suddenly aware Captain Gold was standing next to her. “How do we turn it off?”

  “We can’t, unless we can get someone down to directly disable the emitters. And if we break the circuit, I don’t know where the energy will go. It could kill anyone near the emitter, even make them explode.”

  “Roll is at twenty RPM,” said Wong. The stars whirled on the viewscreen like a child’s pinwheel.

  “Warning,” said the computer, “inertial dampers in overload. Failure imminent. Warning, structural integrity field reaching critical load.”

  “Damn, there just isn’t time!”

  The ship moaned and shuddered as it tried to tear itself apart.

  It was a race. If the SIF failed, the ship would break up. If the inertial dampers failed, they’d all be splattered against the nearest bulkhead.

  Tev blinked. “Put the main phasers in overload.”

  “That’ll blow up the ship,” said Gold.

  “It’ll do nothing,” said Gomez. “The phasers don’t have power.”

  “Just do it,” said Tev. “It’s the only way.”

  Stevens, holding on to the tactical station for support, had a sudden look of revelation. “Captain, he’s right! It’s our only hope!”

  Gomez scowled at the EPS diagram. She didn’t see what good it would do, but Captain Gold had once told her, “Trust your people.”

  “Setting main phasers to overload.” She was leaning sideways in her chair now, struggling not to slide out of it.

  “Warning,” said the computer, “phaser overload requires command authorization.”

  “Authorization, Gold, alpha tango one!”

  There was a noise, as though the phaser banks were about to fire, which turned abruptly into a dull thud that shuddered through the ship. A flash illuminated the der
elict on the screen. By the time Gomez’s eyes adjusted, the tractor beams were gone.

  The ship shook violently. The lights on the bridge flickered. Then things smoothed out. The rotating stars on the screen began to slow.

  “Damage report,” said Captain Gold.

  “Minor buckling in the hull and secondary structural members,” reported Anthony Shabalala from tactical. “Tractor beams and main phasers are offline. Damage to EPS conduits ten and thirty. Minor damage to structural integrity field systems and reaction control systems. No casualties.”

  Gold stared at the object on the screen. “Well, that was exciting.” He turned and made eye contact with Gomez. His look made it clear he was trying not to be judgmental, but she knew she’d better have a damned good report ready for him ASAP.

  First, though, she wanted to know how Tev pulled that rabbit out of his hat, and she gave him an expectant look.

  To his credit, the Tellarite spoke up immediately. “The phasers were isolated on the same branch of the EPS system as the tractor beams.”

  Stevens nodded. “Energy was flowing in through the emitters when it should have been going out, feeding that branch. Putting them in overload was like putting a dead short across the circuit. It shut the feedback down, and the excess energy was dissipated harmlessly through the phaser strips.”

  Tev nodded, obviously a little annoyed at being cut off in his moment of glory. “In far too simple terms, that’s more or less what happened.”

  “That was a close one,” said Gomez.

  “Just for the record,” said Gold, annoyance slipping into his voice, “I do not like close calls. There will be a full S.C.E. briefing at 1100 hours. I’ll expect a complete report on this incident, and what we’re going to do about this—” He gestured at the screen. “—thing, now that we have no tractor beams or phasers.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go call the ambassador and explain why there’s still a killer ship heading toward his planet.”