Sight Unseen by James Swallow

Author:James Swallow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek

Ten

* * *

Seen from orbit, Casroc was a mix of umber shades and wide swathes of yellow savannah that covered continents. Not the blue-white vista of Earth, Riker reflected, but the homeworld of the Dinac had a kind of raw beauty to it that was undeniable. High above, the planet’s environmental issues were less noticeable, but he knew that down on the surface, life was hard.

It saddened him that he had to make things harder still for these people with the news that Titan brought them. Looking away, the admiral’s gaze slipped over the curved walls and floor of the space station around him to a wide oval screen hanging from the ceiling. It showed an image captured by a sensor on the outer ring of the toroidal orbital platform.

In the background, the floating shape of the Titan filled most of the screen, but the activity in the foreground was where all attention was focused. There was a hush over the assembled beings standing on the bowed deck of ornate woods and inlaid marquetry before him, and again, Riker wished he could have been there under better circumstances.

On the screen, Dinac astronauts in bulky orange excursion suits completed the work of fitting a net-like sheath over the hull of the ruined explorer ship. In keeping with the nautical nomenclature used to describe their vessels—some peculiarity of the universal translator’s software, he guessed—the four smaller craft surrounding the pinnace were identified as “sloops.” Each had a tether cable attached to the rig about the derelict, and as somber, funereal tones played over the station’s internal communications channel, Riker watched the quartet fire their sublight engines as one and pull the wreck away. Powerful lights in the belly of the sloops activated to illuminate the explorer with a dazzling glow.

As if anticipating his question, the tall engineer-commander standing to his right glanced down at Riker. “It will be taken on a journey around our planet to the night side, Admiral. There, it will circle Casroc in low orbit for several of our days as farewell rites are performed for the crew. This is done so that those on the surface may look up after sunset and find this craft and see it with their own eyes.” She had a lilting tone to her voice, at odds with the lupine nature of her features. “This we do in the names of our vanished host-brothers and host-sisters, crèche-sons and crèche-daughters.”

He nodded. “Our sorrows are shared.” Riker shot his wife a look. Deanna said nothing, letting him take the lead. “But I would suggest that our lost comrades are only that. Lost. We have no definite confirmation of their deaths as yet.”

“But neither can you offer more than words that they still live.” The Dinac leader standing in front of the screen turned to give the Titan’s landing party an unforgiving glare. He was the lord council, the same being Riker had spoken to over subspace after their first encounter with the wreck, and in the time it had taken them to reach Casroc, the leader’s mood had hardened.

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