It took Riker a moment to pierce Ra-Havreii's unusually subtle wording. "You want to salvage from the wrecked ships in the nebula," he said, nodding with grim understanding.

"Aye, sir. I know it must seem a bit ghoulish, but we need those parts. We've opened the shuttlebay doors using manual controls, and the Armstrong, the Holliday, and the Ellington are ready to begin recovery ops-on your order, sir."

As distasteful as Riker felt it would be to plunder a fresh starship graveyard, he knew that the chief engineer was right. It was an absolute necessity. "Proceed, Commander. Do what you have to do, and keep me posted."

"Aye, sir. Ra-Havreii out." A barely audible click signaled the closing of the comm channel.

Riker walked out of the dead end and back to the corridor, turned right, and continued toward his destination.

The two female security guards posted outside the door watched Riker as he approached. To the left of the door was Senior Petty Officer Antillea, a Gnalish Fejjimaera. Aside from resembling a human-sized bipedal iguana, her most noticeable physical characteristic was the prominent fin on the top of her scaly, olive-hued head.

On the other side of the door was Lieutenant Pava Ek'Noor sh'Aqabaa, a statuesque and breathtaking Andorian shen who preferred to let her flowing white hair frame her blue face. The only parts of her that looked remotely fragile were her antennae, but Riker pitied the person who dared try to lay a finger on them without permission.

He looked to sh'Aqabaa as he arrived at the door. "Any trouble, Lieutenant?"

"None, sir," sh'Aqabaa said.

Riker nodded. "Good. I'm going in to talk to her." He keyed in a security code to unlock the door to the guest quarters. The portal slid open ahead of him, and he walked in.

Once he was a few meters inside the compartment, the door hushed closed behind him, and he heard the soft confirmation tone of it returning to its locked state. He remained still for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dim illumination into which he'd stepped. Noting the cyanochrome hues that surrounded him, he realized that all of the artificial lighting was off. The only light came from the glow of the Azure Nebula outside the row of rounded-corner windows that sloped along one side of the living area. Silhouetted in front of them was t.i.tan's latest guest, Erika Hernandez.

She didn't look in his direction as she said with serene courtesy, "Don't bother to knock, Captain. Come right in."

He felt abashed at his faux pas and slightly wary of this peculiar stranger who had appeared without warning on his bridge. True, she had done him and his crew a great favor, but it still felt too soon to trust her. Feigning a casual demeanor, he sidled over to her in front of the windows. "Now that my crew is able to work on repairs, I thought it was time we talked."

"I figured as much," Hernandez said.

Outside the windows, in the middle distance, shuttlecraft from t.i.tan maneuvered through the roiling cobalt mists and snared large hunks of starship debris in tractor beams. "We've been forced to scavenge, I'm afraid," Riker said.

"Don't feel you need to apologize," Hernandez said. "Out there, it's just wreckage. In here, it's survival. That's just the way it is. If this had happened to my ship, I'd have done the same thing."

Riker cleared his throat. "Since you've brought it up, let's talk about your ship," he said. Gesturing toward the sofa beneath the window, he asked, "Can we sit down?"

"Of course," she said. She settled in at one end of the couch, and Riker took a seat at the other end. She asked, "What do you want to know?"

"You said your ship was the Columbia," Riker said. "You were talking about the twenty-second-century Earth starship?"

Hernandez nodded. "Yes, the NX-02."

"That ship went missing more than two hundred years ago," Riker replied. "And according to our records, its captain was in her forties. You look a bit young for the part."

The youthful woman flashed a bright, wide grin. "I've had some work done," she said with a playful lift of her eyebrows.

"Apparently," Riker said, returning her smile with one of his own. "Starfleet also discovered the wreck of the Columbia in the Gamma Quadrant, more than seventy thousand light-years from here and even farther from where we found you."

She sighed. "Yes, I know. When Erigol's star went supernova and created this nebula in 2168, the Caeliar took off in their city-ships. Most of them didn't make it. I was in the capital, which did escape, but it wound up a few hundred years in the past. My ship stayed in the present and entered another pa.s.sage; it got tossed across the galaxy, and my crew was probably incinerated by the radiation inside the subs.p.a.ce tunnel."

Riker was about to ask another question when she cut him off. "Why the third degree, Captain? Can't you just take a sample of my DNA and use that to see if I am who I say I am?"

"I did," he confessed. "My chief nurse recovered traces of your DNA from the bridge consoles you touched and from some of your hairs we found on the deck. I already know you're the real Erika Hernandez-and the way you turned Lieutenant Rriarr's phaser into dust when you came aboard tells me you're also something more. What I want is to know more about your history, so I can understand why you helped us escape."

Her disarming smile returned. "You could have just asked."

"What fun would that be?"

They laughed for a few seconds, and then Hernandez looked away and became serious. "You really want to know why I helped you? The truth is, there's no one reason. I've wanted to get away from the Caeliar pretty much from the first moment they told me I couldn't leave. I also spent the last several hundred years feeling I let down all the people I was supposed to protect. The convoy the Romulans ambushed...my crew...Earth...my friends in exile." Hernandez became quietly introspective for several seconds, and Riker let her collect her thoughts.

She continued, "Anyway, when the Caeliar took your people on the planet prisoner, it was like seeing it happen to myself all over again. Then I saw those black cubes destroy your fleet, and I remembered how much I wanted to be there for Earth when the Romulans attacked. I figured you'd feel the same way about this." She looked up at him, and her expression conveyed a deep sadness. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save your landing party. Especially your wife. But there was no other way."

"It wasn't your fault," he said, and he meant it. "I made the decision. You have nothing to apologize for." He hesitated to ask what he really wanted to know, but his need was too great to be denied. "Can you just tell me...is Deanna all right?"

"She was pretending to be, but I noticed signs that she was in pain-and when I listened in on the Caeliar, I heard them say she was in some kind of medical distress."

Riker wrapped his left hand over his fist and clamped down, focusing his thoughts on remaining calm. Hernandez cast her eyes toward the floor, away from his obvious emotional turmoil. She said, "I'm sorry the news isn't better."

"I'm all right," he said, and he pressed his fist over his mouth for a second. It was an effort to lower and unclench his hand. "One more question: If you were able to open a pa.s.sage and bring us here, why couldn't you take us back to Earth?"

"Because I didn't create the pa.s.sage we traveled through," she said. "I only widened it, by amplifying the power to the machine that generated it. If I had tried to open a new pa.s.sageway, the Caeliar would have detected it and shut it down. As it was, the gestalt was about to collapse the tunnel that pointed here. So it really was this or nothing."

"Good enough," Riker said. He stood. "Thank you for your patience, Captain."

"My pleasure," she said. He started to leave but turned back as she asked, "Now that you're home, what's your plan?"

He flashed a rueful smile. "I plan to call for help."

Jean-Luc Picard stepped back onto the bridge of the Enterprise, expecting an update on the ship's repairs. Instead, Worf rose from the command chair and said, "Captain, we are being hailed."

"By the Aventine?" Picard wondered what could have happened in the minutes since he had left Captain Dax's ship.

Surrendering the center seat to Picard, Worf replied with an uncommon gleam, "No, sir, by the t.i.tan."

The name of the ship was enough to provoke a double-take by Picard, who cast an incredulous stare at his first officer. t.i.tan was supposed to be thousands of light-years away, months from Federation s.p.a.ce. "What is the signal's point of origin, Number One?"

Worf said, "Directly ahead, sir. Inside the Azure Nebula."

"Do we have a visual?"

"Affirmative."

Picard stood tall and smoothed his uniform. "On-screen."

Sickly colors fluctuated on the main viewscreen, and an oscillating whine stutter-scratched through the speakers. Then the signal resolved into an unstable image with mildly garbled sound, and Picard recognized the haggard face of his old friend and former first officer, William Riker. "Captain Picard?"

"Yes, Captain," Picard said, unable to suppress a discreet grin. "It's good to see you again."

Riker returned the smile. "Likewise, Captain. I wish it could have been under better circ.u.mstances." He nodded to someone off-screen and continued, "We're pretty banged up over here. My people are working a salvage mission in the nebula, but if there's any way you can lend us a hand, we'd be grateful."

"I think something can be arranged," Picard said. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Worf's confirming nod. "We're on our way back to the nebula with the Aventine. Have your people found any survivors during your salvage?"

Frowning, Riker replied, "Only on Voyager, and they refused to abandon ship or be rescued. They're doing the same thing we are, scrounging for parts, except they have to rebuild an entire warp engine, one coil and bolt at a time." He shook his head. "You have to give them credit-they've got spirit."

"Indeed," Picard said. "Will...don't think I'm not glad to see you, but your arrival is rather unexpected. How did t.i.tan come to be in the Azure Nebula?"

The question pulled a tired sigh from Riker. "It's kind of a long story," he said. "Do you want the full explanation?"

"I'm afraid we don't have time for that," Picard said. "Perhaps you could sum up?"

Riker nodded and lifted his eyebrows in mild amus.e.m.e.nt. "Long story short: We followed energy pulses that we thought would lead us to a Borg installation. Instead, we found a species of powerful recluses called the Caeliar, who took us prisoner. A fellow prisoner helped my ship escape through a subs.p.a.ce tunnel, but I had to leave my away team behind."

At the mention of a subs.p.a.ce tunnel, Picard's attention sharpened. His next question was driven not by logic but by a gut feeling, an intuition that the presence he'd sensed a short time earlier had to be connected in some way to t.i.tan's sudden arrival in the nebula. "Captain, by any chance, did the prisoner who aided your escape come with you aboard t.i.tan?"

"As a matter of fact, she did," Riker said.

For a moment, Picard broke eye contact with Riker and concluded that his feeling had been right. The timing of the two events was definitely not a coincidence. Riker pulled him back into the conversation by inquiring, "Why do you ask?"

"Simple curiosity," Picard lied. "We'll reach you in just over an hour. If possible, have your chief engineer advance us a list of any parts or personnel you need to effect repairs."

"Will do, Captain," Riker said, looking utterly exhausted. "We'll be looking forward to your arrival. t.i.tan out." The channel closed, and the nebula's distant blue stain on the starry heavens returned to the Enterprise's main viewscreen.

Picard returned to his chair and sat down. Worf took his own seat at the captain's right. "Mister Worf," Picard said. "Please contact Captain Dax and let her know that I would like her and Commander Bowers to join us here on the Enterprise when we welcome Captain Riker aboard."

"Aye, sir," Worf said.

The captain added, "And instruct Commander Kadohata to coordinate with the Aventine in the creation of spare parts for t.i.tan and the a.s.signment of emergency crews."

"She has already done so, sir."

"Very good." From his chair, Picard had an all but un.o.bstructed line of sight through the still-open door of his ready room, which remained a darkened, carbonized cave just off the bridge. Nodding to his scorched sanctum, he said to Worf, "I want that door closed, Mister Worf."

Worf scowled at the open portal. "We have tried, sir. A plasma fire warped the interior bulkhead. The door is stuck."

Unable to rein in a surge of irrational anger, Picard snapped, "No excuses, Worf! Get it done." Embarra.s.sed by his own outburst, he got up and walked to the aft turbolift. "You have the bridge, Number One." He felt the eyes of the bridge crew on him as he made his exit. The lift doors closed, granting him sanctuary in the solitude of the turbolift car.

"Deck Eight," he said.

It took the turbolift less than ten seconds to descend seven decks. The doors parted with a soft hiss. Picard walked quickly and was grateful to return to the refuge of his quarters without encountering anyone else along the way.

He moved in light, careful steps through the living area and poked his head inside the bedroom. Beverly was asleep. Picard noted the time-just shy of 0500-and wished he had the luxury of slumber. No time for that now, he scolded himself. He undressed in the dark, kicked off his boots at the foot of the bed, and lobbed his perspiration-soaked, battle-soiled uniform into one corner, intending to put it in the reclamator later, when Beverly was no longer trying to rest.

Stripped naked, he padded into the bathroom and shut the door. The light faded up slowly, and he felt as if it were revealing him to himself, a figure taking shape in the shadows. There were fatigue circles under his eyes, darker than any he'd ever seen on his face before. Somewhere beneath the mask of years that stared back from the mirror, there lurked the younger man he'd remembered being not so long ago.

Keeping his voice down, he said to the computer, "Shower, forty-six degrees Celsius." Inside the stall, a fierce spray of hot water flooded the small compartment with water vapor. Overhead, the ventilators purred into action, drawing up the moist clouds to stabilize the humidity.

Picard stepped inside the shower and bowed his head under the pleasantly sultry mist. If only I could just stay here, he thought. But with his eyes closed, he continued to see the charred bulkheads and seared-bare deck of his ready room. He shook his head, trying to cast off the memory, which disturbed him for reasons he didn't dare to let himself name.

Instead, he focused his mind on the new presence. He didn't hear it the way he heard the Borg. Where the Collective spoke in a roar, this was but the faintest hush of a whisper, and it was all the more compelling for its subtlety.

As the Enterprise continued toward its rendezvous with t.i.tan, Picard knew one thing for certain: Whatever this new intelligence was, every moment was bringing him closer to it.

And one word echoed unbidden in his thoughts.

Destiny.

4527 B.C.E.

8.

"The wind's picking up," Pembleton said with a wary eye on the gunmetal gray sky. He and the rest of the survivors huddled around the campfire, all bundled tightly against the frigid gale. "Smells like more snow."

"G.o.d hates us," Crichlow muttered. "That's what it is."

A week had pa.s.sed since they left the wreckage of Mantilis and encamped near the sh.o.r.eline below. In that time, at least sixty centimeters of snow had fallen. Temperatures had plummeted daily, and the fjord, which had been crowded with pack ice, now was frozen solid. Adding to the group's misery was the fact that the days were growing shorter. Soon the sunrises would cease altogether, and several months of night would be upon them.

Flames crackled and danced around a tiny, gutted rodent carca.s.s, which was impaled on a sc.r.a.p-metal spit mounted on a pair of Y-shaped branches. Evaporating water inside the firewood hissed as it escaped, and one of the logs fissured along its length with a sharp pop. The aroma of cooking flesh had Pembleton's stomach craving sustenance, but it wasn't his turn to eat. Every other meal was reserved for Kiona Thayer, who needed to maintain her strength to fend off infection and promote the healing of her wounded foot, which would soon be strong enough for her to walk.

Mazzetti, who had become the group's de facto cook, gave the broiled rodent another quarter-turn on the spit. "Almost done," he said to Thayer, who nodded.

A chilling gust made the taut ropes of their shelter sing with vibration. Graylock eyed the ramshackle ma.s.s of metal, fabric, and microfiber rope. Then he turned with a glum expression back toward the fire and scratched at his stubbled face. "We need to reinforce before we get more snow," he said.

The three MACO privates groaned, and Steinhauer hung his head in denial. The chief engineer had sent them on daily hikes back up the slope, to salvage everything they could carry back down from the debris of Mantilis. Between the thin air and the strain of fighting this planet's gravity, it would have been a miserable a.s.signment even in good weather.

Crichlow sighed, frowned, and shook his head. "Right, lads. Time for another trip up Junk Mountain."

"Steinhauer, make sure you check the traps before we go," Pembleton said. To the two officers, he said, "It'll be faster work if I go with them to lend a hand. Will you two be all right here on your own for a few hours?"

Thayer harrumphed behind a cynical grin. "Sure," she said. "We'll have a grand ol' time. Maybe we'll go ice fishing."

Through chattering teeth, Mazzetti replied, "For what? More poisonous seaweed?"

"I think she was kidding, Nicky," Crichlow said.

Pembleton summoned all his willpower to stand and step away from the comfort of the fire. "On your feet, men, we need to move. We'll only have about nine hours of daylight today. Let's not waste them." Watching the privates lag and dawdle, he coaxed them. "Up, gents. With a purpose, let's go."