by David Mack
Oliveira nodded. “I see what you’re saying. The Juggernaut might adapt its drones to match new threats, like pods from a Sibellian hunting tree.”
“Exactly. But without the nasty-smelling sap. I hope.”
He was about to suggest that they continue their conversation over lunch in the officers’ mess, when Ensign Coniff came jogging after them. Coniff waved one brown hand to catch Johar’s attention. “Sir! I think I have something.”
“Already? That was quick.”
“Well, it’s only a partial finding,” the eager young officer said. “But have a look at this.” He turned his tricorder so Johar and Oliveira could see its display. “To address the question of provenance, I decided to see if I could determine how old it is, and then to see if there was a difference between its likely age and that of the seabed from which it emerged. Based on half-life decay in several of the elements I found in its hull, and some fragments of sediment that I suspect it accumulated while submerged in a nonwatertight compartment on the Juggernaut, I’d estimate this drone is approximately nine million years old. Which means this thing was waiting down there for a really long time. And—” He switched to a new set of data and handed the tricorder to Johar. “Last but not least, compounds in its hull contain elements that don’t exist on Sirsa III, so it’s almost certainly not native to this world.”
“Good work, Ensign.” Johar handed back the tricorder. “Upload those scans to the main computer, on the double.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Coniff stepped away to resume his work, Johar turned to Oliveira. “Compounds that exotic would be hard to miss during a detailed planetary survey, wouldn’t they?”
“Almost impossible,” Oliveira said.
Dark clouds of suspicion gathered in Johar’s thoughts. “We should tell the captain. Call me crazy, but I think she’ll want to look into this.”
* * *
As many times as Georgiou had heard the expression “like trying to take blood from a stone,” she had never understood it so well as she did now that she was trying to extract the truth from the appointed head of Sirsa III’s colonial government. “Governor Kolova, my team has checked these scans multiple times. There’s no doubt the Juggernaut has been lying dormant under this planet’s sea floor for more than nine million years.”
The stern-faced, platinum-haired woman’s image was holographically projected in front of the Shenzhou bridge’s center viewport, magnified in unforgivingly revealing high resolution. “So you said, Captain. But I think the most important word here is ‘dormant,’ don’t you?”
“I’m not interested in parsing word choices with you, Governor. This planet was supposed to have undergone an exhaustive search for any signs of precursor civilizations or sentient life prior to the establishment of a colonial presence.”
Kolova rolled her shoulders in a dismissive shrug. “It was.”
The more cavalier the governor’s manner became, the closer Georgiou’s temper came to slipping its reins. “And full subsurface imaging was required before any permits were issued for mining, either on land or at sea. Yet one of your platforms sunk its plasma drill into the hull of what appears to be an ancient starship lurking beneath the sea floor. Did your survey scans miraculously miss that enormous starship? Or was evidence of its presence concealed?”
Confronted with a clear accusation, Kolova turned defensive. “I assure you, Captain: Neither I nor anyone in my office concealed any such thing. We had no knowledge that any past intelligent life-forms or civilizations ever existed on Sirsa III. But if we had, we would have notified the Federation Council, as required by law.”
Georgiou was sure she heard a note of falsehood in Kolova’s melody of virtue. “And just how many of the planetary surveys did you or members of your office review before they were submitted for approval?”
“None of them—but only because the surveys were done long before I was appointed to this office.” Perhaps noting Georgiou’s suspicious reaction, Kolova added, “All of the surveys were conducted by agents of the Kayo Mining Consortium, roughly five to six years ago.”
That was a new detail, one that reinforced Georgiou’s perception that something was seriously amiss with this colony. “Excuse me a moment, Governor.” She looked back at her communications officer, Ensign Mary Fan, and, with a subtle gesture below the frame of the image they were sending to Kolova, signaled that she wanted the channel muted.
A flick of a switch later, Fan said, “Muted, sir.”
Pivoting to starboard, Georgiou found her new yeoman, Ensign Danby Connor. The young, curly-haired force of nature noted her searching look out of the corner of his eye and turned to give her his full attention. “Sir.”
“Connor, pull the colony’s files from our memory banks. Show me everything from their application for a colonial permit. Put it on the starboard viewer. Our eyes only.”
“Aye, sir.” Connor quick-stepped to the nearest duty station and summoned the colony’s information with such speed that Georgiou realized he must have anticipated her request hours earlier and had the data on standby. Before she could compliment him on his preparedness, he had projected the information over the viewport to the right of the center screen. What she saw confirmed Kolova’s version of the facts—but it also raised new questions.
Another look in Fan’s direction. “Reopen the channel.” Fan restored the two-way connection, then nodded at Georgiou to confirm it was ready.
“Governor,” Georgiou said, “your colony’s application file is rather incomplete.”
A sage nod from Kolova. “It’s my understanding that KMC was eager to secure the license ahead of a competitor, so they submitted a partial application with a request for expedited approval. The remaining planetary survey scans were delivered later, directly to the Colonial Authority office in Beijing, on Earth.”
“That’s a rather serious break from protocol,” Georgiou said.
“It’s all completely legal, Captain. The necessary waivers were filed and approved.”
It was an evasive reply, but when Georgiou looked at Connor, he frowned as he nodded in confirmation of Kolova’s claim. “Be that as it may,” the captain said, “we still need to see the complete planetary survey files. Please transmit them to us as soon as—”
“I’m afraid we don’t have them,” Kolova said.
That sounded like a lie to Georgiou. “How can you not have a copy of the survey files? How do you manage your mining operations without them?”
“The miners drill and dig where KMC tells them to.” Kolova paired an insincere smile with a dismissive lift of her brow. “The price we pay for political autonomy. Now, if there’s nothing else . . . ?”
“We’re done—for now. Shenzhou out.” The channel closed, and the holographic image vanished from in front of the center viewport, leaving only the majestic curve of the planet falling away beneath the Shenzhou’s bridge.
Georgiou had been stonewalled more than once in her many years of service to Starfleet. She detested it as much now as she had when she had been a junior officer—but now, as a captain, she finally had the authority to do something about it. “Mister Connor!”
Her yeoman snapped to attention. “Sir.”
“Get on the horn to the FCA—use the priority subspace channel. Tell them I want every bit of data they have on the Sirsa III colony, and I want it right now. If anyone gives you the runaround, tell them the next person they’ll be hearing from is Admiral Anderson.”
“Aye, sir.” Connor pivoted back to his station and set to work with a youthful energy and singularity of focus that Georgiou secretly envied, just a little.
Just as Georgiou settled back into her command chair, relief operations officer Ensign Troy Januzzi—who pronounced his surname “Yanoozi,” thanks to an arcane bit of language drift—swiveled from his station to face her. “Captain, we’ve completed a sensor sweep of the Juggernaut. All data has been routed to the science labs for analysis.”
“Good work, Mister Januzzi.” A notion occurred to Georgiou. “Transmit our sensor data to Starfleet Command. Maybe they’ll see something in it that we don’t.”
“Never hurts to have a second set of eyes, eh, Captain?”
“No, it doesn’t, Ensign. And if there’s one lesson I’ve learned that never seems to go out of style, it’s this: Take all the help you can get.”
* * *
Few errors of courtesy in Starfleet carried graver penalties than keeping a flag officer waiting. Neither the offense nor its repercussions were the least bit official, of course. It was just one of many facts of life implicitly understood by those who made a career of service in Starfleet: wasting an admiral’s time was a surefire way to get saddled with the worst assignments.
In his time, Captain Christopher Pike had endured his share of scut jobs; he was not about to subject his ship and crew to such an iniquity, not if he could help it. So it was that he found himself charging down the corridors of the Enterprise in a mad rush to reach his quarters.
Unlike many other types of starship in the fleet, Constitution-class vessels had no ready rooms for their captains. Most days, Pike didn’t miss having a ready room—except for those occasions when he received a classified transmission above the security clearance of his bridge crew, compelling him to return to his quarters to receive it.
Today he had the bad luck of being on the receiving end of one such message that was being tendered in real time, from the admiral in charge of this sector—and finding his route to his quarters hampered by a sluggish turbolift and dense foot traffic in the corridors.
Pike’s door slid open ahead of him, and he darted inside his quarters. Without pausing to switch on the lights he moved to his desk and powered up his secure terminal. After taking a moment to recover his breath, he thumbed open a channel to the bridge. “Chief Garison, patch that signal through to my quarters.”
“Aye, sir,” his signals officer replied. “Stand by.”
The screen of Pike’s desktop terminal snapped to life, revealing the strong features of Admiral Brett Anderson, a man whose lantern jaw and piercing eyes were accentuated by a creased forehead that hinted at his decades of service. His short thatch of golden hair was his last bastion of youthfulness. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me, Captain.”
“Sorry for the wait, Admiral.”
“Are you certain this connection is secure?”
He checked the channel’s status. “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Analysts at Starfleet Command just got a look at some sensor data the Shenzhou sent over from Sirsa III. In a word, it’s a nightmare.”
Hyperbole had never sat well with Pike. “Can you be more specific, sir?”
“I’m sending you the original data now, plus our analysis. Review it with your XO and science officer immediately, and set your ship’s course for Sirsa III at maximum warp. We need your ship in orbit there as soon as possible.”
That sounded ominous. “May I ask for what purpose, Admiral?”
“I need you to perform a mission to which I suspect Captain Georgiou will . . . object.”
* * *
Cold wind blew in off the sea, stinging Burnham’s face like needles of ice. Pacing along the dull, pitted black surface of the Juggernaut’s dorsal hull, she was reminded of ancient human myths—tales of a beast known as a kraken, a leviathan the size of an island. A monster that could rise from the depths and leave mariners stranded, their vessels beached upon its back. Like so many other tales of the ancient world, yarns of the kraken had, to Burnham, always seemed absurd and beyond belief. But now she was forced to wonder whether a vessel such as this one might once have crested the waves of a Terran sea, birthing a legend that refused to die.
Most of the Juggernaut’s visible exterior was unremarkable, but its few notable features were, Burnham noticed, symmetrical and dual in nature. Each major deviation from the hull’s smooth surface either had a matching counterpart in mirror image on the other side of the vessel, or was irregular enough to be discounted as damage. Whatever else she might deduce about the Juggernaut’s makers, she was willing to surmise they came from a species that either exhibited bilateral symmetry—like so many other intelligent species known throughout local space—or they revered the concept of symmetry in their designs.
A soft chirrup from her tricorder drew her attention. The device had completed its passive multispectral scan of the Juggernaut while she walked its length. Now she would have a trove of raw information to study after she and the landing party returned to the Shenzhou. She dismissed the alert, then looked back the way she had come, toward the rest of her team.
At the far end of the Juggernaut from her were Gant and Temkin. The security officer was anchoring Gant, who had descended the sloped hull of the Juggernaut almost to its waterline and was crouching while he reached with one hand into the water lapping at the alien vessel’s dark hull. He must be filling another vial for his collection, Burnham realized.
Since the earliest days of Gant’s Starfleet career, he had made a point of collecting water or soil samples from every alien world he visited. Once each sample was cleared through the Shenzhou’s quarantine protocol, it was afforded a place inside a vacuum-sealed, padded display cabinet in Gant’s quarters. His hobby struck Burnham as silly and sentimental, but she couldn’t deny that it seemed to make him happy, and the case itself made for a unique conversation piece.
Near the middle of the gargantuan ship, close to the party’s original beam-down point, stood Saru and Rogers. The pair were a few meters apart and seemed to be avoiding not only conversation but eye contact. While Saru busied himself fiddling with his tricorder, Rogers passed the time staring at the horizon while keeping one hand on the grip of her phaser.
Burnham trudged back toward the middle of the Juggernaut. She pulled her communicator from her hip and flipped open its grille with a flick of her wrist. A quick tweak with her thumb set it for the limited-range shore-personnel frequency. “Burnham to landing party. I’ve finished my survey. Prepare to regroup for beam-up.”
In the distance, she saw Saru flip open his communicator. His voice issued from her comm, creating a peculiar sensory disconnect. “Confirmed, sir.”
At the opposite end of the Juggernaut, Temkin pulled Gant back up from the waterline onto the mostly level crest of the ship’s dorsal hull. Once they were both steady, Gant flipped open his own comm device, and his transmitted voice spilled from Burnham’s communicator. “Copy that, sir. Heading back now.”
Burnham reached the middle of the Juggernaut well ahead of Gant and Temkin. There she found Rogers keeping her distance from Saru, who seemed to exhibit a skittish alertness to every minuscule shift in the environment. Under normal circumstances she would have written off Saru’s agitation to his species’ innate talent for finding threats in the most innocent of situations, but something about his apprehension felt different this time.
His anxiety was not unreasonable, in Burnham’s opinion. After all, the Juggernaut had obliterated a drilling platform and snuffed out some nine hundred sentient lives in the process. But as she moved closer, she saw Saru was more than just guarded; he seemed afraid.
She sidled over to him but stopped short of making contact. He’s already on edge. Might be best not to do anything to spook him. Modulating her voice into a lower register, she said in a soft tone, “Saru? Are you all right?”
The Kelpien turned toward her, his dilated pupils betraying his alarm. “I’m sorry? What?” After a moment’s pause, he mentally regrouped. “Yes, sir. I think so.”
“You think so?” Burnham checked to make certain that Rogers wasn’t eavesdropping on the two of them. Then she confirmed that Temkin and Gant were still too far away to hear or discern what was transpiring between her and Saru. “Lieutenant, what are you sensing? Is there something about this ship, or this place, that’s giving you reason for concern?”
Saru looked at her with mistrust, as i
f he thought she might be goading him into a trap. Burnham chided herself: He thinks this is a ruse, that I’m trying to embarrass him.
She inched closer to him and took care to keep her voice low and even. “Saru, I need your input. I’m asking you, as first officer to second officer, to tell me what you sense.”
He drew a deep breath through his long nostrils, then closed his eyes. Was he gleaning something from scents in the air? Or just oxygenating to clear his thoughts? Burnham wasn’t sure, and she didn’t particularly care, as long as Saru focused and told her something useful.
“Vibrations,” he said. “Infrasonic. At regular intervals. Something big is coming.”
Burnham tried to pick up on what Saru described, but she lacked his species’ knack for sensing low-frequency pulses. It was one of the first times she had envied an ability of the Kelpien officer, though she had often desired the superior high-frequency hearing of Vulcans. “When you say ‘something big is coming,’ Saru, do you mean from inside the ship?”
He nodded. “The intervals are decreasing. And the intensity is increasing. It’s close.”
“Can you describe more precisely what—”
An eerie droning filled the air, and a strange oscillating whine resonated through the hull of the Juggernaut. The entire vessel juddered beneath Burnham’s feet, and she and Saru fell against each other as the massive ship lurched. Several meters away, Rogers, Temkin, and Gant tumbled apart, and then each of them grasped for handholds on the ship’s hull.
The waves to one side of the Juggernaut frothed with gray foam, then erupted in a wall of spray and hot vapor as the eerie noise from inside the ship broke free to the air outside of it. Three shapes, long and dartlike, shot upward through the sudden fog engulfing the landing party and soared skyward. Eager to see from where they had emerged, Burnham scrambled across the top of the Juggernaut just in time to see three previously nonexistent apertures in the hull constrict and seal themselves, leaving behind no seams or evidence.