by David Mack
Yellik glanced inside the vehicle and aimed his weapon into the cab. The air was split by the angry buzz of his assault rifle. Maleska shielded his eyes from the incandescent muzzle-flash. Seconds later, Yellik eyed his handiwork and signaled all clear to Maleska, who keyed his mic.
“Tikrun Seven, Five-Nine Jazim. Site secured, over.”
“Five-Nine Jazim, Tikrun Seven. Acknowledged, site secure. Relaying to Sync-Com. Tikrun Seven out.”
Maleska kneeled beside the overturned vehicle and glanced beneath it. Secured to the flatbed was an oblong shape wrapped in a dark tarpaulin. He looked over his shoulder and snapped his fingers a few times in quick succession to get his squad’s attention. “Norlin, Pillo. Crawl under and cut whatever that is free. Get it out here so I can see it.”
With sour-tempered grumbling, the two enlisted men wriggled under the flatbed and began cutting the heavy cables that secured the object to the flatbed. Maleska stood off to one side and kept his expression neutral to mask his growing impatience.
Several minutes later, while the two men were still working, a trio of Venekan jumpjets landed down the road, behind Tikrun Seven. Three squads quickly debarked from the jumpjets and fanned out in either direction, far behind and far in front of the secured site. Following them up to Maleska and the wrecked flatbed was an officer whom Maleska recognized only by virtue of his rank and a few surprisingly accurate overheard descriptions: his division leader, Commander Zila.
Zila was a career officer whose face looked like it had been hewn from the mountains of Zankethi and tempered in the fires of combat. He had a reputation for never accepting defeat in battle, and he was rumored to be nurturing lofty political ambitions. Maleska didn’t believe that a high-ranking officer like Zila would leave the safety of Sync-Com headquarters and set foot inside X’Mar unless there was something critically important going on—something that would require the commander’s personal attention.
Zila strode up to Maleska and spoke through clenched, sepia-tinted teeth with a voice like a rasping saw.
“As soon as your men cut the truck’s cargo free, I want them back on the jumper,” Zila said. “But you stay here.”
“Yes, sir,” Maleska said with a nod. He turned as he heard the sound of the truck’s cargo falling free of its bonds and thudding to the ground beneath the truck. A few seconds later, Norlin and Pillo, now coated in mud and grease, pushed the cylindrical, shrouded object out from under the truck, rolling it ahead of them. As soon as it rolled free of the truck, it slipped away from them and began to roll toward the side of the road. Zila stopped it by planting his heel on it, like a conquering hero. Norlin and Pillo, still down on their bellies in front of him, stared up at him in awe.
“Get up,” Maleska said, his voice sharp. “Yellik, take the squad back to the jumper, double time.” Yellik snapped Maleska a quick salute, then barked orders at the rest of the squad as he herded them back into Tikrun Seven.
Zila watched them pile into the aircraft. As soon as the jumpjet door slid closed, he turned to Maleska. “Cut that cover off of it,” he said. Maleska drew his utility knife and sliced the tarpaulin off the object.
The shredded fabric fell away to reveal an ordinary fuel drum—rusted, pockmarked with holes, and emptier than the promises of a politician. Beside him, Zila made a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a growl.
As the sky overhead turned a bleak, hopeless shade of gray, Maleska’s long day became just a little bit longer.
Ganag kneeled in the stern of the long, narrow skiff and slowly paddled it downstream. The skiff sat dangerously low in the water, which threatened to wash over the gunwales and swamp the small boat if Ganag tried to paddle too quickly. In the prow of the skiff, Lerec and Shikorn lay back-to-back, sleeping fitfully beneath a thin, shared blanket of moth-eaten fabric.
The object from the sky was in the middle of the skiff, between Ganag and his friends. It was concealed beneath thick, gray sheets and sacks marked as grain but filled with feathers.
Ganag knew that Hakona and his officers were dead. He had seen the Venekan aircraft streak toward the Scorla Pass, and he’d heard the muffled explosions echoing off the hills. Just like that, every adult Ganag and his friends had known was gone.
Now it was up to them to carry this strange prize to safety—to the last bastion of the X’Mari Resistance.
Ganag stopped paddling for a moment and unfolded his map, which rustled in a frigid breeze that signaled the early onset of winter. This stream would carry him to the Ulom River within half a day. From there, he had only to let the current carry him and the skiff downriver. Once on the river proper, they would hide during the daytime and move only at night.
If we’re lucky and careful, he thought, we might reach the Resistance in four days. He forced himself not to consider what would happen if the Venekans learned that it was to him and his friends that Hakona had entrusted the object.
The first reddish rays of dawn snuck over the horizon and slashed between the war-ravaged hills of northern X’Mar. Ganag tucked his map inside his shirt and resumed paddling with quiet resolve toward his destination.
Chapter
2
Commander Sonya Gomez leaned against the washbasin in her quarters and sighed heavily. Today is nothing, she thought.
She had been silently observing the milestones of time’s passage since “that day.” The day that a routine salvage mission had become a gruesome tragedy. The day that more than half of the da Vinci’s crew had died in the line of duty. The day that Kieran Duffy, the man she’d loved, had gone to his death.
She didn’t speak of her habit with the other survivors of the Galvan VI mission, and she hadn’t discussed it during her Starfleet-mandated counseling sessions. She had simply noted the passing of the days and at regular intervals reminded herself:
He’s two months gone. Three months gone. Four months gone.
Today marked no such milestone. Today was just another day like any other. Another day aboard the da Vinci. Another day in Starfleet. Another day alone with her empty, shattered heart.
Today is nothing.
She had been woken only minutes ago by a com chirp in the middle of her sleep cycle.
“Bridge to Gomez,” the voice had said, rousing her from a fitful slumber. After a moment of foggy-headedness, she had realized that the voice was that of Vance Hawkins, the ship’s deputy chief of security.
“Gomez here,” she had said, her voice halfway between a croak and a groan.
“Captain Gold needs you in the briefing room, Commander,” Hawkins had said. “He said it was urgent.”
“On my way, Chief,” Gomez had said, then half-rolled out of bed and slouched into her bathroom.
She sighed again and let her weight rest on the washbasin. Looking up at her hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror, she wondered whether she had time to step into the sonic shower or perhaps just work some cleanser and conditioner into her dark, curly hair, which spilled in unkempt coils over her shoulders.
Chief Petty Officer Hawkins’s voice echoed in her thoughts: “He said it was urgent.”
She tied her hair back in a utilitarian ponytail, opened her closet, and grabbed a clean uniform. No point getting all dolled up just to get my hands dirty.
Fabian Stevens looked like something the sehlat dragged in. His hair was slightly disheveled. He could swear his eyes were filled with sand. His eyelids drooped and threatened to drag him back to sleep. His head lolled forward, and he caught a whiff of his replicated Colombian coffee.
He jerked awake, his eyes now stuck at wide-open. He took another much-needed sip of coffee and tried not to let himself become hypnotized by the sixty-cycles-per-second hum of the briefing room’s overhead EPS conduits.
Captain David Gold sat at the head of the briefing room table, hands folded in front of him. Seated to Stevens’s left was revoltingly wide-awake cultural specialist Carol Abramowitz, who casually scrolled through screen after screen of data on her pa
dd.
Bleary-eyed, Stevens fixated on the steam rising from his coffee mug. Sitting opposite him was Hawkins, who leaned back in his chair and pensively stroked his dark, bearded chin.
Past the far end of the table from the captain was the main viewscreen, on which heavy-jowled and white-haired Captain Montgomery Scott, the officer who gave the Starfleet Corps of Engineers its marching orders, rolled his eyes impatiently.
“I apologize for the delay, Captain Scott,” Gold said. Scott smiled and waved his hand, brushing aside the apology.
“No need, lad,” Scott said. “I remember what it’s like living on ship’s time. It’s always midnight somewhere.”
Abramowitz put down her padd as the door slid open. Gomez entered and blushed as she saw the group was waiting for her. She took her seat at Gold’s left. “Sorry to keep you wait—”
“It’s all right,” Gold said, cutting her off. “Captain Scott, the floor is yours.”
Scott keyed some switches on his companel. The screen split to show two images: Scott on the left, and a schematic of a Starfleet Class VII Remote Culture Study Probe on the right. “About a year ago, Starfleet lost contact with Probe Delta-7941 after it encountered an uncharted astrophysical hazard,” he said. “We thought it was destroyed. We were wrong.”
The image on the right side of the screen changed to a detailed schematic of one of the probe’s internal systems.
“Four-point-six hours ago, Starfleet received a subspace signal from the probe indicating that it’s crashed—and that its self-destruct failsafes have…well, failed.”
The image on the right side of the viewscreen changed again, to a solar-system diagram. “The probe went off course and landed intact on this system’s third planet,” Scott said. “Teneb is an M-class world, humanoid population, uneven levels of technological development between its many nation-states. A lot like Earth before the Third World War.”
“And no doubt protected by the Prime Directive,” Gomez said.
Scott nodded, his expression grave. “Aye, and that’s where the wicket gets sticky. The Tenebians are a clever lot, but not as clever as they like to think. Depending on which one of their countries gets its hands on the probe’s warp engine, they might reverse-engineer the thing…or they might blow themselves to kingdom come while tinkering with its antimatter pods.”
“There’s an even worse scenario,” Hawkins said. “They figure out how to control antimatter, and they turn it into a weapon that can destroy their planet. The probe could be used to start an apocalyptic arms race.”
“Oy vey,” Gold said.
Abramowitz looked confused. “Can’t we remote-detonate it?” she said. Stevens swallowed a sip of coffee and shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “The remote-detonator’s part of the self-destruct failsafe—which failed.” He took another sip of coffee.
“But can’t we just beam it up?” Abramowitz said.
“Unfortunately, no,” Scott said. “The crash damaged its antimatter shielding. Trying to beam it up would cause an explosion larger than anything that world’s ever seen…. And, there’s another wrinkle to consider….”
“Of course there is,” Gomez said, and smirked ironically. Scott continued without acknowledging her gentle sarcasm.
“The planet’s dominant superpower has begun exploring space: orbital stations, lunar bases, deep-space telescopes…. Bringing a Starfleet vessel into orbit is a risk we can’t take. You four need to land on the planet without the Tenebians detecting the da Vinci. You’ll go in undercover: no weapons, and with as little Starfleet technology as possible. We can’t risk any more cultural contamination.”
Gomez furrowed her brow before tossing out another question to Scott. “Captain, may I ask why this operation isn’t being handled by Starfleet Intelligence?”
“They asked us to do it,” Scott said. “If the probe could be detonated without being fixed first, they’d handle it themselves. But they don’t have anyone who can make these kinds of repairs in the field…. That’s why I’m sending you lot.”
“Understood,” Gomez said with a curt nod.
“All right, then,” Scott said. “I’m sending over everything in the database about Teneb and all the telemetry from the probe…. Are there any more questions?” Everyone shook their heads to indicate that there weren’t.
“Then Godspeed, and good luck. Scott out.”
The viewscreen blinked to a bright blue field adorned with the white double-laurel-and-stars of the Federation emblem.
Gold turned toward Gomez. “We’ll reach the Teneb system in just over sixty-eight hours,” he said. “I’ll ask Conlon and Poynter to find you a hush-hush way to go planetside.”
Gomez nodded. “Okay, good. Carol, I need you to go over all the cultural files on Teneb. Check the probe’s crash coordinates and pay particular attention to the cultures and current situations in that region.”
“Sure thing,” Abramowitz said. “I’ll let Bart know we’ll need an alphanumeric primer for the planet’s written languages.”
“Good,” Gomez said. She turned toward Hawkins. “Vance, check the database for information about the types of vehicles we might find down there. We might need to cover a lot of ground to find the probe, and I’d rather not do it all on foot.”
“You got it,” Hawkins said. Gomez turned her attention toward Stevens, who was trying to look attentive rather than jittery and wired on caffeine. He suspected, based on her bemused expression, that he was failing.
“Fabe,” she said, “you look like I feel. Go get some rest, and I’ll see you when alpha shift starts—” She checked the ship’s chronometer on a display set into the tabletop, then let out a weary sigh. “—in about six hours.”
The landscape blurred past. Wind whipped through cracks in the fragile glass windshield in front of Hawkins. He stomped on the clutch then slammed the gearshift lever forward. He felt the vehicle lurch as a jaw-clenching grinding of metal on metal screamed from the combustion engine. The pistons seized and smoke belched from beneath the car’s dented red hood. The rapid deceleration made the two-passenger vehicle fishtail wildly, and Hawkins saw the gnarled trunk of a tree a split second before it crumpled the front end of the automobile into an accordion fold. The safety-harness strap that diagonally crossed his torso bit into his collarbone.
The simulation froze, its injury-and-mortality failsafe kicking in at the last possible moment. Hawkins’s pulse raced and sweat soaked his brow and back. There was nothing simulated about the adrenaline rush that still had him shaking in his seat. He had never understood why some of his fellow security officers felt the need to court disaster in holographic simulations. He figured there was more than enough real danger in the galaxy without bringing it into a training program.
“Computer,” he said, “load vehicle training program Hawkins Twenty-nine. Introduce random road-hazard variables and activate foul-weather subroutine.” He was enjoying this training regimen. Tenebian motor vehicles and weapons were a good example of Hodgkins’s Law of Parallel Planet Development: Many of their inventions closely paralleled those of early twenty-first-century Earth.
The environment re-formed itself around him. He now was seated on a squat, two-wheeled vehicle that was parked on a high-mountain road marked by steep grades and treacherous hairpin turns. Swiftly approaching from the horizon was a bank of storm clouds. “Program ready,” the computer said, its feminine voice unchanged since the day Hawkins had joined Starfleet.
He twisted the vehicle’s handgrip throttle and was about to launch himself down the lonely, snaking road at the fastest speeds he could handle, when the door chime sounded.
“Hey, Vance,” Stevens said over the com. “It’s Fabe. Can I come in?”
Hawkins reduced the cycle’s throttle. “Sure,” he said.
The hololab door appeared to Hawkins’s right, taking shape on the rocky face of the cliff wall. The door opened and Stevens stepped inside the hololab next to Hawkins and his l
oudly purring machine. “Nice program,” Stevens said, looking past Hawkins at the panoramic vista. “Teneb?”
“Yeah,” Hawkins said. “Built it from database files. The vehicle specs are at least a few years old, but I don’t think the basic operating principles will have changed much since then.” Hawkins nodded toward the road. “Want to join me? Play a little follow-my-leader?”
“Nah,” Stevens said. “Took me six weeks to master flying a Work Bug, and that was based on a system I’d already been trained on.” He gestured toward Hawkins’s motorcycle. “I wouldn’t know where to start with one of these things.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Hawkins said.
“No, but I know what you’re missing,” Stevens said. “The premission briefing. It started five minutes ago. They sent me down to get you. Apparently, someone with a security clearance turned off the hololab’s main com circuit.”
Hawkins dismounted from the motorcycle. “Computer,” he said. “End program.” The road, the vista, and the cycle all vanished, revealing the compact space of the da Vinci’s hololab. Hawkins narrowed his eyes in mock irritation at Stevens. “Killjoy,” he said. Stevens shrugged as he led him out of the hololab and into the corridor.
“That’s the job,” Stevens said. “You don’t like it, quit.”
“I can’t quit,” Hawkins said as he followed Stevens. “I’m enlisted.”
“Yeah,” Stevens said stoically. “Me, too.”
Abramowitz switched the briefing room viewscreen image to one that displayed the national borders and prominent landmarks of an area within a one-thousand-kilometer radius around the crashed probe’s last known coordinates.
The rest of the away team—as well as da Vinci second officer Lieutenant Commander Mor glasch Tev, chief of security Lieutenant Commander Domenica Corsi, chief engineer Lieutenant Nancy Conlon, chief medical officer Dr. Elizabeth Lense, and Captain Gold—listened as she detailed the findings of her hastily compiled research.