Chapter Text
"Verdammt!" Hasselmann cursed to himself as he examined the last container's status display. "In sechs Minuten sterben wir!"
Until now, the containers had been flashing orange and whilte lights to indicate the status of the stasis fields, but the container designated Dol Guldur had started flashing all its lights red, rapidly, and in unison. Dread overwhelmed Hasselmann. There was no way to tell exactly what that meant, but he could take a good guess that it meant nothing good. He pounded the communicator button on his helmet. "Bridge, this is the hangar deck. We have a serious problem here!"
There was no response. Hasselmann repeated his hail, shot a desperate look at the winking, glaring display lights, and switched channels. "Hasselmann to auxiliary control!"
Even if Hasselmann could have reached the bridge just then, there would have been no eliciting a response: not when any attempt by either Decker or T'Prea to reply would result in Galbraith's head being phased off.
"Dorian, you scheming bastard," Decker growled as he got slowly to his feet. "This is dry rot even by your standards. Disobeying orders, brig break, threatening a junior officer - I'd ask what you have in mind for your next court-martial offense, but I don't want to give you any ideas."
"Technically it wasn't brig break," Dorian said obtusely. "Not since you ordered all hands to move inboard from the outer areas of the ship. Currier was so busy scratching his crotch by then, it was too easy to knock him on his ass." Galbraith grimaced in disgust.
"But to answer your question," Dorian went on, "I'd say mutiny should work."
"Mutiny?" Decker ogled him in disbelief. "That only works if the entire crew is in on it, not just one arrogant ass with a phaser and a hostage!"
"Oh, you think it's just me, do you?" Dorian smiled faintly. "Think again. You know, there was a time when they hanged mutineers from the yardarms of sailing ships. But let's face it, in our case, the warp nacelles simply aren't long enough for that."
T'Prea had slowly risen from her chair, standing within arm's length of both Galbraith and Dorian, but the stocky, dark-visaged man caught her in a peripheral stare. "Keep your hands to yourself, T'Prea. Whether this thing's set to stun or kill is for me to know and for you to wonder about. But if you try and give me a pinch, my reflex action won't make much difference at this range."
"Whatever you're attempting, Mr. Dorian," T'Prea replied, "logic is not on - "
"Oh, don't start that 'logic is not on your side' bullshit with me again," Dorian snapped. "Promised myself I'd transfer you if you brought it up one more time."
There was a pause. Decker and Dorian held each other's unblinking glares. T'Prea stood very motionless by her station. Galbraith trembled, eyes closed, waiting for an abrupt scorch at the back of her head that would be the last thing she'd ever feel.
At length, Decker tossed up his hands. "So now what? You wouldn't be holding Galbraith at phaser point and threatening a mutiny if you didn't have something you wanted to coerce from me."
"For one thing, you aren't even aware of half the damage and casualties this ship has suffered during this insane flyby. For another thing, in case the heat's affected your memory, that old fart from Organia warned you that an even worse power of destruction was headed our way and I'll bet you a king's ransom that it did those solar systems in. Don't you think it'd be prudent to have a significant tactical advantage handy in case we run into it?"
"Are you even listening to yourself? What the hell kind of advantage could we be holding if it is more powerful than what we're dumping right now?"
Dorian did not retreat. "There's an extreme threat to the Federation out there, Commodore. There's a section in the Starfleet Charter that authorizes us to take extraordinary measures to deal with it. Now are you trying to tell me our payload doesn't qualify, that you'd just as soon see this whole galaxy shattered one system at a time?"
Decker bared his teeth. "There's an extreme threat to the Federation right here on my goddamn ship, Dorian. And you can follow me to the gates of hell and damnation itself if you think I'm letting some damn fool bureaucrat grab it and hide it in some weapons depot!"
"Oh, you mean you're going to let poor little Laurie here die for your ass-backwards quest?" Dorian shook his head in mock dismay. "And here I was just about to raise a point about playing favorites with your junior officers."
"Please don't bait him, sir," Galbraith entreated Decker, her sweat-glistening face frozen in fear. "Please? I don't want to die!"
"In that case, Lauren...." T'Prea said softly. "Please forgive me, my friend."
Before either Dorian or Decker understood her intentions, she reached up and quickly pinched Galbraith on the neck.
Galbraith burst out a short, strangled cry of surprise, but she immediately crumpled out of Dorian's line of fire. In a fit of anger, Dorian backhanded T'Prea with his phaser-wielding hand: though she could easily absorb the blow, the logical course of action was to drop to the deck, out of the way, and let Decker take care of this.
For Decker had already reacted and Decker meant to knock Dorian's lights out. He grabbed the chair from the science station and hurled it at Dorian, who had only just rebounded from striking T'Prea when the chair hit him squarely in the face and chest. He bellowed and dropped the phaser, staggering sideways.
Decker moved in on him, jumping to one side of the prostrate Galbraith and launching a double jab at Dorian's chin. He brought his other fist around for a hook, but Dorian furiously blocked it and replied with a right cross. Decker blocked the punch in like manner and feinted a right cross of his own, only to bring his knee up to ram into Dorian's abdomen. His rage burgeoning with each successive blow, Dorian dropped back against the communications console and rebounded again with a two-fisted jab against Decker's chest.
Now it was Decker's turn to stagger and recoil, but he caught himself on the railing encircling the well of the bridge, braced himself, and lashed out with both feet against Dorian's breastbone. Dorian stumbled backwards into the opening turbolift doors, but he caught himself on both sides of the doorway and hurled himself back at Decker, bowling him over and bringing both of them tumbling into a collapsing pile on the deck in the bridge well. Decker barely had a chance to raise a knee along with both fists to absorb Dorian's tackle and fling him off to one side. Almost immediately both men scrambled back to their feet and faced each other, sneering, fists raised, each of them awaiting the other's next strike.
By now it was clear that the two men were evenly matched. Still lying prone under the communications console, T'Prea watched them, unable to predict the outcome of the fight logically: but then she chanced to look down and see Dorian's phaser lying easily within reach. She grabbed it in the same instant as Dorian grabbed the arm of the command chair and spun it clockwise. He leaped onto the cushions, surged over the back of the chair, and pounced on Decker again, driving him back toward the helm console: Decker had no recourse but to elbow him in the side and cross him squarely in the mouth. Dorian reeled, knocking over the navigator's chair, but catching it at the last moment and preparing to bring it around in an arc even more damaging than the first blow Decker had dealt him.
Now or never. T'Prea hoisted herself halfway up, braced on one knee, and blasted Dorian with the phaser. She hadn't bothered to check its setting, but she couldn't deny feeling a tinge of relief as a stun bolt enveloped Dorian and sent him slumping over the navigation console.
Decker heaved a deep sigh, sagged back against the helm, and nodded. "Nice work, T'Prea."
Relief, however faint, gave way to distaste. "With all due respect, Commodore, I shall never fathom the human male proclivity to use physical violence to resolve differences," T'Prea commented as she powered the phaser down and removed the energy unit from the handgrip. "I find the illogic of it excessive to the point of intolerable." She moved to lift the still-unconscious Galbraith up into the communications chair.
"Can't argue with that." Decker crossed the well and hauled himself up to the science station. "Auxiliary control, report."
"We're....we're approaching apoapsis and circling the second planet," Edgerton sounded bemused. "But sir, didn't you receive Hasselmann's warning?"
"We got a little distracted up here - " Decker broke off as T'Prea bent over her console and pressed her ear antenna.
"Urgent message from Lieutenant Hasselmann, sir!" she exclaimed. "Dol Guldur's stasis field has short-circuited due to the high temperature! He expects the field to fail in less than two minutes!"
Decker shook his head heavily. "Just what we need. Switch him over!" He dropped into the well and hit his communication button. "Decker to Hasselmann. Report!"
"We're going to lose Dol Guldur in a minute und forty-seven seconds!" Hasselmann's voice sounded like steel dragging on concrete. "When it's exposed to this much heat, there's no way to predict its combustion point!"
"What are your orders, Commodore?" Edgerton's voice had a strange, almost condescending, undertone.
"Take us in," Decker replied. "Warp two. We'll heave 'em both at the same time! Hasselmann, reposition Dol Guldur to drop first!"
"Jawohl, Herr Kommodore!" Hasselmann grabbed an anti-grav grapple of his own to lend a hand to his crewmen as they shuffled the order of the last two containers.
T'Prea, meanwhile, bounded to the science station and peered into the viewer. She had only a rudimentary understanding of how to interpret the readings thanks to her science rotation, but the ability to interpret came naturally thanks to her race. She turned the knob on the side of the viewer, zeroed in on the star, and reported: "Eighty-five million kilometers and closing, sir. At our present speed, we will reach periapsis in thirty-five seconds. That gives us a window of twenty to jettison!"
"Finally something goes right around here," Decker growled. "Get ready down there, Hasselmann. As soon as I give the word, ditch 'em just as quick as you can!"
"Only too happily!" Hasselmann muttered. His crewmen had just finished moving the container designated Gorgoroth across the hangar and away from the doors, as the other two moved Dol Guldur further aft. The warning lights flashed with such malevolent intensity that he kept expecting the explosion to spark prematurely, to begin right on that very panel of warning lights.
The lights flashed. The star blazed. The Constellation barreled closer and closer to it. Decker poised between his chair and the bridge railing.
Time stopped.
He held his breath as the star dropped toward the bottom edge of the viewer. There was nothing, no word, no warning, from the hangar bay or auxiliary control. The heat climbed higher than anything he'd felt before: the ship began to shake and the lights began to flicker. One more pass, he knew, was all they could afford to make, or the Constellation would surely shake apart under the massive gravimetric forces as it drew near the star if it didn't burn up first.
"Periapsis in twelve seconds!" Time began to pass again at T'Prea's report. Ten seconds came and went: as she counted down, Decker leaned over the speaker on his chair.
"...zero!" T'Prea exclaimed.
"Now, Hasselmann, give it the toss!" Decker hollered.
There was no reply from below. He looked, flabbergasted, at the speaker, but it stayed tauntingly silent.
"Periapsis plus five," T'Prea warned.
"Decker to Hasselmann! Toss those containers, now!"
Still no reply.
"Periapsis plus ten!" T'Prea sounded more urgent than ever.
"Decker to auxiliary control! I've lost contact with Hasselmann! Tell him to unload before they blow!"
Still nothing.
"I believe communications have malfunctioned, sir," T'Prea said gravely. "It is in Mr. Hasselmann's hands now."
The same conclusion bore down upon Hasselmann as one of his crewmen looked desperately over at him, nodding at the wildly flashing warning-light panel. "Sir, I don't think we can wait for orders from up above any longer!"
"Agreed." Hasselmann nodded resolutely. "Dol Guldur, los!"
The two crewmen handling Dol Guldur clapped it in their anti-grav manipulators and heaved it mightily off the deck. Stomping the soles of their feet like sauropods they hauled on toward the threshold, and heaved the great vessel of death and destruction out of the doorway, not bothering to disengage: the manipulators were expendable, as they would later agree. The container tumbled out of the doorway and off to keelside of the Constellation as the star sucked it greedily in.
"Nächstes auf die Scheissliste," Hasselmann muttered to himself. "Sauder, Buslovich! Ready on Gorgoroth?"
"Ready on Gorgoroth, sir!" Sauder replied.
"Gorgoroth, los!" Hasselmann bellowed, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. He flung himself to the deck and scrambled out of the container's path, as Sauder and Buslovich bore it on aft. As they reached the threshold of the hangar doors, Buslovich heaved on his manipulator almost too late and stumbled: the tether about his waist could barely withstand the jolt of the combined mass of his body and the container before his grip broke. Gorgoroth spun its way out of the hangar in almost the same instant as Dol Guldur detonated.
Only the Constellation's velocity kept it ahead of the shock wave. But Gorgoroth was not so lucky. Released just a few seconds after Dol Guldur, it spun into the wave head-on: anyone viewing the explosion of the two containers from distantly enough might have sworn by the effulgence of the blast that M-427 achieved temporary status as a binary star system. The Constellation powered on away, but the dual concussions pursued it hotly until the combined shock slammed into the ship low on the starboard side. The engineering section took most of the impact, loosening some of the plating around the starboard nacelle.
The force of the blast hurled Decker forward, stumbling over the inert Dorian and sprawling across the helm. T'Prea tried to catch herself on the railing, but her inertia was already such that she missed and landed flat on the deck. Galbraith, still unconscious from T'Prea's nerve pinch, ended up right where she'd been afterward, but her sudden crash on the deck brought her around. Disoriented and shaken, she found herself sliding uncontrollably across the deck, cried out wordlessly with confusion and panic, flailed about to grab one of the stanchions supporting the railing. No sooner had she achieved a purchase than the Constellation abruptly yawed nearly fifty degrees to starboard and veered away from the star.
Bracing himself on the console, Decker pushed back into the helmsman's seat and cursed under his breath as he looked at the chronometer. The stars were sweeping across the viewer in dizzying, flashing circular lines from the upper right to lower left corner - the ship was spinning out of control. He tried to engage braking thrust, to no avail; Samuels had transferred all helm control down below. He became conscious of Galbraith's distressed, gasping cries, looked over and saw her hunkering under the science console, wailing without a word and repeatedly slapping both sides of her head. He scrambled underneath the railing and crouched in front of her.
"Lieutenant!" he exhorted her forcefully. He shook her by the shoulders, but it made matters no better - she looked on the verge of a personal implosion, alternately slapping her temples one second and slapping them simultaneously the next, caterwauling her distress all the while.
"Lieutenant Galbraith, snap to!" Decker barked. "That's an order!"
"Commodore!" T'Prea had quite suddenly appeared beside him and grabbed Galbraith by the wrist. "She is in a state of severe overstimulation and cannot respond. Please allow me." Without waiting for his permission, she pressed her hand flat against the side of Galbraith's head, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.
"There is fear," she said in a quiet but firm voice. "I feel it as you feel it. It pervades the ship, everywhere....but the danger is past, it is past."
Galbraith's cries died down to heavy, whimpering breathing. T'Prea pressed her fingertips hard into the young human woman's temple. "The ship is out of danger," she persisted. "Our mission is complete. There is nothing to fear, Lauren. We still live. The ship....is safe."
"I wish that were a hundred percent the case," Decker interjected. "But we're in a goddamned time warp and I need communications with auxiliary control before we end up like the Discovery!"
"We will handle it, sir," T'Prea pledged as she lowered her hand from Galbraith's head.
Still breathing shakily, Galbraith rubbed her eyes and offered a short, spastic nod. "If we - if we reroute the secondary bridge circuit through the navigational relay, is that likely to open us up a speaking tube?" she offered. To look at her, Decker, much to his incredulity, never would have guessed that she'd been on the verge of a mental nervous breakdown just a few moments ago.
T'Prea nodded consideringly. "Archaic terminology, but an intriguing suggestion. It will be necessary to cross-circuit the subspace direction finder to the internal distributor."
"I don't think he's going to go nuts over that," Galbraith muttered, nodding at Dorian.
"Forget about that bearskin rug," Decker said, reaching for Dorian's phaser. "Get to work, ladies. I'll deal with him when he comes around."
"Very well, sir." T'Prea guided Galbraith to the access panel under the communications console and popped it open. "I wish to renew my apologies for the nerve attack, but in order to defuse Mr. Dorian's sedition - "
"Don't worry about it. You pulled me out of the worst meltdown I've had in years. Which, by the way, how did you carry that off?"
"Pass me the distribution microchip," T'Prea said, motioning. "Are you familiar with the Vulcan mind-melding technique?"
"I've heard of it. Is that what that was?"
"Indeed. Many of us are reserved about using it with offworlders, but as you have discovered, it can be important for such purposes as placing a pacifying suggestion into an agitated mind." T'Prea plucked two wires from the microchip and gave one to Galbraith. "Disconnect the subspace direction finder from its filament and attach this to the lead."
"Okay. I was pretty overwhelmed, what with Dorian and all the shaking around and the noise...."
"Your reaction was fairly inevitable for a human with your neurological structure. But there are certain Vulcan mental disciplines that, were you interested in learning them, would aid you in avoiding such episodes in the future."
Galbraith cocked her head as she crimped on the attachment from the microchip to the direction finder. "Can we talk about it some more later?"
"If I was capable of enjoyment," T'Prea said as she attached the microchip to a power source, "I believe I would experience it."
"Okay. I think that should about do it." Galbraith closed the access panel as T'Prea stood up and hooked in the internal channel.
"Bridge to auxiliary control," she hailed. "Commander Edgerton, please respond."
"Edgerton here. Blimey, we were starting to wonder if anyone was still alive up there!"
"We're not quite dead yet," Decker answered. "Listen, Richard, we're right where I didn't want to end up - in a time distortion. Get us on a straight course and hit the brakes!"
By hand and foot he anchored himself to the command chair as he watched the chronometer and waited. The Constellation heaved forward again, the shivering thrum of the engines dropped sharply in pitch. The arc of spinning stars on the main viewer slowed drastically, the ship shook like a mountain in an earthquake: Galbraith braced herself at the side of the communications console, T'Prea clung to the edge. The drop in momentum sent the unconscious Dorian rolling into the support bracket of the helm and navigation consoles, but unconscious he didn't remain for long thereafter.
As the ship ceased shaking, rattling, and tossing about, Dorian began stirring. Decker picked up the phaser from the seat cushion beside him and held it languidly in one hand, waiting for him to come fully to consciousness.
In auxiliary control, all eyes were on the viewing screen as the star field slowed to a full stop. Edgerton stood up straight and felt the deck under his feet - no vibration. He looked at the velocity indicator - no momentum. He checked the engineering console - no output.
"Did we make it?" Samuels ventured.
"We sure did. We're out of the gorge!" Marlowe exhaled heavily as she reached over to grab his hand, grinning with exultation.
"Yes!" Samuels exclaimed. He clapped his other hand over Marlowe's, joining her in a hearty, relieved laugh - but almost at once they instinctively let go as the intercom before them whistled.
"Bridge to auxiliary control," Decker's voice had resumed its accustomed authoritarian growl. "Ship's chronometer shows that we lost about two weeks in that time distortion. Get me a position report and a preliminary damage report. We'll resume course for those destroyed solar systems after we've taken care of the main damage and the casualties."
"Aye, aye, sir," Edgerton answered darkly, glaring daggers at the speaker.
Samuels gazed at the console before him and shook his head. "Can't even stop to catch our breath, can we?"
"And I was just beginning to think Masada was wrong about him," Edgerton scoffed.
"You were wrong about one thing," Decker told Dorian, who had hauled himself up into the navigator's seat, leaning sideways across the console. "Actually, you were wrong about a lot of things. But this mission was anything except 'ass-backwards', as you so insubordinately put it, and don't give me any guff about the cargo falling into the wrong hands. When it could have caused devastation enough to flatten the entire surface of a planet, there damn well aren't any right hands."
"I bet you wouldn't be talking all lofty and moralistic if the Klingons had snatched it up and were on their way to Vulcan with it already," Dorian grumbled.
"Well, we'll never know, will we? Not now that my 'ass-backwards' mission is completed and we're hauling 'ass-forwards' on to the next thing."
"And when you come within sight of whoever or whatever reduced all those solar systems to space dust, what do you intend to do then, now that you've done away with our only tactical advantage?"
Decker's eyes narrowed to an aperture that could have cut straight through Dorian's neck if they were capable of emitting light. "Who the hell do you think you are, Dorian?" the commodore demanded. "You threaten to kill one of my officers, you threaten a one-man mutiny on my ship, you evoke interplanetary war and you think you can talk to me like you're the Chief of Starfleet Security and I'm some snot-nosed plebe. Well, let me tell you this, mister - I don't give a flying rat's ass if you are the Chief of Starfleet Security, or Intelligence, or the goddamned Men in Black." He motioned at the scanning station on the starboard side of the bridge. "When we find whatever's out there blowing my planets apart, you're going to sit right there where I can keep an eye on you, and you're gonna watch while I put a stop to it."
'Look ahead!' called Gandalf. 'The Bridge is near. It is dangerous and narrow.'
Suddenly Frodo saw before him a black chasm. At the end of the hall the floor vanished and fell to an unknown depth. The outer door could only be reached by a slender bridge of stone, without kerb or rail, that spanned the chasm with one curving spring of fifty feet. It was an ancient defence of the Dwarves against any enemy that might capture the First Hall and the outer passages. They could only pass across it in single file. At the brink Gandalf halted and the others came up in a pack behind.
'Lead the way, Gimli!' he said. 'Pippin and Merry next. Straight on, and up the stair beyond the door!'
Arrows fell among them. One struck Frodo and sprang back. Another pierced Gandalf's hat and stuck there like a black feather. Frodo looked behind. Beyond the fire he saw swarming black figures: there seemed to be hundreds of orcs. They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood in the firelight. Doom, doom rolled the drum-beats, growing louder and louder, doom, doom.
For the next two days Decker found he could no more take rest in his quarters, reading further on in The Lord of the Rings, than he could lay off drinking coffee for a week. The preliminary damage and casualty reports were sobering enough, but the full reports, as they came in, were altogether depressing. The star's reactions to consuming the magnotritium nitrate - to the beat of several solar flares, prominences, and coronal mass ejections - had rattled the Constellation's hull plating, weakening its structural integrity by fifteen percent: the high gravitational forces plus the heat had warped the support pylon of the port nacelle almost irreparably. Even making temporary repairs necessitated a day and a half of cruising at full impulse power, but still Veltanoa determined that the ship's maximum velocity would be reduced to warp 3 until a starbase could render a more thorough refit. And that temporary repair job amounted only to the engineering crew who were available, excluding those still recovering from high-temperature illnesses.
Only the climate controls in the sick bay had kept Dr. Jol and his staff reasonably functional since the mission began. Still, after nearly two days of treating those who were worst off, all Jol wanted was to visit the ship's botanical garden and relax among the flora. For now he had to settle for sitting in his office, eyes closed, resting his weary mind for a few moments, reflecting on the unfathomable burdens of the medical profession, until he'd recovered enough energy to return his attention to the weak and the sick. His internship on Bolias had scarcely prepared him for the seemingly infinite scope of the health care needs of other races.
When next he opened his eyes, there stood Edgerton next to his desk, staring at the Starlife monitor. Jol stood up and turned to look with him, eyeing the many warm colors of the system's unsettling readings.
"How's Buslovich?" Edgerton asked.
"I got the internal bleeding stopped, and managed to realign his lower ribs, but the connecting tissue is damaged and needs a few days to regenerate," Jol said, stifling a yawn. "On the brighter side of things, I've managed to return two-thirds of the most affected personnel to duty, including Commander Masada. But at this point, you can see what all hands are laboring under."
"Mmm," Edgerton nodded. "And the commodore?"
"I'm half surprised he took my advice to get some rest. After the way that mission went, I thought for sure I'd have to give him medical orders."
"About that...." Edgerton looked furtively toward the doorway to the examination room to be sure no one was eavesdropping. "We barely had the cargo unloaded when he ordered the ship about to return to the destroyed solar systems we ran into the day before. I'm not sure I like the direction he's leading us in, Doctor. If he places the ship in critical danger, then as first officer, I may have to take action and I'll likely need your involvement."
Jol cast a troubled glance at his desktop. "In what way?"
"In establishing grounds to relieve him based on his mental state."
"I was wondering if anyone else noticed something off," Jol nodded slowly. "It's been what, over three years since he took command of this ship and I've never seen him push it this hard. Intense heat has been known to wreak havoc on a man's cerebral cortex."
Edgerton frowned thoughtfully. "I have a feeling this far preempts heat-related illness. Are you familiar with the concept of the one-track mind, Doctor?"
"Ah, you mean 'ospla-ombas'? That's the Bolian term for it. Yes, it's a common psychological condition across all sapient races. And I think I see what you're getting at - Commodore Decker is, in perpetuity, a man with a mission, whatever he perceives it to be."
"Even if it overrules or even ignores the mission parameters set forth in our original orders." Edgerton's tone was as grim as his expression.
"Think of it," Jol said, looking away. "The bridge of a ship is its brain. Every system is controlled from it, every station reports to it. If the bridge should be damaged or broken, then so is the linkage that keeps every function of the ship connected and working. A man's brain isn't far different - you remember what happened with Irene Cornwell on Doradus? Her brain was traumatically injured, and she ended up blowing that whole affair wide open for us. The brain is the bridge, and if it's damaged, the rest of the body starts to lose cohesion."
"Are you suggesting Commodore Decker suffered some sort of neurological trauma during Operation Orodruin and he's declined to let you in on it?" Edgerton's frown deepened.
"Like you posited, there may be more to it than the heat. But whether neurological or psychological, he's been through something. If I knew what it was, if I knew just what was driving him like this, it might help my professional judgment."
"Maybe that's it. Remember how he lost his wife just before he took this assignment? His wife was Maria Trask, the exobiologist. She was famous for her love of nature and for her work adapting extraterrestrial flora to the environments of other planets. If anything's driving the commodore, it's his grief, his resolve to shield any planet he lays eyes on from being destroyed, for the sake of her memory."
"I'd been hearing her name ever since Bolias joined the Federation. And grief is one of the most powerful negative emotions anyone will ever feel. I tell you, Richard, I envy the Vulcans being able to suppress feelings even as intense as that. But that to-do with Lady Cornwell can't have helped his state of mind any."
"If we do find out what's behind all this destruction, I have some very real concerns about the harm's way he's likely to take us into."
"Then you joined Starfleet why, again?"
A chill ran down Edgerton's spine as he heard Decker's voice from uncomfortably close by. He and Jol both turned to see the commodore standing by the doorway to the examination room, scowling at them. He hadn't shaved, and Jol didn't like the nearly infinitesimal diameter of his pupils. He remained silent, quietly sizing Decker up as Edgerton handled the exchange.
"Well, sir," Edgerton began carefully, "you did say when we left Earth that there was a lot of galaxy to explore."
"And a lot of planets to defend." As Decker stepped forward, Jol studied the increased pallor of his complexion in the changing shades of light. "And as anyone who's joined this crew in the past three and a half years very well knows, maintaining life and the safety of Federation planets is its one duty to carry out and hold above all else. You gentlemen might be interested to know that we've just returned to the sector where we came upon what was left of some of those planets, which means our job now is to prevent any more of them from coming to harm. Not to go running around the ship with phasers and hostages threatening mutiny."
"May I ask what your intentions are if and when we discover the cause?" Edgerton inquired.
"My intention is to put a stop to whatever that cause may be." Decker's tone was simple, but it had a double edge. "And to do that, I need my senior officers to stop questioning either my orders or my motivation for giving them, not to mention perseverating over my personal tragedies." He glowered meaningfully at Jol, who had been summing up the unkempt state of both his cranial and facial hair along with his unusually irritable deportment.
"Sir, for what it's worth, no one aside from Dorian has seen fit to question your character," Jol offered. "But what worries me right now is the amount of strain you're taking on. One would think protecting Federation space is your sole personal responsibility."
Decker stared awls at him and shook his head. "Don't start with me again, Doctor. I won't waste another day laid up in my quarters while another solar system gets laid waste. And when we find the leading end of this debris field, I'm going to need all hands on deck. That's your primary duty."
Jol was about to beg to differ, saying that an essential facet of his duty was to assure the safety of the ship by monitoring the commanding officer's health and wellness, but the intercom whistled before he had the chance. Masada's urgent call for Decker from the bridge drew the commodore to the communication screen on the desk, yet he held Jol in his peripheral vision to make sure he didn't move in on him with a hypospray.
"Decker here. Did you manage to get through to Starfleet yet?"
"Not yet, sir," Masada answered. "But I think you'd better report to the bridge. We're approaching the L-374 system, and from here it looks like the fourth planet is being broken to pieces."
Decker's eyes flashed with resolve as he looked up at Edgerton and Jol, neither of whom looked particularly sanguine about this development. "Very well, Toshiro, head for that planet," he ordered. "I'll be right there." He shut off the monitor and began to move toward the exit. "All right, men, we know what our job is, so let's get about it. Dr. Jol, get every crewman who's fit for duty on his feet. Mr. Edgerton, be on the bridge in five minutes with a report on our battle readiness. If we're about to find out what's been wreaking havoc on this sector, damned if I'm letting it pass."