Star Trek: The Next Generation - 078 - Gemworld 1 by John Vornholt

Author:John Vornholt [Vornholt, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Adventure, Science Fiction/Fantasy
ISBN: 9780671042707
Publisher: Star Trek
Published: 2000-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Deanna Troi reclined gratefully in her bed, glad to get a moment’s rest after the heady events of the day. It wasn’t often she got to take over the bridge in the middle of a crisis, then spend hours flying in a wonderland. But even the incredible sights of Gemworld were almost anticlimactic after their dealings with the Exalted Ones and the Jeptah. It all added up to sensory overload. This was one night when she wouldn’t have to dream, thought Troi. Her imagination couldn’t possibly match the reality all around them.

Tomorrow she would have to deal with the emotional overload of losing seven crewmembers. She could comfort grieving friends and spouses, but the ongoing tension on the ship was proving to be more difficult to deal with. Although they seemed safe inside this metal cocoon surrounded by jewels, everyone knew it could crumble apart in an instant. The rift was too unpredictable and Gemworld too fragile—the shell didn’t seem to be enough, with its arrogant programmers and arcane protocols. Every member of the crew knew that the Enterprise couldn’t escape, and nobody could rescue them.

Deanna shook off her troubled thoughts and picked up a padd to do a little reading. But she found that she barely had the energy to focus her eyes, and she let the padd drop to her bed. Music, she thought, would be more soothing.

To her surprise, it wasn’t a nice concerto she or dered up, but a sound effect. “Computer, put on a sound . . . the ocean at the beach.”

The cry of a seagull greeted her ear, and waves lapped gently at an unseen shore. With a rhythmic lull, the waves washed up and down the sand, and Troi could feel herself floating in a cradle on the tide. Since she had actually been floating that day, her body aided the illusion, and her muscles went as limp as a Lipul floating in its crystal. Real perception and dream perception intermingled, and she felt herself floating away though a dozen different substances—water, gelatinous mass, the crystal, the air, the shell, and even space.

She thought it was the Lipuls’ dreamships calling her, and she turned to look for them in the luminous starscape. But their ghostly, billowing sails were nowhere to be seen. Instead she felt the draw of a presence just outside the protective shell, something that was close but oddly far away. It terrified Deanna to think that she was alone—a fleet of one—but there was the attraction of the deep unknown, lying so close at hand.

If only I could see it as well as I can feel it. With her mind, she probed the emptiness of space and found it wasn’t empty. Inside the darkness was an even greater darkness, alive and roiling with attraction and energy. It didn’t reveal itself, but it knew she was there, like a suitor waiting in the shadows for his beloved to sneak out of her house.

Suddenly her mind was flooded with incredible images of worlds and wonders that dwarfed the amazing things she had already seen.

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