by David Mack
“This is our biggest problem,” she said. “The entire region, which the indigenous people call X’Mar, is a war zone. The country of Veneka, Teneb’s sole military and economic superpower, recently invaded X’Mar for its uranium resources.”
She switched to the next screen of information. On one side were images of Venekan soldiers in uniform. On the other side were images of X’Mari civilians and Resistance fighters.
“The Venekans,” she said, “are an ethnically diverse population, with a level of technology roughly equivalent to the best of early twenty-first-century Earth. The only Venekans we’re likely to encounter during our mission will be soldiers. We have no hope of infiltrating their military, and we definitely won’t be equipped to fight them, so we should avoid them.”
She pointed at the various X’Mari images. All the X’Maris had skin tones of dark blue, and metallic hair colors ranging from coppery to dark bronze. “The X’Maris, on the other hand, are ethnically homogenous and highly xenophobic. Their army is composed primarily of irregular militias. Our best bet for moving through the region undetected is to pose as X’Mari civilians—and pray that we don’t run into the Venekan Army.”
Gomez nodded. “Thank you, Carol.” Abramowitz sat down as Gomez looked to Tev, her second-in-command of the S.C.E. team. Even after having served with Tev for a matter of months, Abramowitz still found the Tellarite’s omnipresent air of arrogant superiority off-putting. “Tev,” Gomez said, “have you made any progress with tamper-proofing the away team’s tricorders?”
Tev looked offended that Gomez would even entertain the possibility that he hadn’t devised something unspeakably brilliant since breakfast. “Of course I have,” he said. “I’ve outfitted them with a self-destruct circuit that you can trigger with a pre-set command phrase, on a timer, or by remote from another tricorder. Also, I designed an independent tactile sensor that recognizes whether the person touching the tricorder is human. If a non-human picks up one of your tricorders—poof! No more tricorder. I’d have brought one to the meeting except—” He held up his hands, and looked around the room. “Poof,” he said.
“Good, thank you,” Gomez said. Abramowitz wondered if she was only imagining an expression of long-suffering on Gomez’s face whenever the second officer spoke. Gomez turned her attention to Dr. Lense. “Doctor, how soon can you be ready to begin cosmetic surgery for the away team?”
“Give the word, Commander,” Lense said. “Sickbay’s ready when you are.”
Abramowitz watched Gomez fluidly shift her gaze toward Chief Engineer Conlon. “And that brings us to you,” Gomez said. “Nancy, are we any closer to formulating a plan for getting the away team onto and off of the planet?”
The petite chief engineer cocked her head at an odd angle and shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. She sounded unconvincing.
“Maybe?” Gomez said, obviously wanting more details.
“Chief Poynter and I are still running some tests,” Conlon said. “If we can iron out the bugs, we’ll have an answer for you by tomorrow at 0800.”
“I think you mean today, at 1900,” Gomez said.
Conlon hesitated, tapped her fingers on the table as she parsed the order implicit in Gomez’s remark, then nodded. “Right, that’s what I said,” Conlon quipped. “Today at 1900. No problem.”
“All right,” Gomez said. “Assuming we iron out the insertion and extraction plans by then, the away team will report to sickbay at 2100 to begin cosmetic modification. Does anyone have anything else?” A quick look around the room yielded no questions. Gomez stood up from the table. “Meeting adjourned.”
Abramowitz picked up her padd, saved her notes from the briefing, and pocketed the handheld device as she followed the others out of the room. She had long dreamed of a chance to study a new alien culture incognito and in situ. But walking unguarded into a combat zone had not been what she’d had in mind.
“Dom, wait up!” Stevens said, calling out to Corsi. She was several paces ahead of him in the corridor, which was empty except for the two of them. It was rare to be able to steal a moment’s privacy aboard a ship as small as the da Vinci, and Stevens figured he’d best take advantage of it while it lasted.
She stopped and half-turned to face him. The perfection of the blonde security chief’s tall, athletic body was outshone only by the delicate symmetry of her face in profile.
He quickened his step and came to a stop beside her.
“Hey, Fabe,” she said. “What’s up?” Her manner was warm and relaxed. It was a side of her that most da Vinci personnel didn’t get to see often, if ever.
Stevens had tried not to develop expectations when it came to Corsi. It had been roughly a year since they’d shared a one-night stand that she had made him promise to never mention again—in part because Starfleet frowned upon fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel, and because Corsi simply didn’t like having her personal life on display.
But a few months ago, when Stevens’s best friend Kieran Duffy was killed in the line of duty, it had been her shoulder that he’d cried on. At the time, he and Corsi had been on the verge of…what? Romance? It had been hard to tell. But after their visit to her family and their return to duty on the da Vinci, nothing had been the same between them. For one thing, they no longer needed to pretend that they weren’t friends. For another, much of the awkwardness that had marked the beginning of their relationship had long since passed.
Which made the awkwardness of this moment stand out.
“I’m not sure how to ask this,” he said.
“Just spit it out,” she said reassuringly.
Stevens nodded. The moment stretched out a bit longer than he’d intended. She kept her attention fixed on him while he studied the scuffs on his shoes. He looked up. “Why aren’t you going on the away mission?”
She shrugged. “It’s Vance’s turn.”
“But it’s such a high-risk mission that I just assumed you’d want to—”
“He can handle it,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning upward in a half-smile. “He’s actually better qualified than I am for this kind of thing.”
She reached out and pressed the turbolift call button.
“If you say so,” Stevens said.
“Besides, he’ll need high-profile field experience if he ever wants to become a chief of security. People in our line of work don’t get promoted for sitting around pushing buttons.”
Stevens heard the hum of the turbolift stopping a moment before the outer doors opened. Corsi stepped inside the turbolift, then turned to face him again.
“Anyway,” she said. “Good luck down there. Be careful.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I will.” The turbolift doors closed.
He stood alone in the corridor, staring at the closed door.
For months after their one-night stand, he hadn’t noticed that she had always seemed to be at his side during away missions, even when protocol would have placed her closer to someone of higher rank. Now, however, she seemed content to leave his defense to someone else.
As he walked back toward his quarters, he realized that, though he would never admit it, he was bitterly disappointed and more than a little concerned that this time out she wouldn’t be there to watch over him.
Chapter
3
“Testing,” Haznedl said. The ops officer’s feminine voice was soft, barely audible through the subaural transceiver implanted in Gomez’s middle ear. The sensation of having a voice inside her head made Gomez feel like she was hallucinating.
“Susan, can you boost the gain on my transceiver?” Gomez said. A moment later, Haznedl’s voice sounded again inside Gomez’s head, this time as clear as if she was standing right next to her. “Testing,” Haznedl said again. “Better?”
“Much. Thanks.” Gomez sat on the edge of a bed in sickbay, staring down at her indigo hands. She was already attired in the rough, earth-toned cloth garb of a X’Mari civilian. Her tricorder was safely tuc
ked away in a deep pocket along the leg of her pants. Her new, coppery hair spilled across the front of the heavy, dark-brown serape that covered her torso. Her feet were shod in heavy leather shoes, and each leg was wrapped from ankle to midthigh with a long, wide, supple strip of dark leather tied tight at the top with thin strips of hemp cord. Despite having been replicated less than an hour ago, it all smelled like vintage clothing, musty and rich with history.
Across from her, sitting on two other beds, were Hawkins and Stevens. Both men had already been cosmetically altered with nearly identical shades of dark-blue skin and dark-bronze hair. Only the slight difference in their eye color—Stevens had been given metallic-gold irises, while Hawkins’s were now metallic violet—enabled her to distinguish them from one another. Both were dressed similarly to Gomez, except that the leather wrappings on their legs stopped below the knee. That was a gender-specific detail that Abramowitz had insisted on when she submitted the replicator patterns for the away team’s disguises.
Stevens checked the settings on his tricorder. Hawkins tucked his tricorder under his serape and began stretching and testing the range of motion afforded him by the X’Mari clothing.
The door to the surgical suite opened and Abramowitz stepped out. The petite cultural specialist had been the last to undergo the procedure because she had been busy overseeing the others’ transformations into authentic-looking X’Maris. Her skin was now midnight blue, and her new head of rust-hued, copper-flecked hair was tied in a long, large-knotted braid that hung straight down her back almost to her waist.
Abramowitz walked over to Gomez. “I have to fix your hair, Commander,” Abramowitz said. “Turn around for me?” Gomez turned and sat quietly as Abramowitz rapidly braided her hair. Within a few minutes she was finished. Abramowitz stepped in front of Gomez and looked over the first officer’s disguise. “Perfect,” she said. “And if I may say so, blue is definitely your color.”
Gomez rolled her eyes and stood up. “Let’s go.”
The away team stood in the transporter room and stared at Conlon and transporter chief Laura Poynter. None of the away team personnel showed any sign of being willing to step onto the transporter pad. Conlon was quickly growing annoyed.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gomez said.
“I’m not saying it’s perfect,” Conlon said. “But if the ship can’t go into orbit to beam you down, then this—”
“Is suicide,” Hawkins said.
“I won’t lie to you, it could be a rough ride,” Poynter said. “But we’ve got plenty of documentation on previous, safe uses of this technology, and we’ve tested the living daylights out of it.”
“If I’d known you were planning on using a jury-rigged subspace transporter, I’d have aborted the mission,” Gomez said.
Conlon rolled her eyes. “Do you think we’d let you step on the pad if we thought it wasn’t safe? The transporter will work fine. My only concern is getting accurate beam-down coordinates from this distance.” Conlon was actually more concerned about interference from Teneb’s primary star, because Captain Gold had parked the da Vinci above the star’s north pole to conceal the ship from Teneb’s legions of satellites and radio telescopes. But given the level of agitation the away team was already exhibiting, Conlon thought it best not to tell them about that particular variable in the equation.
“Let’s say you can get us down more or less in one piece,” Stevens said. “How are you supposed to lock on to our signals to beam us up from this far away?”
“We can’t,” Conlon said. She continued before the team’s groans of dismay got out of hand. “You can use a tricorder or the probe’s transceiver to send a signal that’ll let us know you’re ready to come out. When we get it, we’ll warp in, do a high-impulse flyby of the planet, and grab you with a near-warp transport before the Tenebians get too good a look at us. We can go from signal to beam-out in thirty seconds. In theory.”
“If you can get us out with a near-warp flyby,” Hawkins said, “why can’t you beam us in the same way?”
“Captain’s orders,” Conlon said. “He doesn’t want the Tenebians getting more than one look at us. That means you only get one shot at this. You all go in together, you all come out together. If you choose to abort, that’s it—mission over.”
Stevens rolled his eyes. Abramowitz brusquely lifted her hands in a gesture of capitulation. Hawkins shrugged.
Gomez stared at Conlon. “Captain’s orders?”
“Uh, yeah,” Conlon said. “Is there a problem, Commander?”
Sighing, Gomez said, “No, no problem. He’s the captain, after all.”
Conlon had felt odd being the bearer of Gold’s orders to Gomez. She guessed that this was the captain’s way of tweaking Gomez for what happened at Rhaax.
Gomez stepped onto the transporter pad. The rest of the team followed her and took their positions beneath the phase-transition coils. Conlon nodded to Poynter, who took her post at the transporter controls. Gomez frowned at Conlon.
“And away we go,” Gomez said with flat sarcasm.
Conlon moved behind the control panel next to Poynter. “Conlon to bridge. We’re ready, Captain.”
“Stand by,” Gold said over the com. A few seconds later, he continued. “Commander Corsi says the beam-in point is clear. You’re good to go.”
“Acknowledged.” Conlon nodded to Poynter. “Energize.”
Poynter keyed in the transport sequence. The room filled with the deep hum of the energizer coils charging to maximum power, followed by the almost musical rush of white noise that accompanied the dematerialization sequence. As the away team’s glowing silhouettes vanished from the transporter pad, Conlon prayed for their soft landing and safe return.
Abramowitz felt the irresistible tug of gravity as she began to materialize. She had warned the others that Teneb’s gravity was just slightly higher than what they were accustomed to aboard the da Vinci, and to pace themselves accordingly.
The transporter’s annular confinement beam released its hold on her. She had just enough time to blink at her majestic view of the moonlit Scorla Hills before she realized that she was falling.
The rest of the away team plummeted beside her. They had materialized in mid-air, more than five meters above a river. For a moment, she almost dared to hope the river would break their fall. The coursing water rushed up to meet her.
The away team splashed into the river. Abramowitz had barely registered the stinging cold of the water before her feet struck a slippery mass of rock that had been concealed just beneath the river’s frothing surface.
Her left ankle shattered on impact. She shrieked in agony as her legs buckled. Her left femur broke as it slammed against the submerged boulder, and she fell on her side. Her left arm struck the jagged crest of the rock. She felt the bone break beneath her bicep, as she slipped swiftly beneath the frigid water.
She cried out in pain, tried to shout for help. She gasped for air and instead pulled water into her lungs.
Back to the surface, she commanded herself as she looked upward at the water-distorted crescent of Teneb’s moon. Use your good arm. Air! Swim! Her body refused to obey. She felt leaden. She reached out toward the light as she sank. Her outstretched right hand seemed to be several meters away.
Then it was in the grasp of another hand.
She was back above the surface, gasping for air, with no recollection how she’d gotten there, being pulled to shore. She was so cold, almost numb, that she started shivering uncontrollably. She couldn’t feel her feet. Her teeth chattered violently despite her attempts to stay still.
Hawkins carried her out of the water and gently laid her down on her back a few meters from shore. Gomez and Stevens were right behind him. Gomez already had her tricorder out and was scanning Abramowitz.
“It’s bad,” she said, as much to the two men as to the injured cultural specialist. “Left ankle shattered, multiple breaks in the left femur, fibula, and tibia. Left knee joint dislocated. Mu
ltiple serious fractures in her pelvis. Broken humerus.” Gomez put away the tricorder and took out a disguised emergency medical kit that Dr. Lense had put together.
“You two go find some kindling and firewood,” she said to Stevens and Hawkins. “We have to warm her up before she goes into shock. Once she’s stable, we’ll move out.”
Hawkins stopped Stevens with a gesture and pointed at Abramowitz as he spoke to Gomez. “ ‘Move out’? She needs to get to sickbay.” Gomez opened her medkit and took out two transparent adhesive patches. She gently affixed them to the underside of Abramowitz’s upper right arm, and they seemed to vanish as they absorbed into the faux-blue skin.
“We can’t get her back to the da Vinci without aborting the mission,” Gomez said. “Her injuries are serious, but they’re not life-threatening. Once we stabilize her, we’ll set her up with some camouflage and supplies. If we need any cultural advice, we can reach her on the subaural transceivers.”
Hawkins looked like he was considering further protest, but a silent, withering glare from Gomez convinced him otherwise. “Yes, sir,” he said. He turned and followed Stevens away from the river, up a slope toward some trees.
The dermal patches released their painkillers into Abramowitz’s bloodstream. The pain in her leg abated. Gomez opened a watertight compartment in her backpack and took out a rolled-up blanket. She gently placed it under Abramowitz’s head. “You’ll be okay, Carol,” Gomez said. “I promise.”
“I’m going into shock,” she said through a shaking jaw.
Gomez spread another heavy blanket over her and tucked it under her. “No, I’m gonna fix that right now,” Gomez said. “As soon as the guys come back, we’ll build you a fire. You’ll be okay here while we finish the mission.”