Long Shot

by David Mack

  “That’s not what I said, Doctor. And I’ll thank you not to presume to know my mind.” Regretting the confrontational turn the discussion had taken, Beiana decided to back away from blame and try to turn his energy in a more fruitful direction. “I know part of what’s bothering me most right now is that I feel so far away from the people I care about. I’m worried that no matter what happens, I might lose them, or they might lose me . . . and I’d never get another chance to tell them what they mean to me. If this is the end, I’m angry I might not get to say good-bye.”

  Now there was no dissent, just sad agreement around the huddle. His comrades all retreated for a moment into their own thoughts, no doubt reflecting on those each of them had left behind, the ones they wished they could reach out to one last time.

  Pylus looked up at the comm panel on the bulkhead. “If this thing can pull signals in from our satellites, there’s no reason it can’t push a signal back to them—and maybe even down to the surface.” He wore a hopeful expression as he faced the others. “We could record messages—nothing long, maybe just audio, or text if bandwidth is a problem.”

  “Yes,” said Professor Mufungo, “that stands to reason.” He glanced at the comm panel. “Though it’s likely this terminal’s capabilities are limited without proper command authorization. We would need the help of the ship’s crew to send any such messages.”

  Beiana rested his hand on Mufungo’s shoulder, a gesture of reassurance. “I’m sure they’ll do whatever they can to help. They’ve been friends to us so far—and on a day like this, that’s the best good fortune anyone could ask.”

  17

  No one is a strong swimmer when lashed to a heavy stone.

  The wisdom of that old Arkenite saying, inspired by the same insight as the human expression “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” was brought home to Hesh as he watched his tricorder rip through one tiny segment of code after another, while the dark energy facility’s comparatively primitive mainframe computers lagged far behind in their ability to transmit data. It had taken the tricorder less than ten seconds to analyze the handshake sequence and error-correction subroutines of the mainframe’s wireless protocols. All the delays could now be blamed on the bottleneck of the Austaran system’s narrow bandwidth.

  Doctor Kavalas hovered behind Hesh’s shoulder, peeking at the tricorder’s display despite not knowing what any of its symbols meant. “How is it going?”

  “Very well,” Hesh lied. “We’re making progress.”

  Just as a drop of rain makes progress wearing down a mountain.

  Kavalas wandered away and drifted down a narrow lane between towering parallel racks of interconnected server drives. “I really thought I was on the verge of a breakthrough,” he said. “I spent my entire career, most of my life, building up to this moment. But I was a fool.”

  He circled around the end of one rack and meandered back up another lane. “When I was young, I thought myself a genius. I dared to imagine I was destined for great things. For fame and glory. I thought I’d be the one to contribute something meaningful to science. Something that would last. Something that would matter.”

  Arriving at the end of another lane, he paused. “How could I have been so gullible? So selfish? So reckless?” He hung his head in shame and moved on, down the next narrow path. “It was hubris. I see that now. I thought I was smart enough to steal the secrets of a race whose technology was clearly centuries ahead of ours. I stood on the shoulders of giants and tricked myself into thinking I was their equal.” He stopped in the middle of the electronic jungle and filled the vast room with a rueful sound from his vocal sac. “It never occurred to me that I might be playing into a trap, that I could be the architect of my people’s destruction.”

  Hesh found himself torn between compassion for Kavalas’s despair and contempt for his careless overreach. Remembering the teachings of his elders on Arken II, he erred on the side of forgiveness. “You are not the first disciple of science to fall prey to the lures of ambition, Doctor. But your world, while imperiled, is not yet destroyed. With your help, my shipmates and I will do all we can to preserve it. So dwell not on your mistakes. Turn your gifts to finding a solution.”

  Kavalas made his way back to Hesh. “Thank you for that dose of perspective.” His affect took on a humble air. “Are all your people so wise as you?”

  Unaccustomed to such flattery, Hesh was momentarily at a loss for how to reply. “Among my kind, I am not considered exceptional, in any respect. Not in intellect or ­experience, not in gifts or achievements.”

  “You must hail from a most remarkable world.”

  The scientist’s comment brought back the feelings of homesickness Hesh had weathered during his first few months of deep-space service on the Sagittarius. “Indeed. Arken is a place of special beauty. Cities that ride the waves. A world of great oceans and glorious reefs.”

  “I meant, your people must be impressive if one such as yourself is counted as average.”

  He lost himself for a moment in memories of his sia lenthar, his social bond group of artists and thinkers that had nurtured him through his first two decades. “Yes, they are.”

  A double beep from the tricorder. Hesh checked the download status in its display. “It would appear we are almost done. I will have a complete virtual schematic of the master console and the facility’s command information network in a few moments.” He lowered the tricorder. “We should head back to the others.”

  Hesh led the glum Austaran out of the mainframe room and down a long, poorly lit corridor back to the control center. It wasn’t long before Kavalas broke the uncomfortable silence between them. “If we are so fortunate as to find a way to shut this machine down and save my world from destruction . . . nothing will ever be the same, will it?”

  “Forgive me, Doctor, but I don’t understand your ­question.”

  “I just mean—” His face scrunched as if he were in pain while he struggled to form his thoughts into words. “Even if we save my people from this artificial apocalypse, sooner or later they’ll demand to know its cause. This project won’t be able to stay secret after this. Sooner or later, the world will know that it was my research—my mistakes—that brought us to the edge of doom. My reputation, my career . . . it will all be ruined. My life as a scientist will be over.”

  Once again, Hesh suppressed his less charitable impulses, which wanted to excoriate the distraught Kavalas for his crimes of scientific plagiarism, and made himself focus on easing the Austaran’s mind so that he might be able to continue contributing to an eventual solution, rather than collapse into a useless ball of self-pity. “It is difficult to say for certain what the future will bring, Doctor. If you help us resolve this crisis in time, it’s possible that any ­opprobrium you might endure for instigating it can be outweighed by the esteem you would earn for engineering your people’s salvation. Or perhaps not. What I can tell you is that unless we contend with the matter before us, your fears for the future will almost certainly prove irrelevant. Let go of the past, Doctor, and give no thought to the future. If you want to live, focus on the now.”

  • • •

  Neither of Terrell’s men said anything as they stood over the painstakingly arranged rows and columns of salvaged parts and scanned them with the tricorder. Each new bit of data wrinkled Hesh’s frown into a new crooked shape and deepened the creases of concern on Ilucci’s broad forehead. After watching them fret for over two minutes, Terrell reached the end of his patience. “Lieutenant? Master Chief? One of you say something, please.”

  Troubled looks passed between the science officer and the chief engineer. Ilucci feigned deference as he volleyed the query to his shipmate. “You have rank, sir.”

  Hesh shook his three-lobed head. “You have seniority, Master Chief.”

  Terrell grumbled, “I’m going to break you both down to crewman recruits if I don�
�t get an answer. Why are you both standing there shaking your heads?”

  Ilucci sighed. “Unless there’s another maintenance depot where they keep the good parts, we have a problem. There aren’t enough working components here to build a new master console.” He pointed at the various items arranged on the control center’s floor. “For starters, we’re short by one circuit bus. Then we have three of these subspace coils, but each one has a different malfunction or defect. If I take ’em apart, I can use the good parts to build one working coil—but we’d need two to balance the field and make the console work. Then there’s the interface panel. We have enough parts to build one, but we’re missing a key connection node.”

  Now it was Terrell’s turn to shake his head. “There must be something we can do. Do the other workstations have compatible parts we can use?”

  “No, I checked. The Austarans equipped this place mostly with their own gear, but to make the dark energy siphon actually work, they needed the alien technology that drove the master console. It’s like having a roomful of apples when what you need is an orange.”

  Frustrated, Terrell punched his open palm. “Can we build the parts ourselves?”

  “If I had access to the fabricator on the ship, and about six hours to work? Sure.”

  Hesh thrust the tricorder toward Terrell. “We do not have six hours, sir. The improbability field is due for another manifold intersection in less than thirty minutes. It will amplify the range and intensity of the field by an order of magnitude, placing the ship at risk and elevating the likelihood of a coronal mass ejection. Furthermore, the fluctuations in probability and their effects on the events already sweeping the planet will become even more intense. Volcanic and seismic activity will escalate, and more exotic phenomena might ensue.”

  “More exotic than what we’ve already seen?” Terrell’s imagination reeled. “Like what?”

  His science officer’s eyes went wide as he considered the possibilities. “Imagine, if you will, a spontaneous segregation of the atmosphere’s gases, with all of its oxygen molecules gathered in one narrow band of latitude, all its nitrogen in another, its carbon dioxide in another, and so on. Or the sudden, simultaneous decay of all radioactive isotopes on the planet, resulting in a massive release of gamma particles. Or the appearance of a bubble of strange matter that would expand at the speed of light, transforming all matter it contacted into disordered—”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. I get the idea.” He turned toward Ilucci. “Time for a Hail Mary pass, Master Chief. I need an idea for how to shut this place down, right now.”

  Ilucci was stymied. “I don’t know, sir. I really don’t. I mean, forget what I said before. We can’t just blow the place up. Releasing that much dark energy would be a death sentence for this planet. And I can’t think of any way to lift it off the surface or sink it into the planet’s core without making the situation worse.” He turned and looked through the huge window at the complex machinery of the accelerator ring. “It’s feeding itself, which means we can’t pull the plug.” He mumbled to himself. “Can’t move it. Can’t burn it. Can’t bury it.”

  Kavalas, who had been observing Ilucci’s and Hesh’s dismay from a distance, sidled over to Terrell. “Captain? This might be a good time for you and your team to consider finding a way back to your ship—and away from here. Before it’s too late.”

  He turned to face the Austaran scientist. “We appreciate your concern, Doctor. But we knew what we were getting into when we came down here. And we’re not giving up this easily.”

  “Are you sure? I’m grateful for all you’ve done, and all you’ve tried to do. But you and your shipmates shouldn’t have to die because of my mistake.”

  “Neither should your people.”

  Terrell’s pep talk for Kavalas was interrupted by Ilucci, who spun on his heel to face them. “We flood it!” He pointed at the machinery outside the window. “Doctor, we may have lost the control interface for this machine, but the rest of its hardware is still intact, right?”

  “As far as I know, yes. Which systems are you thinking of, specifically?”

  “The power supply lines,” Ilucci said. “You said it took a huge amount of energy to get this system started, but once it tapped the cosmic dark energy potential, it became self-sustaining. Are the power supply lines still connected to the siphon’s core?”

  Kavalas was mystified. “No, we cut them during our first attempt to shut it down.”

  “Damn,” Ilucci said. “Can we run new power lines?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see what good it would do.”

  “We can force a current through them.” He turned toward Hesh. “Run a sim for me. Imagine we adjust this facility’s fusion core to produce energy on a frequency calibrated to destabilize the siphon’s core module, set its output to maximum, bank the charge in the capacitors until they’re ready to blow, then push that entire load into the core at once. Would that be enough to disrupt its self-sustaining charge?”

  Hesh fumbled with the tricorder for several seconds before his shoulders slumped in defeat. “There are too many variables and unknown factors for the tricorder to simulate.”

  “Then use your imagination, sir. What do you think would happen?”

  After a moment of intense concentration, Hesh looked at Terrell. “It might work.”

  That was enough endorsement for Terrell. “Master Chief? What do you need?”

  “Someplace I can tap into the manual controls for the fusion core, and as many high-load power cables as we can find, so we can bypass the safeties and overdrive the capacitors.”

  “All right.” Terrell slapped his large hands onto Hesh’s and Kavalas’s shoulders. “You two round up Taryl and go get those cables. I’ll help the Master Chief set up at the fusion core.” Ilucci headed for the door and Terrell followed him, tossing his parting orders over his shoulder. “And be quick! We’ve only got twenty-six minutes until this planet redefines weird.”

  As soon as he and Ilucci were out of the control center and alone in the corridor, Terrell fell into step beside him and lowered his voice. “Master Chief, I would rather have a plan than not, and I don’t want you to take this as a ­criticism—”

  “But you’re worried this could backfire?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Sure. I can think of lots of ways for it to go wrong.” He led the way through a pair of double doors to a stairwell, then down the broad steps toward the facility’s sublevels. “I mean, it might not work. Or it might work, but release a bunch of quark strangelets. Or—”

  “Stop—‘strangelets’?”

  Ilucci sounded winded from trying to talk while jogging downstairs two steps at a time. “Theoretical subatomic particles that could slip into our universe if disrupting the siphon causes a tear in the dimensional barrier.”

  Terrell was almost afraid to solicit more detail. “And if they did?”

  “They’d transmute every particle they touch into copies of themselves, propagate at FTL speed, and wipe out the universe as we know it—starting with us.”

  It was almost too horrific a scenario for Terrell to imagine. “And that seems like an acceptable level of risk to you?”

  The engineer brushed off Terrell’s fears with the aplomb of a condemned man. “What do you want me to say, Skip? You want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.”

  18

  It vexed Theriault that being in command depended so much on one’s ability to sit and wait while projecting confidence and calm. She wanted to be in action, in motion, doing something, anything. Anything other than sitting in the command chair, listening to the subtle music of feedback tones from the bridge’s computers while waiting for the next thing to go wrong.

  When the captain was aboard, she could pass the time by moving from one station to the next, coaxing her shipmates along while offering advice or suggesti
ng alternatives. That was expected of an executive officer. It was right there in the title: executive. The job was about getting things done and making sure others got things done. But when she had the conn, the rules were different. As the acting commanding officer, it was unseemly to micromanage. She had to content herself to leave that task to Sorak—who, true to his discreet and reclusive Vulcan nature, chose to let his shipmates labor in peace unless and until they solicited his input.

  Thanks a lot, Sorak. Way to make me look like a harpy.

  On the main viewscreen, Anura looked serene. The distant orb’s light was as brilliant as it was cold and remote, betraying no sign of the violent chaos plaguing its surface. There had been no new reports from Sorak or Dastin in the past half-hour, for which Theriault was thankful.

  The door slid open behind her. She swung her chair around to see Commander Beiana enter. His steps were halting and awkward. Theriault sprang from her chair and moved to meet him. “Commander? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. My joints have just forgotten how to handle full gravity.” He reached out his hand, pressed it against a bulkhead, and set his weight against it. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

  Relieved to be in a position to do something, Theriault said, “Name it.”

  Beiana held up a yellow data card. “Doctor Babitz helped me and my crew record some brief messages onto this storage device. We’d like to ask you to transmit them home to our families for us. In case we don’t make it back.”

  She cupped her hand gently around Beiana’s upper arm. “You’re going to make it home.”

  “You can’t know that. And neither can we. But even if we do, there’s no guarantee our kin will still be there when we get back.” His affect took a turn for the morose. “For all we know, they’re already gone. But we want to send these messages home all the same. Will you help us?”

  Theriault looked at Razka. “What do you think, Chief? Can we get signals to Anura?”