Star Trek: That Which Divides by Dayton Ward Read Free Book Online

asked.
    “Absolutely.” Reaching for his console, Boma tapped several of the multicolored buttons in sequence, in response to which one of the monitors began to display a pattern of lights, fluctuating in what Arens quickly surmised was a steady, measured rhythm. “The sensors picked up the repeating pattern,” the science officer explained, “though it’s much slower than what I’m showing here. I amplified the tempo so you wouldn’t have to look at it for an hour.”
    Arens smiled. “Thanks for that. Okay, so the big question now is who or what is responsible, and where arethey?” Even as he asked the question, he found himself looking up from the science station to regard the image of the planetoid, the upper third of which was now visible on the main viewscreen. “Anybody care to take a guess?”
    “Gralafi makes the most sense,” Boma said, “though I haven’t yet picked up indications of any sort of broadcast or projection coming from it. We’re conducting sweeps of the planet surface, but so far I’m not finding anything that can’t be explained by the Dolysians’ presence.”
    Turning at the sound of approaching footsteps, Arens saw Zihl moving toward him, her expression one of confusion. “Commander Boma, are you suggesting that someone other than my people may be living on Gralafi?”
    Boma paused, glancing to Arens, who nodded for him to continue. “At this point, Advisor, I’m not prepared to make that determination, though it’s certainly a possibility. So far, our sensor data remains inconclusive.”
    “You mentioned that you only caught the initial pattern when you were retuning the sensors,” Hebert said as she crossed the bridge to stand opposite Arens on the other side of Boma’s station. “Maybe whatever you’re looking for is operating on another frequency altogether; something we can’t easily pick up, either.”
    “Already on that, Commander,” the science officer replied. “I’m running a program that will cycle through the sensor array with special emphasis on wavelengths we don’t normally use.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I swear it’s like whatever we’re looking for knows we’re looking for it, or at least was designed to evade searches like this.” No sooner did he speak the words than an alert tone sounded from his station, and Boma emitted what to Arens’s ears sounded like a grunt of satisfaction. “Bingo.” He tapped anotherstring of commands to his console, and several monitors shifted their readouts to display what the captain recognized as sensor wavelength patterns.
    “What are we looking at?” Arens asked.
    “Power readings,” Boma answered, “coming from somewhere on the planet.”
    His eyes now riveted to the planetoid on the screen, Arens pondered the mysterious potential it now harbored, if his science officer’s report was any indication. “Can you locate its source?”
    “Working on it,” Boma said. “Hang on, I think—”
    The rest of his report was drowned out as a new alarm klaxon began wailing across the bridge mere heartbeats before Arens felt the deck shift beneath his feet. He reached out to grip the back of Boma’s chair, just managing to keep himself from being thrown off balance as the entire ship seemed to quaver around him.
    “What the hell was that?” Hebert shouted over the siren and the groans of protest that seemed to be emanating from every bulkhead and deck plate. Like Arens, she had grabbed for anything that might keep her from being tossed to the deck, and now held on to one of the rails separating the bridge’s command well from the perimeter workstations. A quick glance around the room told the captain that everyone else seemed to have avoided taking any nasty spills.
    Holding on to her helm console, T’Vrel replied, “Something hit us, sir. Attempting to ascertain damage.”
    “Shields!” Arens barked.
    T’Vrel shook her head. “Nonresponsive, Captain.”
    “It wasn’t something that hit