Federation

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  But Spock put an end to that possibility. “The ship’s present condition precludes a slingshot trajectory, Captain. Neither the remaining dilithium crystals nor the damaged port nacelle strut could withstand the strain.”

  Fifteen seconds remained.

  “Keptin,” Chekov said, “their targeting sensors are locking on,”

  “Spock: Will there be sufficient relativistic distortions near the black hole’s event horizon to disrupt sensors?” Kirk asked.

  “Without question,” Spock answered.

  Kirk made his decision, committed his ship. “Sulu, set course to TNC 65813. Chekov, ready on phasers and photon torpedoes.”

  Both men acknowledged. Ten seconds remained.

  “Open a channel to Thorsen, Lieutenant,” Kirk said to Uhura. “Audio only. Let’s keep them off balance. Ready to fire on my mark, Mr. Chekov.”

  “Channel open, sir.”

  “Colonel Thorsen, we have captured Cochrane and are taking him to the transporter room. Which ship would you like us to beam him to?”

  Thorsen appeared on screen. Half the skin remaining on his face now hung in fluttering strips. Where his eye had been was only a dark socket. “Beam him to me,” Thorsen cackled in triumph. “We have a great deal of time to make up for. We both have secrets to share in the Pursuit of Perfection.”

  “Standing by in the transporter room,” Kirk said. “We will beam him to you as soon as you lower your shields.” He ended transmission.

  Chekov next words were full of wonder. “Keptin, he is dropping his shields.”

  “Definitely not a Klingon,” Kirk said, “Mr. Chekov, Mr. Spock, proceed with firing sequence and shuttle launch.”

  Instantly the deep hum of the phasers echoed through the bridge as Thorsen’s image winked off the viewscreen, to be replaced by a split-second image of the Planitia’s wreckage just before it turned into an expanding field of incandescent plasma. The bridge of the Enterprise shook as the photon torpedoes launched, leaving glowing trails into the plasma cloud. Cochrane held tightly to the Companion, marveling at the audacity Kirk and his crew regularly displayed.

  “Shuttle away,” Spock confirmed. “Maximum warp.”

  “Phasers locked on Thorsen’s ship,” Chekov announced. The phasers sang again. “Registering hits but impossible to tell their shield status.”

  “Get us out of here, Mr. Sulu. Warp factor seven.”

  The bridge tilted as the Enterprise moved out of normal space and the plasma ball vanished from the viewscreen.

  “No sign of pursuit, Keptin.”

  “That’s it?” Cochrane asked. “We’re at time-warp factor seven that quickly?”

  Kirk smiled. His ship and crew had performed perfectly. “Warp readout, Mr. Sulu.” The distant whine of the ship’s engines increased.

  “Factor five point five … point eight … six point two … point five … point nine … warp factor seven, sir.”

  Cochrane whistled. “In my day, it would take three hours just to get up to time-warp four.”

  “These are your days, Mr. Cochrane,” Kirk said. “It’s your engines driving this ship. You made all this possible.”

  “I also made Thorsen possible,” Cochrane answered. “Like you said, Captain: Technology is neutral.”

  Chekov interrupted. “Keptin, I have clear sensor readings around the Planitia wreckage. One cruiser crippled, sir. It has ejected its warp core.”

  “Good shooting, Mr. Chekov. What about the others?”

  “One cruiser is in pursuit of our shuttlecraft decoy. Estimated time to intercept, fifteen minutes.”

  “If they don’t think to scan it for life signs before that,” Kirk said. “Last ship?”

  “Staying within transporter range of the crippled wessel, sir. It appears they’re beaming aboard the crew.”

  “Any sign of the Orion transport?”

  “Negative, sir. It was docked with the damaged cruiser.”

  Kirk almost felt like relaxing. Each second the cruisers delayed chasing the Enterprise increased the odds of success. And they were finally out of Thorsen’s jamming range. “Uhura, open a secure channel to Starfleet Command and request urgent assistance.” Kirk thought about Admiral Kabreigny. She had been convinced that security at Starfleet had been compromised. But was it solely because of Thorsen, or did he have other accomplices? “Identify our attackers as Orion smugglers operating D7 battle cruisers. Make no mention of Colonel Thorsen for now.”

  Uhura acknowledged, and now that the immediate danger had passed, Kirk could see Cochrane looking around the bridge, eyes wide.

  “All that about the condition of those ships behind us,” Cochrane said, “you were able to detect it with … subspace sensors?”

  Kirk nodded. “Would you like a tour?”

  Cochrane stared at him in amazement. “Aren’t we running for our lives?”

  “Keptin, cruiser two is now in pursuit of the Enterprise.”

  “Time to intercept?” Kirk asked.

  “Five hours, ten minutes.”

  “Time to the singularity?”

  “At present velocity, five hours fifty-five minutes.”

  The Enterprise would come under attack forty-five minutes before she reached safety. Cochrane was right. They were running for their lives. And the urge to relax left Kirk as quickly as it had come upon him.

  SIX

  U.S.S. ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D EN ROUTE TO STARBASE 324

  Stardate 43922.1

  Earth Standard: ≈ May 2366

  An hour after the senior officers’ debriefing, three hours after the collision with Traklamek’s Warbird, the Enterprise’s warp core was back on-line and Picard’s mighty ship made way for Starbase 324, the heart of Starfleet Tactical’s effort to develop a defense against the Borg. With his ship at peace once again, Picard arrived in the main shuttlebay as Geordi La Forge had requested, eager to examine the unexpected treasure that had been found.

  By now, La Forge had completely removed the Preserver object from what might or might not have been a Borg artifact. The artifact itself was spread out over a section of the shuttlebay deck marked with a detailed grid. The grid’s purpose was to aid in the analysis and reconstruction of damaged or destroyed vehicles and equipment. Optical sensors recorded the original position of each item on the grid from several different angles so the computer could create three-dimensional models to be studied in greater detail and under various simulated conditions. Portions of the Borg artifact were precisely laid out on that grid, and Picard knew that even now a compressed data stream containing everything La Forge and Data had managed to learn about it was being sent via subspace to Admiral Hanson at Starbase 324. Picard only hoped that the information was not part of a Romulan effort to mislead the Federation about the Borg’s true nature.

  The Preserver object, however, was not on the reconstruction grid. La Forge had mounted it on several equipment cradles normally used to support shuttlecraft undergoing maintenance or repair. Though it was a purely subjective, emotional conclusion, the instant Jean-Luc Picard saw the object unobscured by the jumble of the Borg artifact, he felt certain that the object was authentic, and made by the same hand as the Preserver obelisk. It was, to Picard, a thing of beauty.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” La Forge asked as he approached the captain, wiping his hands with a cleaning cloth.

  “Oh, it is, Mr. La Forge, it is,” the captain said.

  Perfectly displayed against the stars that streaked to a vanishing point past the open shuttlebay doors, sealed only by an atmospheric forcefield, the object seemed to glow with a polished silver sheen beneath the bright shuttlebay lights. Its proportions, far more subtle than just the first reported gross measurements of two meters by three meters by five meters, included graceful indentations and curves that made it resemble a shaft of liquid cut from a magnificent wave of molten metal and frozen in a sparkling instant of time. Picard gazed at it and saw visions of oceans. The reservoirs of life. From what seas ha
d the makers of this object emerged? How distant in time and space?

  “You can almost hear the ocean roar, can’t you?” La Forge said quietly.

  “It’s … magnificent,” Picard replied, knowing the word did no justice to the depth of his feeling. “I cannot believe that this was constructed by the Romulans.”

  “And that’s not all of it,” La Forge continued. “Check out the other side.”

  They walked together, and on the far side of the object, where Data and Wesley Crusher worked with elaborate molecular probes held against the object’s surface, Picard saw what he could only consider as an ugly scar that marred the object’s beauty. It was a dark and ragged scrape a meter square which appeared to have broken off a corner of the object, just where the eye—and the heart—demanded its curves should continue to a graceful conclusion.

  “It’s some kind of stress fracture or abrasion,” La Forge said as they stopped beside the wound. “The outside skin is so tough I can’t think of anything that could have done this short of a supernova, but sometime in the past three and half billion years, this thing suffered quite a shock.”

  Picard held his fingers above the abrupt demarcation line between the smooth outer surface and the dark indentation. “May I?” he asked.

  La Forge nodded. “There’s no danger. I can’t tell yet if the dark material is what happens to the silver covering when it’s subjected to intense heat and deformed, or if it’s the normal appearance of whatever’s inside. Data thinks we’re actually looking at a tightly packed, molecular quantum computer of some kind, so complexly interconnected that it appears to be a solid. If that’s true, this object could contain more computing power than … all the computers in the Federation combined.” La Forge pointed to a textured section of the scar. “Now, over here, you can’t see it, but with my VISOR I can detect a pattern of microscopic holes, almost like wiring conduits. This is the interface area where the Borg artifact had tapped into the object to draw power.”

  “It’s still generating power?” Picard asked.

  “Somewhere. Somehow,” La Forge sighed. “Wesley’s suggested that when we get to the starbase, we might see about creating a specialized type of nanite to crawl inside and look around.”

  “A splendid idea. Just so long as Mr. Crusher doesn’t create the nanites onboard the Enterprise this time,” Picard said. He remembered all too well what had happened with the acting ensign’s last experiment in nanotechnology.

  “I’ll make sure of that,” La Forge agreed. “Anyway, Data and Wesley are going over the undamaged surface to see if there are any interface areas that are intact.”

  Picard was intrigued. “Do you think this object was made for the purpose of interfacing?” The Preserver obelisk, which had been studied so intensely, and so ineffectively, seemed to be designed specifically to not give up its secrets. The idea that this Preserver object was purposely constructed to communicate was tantalizing, to say the least.

  “That’s what Data thinks.” La Forge pointed to the front of the object. “Come take another look at the inscriptions.”

  The object was now oriented so that Picard could identify the markings on its forward face without turning his head. He had no idea what the inscriptions meant, of course, but he did recognize them.

  La Forge pointed to one of the geometric drawings that appeared among the Preserver cuneiform markings: the first drawing when the sequence was read top to bottom. “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

  Picard was startled by the question. “Should it?”

  “It did to me, as soon as Data pointed it out. It’s surprising how obvious it is.”

  Picard studied the drawing, all the more baffling now that he knew it should have some obvious meaning. He traced the open border around it, ran his fingers over its sequence of vertical lines …

  … but its pattern meant nothing to him.

  “Are you suggesting this is similar to the old space-probe data records?” Picard asked. At the dawn of space exploration, humans had affixed various data-storage media to its space probes in the unlikely event they were ever recovered by aliens: first, analog audio and visual recording disks, then diffraction bars, and finally molecular bristle tubes. But no matter the technology of the recording, each data record had been sent out into space with an “instruction” plate. The plate was engraved with what behaviorists at the time had hoped would be universal symbols, each derived from basic physical constants that could be interpreted by any spacefaring culture. The purpose was to show the recordings’ place and time of origin, and to indicate how the data should be interpreted to produce sound and pictures. Earth’s historical societies were still asking alien cultures to try decoding replicas of those variously packaged space messages. To date, none had succeeded. Though the Vulcans had come close.

  “Data thinks it’s a possibility,” La Forge confirmed, “though it’s intended for a more sophisticated level of interpretation.”

  “I can see that,” Picard said. “As I recall, the engraved plates our ancestors sent out began with the depiction of simple hydrogen transition states, to establish basic increments of time and distance, based on the law of mediocrity, the assumption that even alien systems would be based on similar laws of nature.”

  “Well, this engraving definitely starts a bit higher up the scale of physics than hydrogen transitions.”

  Picard took his hand away. He could see nothing he recognized in the collection of lines. “How much higher?”

  “Would you believe continuum distortion?” La Forge asked. He held his finger to the diagram, starting on the left. “Data interprets this inverted T marking and the four dashes below it as a standard tachyon decay event.” He drew his finger down the thin vertical line. “Here’s the tachyon.” He jumped over the thick bar and tapped the dashes. “And after the tunneling discontinuity, here are the tachyon’s four constituent quarks.”

  Picard nodded slowly. “So the thick horizontal bar is the tachyon decay threshold.”

  “Which is the speed of light,” La Forge confirmed. “Then, if we consider these two short, thick lines on either side of the vertical line pattern to represent the speed of light …”

  Picard saw it instantly. It was in two dimensions, without a logarithmic or any other kind of curve, but the ratios looked right. He touched the thin, clear vertical line that cut through the horizontal bars above the speed-of-light markings. “Then this represents a state of infinite energy,” he said.

  “You’ve got it,” La Forge agreed.

  Picard dropped his finger to the set of horizontal dots that extended below the speed of light. “And this is the energy required for movement into warp space, which is less than infinite.”

  “And,” La Forge continued, indicating the three clear vertical bars on the diagram’s right, “once you’re in warp space, here’s your offset of the theoretical peak power consumption at one hundred percent efficiency.”

  “Do the ratios work out?” Picard asked.

  “Data measured the width of each line and the spaces between them to within an angstrom. This diagram was engraved with precision particle etching that gives the numerical relationships of all warp ratio values to five decimal places. Captain, the diagram on this object is just a bare-bones version of this.” La Forge tapped his chest beside his communicator pin, which was fashioned in the shape of Starfleet’s familiar delta design. “It’s the basis of warp physics established by Zefram Cochrane—a diagram of the asymmetrical distortion field function, missing one of its axes.”

  Picard was impressed. “If this is true, then whoever built this was indeed counting on a considerable level of achievement from those who found it.”

  “I’ll say. Especially considering this is just the first diagram of twenty-four.”

  Picard rubbed at his chin. The power-consumption relationship depicted by the diagram was as obvious to him now as it was in the Starfleet insignia he wore, just as La Forge had said. But there were still part
s of the diagram that didn’t fit. “If the vertical line on the left is a tachyon decay, what about this vertical line on the right?” he asked.

  La Forge shrugged. He pointed to the right-hand line and the vertical bar at the center bottom. “Data’s best theory is that these lines have something to do with zero-point energy extraction.” He indicated the horizontal line cutting across the six upper bars on the right. “And these lines might have something to do with transwarp propulsion in other dimensions.”

  “My word,” Picard said. “Getting energy from a vacuum has eluded our scientists for generations. And Starfleet abandoned the whole idea of transwarp propulsion as impractical decades ago.”

  La Forge touched his finger thoughtfully to the diagram. “You know, Captain, if Data’s right about this, if it is some sort of message that’s set up for extremely technologically advanced cultures to interpret … it sort of makes me wonder if we were supposed to find it yet.”

  Picard had also been thinking exactly that. “You mean, somehow the object was damaged, perhaps, as you suggested, by a supernova. The Borg then incorporated it into their vessel without recognizing it for what it was, and the Romulans acquired it by accident, by destroying the Borg vessel.”

  “If the Romulans did acquire it from a Borg vessel. I’m still not convinced of that.”

  Data and Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher came around the corner of the object, molecular probes switched off.

  “Hi, Captain Picard,” Wesley said. He grinned at the object, eyes full of wonder. “Isn’t this incredible?”

  Uncomfortable as he was with children, even those as old as Wesley, Picard appreciated the acting ensign’s youthful enthusiasm for an archaeological find of the first order. It indicated that the youth showed promise, which Picard had always suspected. “That and much more, Mr. Crusher,” Picard said. He looked at Data. “Were you able to find an intact interface area?”

  “No,” Data said, “but that does not mean that one does not exist. Regrettably, I suspect it is simply beyond the means of our technology to identify.”