by David Mack
Perhaps sensing his growing unease, Una took the lead and made a point of looking back every dozen steps to check on Saru. She asked, “How do you like serving on the Shenzhou?”
“It’s an amazing ship, despite its age,” Saru said. He was grateful for the distraction of small talk. “And Captain Georgiou is a remarkable commanding officer.”
Una nodded as she looked back. “Yes, her reputation precedes her.” Ten steps later, she asked, “Are you the only Kelpien in Starfleet?”
“So far as I know, yes. My people, alas, tend to be risk averse.” He felt a twinge of shame as he considered the shortcomings of his species. “But I hope to change that one day.”
“I sympathize,” Una said. “It can be hard to feel like an outsider even among one’s shipmates. Especially for people like you and me—creatures of peace, surrounded by those whose natural instincts drive them toward violence.”
It felt to Saru almost as if she were reading his mind. “Yes! It’s excruciating at times to be a scientist, an explorer, in a culture dominated, in however benign a fashion, by soldiers. So many times I’ve dreamed of—”
His threat ganglia danced to life, emerging in a mad dance above his ears. Fear constricted his throat and arrested him in midstep. His sense of peril had been triggered by a scent of something with blood on its breath, the scrape of claws against rock in the shadows, a trembling of muscles tensed to strike . . .
Una stopped, turned back, and studied Saru. She noted the waggling of his threat ganglia but said nothing. Instead she listened. Tasted the air, which had cooled in the shaded canyon. When she threw an inquisitive glance at Saru, he darted his eyes upward and to his right. With almost glacial slowness, Una nodded her understanding.
Then she was a blur. She pivoted about-face, snatched a stone from the path, and hurled it up into the surrounding jagged outcroppings of rock. Her projectile found its mark: a creature hissed, then growled as it skittered into retreat, pelting Una and Saru with dislodged pebbles as it fled. Within seconds its foul scents were gone from Saru’s sensitive nostrils, and the sound of its scrabbling flight over the rocks faded into the distance. His ganglia retracted, calm once more.
Saru exhaled a breath he had held by reflex. Una set her hand upon his shoulder, in a manner gentle and encouraging. “Thanks for the warning. I’d have missed it. Are you all right?”
“Yes, Commander. I am fine. Thank you.”
“Glad to hear it. How much farther to the cave mouth?”
He checked his tricorder. “Twelve point six meters, on the right.”
“Then we’d best get moving.” Una resumed walking, and Saru moved forward to walk at her side. This woman of peace was also a born defender, and her example inspired Saru to emulate her, in both confidence and calm. Among Kelpiens there was no honor greater than to be known as a defender of one’s clan. Una made Saru feel as if he, too, could become a protector.
Less than a minute later, the ragged entrance to the cave complex gaped open on their right, its maw an invitation to descend into an underworld of darkness. Where some might see a dangerous warren of shadows, Saru saw an environment that finally reminded him of home. He had to remind himself then that this was not Kelpia. There was no telling what devils lurked within this unfamiliar dark.
Una, however, continued inside without missing a step, and without a single look back.
Saru had no choice but to follow her. Nothing good can come of this, his fear told him, but he ignored it and pushed onward. Because those were his orders, and because the only thing worse than going into that darkness with Una would be remaining outside of it without her.
* * *
Spock kneeled on the aft section of the Juggernaut’s ebon hull, beside a patch that was smoother than anything else around it. It was almost glasslike, faithfully reflective, and cool to the touch. He looked toward Burnham. “Have you found the corresponding pad?”
She was down on one knee several meters from him, pressing her right palm against a patch of smoothed hull identical to the one in front of Spock. “I have it.”
A chilly breeze flung salt water into Spock’s eyes. He winced and shook off the disagreeable sensation. Though half of his heritage was human, he had never appreciated the allure of vast oceans such as those found on Earth and many other Class-M planets. His formative years had been spent in the harsh desert climes of Vulcan, a red world whose environment ranked among the least forgiving of those known to have incubated intelligent life.
Burnham checked her tricorder, which she had set for constant sensor recording. “The oval region between us is the only unique feature on the dorsal hull of this ship.”
“Intriguing,” Spock said. He appreciated Burnham’s restraint; many of his human shipmates on the Enterprise—with the exception of Commander Una, of course—would likely have made an unsupported supposition and stated that the oval region between himself and Burnham was the vessel’s only unique, unmirrored element. But Burnham had been educated on Vulcan; she knew that they had not yet reviewed a high-resolution map of the Juggernaut’s under side, and consequently had made no assumptions about it. Thinking he might test her logic, he speculated aloud, “It is possible the oval has a twin on the underside of this ship.”
“Possible, yes,” Burnham said, “but we have no evidence for that, and no convenient means of access even should that prove to be the case. For now, the logical course of action would be to explore the potential represented by this feature.”
It was exactly the answer for which Spock had hoped. Yet he remained at a loss for an idea concerning how to proceed. “If this does function as some sort of portal to the ship’s interior, there seems to be no interface for its control. At least, none on the exterior.”
“I’m not so certain of that, Mister Spock.” She ran her hands over the hull’s surface. “Based on its reaction to the drill head striking its hull, and its subsequent attack on New Astana, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Juggernaut has external sensory capability. Therefore, if this is a kind of airlock or other means of accessing the ship’s interior, it would make sense for it to have an external interface of some kind.”
“Not necessarily,” Spock said. “If this vessel had come here with a crew, would they not have departed after their mission, whatever it might have been, had concluded? Does not its continued presence suggest that it was sent here without crew or passengers, perhaps to perform some limited function, and then be abandoned?”
Burnham turned pensive as she considered his argument. “I see your point. And I will concede that this feature we’ve found might prove to be nothing more than the launch aperture of an even larger form of weapon than the drones, or perhaps even nothing of note whatsoever. But consider this, Mister Spock: the apertures that opened for the drones vanished without a seam. That suggests to me that this feature we’ve found would not exist unless the makers of this vessel wanted it to be found. And why would they want it to be found? That in turn implies that they hoped this planet’s native inhabitants would seek out the Juggernaut—and this entrance point.”
“To what end?” Spock asked, his curiosity aroused.
He was mildly disappointed when Burnham shrugged. “I don’t know yet. But I mean to find out.” She pawed at the smooth patch in front of her, then looked toward Spock. “Are you pressing your hand against yours?”
“Not at the moment. Do you wish me to?”
“Please,” Burnham said. “This is a long shot, but I recall something I was taught as a child on Vulcan: at a bare minimum, the sensory capacity required for space travel is—”
“Tactile,” Spock said, his own memory of early teachings jogged by Burnham’s cue. He put his hand to the smooth patch in front of him and mimicked the spread of Burnham’s digits. At once he felt a firm but shifting pressure under his palm. “A haptic interface,” he noted. He regarded Burnham with a new level of respect. “How did you know?”
“I suspect this entry point was designed
to be accessible to the lowest common denominator,” she said. “And the ship’s symmetry, which extends to these two panels, made me think its control interfaces might have been geared toward a pair of respondents.”
“Or toward a single operator with an arm span of several meters,” Spock offered.
She arched one eyebrow, in a manner that reminded Spock of his father’s chosen form of silent rebuke. “A valid analysis, if not a particularly helpful one.”
Even her criticism sounds as if it comes from my father, Spock thought.
He felt another series of shifting pressures under his palm. “The interface is working again. The sensation is similar to dull pinpricks rolling against my palm and then subsiding.”
“I’m feeling the same thing over here,” Burnham said. “Pay attention to every detail. Number of pressure points. The order in which they appear. Their position, duration, and location. Their temperature—I’m feeling some that are hot, some that are icy.”
Once she began guiding him, he appreciated the complexity of the interface. “It is not unlike the systems created by your people to make textual information accessible by the blind, combined with those developed by the Andorians.”
“Yes, I’d noticed that, too. Now concentrate. Tell me everything you’re feeling.”
He recited details as he became aware of their patterns, and Burnham did the same. Within a few minutes of back-and-forth, they experienced a simultaneous epiphany:
“It’s a challenge-and-response system,” they said to each other.
Burnham nodded, then closed her eyes to concentrate. “I’m getting complex numbers over here, if I’m reading this correctly. The early iterations were made to set a baseline. To teach us the number system. Now I’m being fed massive integers.”
Spock closed his eyes and trained all of his mental acuity on the haptic panel beneath his hand. “Yes. And I am being given a small set of simple equations. A different set roughly every thirty seconds.” Concentrating more intently, he realized, “All the numbers I receive are primes.”
“Then what are these longer strings I—” Burnham sighed, partly in relief but also, it seemed, in self-criticism. “Of course. Factorization by prime numbers. The key to entry is to prove not only fundamental mathematical literacy, but also the ability to parse their haptic matrix.” She tensed. “Hang on, I’m getting a new number.”
“And I am getting a new set of simplified equations,” Spock said.
It took Burnham only a few seconds to interpret the new information. “The challenge number is thirty-four thousand, five hundred sixty-eight.”
“In which case the factorization by primes would be two to the third power times twenty-nine, times one hundred forty-nine,” Spock said, reading the tactile formulae under his hand. “I have found the matching equation. I am going to apply pressure to it.”
He pushed the string of dots corresponding to the correct factorization sequence. They retreated into the hull and left no trace of their presence behind—
The great oval between Spock and Burnham dilated open. It made almost no sound as it swirled apart from its center, the smart metal retreating into itself to reveal a ramp leading down to an antechamber with a long corridor on its far side, both illuminated in sickly green light.
Spock looked at Burnham. “What do we do now?”
“Get inside before it closes,” she said, scrambling over its threshold without so much as a single tricorder scan to deduce what might lurk within.
Spock followed her inside without question or hesitation. They moved together into the antechamber, which had many features that reminded Spock of an airlock, though once again he was at a loss to find anything that resembled a conventional interface. A series of alien symbols had been etched around the interior edge of the entrance. The compartment’s inner portal opposite the entrance was already open, which suggested they were intended to move deeper inside the ship, on a straight line toward its distant bow.
He lifted his tricorder and checked its ongoing scan mode. “No life signs inside the vessel,” he said. “Though I detect a mild surge in energy readings around us, which might—”
The oval exterior hatchway spiraled shut. As the last pinhole of light at its center went out, and the alien symbols around it flashed with crimson energy, it took all of Spock’s hard-learned Vulcan conditioning to suppress a natural fear response.
Burnham, however, evinced a more human reaction to their predicament. She frowned at the bulkhead where the portal had been and muttered under her breath, “Shit.” It took her a moment to restore her pretense of logical control. “It appears our direction has been chosen for us, Mister Spock.” She stepped past him and led the way inside the Juggernaut. “So, like it or not . . . into the heart of darkness we go.”
12
* * *
Gant and a team of five security officers from the Shenzhou materialized from a transporter beam on the edge of the circular plaza at the center of New Astana. Several meters away, another six-person security team beamed down from the Enterprise. Gant and his team from the Shenzhou wore dark blue Starfleet utility jumpsuit uniforms with black trim, while the Enterprise team sported pale gold or light blue jerseys over black trousers—a new uniform style that so far had been issued exclusively to the crews of Starfleet’s vaunted Constitution-class starships.
The leader of the Enterprise’s landing party approached Gant. His counterpart was a tall, slender woman with pale skin and short, slicked-close dark blond hair. As they arrived at a respectable distance for a conversation, Gant spoke first. “Lieutenant Kamran Gant, senior tactical officer, U.S.S. Shenzhou.”
“Lieutenant Elena Donnelly, deputy chief of security, U.S.S. Enterprise.” She shook his hand quickly, then cast a worried look around the otherwise empty plaza. “I thought a squad of local law enforcement was supposed to meet us.”
Gant made his own anxious survey of the empty streets and building fronts marked by closed doors. “That was my understanding. Looks like the colonists didn’t get the memo.” He snapped an order over his shoulder to one of his own people. “Goldsmith, run a tricorder scan. Get me a twenty on the colonists—especially the governor.” He tried to reassure Donnelly with feigned confidence. “If they’re here, we’ll know soon enough.”
Donnelly surveyed the windows and looked toward the surrounding rooftops. “I have no doubt they’re here. Right now I’m just wondering how well armed they are.”
“Substantially, I’d guess,” Gant said. “The Kayo Mining Consortium played fast and loose with the laws and regulations on this rock. It’s a good bet everyone’s armed.”
The Enterprise’s deputy security chief looked disgruntled. “Wonderful.”
Chief Petty Officer Goldsmith sidled up to show them the results of his scans. “Sirs? We’re surrounded, and not just by people cowering inside their prefab houses. We’re reading several dozen armed people on the rooftops, and more out of sight behind corners.”
Feigning amusement, Gant raised his voice to mock and goad the colonists into showing themselves. “What the—? A surprise party? Whose idea was this? You crazy scamps. You know how much I hate surprises.” He drew his phaser. “I mean, I really hate ’em.”
The rest of his landing party followed his lead and brandished their phasers. The group from the Enterprise waited for Donnelly to draw her weapon, then they did the same.
Donnelly lowered her voice to ask Gant, “Now what?”
“We do what we came here to do—and hope the colonists don’t make an issue of it. Everyone, set phasers on heavy stun.” Gant led the two parties toward the nearby Executive Complex, a drab block of a building whose only flourishes of style resided in the columns atop its short flight of steps and the tall, narrow windows that lined its façade. The two security teams fanned out as they advanced on the government building. By the time they reached its steps, they were almost a single rank, twelve bodies across, climbing the steps in wary unison.
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p; Then came a man’s voice from the shadows behind the columns: “That’s far enough.”
Gant and the others halted. He strained to see the person who had spoken, but the shade ahead was too deep to pierce. “Who are we talking to?”
“Not important,” said the gravel-voiced sentry. “This building’s transport-shielded, and you’re surrounded. Take one more step up those stairs, and we’ll put you down.” A blast of charged plasma streaked out of the darkness and left a scorch across the steps in front of Gant. “That’s the only warning you’ll get. Now I suggest you turn back and return to your ships.”
Donnelly raised her voice to answer the threat. “Sorry, that’s not an option. We’ve been sent here with clear orders: to arrest Governor Kolova and her senior advisers, as well as anyone suspected of participating in the planetary survey fraud. We have a warrant from the colonial court. Unless you stand down you’ll be facing charges of obstruction, and you might end up charged as accessories after the fact. Do you understand?”
Another blaster pulse scored a diagonal black streak across the steps in front of Donnelly. The gruff voice from the dark shouted, “What I understand is we have cover, and you twelve are standing in the wide open. Now, go back to your ships before this gets ugly.”
Gant pulled out his communicator and flipped it open, while keeping his phaser at the ready in his other hand. “Lieutenant Gant to Chief Le Fevre. Chief, do you copy?”
He was answered by Cameron Le Fevre, the capital’s chief of police. “I read you.”
“Chief, my shipmates and our colleagues from the Enterprise are facing stiff resistance at the entrance to the Executive Complex. We could use some backup out here.”
“Look up and behind you,” Le Fevre said.
The two landing parties pivoted slowly about, then looked up to see a team of colonial law enforcement perched along a roof’s edge—all of whom were aiming long-barrel blaster rifles at them. In the center of their formation was Chief Le Fevre, manning his own rifle.