Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic Read Free

at
Intrepid
’s position?”
    “No Starfleet vessel is within a week of the co-ordinates, sir. There is a Vulcan ship, the
Ni’Var
. . .”
    “How quickly could they reach the coordinates?”
    “A couple of days.”
    Collins nodded slowly. “Let’s ask them.”
    “Aye, sir,”
the duty officer acknowledged, and then he vanished from Collins’s screen. The admiral turned back to his office window, watching the sky darken.
    It took three days before spotlights pierced the blank gaze of Anna Byelev’s faceplate, and illuminated her half-open eyes. She didn’t smile at the prospect of rescue. She didn’t so much as blink, and her pupils didn’t react to the light.
    A Vulcan medical technician in an EV suit with a flight pack attached jetted out to steady her spinning form. With a deft touch of the maneuvering thrusters set into the pack, he was aligned with her, and slowed her movement. Then he was able to fly her body back to the
Ni’Var
’s airlock, which was situated in the base of the blade-shaped hull, near the warp ring that surrounded it like a hilt guard.
    Hers was the third body recovered, and the
Ni’Var
’ssensor officer believed there was only one more in the area. A humanoid form was small and hard to detect in the vastness of space, and it had taken eighteen hours to find three bodies and two panels of hull plating. As the sensor officer narrowed the field of blackness which, if his calculations were correct, could contain the last body that was recoverable, he could hear the captain softly acknowledging the recovery of the most recent.
    A moment later, the captain’s voice was directed to him. “How long do you calculate before the final cadaver is recovered?”
    “We should detect it within the next twenty minutes.”
    “Then I shall order the navigator to prepare to resume course, and inform Starfleet of our progress so far.” The captain paused, then stepped down from his station to the sensor booth. “There are no indications of further Romulan mines?”
    “None, Captain. But they were in the indicated area. Radiation readings confirm this.”
    “Thousands of kilometers away, but not here . . .”
    “Captain?”
    “The two hull panels are all that remain of the Earth ship?”
    “Indubitably. I have recorded the courses of their drift and plotted their exact point of origin. If any other wreckage or materials from the ship had come from that point, we would have detected them no less than five hours ago. Since we have not, they are not there.”
    “Even were the mines in contact with the ship, they could not have destroyed every part of it so completely,” the captain mused. “Intriguing. I wonder how the humans will interpret this matter?”
    “Logically, they will interpret it as having been destroyed. They may yet be correct.”
    “And they may not. I believe it will be more accurate for us to simply report the vessel lost, as there is no evidence of the true cause of its destruction.”
    The sensor officer nodded in agreement. “Though there is as little evidence that the ship ever existed at all.”
    “That is something to which Starfleet would not react well.”
Two Weeks Later
    There was noise and chatter in the background of the
Hidden Panda
bar in Trenton. It was lunchtime, so most of the booths were occupied by men and women taking the weight off and enjoying the bar’s famous Chinese food deals. The lunch crowd kept an eye on the 3D projection that was tuned to the Federation News Service. It hung from the ceiling above the large squared-off enclosure of the bar, projecting the news anchors’ heads above the bar staff. Though there were four expanses of bartop, only three people were seated there. A lanky man in his late thirties was watching the news with a keen interest. He was dressed casually, in loose slacks and an even looser shirt and overshirt, and his high forehead creased a little as the newsreader continued her report.
    “The Vulcan