by David Mack
“Hi, Lerxst. We’d like to know what’s happening.”
The scientist didn’t look at Pembleton as he replied, “Your friend Karl Graylock is correct. We’re crashing.”
“Where, exactly?”
A rectangle of metallic liquid assembled itself in front of Pembleton and rippled to life. It showed a world that, despite being half-obscured by the curtain of fire around the Caeliar’s city, appeared Earth-like—but which, based on the shapes of its continents, definitely was not Earth. “There,” said Lerxst.
Pembleton began to understand why Graylock had tired so quickly of talking with the aliens. “Does ‘there’ have a name?”
“None that is known to us. If it’s inhabited by sentient forms, they might have one they prefer.”
Now he was annoyed. “I don’t suppose you could give me a sense of where we are relative to, for instance, Earth?”
“We are fifty-eight thousand, nine hundred sixty-one light-years from your world.”
Pembleton heaved a disgruntled sigh. So much for a shortcut home.
On the screen, plumes of superheated gas from Mantilis’s atmospheric entry blasted vast areas of the city-ship’s surface bare. Gone were the spires, the plazas of art and trees, the reflecting pools and footbridges and elegant architectural flourishes. The city resembled little more than a metallic disk with molten edges and a million ragged scars.
“Graylock says you told him the rest of the city was dead.”
“You six and we twelve are all that remain,” Lerxst said, apparently without either regret or bitterness.
Pembleton was surprised by the scientist’s sangfroid in the face of tragedy. “Aren’t you upset about this?”
“Do not mistake stoicism for an absence of emotion,” Lerxst said. “Our anger and sorrow are greater than you can imagine, but the sacrifice of our people outside the apparatus was a choice, not an accident.”
“What does that mean?” Pembleton asked.
Lerxst said, “It means that we will not destroy sentient life, or allow sentient life to be destroyed, by action or omission. Not for revenge, not in self-defense. We do not kill.”
“Are you telling me that millions of Caeliar agreed to let themselves die to save the six of us?”
“Correct,” Lerxst said. “Though making the passage would cost them their lives and violate our people’s laws against time travel, the gestalt concurred that—”
“Time travel?” Pembleton interrupted. “Forward or back?”
“Backward,” Lerxst said.
“How far?”
Lerxst told him the numbers, in years, months, and days.
Pembleton staggered back to the others in a daze. Liquid screens throughout the vast circular facility showed the flattened disk of the city-ship. It was aglow within a nimbus of fire and slicing through the atmosphere, toward a rocky, icy expanse of arctic tundra whose details were coming into focus all too quickly for comfort. The sergeant slumped to the floor next to the chief engineer, who asked, “What’d they say?”
“They said we’re gonna crash.”
The rippling images of the horizon flattened and fell away, and then the liquid screens went dark and scattered. Pembleton felt the ground rising to meet them. It would be a disastrous crash landing, and their chances of survival were slim. But even if they did live through planet fall, it no longer mattered.
He closed his eyes but didn’t bother to pray—because it was much too late for that now.
2381
21
Ezri Dax emerged, bleary-eyed and aching-limbed, from her ready room shortly after 0200 and was surprised to see many of her senior personnel still at work on the bridge.
Sam Bowers was settled in the command chair as if he had been melted into it. The steaming beverage he held in one hand while perusing a report on a padd seemed to have done little to reinvigorate him. He looked up at Dax as she entered and was half a second slower than usual snapping to attention.
“Captain on the deck!” he announced as he bolted to his feet—and spilled his hot drink across the back of his wrist. Swearing under his breath, he dropped the padd on the chair and swapped the mug into his unburned hand. He waved his scorched appendage in the air to cool it as Dax approached and smiled.
“As you were,” she said to the bridge crew. Joining Sam at her chair, she added sotto voce, “Guess how much I want to make a joke at your expense right now.”
“I can only imagine, Captain.” He wiped the liquid from the back of his hand onto the pant leg of his uniform. “I’m required by regulations to remind you that we’re now ten hours overdue for departure, as per our last orders from Starfleet Command.”
Dax fought the urge to roll her eyes and said simply, “I’ll note your reminder in my log, Sam, thank you.” She stepped past him toward the security chief’s station, where Lieutenant Kedair was busy reviewing a steady stream of incoming data and reports. Catching the Takaran woman’s eye, Dax said, “Give me an update on the manhunt, Lieutenant.”
Kedair’s hands continued to manipulate data on her console as she replied, “We’ve finished two full sweeps of the ship, Captain. So far, no intruder.” She called up Dr. Tarses’s forensic reports on one side of her station. “No new leads on the cause of death, and no progress devising a defense against it—whatever it turns out to be.”
“That’s not very encouraging, Lonnoc.”
“No, Captain, it’s not. But I’d still like your permission to keep the ship in lockdown until we complete a third sweep of all compartments. We’ve switched to some fairly exotic detection methods this time around. It’s a long shot, but I want to be as thorough as possible.”
She admired Kedair’s refusal to admit defeat. “All right. Let’s hope the third time’s the charm.” Kedair nodded her understanding and resumed her work as Dax moved on to the aft station, where Gruhn Helkara and Mikaela Leishman were immersed in conversation about their wall of schematics and sensor data. “How’s your search going?” she asked the duo.
“We haven’t found the subspace tunnel yet,” Helkara said. “But not for lack of trying. We’ve been through the full range of likely triggers, and now we’re trying the unlikely ones.”
“Sounds like a familiar refrain around here tonight,” Dax said. She nodded at a screen showing a diagram of the Aventine’s shield emitter network. “What about the hyperphasic radiation inside the anomaly?”
“That we solved,” Leishman said. “If we ever find this thing, we’ll be ready to try it out.”
Dax smiled at the pair. “Finally, some good news. Keep at it, and let me know when we get a fix on the phenomenon.”
“Will do, Captain,” Leishman said. She and the Zakdorn science officer returned to their hushed conference about exotic particles and technological arcana.
The captain continued her circuit of the bridge, past the relief conn and ops officers, who were occupying their time at the starboard duty stations compiling data for Kedair’s manhunt and tagging sensor reports for Helkara and Leishman. Ensign Erin Constantino, a human woman from Deneva, manned the conn, while Lieutenant Mirren was on her second shift of the day at ops.
Stopping beside the ops console, Dax peeked at the display panel. Mirren looked up. She sounded anxious. “Yes, Captain?”
“Just curious,” Dax said. “Have we learned anything new from the Columbia’s databanks?”
“Maybe,” Mirren said. “Most of it is log fragments and snippets of internal comm chatter, but there was one interesting bit.” She called up a recovered data file on her console. “The Columbia’s transporter had a redundant activity log from the main computer. It shows four outgoing transports, for twelve people. The first six beamed down at 1100, and the rest followed at 1300. The time stamp on those transports is roughly sixty-three days after the Romulan ambush.” Mirren called up the last line in the log. “There’s only one beam-up sequence, for three subjects, about six months later—less than twelve minutes before the ship’s flight
logs put it inside the subspace tunnel.”
Intrigued, Dax asked, “What’s the connection?”
“No idea,” Mirren said. “But I have to believe it’s more than a coincidence—and it accounts for nine of the ten missing personnel. Or maybe for all ten, if we assume that one of the three who beamed up wasn’t a Columbia crew member.”
Dax nodded. “Okay. What if something beamed up with two of Columbia’s people? Could that something have killed Komer and Yott inside the wreck and the crewman in the shuttlebay?”
“Two hundred years later?” Mirren said, incredulous. “It would have to be something really long-lived if it—”
An explosion thundered belowdecks and resonated through the bulkheads. The Aventine pitched wildly and knocked Dax off balance. Then the ship’s inertial dampers reset themselves, and the heaving and rolling of the deck ceased. “Report!” Dax said.
Kedair replied from tactical, “Explosion in Shuttlebay One! Hull breach and explosive decompression in the bay.”
“That bay was sealed after Ylacam’s body was found,” Bowers said. He joined Dax at ops. “Mirren, what the hell happened?”
Mirren reconfigured her console to assess the damage and review internal sensor logs of the explosion. “It was the runabout,” she said, surprised. “The Seine destroyed the bay doors with a pair of microtorpedoes.” She looked back at the captain and XO. “It’s leaving the bay, Captain.”
Looking back at Kedair, Dax said, “I want to know who’s in that ship—now.”
“No life signs inside the runabout,” Kedair said. “But I’m picking up some wild energy readings.”
Mirren added, “It’s accelerating to full impulse and breaking orbit, bearing three eight mark seven.”
“Pursuit course,” Bowers said. “Full impulse.”
“Aye, sir,” Constantino replied. The Aventine veered away from the planet and fell in behind the fleeing runabout.
Helkara bounded away from the aft station. His face was bright with excitement. “Captain! There’s a massive energy buildup in the runabout’s sensor array. I think it’s been reconfigured to emit a soliton pulse!”
“Locking phasers,” Kedair said, as if by reflex.
“Hold fire,” Dax said, and then she turned to watch the runabout on the main viewer. A moment later a shimmering beam lanced out in front of the tiny ship and seemed to cut through space-time like a scalpel. The slash through reality parted and revealed a tornado-like passage of coruscating blue light.
The runabout accelerated toward the subspace tunnel.
“Captain,” Bowers said, “we can catch it with a tractor beam before it crosses the aperture.”
Dax shook her head. “No, Sam. Whatever’s on the runabout, I think it could’ve killed us all if it meant to. But that’s not what it wanted. I think it came here from the other side of that passage. Now it’s on a journey, and I want to see where it leads. Lieutenant Kedair, raise shields. Helm, take us into the subspace tunnel, full impulse.”
Seconds later, the Aventine plunged into the blinding maelstrom, close behind the fugitive runabout. Erratic fluctuations in the inertial damping system had Dax hanging on to the edge of the ops console for balance, while Bowers clung to the flight controller’s chair to keep himself upright. Twenty seconds into the passage, Dax directed a questioning look back at Kedair, who reported in a calm voice, “Shields holding.”
Less than a minute later, a pulsing circle of midnight blue appeared ahead of the Aventine, the darkness at the end of the tunnel of light. The runabout shot out of the subspace passage, and the Vesta-class explorer followed it back into normal space-time moments later. The two ships were completely engulfed in a deep-indigo stain, a rich cloud of violet supernova debris that was, depending on where one looked, steeped in shadow or lit from within.
Dax stared at the cerulean majesty on the main viewer as she said, “Position report.”
“Beta Quadrant,” Constantino replied. She checked her readings while stealing glances at the vista on the screen. “Near supernova remnant FGC-SR37–758, in the center of the Azure Nebula.”
Kedair looked up from the tactical console. “Captain, the runabout is reducing speed.” She punched in a command on her console and added, “Its power levels are dropping fast.”
“Helm, hold station at ten thousand kilometers,” Dax said. “Mirren, put a tractor beam on it.”
On the main viewer, a golden beam from the Aventine snared the runabout, which made no effort to evade it or break free. “Tractor beam locked, Captain,” Mirren said. “Radiation levels inside the runabout are dissipating rapidly.”
“It didn’t even put up a fight,” Bowers said. He lifted one eyebrow to express his suspicion as he said to Dax, “After all that, it’s just giving up?”
“I don’t know, Sam,” Dax said. “That’s what I’m beaming over there to find out.”
The XO raised both eyebrows, bringing out the worry lines on his forehead. “With all respect, Captain, you should let a boarding team secure the runabout before you beam over.”
She headed for the turbolift. “What? And miss all the fun? Not a chance.” To Kedair she added, “Lieutenant, have two security officers meet me in transporter room one.” The security chief nodded to Dax as she passed by. The turbolift door sighed open ahead of Dax, who stepped in and turned back to face the bridge. She leaned forward, just enough to poke her head out at Bowers. “Well? Are you coming or not?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really, no.”
Bowers walked to the turbolift, issuing orders along the way. “Mirren, watch the runabout and make sure the transporter room keeps a lock on the away team. Kedair, lower the shields only for transport. Mister Helkara, you have the bridge.”
Helkara crossed to the command chair as Bowers stepped into the turbolift with Dax, who directed the computer, “Deck Four.”
As soon as the doors closed and the lift began its descent, he said, “I’m required by regulations to remind you, Captain, that this is a really stupid thing to do.”
“Sam, what’s the point of being a captain if I don’t get to do something stupid once in a while?”
His mien shifted from annoyed to bemused to stymied in just a few seconds. Then he frowned, sighed, and replied, “Touché.”
* * *
Shapes emerged beyond the white haze of the transporter beam, and Dax recognized the familiar close quarters of a runabout’s empty aft compartment.
The transporter effect faded. She looked around to confirm that the rest of the away team was with her. Bowers was at her right side, and behind them were Ensign Altoss and Lieutenant Loskywitz from the ship’s security detail.
Loskywitz and Altoss charged their phaser rifles. Bowers checked his tricorder and pointed the pair forward, toward the cockpit. The human lieutenant took point, with his rifle braced against his shoulder, moving in smooth, easy strides that kept his aim steady. His female Efrosian partner stepped to the control panel for the aft portal and, on Bowers’s signal, opened the door to the middle compartment of the small ship. Then she aimed her rifle around the corner and covered Loskywitz as he stole forward, his body pressed close to the port bulkhead in the short connecting passageway.
Dax started to follow them, but she stopped when she felt Bowers’s hand on her arm. He held out his tricorder so she could see the information on its screen. Although it wasn’t reading any life signs in the forward compartment, its motion and air-density sensors had revealed a vaguely humanoid shape slumped against the cockpit’s aft tactical console.
“Let them secure the ship first,” Bowers said to Dax, with a nod toward the security officers. Loskywitz was keeping his weapon aimed at the hatch to the cockpit as Altoss advanced through the narrow passageway to the middle compartment.
As soon as both security officers reached the portal, they looked back to Bowers for the order to proceed. He motioned Dax to take cover near the corner, and she moved to a safe positio
n from which she could still observe what was happening. Then the XO signaled Altoss and Loskywitz to advance.
Altoss reached up and tapped a button on a control panel. The hatch hissed open, revealing the darkened cockpit, whose only illumination came from the glow of the nebula outside.
Just as the tricorder’s scans had indicated, a large, long-limbed alien figure was collapsed on the deck, its narrow torso resting against the support for the aft tactical console. The upper and rear portion of its head was enormous and round, but it had a fleshy quality, like that of a cephalopod. On either side of its head were tubules, whose ends dilated and contracted in a slow cadence. Pulsing in the same rhythm were ribbed, organic tubes that emerged from its neck and curved over its shoulders before tapering and vanishing into its chest.
At the ends of its gangly arms were limp tendrils, and its feet had two forward toes joined by a U-shaped curve and a prominently clawed third toe near the rear of its instep.
Its head swiveled slowly in Dax’s direction. Lidless, almond-shaped black eyes stared at her from a narrow face with a mouth that seemed capable of no expression but a grimace.
Loskywitz and Altoss kept their rifles aimed at the weak and apparently defenseless being, even as they looked back to Bowers for new orders. Bowers, in turn, looked to Dax.
She emerged from behind the corner and walked forward before Bowers could tell her not to. “Lower your weapons,” she told the security officers.
At the cockpit’s threshold she stopped and examined the creature more closely. Its leathery hide was mostly gray and mottled with faint hues of violet and viridian.
“I’m Captain Ezri Dax, commanding the Starship Aventine.”
The alien’s mouth barely moved as it replied in a fragile whisper, “I am Arithon of the Caeliar.”
Dax stepped inside the cockpit and squatted next to Arithon. “You were on the Earth ship Columbia?”
“Yes. Taken as a prisoner. Before entering the passage.”
Following her flashes of intuition, she asked, “Was it you who set the ship’s autopilot after the crew died?”