Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea, page 1
“TUVOK!”
The lights were gone, only the emergency illumination remaining, but it was enough to let Deanna see that the Vulcan was sprawled motionless on the floor beneath the office table, his head coated in something dark and glistening. She couldn’t see color, but she knew it was green. “Oh, God.” She struck her combadge. “Medical emergency, Counselor Troi’s office!” Maybe emergencies, she thought as she felt her insides heave and she vomited up her last meal onto the carpet. She couldn’t tell through the inner turbulence if the baby was still kicking. “Sickbay, acknowledge!”
Nothing. “Computer!” She began dragging herself toward Tuvok. “Where are you, you stupid computer?” But that voice, the one that reminded her so maddeningly of her mother, remained silent. “Somebody!” she yelled. “We need help in here!”
Finally she reached Tuvok and began pulling him toward the door. Her muscles, overtaxed from months of service as a walking baby carriage, strained from the exertion. It felt like that wasn’t all she was straining. “Dammit, Tuvok, wake up! Help me out here! I’ll leave you here if I have to!”
Now her own voice was starting to remind her of her mother’s, in attitude if not in timbre. So be it, she thought. Lwaxana Troi’s sheer cussedness got her through the occupation of Betazed in one piece. And kept her baby boy alive. She’d never been more glad to be that woman’s daughter.
Finally she reached the door, which shuddered halfway open—better than nothing. Forcing it the rest of the way, she channeled her mother’s sheer vocal volume and began screaming for help.
Other Star Trek Novels by Christopher L. Bennett
Star Trek: Ex Machina
Star Trek Titan: Orion’s Hounds
Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Buried Age
Places of Exile
(from Star Trek Myriad Universes: Infinity’s Prism)
Star Trek: The Next Generation—Greater Than the Sum
Short Fiction
“Aftermath”
(from Star Trek Corps of Engineers: Aftermath)
“…Loved I Not Honor More?”
(from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—Prophecy and Change)
“Brief Candle”
(from Star Trek: Voyager—Distant Shores)
“As Others See Us”
(from Star Trek: Constellations)
“The Darkness Drops Again”
(from Star Trek: Mere Anarchy)
“Friends Among the Sparrows”
(from Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Sky’s the Limit)
More Novels
X-Men: Watchers on the Walls
Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9821-3
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To absent friends
HISTORIAN’S NOTE
This tale’s prologue begins in the latter half of February, 2381 (over a week before the epilogue of Star Trek Destiny, Book III: Lost Souls), and concludes at the end of April (about two weeks before the end of Star Trek: A Singular Destiny).
The rest of Over a Torrent Sea unfolds between July 1 and August 4 of the same year.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain,
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Cloud”
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
We will not shrink from the challenge of raising back up what the Borg have knocked down. We will honor the sacrifices of all those who fought and died to defend us, by committing ourselves to repairing the damage that’s been done and creating a future that they would have been proud of.
…More important, though Starfleet is needed for the recovery and reconstruction and to render aid, we will renew our commitment to its mission of peaceful exploration, diplomatic outreach, and open scientific inquiry. The Luna-class starships will continue—and, in the Titan’s case, resume—their missions far beyond our borders: seeking out new worlds, new civilizations, and new lifeforms and offering, to those that are ready, our hand in friendship.
There are those who might doubt our ability to do all these things at once. To them I would say, don’t underestimate the United Federation of Planets.
—President Nanietta Bacco,
Stardate 58126.3 (February 16, 2381)
UTOPIA PLANITIA ORBITAL SHIPYARDS, MARS
Captain William T. Riker did not underestimate the United Federation of Planets. After the decisive victory it had achieved over the Borg Collective the week before, Riker wasn’t about to put anything past the Federation at this point—even if he, as one of the people directly responsible for that victory, did say so himself. But just because he believed something could be done didn’t necessarily mean he agreed it was the best option.
“The Federation needs every able-bodied person it can get right now,” Riker argued as he paced in front of Admiral Masc’s desk. “I want to be part of that effort, Admiral. And so does my crew.”
“I understand, Will. Believe me.” The elderly admiral folded his hands, his normal Denobulan cheer subdued by recent events. This was a man who had carried heavy burdens before, including his failed effort to prevent Betazed from falling to the Dominion, without losing his customary aplomb. He had remained an optimist despite everything, spearheading Starfleet’s ambitious Luna-class program as a symbol of the Federation’s commitment to diversity and peaceful exploration. But the devastation the Borg had inflicted over the past month and a half—including the complete obliteration of Deneva, Regulus, and other major worlds and massive destruction across the faces of Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar—would take the rest of his career, if not his life, for the Federation to recover from. “But the decision is made. Do you want President Bacco to back down from her promise?”
“She doesn’t have to, sir,” Riker said. “There are still ten other Luna-class ships out there. They can continue the mission without us.”
“The president mentioned Titan by name.”
“So this is politics?” Riker stopped pacing and leaned over the desk. “Admiral, you’re going to have to give me a better reason than that. Something I can take to my crew, that will convince them. Otherwise you’re going to be looking at a lot of transfer requests. Maybe including mine.”
Masc examined Riker patiently. He may not have been as cheerful as usual, but he wasn’t prone to anger. “I would have thought you’d be glad to get back to exploring. I remember Admiral Akaar telling me how unhappy you and your crew were when your Gum Nebula survey was postponed for the Romulan diplomatic mission.”
“I don’t have to tell you how different the situation is now, sir. I’m still an explorer. But I’m also a patriot.”
Masc finally smiled. “Will, you and your colleagues have already done the Federation a service we can never repay you enough for. Think of this as your reward.”
“I don’t want a reward, sir. With all due respect. I want—my crew wants—to be useful.”
“And you will be.” Masc rose from
He held up a hand before Riker could speak. “And no, that’s not all. There is a more tangible goal you can achieve out there. If the quantum slipstream drive the Aventine is testing proves practical, then Starfleet is going to begin questing much farther out into the galaxy, much faster than ever before.”
“Then doesn’t that make us obsolete, sir?”
Masc smirked. “Only until we can retrofit the Luna ships with slipstream drive. But that’s probably years from now; the Federation will need to devote its resources to reconstruction for a long time to come, so we can’t make propulsion upgrades a priority. In the meantime, though, it’s in our best interest to have advance scouts out there, getting at least a basic picture of the terrain, both astrographic and political. Better to send crews like yours out to make initial contacts before we erupt into the wider galaxy at slipstream speeds. Ideally to make new friends, of course…but also to identify and assess potential threats.”
Riker studied the admiral in a new light. Masc may have been renowned for his optimism, but he was too much a veteran not to be a realist. Especially now.
“That’s been part of our mission all along, hasn’t it, Admiral?” Riker said. “Laying the groundwork for future slipstream vessels.”
“Not a formal part,” Masc replied. “You would have been told if it had been, of course. But as the slipstream research proved more promising, it became a larger factor in Starfleet’s considerations.”
Riker nodded to himself. It explained a lot. When Titan had entered the space bounded by the Gum Nebula, a region vaster than the Federation and all its neighbors put together, it had been with the expectation of spending years there. Indeed, it would take a hundred ships centuries to make a thorough survey of such a region, and Starfleet had assigned only two—first Titan and Ganymede, but after the latter ship had taken damage and needed to return temporarily to port, Charon had been reassigned to cover its survey zone, an assignment that had unfortunately led to its destruction at Orisha two months later.
And yet, with only Titan remaining to survey the nebula interior, Starfleet had soon ordered the vessel to head out beyond it and probe past the inner edge of the Orion Arm. The rationale had been that the star charts and databases that Titan and Charon had obtained from regional civilizations such as the Pa’haquel, the Vomnin Confederacy, and the Gam-Pu Star Command had provided Starfleet with sufficient information on the nebula’s interior. Riker hadn’t quite understood Starfleet’s haste. Even a well-populated, well-explored region could still turn up surprises; space was so vast that even now there were star systems less than a hundred light-years from Earth that Starfleet had never sent a crewed vessel to explore. Starships racing outward to get the big picture were bound to skip over a great many discoveries. True, Riker had once declared that Titan would always go forward, but he hadn’t meant it to be in such a rush.
“To be frank, Admiral, I’m not sure I’m happy about being just the advance scouts for the real explorers.”
“Nobody’s saying that, Will. Yes, you’ve been…encouraged to quest outward as far as possible, but you haven’t been prevented from doing real science. It’s just that your goal is to seek out the most significant discoveries, to hit the high points. Every mission has to prioritize.”
“With all due respect, Admiral, our last mission before the Borg invasion was charting an extremely dull, empty sector of the interarm expanse.”
Masc quirked a smile. “Which is where you stumbled upon the key to solving the entire Borg crisis. You never know what you’ll find until you get there, Will. Sometimes you lose the gamble, but sometimes it pays off hugely.”
Riker conceded the point. To be honest, now that he thought back on the discoveries Titan had made over the past year, he was beginning to feel renewed excitement about returning to an exploratory mission. “So where will we go next, sir? Back to the interarm expanse? All the way to the Carina Arm, perhaps?”
Masc chuckled. “Ohh, I think we can strike a better balance between distance and thoroughness. If anything, it’s probably best to keep you relatively close to home, so there’s not as much delay in getting your mission reports to an eager public. But far enough out to be interesting, anyway. I can’t tell you more just yet; we’re still working out how best to redistribute the Luna fleet. Your sudden return home has left yet another gap in our coverage. We’ll let you know when we have your new course.
“For now, though, you and your crew are entitled to a long vacation. Besides, Titan still needs plenty of repairs. Not to mention a new set of upgrades. If she’s to be the flagship of the fleet, she needs the newest and the best we have to offer. And, uh, she needs to be made as durable as possible, since you’re going to be far from any repair bases. Goodness knows, we built all the Lunas to be as resilient as we could, but after Charon, we don’t want to take any chances.”
“My crew and I appreciate it, sir.”
Masc quirked a brow. “I’m sure you and Commander Troi want your daughter to be as safe as possible.”
Riker fidgeted. “Of course, sir, I wouldn’t let my concerns as a father interfere with my duties…”
Masc waved him off. “Don’t worry about it, Captain. Honestly, right now I can’t help but feel that a child would be safer out there on the frontier than here in the Federation. We tend to present a large target, and a stationary one.”
After a somber moment, Riker asked, “And what if, while we’re out there, sir, we stumble across the next Borg or Dominion?”
The admiral smiled, but it was cheerless. “Try not to tell them where we live.”
VULCAN, STARDATE 58239.3
She found him in the desert just beyond the city borders. It had become his habit, in the weeks since they had returned home for their extended leave, to come out here to meditate—if meditation was indeed what he did. T’Pel knew that Tuvok had found it difficult to reach a meditative state in recent times. The cumulative traumas of his years in Starfleet had undermined his control, and T’Pel understood that he came out here not merely to seek an outer calm and quiet he could attempt to emulate, but to avoid the embarrassment of exposing his lack of control to their neighbors.
Tuvok’s difficulty with meditation troubled T’Pel, for it impeded his process of coping with grief. T’Pel’s grief at the loss of their youngest son, Elieth—who had died at Deneva with his wife Ione, staying behind to help others evacuate before the Borg laid waste to the once-bustling Federation colony—was as deep as Tuvok’s own, if not deeper, given the greater time she had spent with her son over the course of his life. There was no shame in that; Vulcan philosophy acknowledged grief as a valid response to loss. “I grieve with thee” was an ancient formula which Surak himself had refused to renounce. While Surak had cautioned against succumbing to the debilitating emotional effects of grief, and most especially against the tendency to transform grief into a desire for vengeance and violence, he had nonetheless taught that even the most logical, dispassionate civilization must cherish life and the ties of family and community, and must acknowledge and reflect upon the great cost incurred when a life, particularly that of a kinsman, was lost. Otherwise, he had written, that dispassion would become callous self-absorption, nullifying the bonds that enabled individuals to function as part of a greater whole.
