Star Trek: The Next Generation - 119 - Armageddon's Arrow by Dayton Ward Page A

human history which had always fascinated her, and though she had read numerous books and seen historical recordings recounting those missions, Chen still wondered what must have gone through the minds of the men who made those original flights while trusting their lives to machines and technology which were little more than a child’s toys by modern standards.
    Cruzen emerged from the connecting tunnel, reaching for handholds as she twisted her body up and away from the opening so that Chen and Elfiki could follow her. Chen pushed her way into the cockpit and oriented herself, noting how the eight workstations had been arranged around the compact space, taking advantage of the bulkheads and ceiling.
    “Interesting layout,” Elfiki said as she pulled herself out of the tunnel. “Maybe we can get Captain Picard to reconfigure our bridge this way.” Using one foot to give herself a slight push, the science officer sailed toward the cockpit’s forward canopy and the workstation positioned in front of it. “Some of the monitors and other indicators are active and operating at minimum power levels. It mostly looks like current system status updates, that sort of thing.” She retrieved her tricorder from the holster on her hip and activated it, the sound of its warbling echoing in the restricted compartment. “Just like that console we found before, all of these workstations appear designed to access any shipboard system.”
    “I know that we’ve figured the ship incorporates an enormous amount of automation,” Cruzen said, having maneuvered herself so that she was resting against a seat at the station adjacent to the one Elfiki was studying. “But this is something else.”
    Elfiki nodded. “I don’t know what the builders had in mind so far as letting the onboard computer run the show while the crew was in hibernation. The fact that it’s been doing just that for over a hundred years, and that’s after the ship took what looks to be a serious beating, is some damned fine engineering.”
    “I can’t wait to see what Commander La Forge finds,” said Chen, using her free hand to push away from the console to the right of the forward-facing position and float across the cockpit to the adjacent seat. Her tricorder continued to scan the unfamiliar controls, only a few of which now made sense thanks to the Enterprise computer’s ongoing efforts to build a language database for the universal translation protocols. “You know he’s probably having the time of his life down there.” The chief engineer, along with Worf and Rennan Konya, had decided to make their way to whatever passed for the engineering section closer to the massive ship’s far end. “The propulsion and weapons systems alone are probably jaw-dropping.”
    Cruzen said, “What I want to know about is the time travel. Where the hell did this thing come from, and did it really jump from there back a hundred years or more? If so, why? That’s the mystery that has my attention.”
    “I should’ve known that if I hung around long enough,” Chen replied, “we’d find a way to get mixed up with time travel. Ours, or somebody else’s.”
    One of her preferred leisure activities since being assigned to the Enterprise was reviewing the logs of its previous missions, which of course were the sorts of things one heard about from official news sources as well as Academy curriculum. Several missions—not just those of the current starship but also its predecessors—had involved exposure to various temporal anomalies or beings who traveled through time. While many details of those encounters remained classified, enough information had escaped redaction to make an engrossing study for many a hopeful cadet. Indeed, there were numerous stories and tall tales shared by senior cadets alleging that the simple matter of naming a new vessel “ Enterprise ” brought with it the jinx of being plagued by all manner of time-based trickery, and that the