Takedown (Star Trek: The Next Generation) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Jackson Miller is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Trek: Picard: Rogue Elements, Star Trek: Discovery: Die Standing, Star Trek: Discovery: The Enterprise War,  the acclaimed Star Trek: Prey trilogy (Hell’s Heart, The Jackal’s Trick, The Hall of Heroes), and the novels Star Trek: The Next Generation: Takedown, Star Wars: A New Dawn, Star Wars: Kenobi, Star Wars: Knight Errant, Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith—The Collected Stories; and fifteen Star Wars graphic novels, as well as the original work Overdraft: The Orion Offensive. He has also written the enovella Star Trek: Titan: Absent Enemies. A comics industry historian and analyst, he has written for franchises including Halo, Conan, Iron Man, Indiana Jones, Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect, and The Simpsons. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and far too many comic books.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: Takedown

One

The one good thing about having a job that took you to hell and back was that you slept soundly. All your nightmares had already happened during the day.

William Riker had always slept well. But this morning, rising was the hard part—and he wasn’t surprised in the least to discover he was already dressed. He’d slept in full uniform many times as an overworked ensign, never as an admiral. But this behavior made perfect sense: He’d been through the wringer in recent days. He was just glad he’d made it to the bed. Falling asleep in a turbolift wouldn’t have done, at any rank.

He knew he’d earned being this tired. There had been another voyage to perdition—or worse—just behind him, but it made his head hurt to think much about it. It didn’t matter. The best way to escape a bad day was to start the next.

Or to try to start it, at least. Riker’s muscles objected as he attempted to sit up in bed, and he nearly fell back down. Standing was the next frontier, and that took longer to accomplish as well. Finally, he succeeded. Looking groggily around the VIP quarters aboard Starship Titan, he wondered for a moment where his wife was—before remembering the vessel’s destination was Betazed, her homeworld. That was one of the last things he’d heard before going to sleep. Deanna had hoped to take their daughter to Betazed’s capital city on a visit, if they had the time.

The time. He checked it as he shambled to the mirror. Sixteen hours, he’d slept. Riker shook his head. It was a good thing he wasn’t on duty of any kind. But then, oversleeping was the bad dream of an ensign. Admirals’ problems were a lot worse; he’d held the rank just long enough to learn that. And his body showed it. The face in the mirror was a fright. His dark, gently graying hair had gone this way and that during his repose, and a whole lot of new whiskers had appeared.

“Must have been some party,” he mumbled. His condition owed to something else entirely, but it didn’t matter. Drydock was about cleanup work, and that went for people just as well as their ships. He set to making himself presentable.

A short time later found Riker in the turbolift. He didn’t fall asleep on this ride either—but he wouldn’t have been able to snooze for long in any event. The doors weren’t halfway open when a firm Vulcan voice declared, “Admiral on the bridge!”

“You make a fine wake-up alarm, Tuvok.” Riker looked over to the tactical station, where the dark-skinned Vulcan didn’t acknowledge the joke. Tuvok simply bowed his head slightly and turned back to his console.

Stepping onto the bridge, Riker looked up and saw through the forward viewport that Titan was indeed orbiting above Betazed, the vessel parked near a large mushroom-shaped space station. The ship had been ordered here for replacement of faulty parts for some subsystem or other; it wasn’t Riker’s job to know about it anymore. That responsibility lay with the woman who looked back at him from the captain’s chair.

“Welcome, Admiral,” Christine Vale said. “How are you?”

“Shipshape,” Riker said, scratching his beard. “If the ship is a garbage scow that’s seen better days.”

“Forgivable, after what you’ve—” Apparently thinking better of her comment, Vale stopped in midsentence and gestured ahead instead. “I’m afraid you missed Counselor Troi by a few minutes. She said to let you sleep.”

“She’s nice like that.”

Walking past the command chairs, Riker studied the scene outside more closely. He’d never heard of Betazed Station 4 before, much less visited. Its spacedock doors were open, waiting to accept the Luna-class vessel. Just beyond the station, he could see a shuttle heading for the blue-green planet below.

That’s one of ours, he thought. But before he could ask about it, a chirp came from the communications officer’s panel. “Shuttlecraft Armstrong hailing us.”

Riker looked back to see Vale smiling at him. “Someone wants to say hello,” the redheaded woman said. “On-screen.”

Turning back forward, he saw the giant image of his little dark-haired daughter waving at him. “Hailing frequencies open, Daddy.”

“Hello, Natasha.” Riker put up his hand in a slight wave and smiled wanly. “You flying that alone?”

“She wants to,” Deanna Troi said, appearing over the child’s shoulder. “She takes after her father.”

Riker nodded. Titan’s bridge wasn’t really the place for a family call, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see members of the crew turning away to hide their amused expressions. Several seconds passed, silently, with neither of them talking: Deanna would have known he wouldn’t want anyone else asking about his health, not here. She, at least, looked well rested—and as beautiful as the day he’d met her. “Why did you take a shuttle?”

“Admiral,” Vale said, “we’ve taken the transporters offline in preparation for the new upgrade equipment we’re getting from spacedock.”

“Natasha thought it’d be more fun to fly over this way,” Deanna said. “She likes to look at the clouds as we—”

Before Deanna could finish the sentence, an alarm screeched aboard Titan—and Riker heard an echo from Armstrong’s cabin, where a similar alert went off. “Warning,” announced a computerized voice aboard Titan. “Plasma storm approaching, high magnitude.”

“Here?” Vale seemed startled. “We weren’t expecting anything like that.”

“Origin unknown. Danger posed to orbiting vessels.”

“How soon?”

Tuvok had the answer. “Four point seven seconds!”

“Shields up!”

Riker looked up to Deanna on the screen. “Deanna, shields, now!”

He grabbed for the railing at the rear of the bridge even as the world around him went sideways. Titan shook, apparently battered by a flood of plasma ejected from Betazed’s sun. Yet his eyes never left the forward viewscreen. Lit by the unholy fury of whatever was outside the shuttle, Deanna clung desperately to Natasha. Riker could barely hear the child screaming over the din of impact.

Riker looked around, not understanding. Like many other populated areas, the Betazed system was monitored by satellites that transmitted information faster than light, via subspace. Even a freak plasma storm should have been preceded by some warning before a tsunami of fire and radiation struck. And yet, here it was, shaking Titan like a tree in a hurricane.

And Armstrong was bearing it far worse. “Counselor!” Vale yelled, clutching the armrests of her chair. “What’s your condition?”

“Not good!” Internal lights strobing across her terrified face, Deanna punched at controls with one hand while hanging onto Natasha with her other arm. “Shields failed. Losing structural integrity!”

Forgetting who was in command, Riker barked, “Beam her out of there!”

“Engineering reports transporters will take three minutes to be placed back online,”...