STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2298 - The Sundered

by Michael A. Martin

  Sayyid recalled his recent Midschool days, when he had heard an audio recording of a very old story—quite a rarity these days, considering how much of the digital library had been lost to radiation exposure during the Passage—that one of the Oldsters had described as a “skiffy.” In the tale, a tribe of People ventured from Earth and voyaged into the infinitude of space inside a vast Ship. Within a few generations, mutineers had tried unsuccessfully to seize control of the great vessel. The descendants of both the legitimate crew and the mutineers were no longer even aware that they dwelled within the giant Ship’s belly. To them, the notion that the extent of the Ship’s interior comprised the totality of the universe was merely common sense.

  Fools, Sayyid thought, every time he thought of that ancient skiffy story. To be ignorant is to be vulnerable.

  No, the scions of ’Neal had no desire to cut themselves off completely from the universe, whatever undiscovered terrors it held. One had to keep oneself apprised of what was out there, lest the unknown bare its tusks again and resume the lopping off of heads.

  Sayyid swung himself down onto the Control Level, where the blaring of the alarm Klaxons was loudest.

  “What took you so long?” Graben demanded the moment Sayyid pulled himself laboriously through the Instrument Room hatch. Sayyid hated high-grav.

  Graben was older—old enough, at least, not to carry much of the genework that had made null-grav the preferred environment for the newest ’Neal generation to come of age—and Sayyid assumed that this was why he always [155] complained so much about the performance of the Youngsters in his crew. Many of these were still arriving in response to the alarm, literally right behind Sayyid’s tail.

  “What’s happening?” Sayyid asked, ignoring Graben’s gruff query. Grinning, he added, “More Tuskers?”

  Graben scowled. “Not Tuskers. The bogey doesn’t appear to be a ship this time.”

  “What then?” Sayyid asked as he draped his long form across one of the instrument couches and donned his gloves and visor.

  “You tell me, boy genius,” Graben said as the virtual display activated, immersing Sayyid in the unknown.

  Thanks to the virt, Sayyid was suddenly floating outside in the void. The illusion would have been perfect save for the insistent pull of the asteroid’s spin-generated gravity, which inexorably pushed his body into the unyielding couch. But the velvet depths of trackless space and the bright stellar baubles that punctuated it made the high-grav sensation a manageable annoyance. When he turned his field of vision 180 degrees, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds—a pair of relatively small globular galaxies that lay well beyond the familiar confines of the Milky Way—stared at him like a pair of baleful eyes.

  Ahead of him, perhaps pars’x away, or maybe only a few hundred klomters distant, lay a silver, shimmering ripple in space, moving in undulating, sinuous waves. Sayyid could not determine what was producing the effect, nor how it was being illuminated so far out in interstellar space.

  “Whatever it is,” Sayyid said, “it seems to be moving fast.” Of course, that was relative. Although Vangarde wasn’t moving at anywhere near relativistic speeds, the Great Rock still retained a fair amount of momentum from the days of the Passage.

  Sayyid recalled a story that Great-Grandmother Zafirah had shared with him when he was little. She had spoken of [156] an energetic wave or disturbance of some sort that had swept through the Earth’s solar system more than a century earlier. One of the planet’s space-based telescopes had observed the phenomenon’s unexplained superluminal passage across the plane of the ecliptic. The anomaly had apparently destroyed the Ares IV, the first manned ship bound for Mars.

  As a small child, Sayyid had always wondered if the Mars ship had actually somehow survived its encounter with the unexplained on that fateful day. Might Loot Kelly’s little vessel have simply been kicked out among the stars, arriving at some impossibly far destination intact, the way the Vangarde colony had been dislocated a generation later? Because of his own life circumstances, Sayyid could never discount such possibilities out of hand.

  Maybe this is another weird energy anomaly like the one that took the Ares. And maybe this one is going to punt us back to Earth.

  Earth. He wondered if the place could be anything like the Earth of his dreams, the Earth conjured by the many stories Greatgran Zafirah had shared with him before entropy and her old Tusker wounds had finally taken her—

  “Enough dustgathering,” Graben snapped, startling Sayyid from his peaceful torpor. “I need an analysis of this thing. Could it be hiding another aggressor ship?”

  Sayyid shrugged. “Can’t rule it out, Boss.” He was old enough to remember the asteroid miners who had landed several craft on the Vangarde’s skin, only to be “persuaded” to leave by a complete fusillade from the colony’s Baruch pulse cannons. Afterward, he’d sneaked into the pathology lab where one of the recovered alien corpses lay on a slab, evidently dead from exposure. He’d never forget how much like a Vangarde Oldster the thing had looked.

  Except for its sickly green bodily fluids and those sinister-looking pointed ears.

  Still floating in space and watching the images coming in [157] from the external telescopes, Sayyid heard Graben begin barking orders to the others. He heard the echoing clatter of the big Baruch tubes being locked and loaded again. Sayyid felt a cold sweat trickling between his shoulders, as though an enraged Tusker were breathing down his back.

  Suddenly, the glistening silver band of spatial distortion greatly increased in size. Before a scream could escape Sayyid’s lips, the effect seemed to have entirely engulfed Vangarde, which lurched and shuddered, tossing him from the couch onto the cold, rigid deckplating. The universe was plunged into utter darkness.

  Sayyid didn’t realize that he’d blacked out until he noticed that Graben and Keller were lifting him bodily back onto the virt couch. The lights were dim, as though whatever had struck the asteroid had also knocked out the main power circuits.

  The scene reminded him eerily of Greatgran Zafirah’s story about How Vangarde Got Way Out Here.

  “What happened to my virt-helmet?” Sayyid said, searching around on the floor in the semidarkness until his feet came into contact with the helmet’s curved surface. He wrapped his footthumbs around its edge and donned it using both feet while his hands and tail sought out the emergency power controls.

  Almost at once, he was back Out There.

  He saw right away that everything was ... different. The stars were far more densely packed now than they had been mere moments before. Neither of the Magellanic Clouds was anywhere to be seen.

  Beyond the main mass of stars lay a vast, multiarmed pin-wheel of light that reminded Sayyid of the tridee maps of the Milky Way he’d made in school.

  It took several days of painstaking comparative positional analysis of every known pulsar and black hole in the astronomical database before Sayyid was able to account for the [158] presence of the additional stars, the gigantic spiral galaxy that dominated the stellar backdrop, and the complete and utter disappearance of both Magellanic Clouds.

  The result was both unbelievable and undeniable. In a twinkling, the anomaly had tossed Vangarde almost dead-center inside the smaller of the two Magellanic Clouds, some 210,000 light-years from the asteroid’s previous position.

  Slowly, very slowly, Sayyid allowed the truth of his discovery to sink in. Compared to the distance we just covered, those first two-hundred light-years the Oldsters crossed when they made the Passage from Earth look like a rounding error.

  Gazing at. the pearlescent brilliance of the Milky Way, Sayyid began to understand that the Earth of his fantasies, the Earth of Greatgran Zafirah’s stories, hopes, and dreams, was now forever beyond the reach of the ’Neal People and their descendants. He wondered if the Tuskers had ever ventured out this far.

  Or if something even worse might dwell here.

  PART 5

  GRIEF

  Chapter 14

&n
bsp; Though several minutes had passed since the battle’s abrupt end, the anticipated phalanx of Tholian vessels still had yet to arrive. However, Ensign Fenlenn had detected the approach of four Tholian warships, evidently rushing toward the colony world in response to its distress calls. With the warships still nearly an hour away, Excelsior remained on yellow alert. The damaged Neyel vessel—the cause of the entire situation—merely hung silently in space, apparently refusing to acknowledge all hails and offers of assistance.

  To Lojur, it almost seemed as though the alien ship was mocking him.

  Standing alone on Excelsior’s aft observation lounge, the Halkan navigator wondered what could be going on inside the Neyel vessel’s thick, refractory metal hull. As the minutes passed, he could feel the increased vigilance and nervousness of the crew emanating from the bulkheads, like some strange new form of radiation.

  But he didn’t care about any of that just now. His shift on the bridge finished, Lojur now looked out of the enormous curved transparent aluminum window that ringed most of the lounge. Located one level below and slightly behind the bridge, the room overlooked the flat dorsal section of the primary hull. Although neither the equally vast lower [162] engineering section nor the saucer’s two gigantic impulse engines were visible from this vantage point, the faint blue glow of the twin warp nacelles seemed to stretch out to infinity behind the mighty starship. Beyond that lay the eternal, boundless dark.

  It was also about the farthest point across Excelsior’s saucer section away from the ruined phaser bay where Shandra had died, defending a colony of inscrutable aliens whose military caste was likely to arrive at any moment, weapons blazing. Lojur hoped they would forgive Excelsior’s intrusion into Tholian territory once the captain explained that they had come in answer to distress signals from the Tholian colony world. But from what he’d seen of the Tholians so far, he wasn’t too sure about that.

  To Excelsior’s starboard side lay the slender yellow crescent of the Tholian colony world the Neyel had attacked. To port, the apparently crippled Neyel warship made a slow, unpowered circuit about the planet, still evidently unable either to change its trajectory or to mount any further hostilities.

  Lojur was distracted from the alien ship by a reflection in the window. He almost failed to recognize the drawn and worn face he saw there as his own. Set beneath thick, pale brows, his eyes seemed absent, their hollow shadows far darker than his russet-colored goatee. Clearly visible in the middle of his ashen forehead was the red crest of his family, tattooed there nearly two decades earlier, after the village Elders had declared him an adult, a True Man of Halka.

  He reached up and touched the intricate, thumbnail-sized design. The marking was all the Halkan Council had permitted him to take with him into his permanent, irrevocable state of exile. Had the Orions attacked Kotha Village just a few weeks earlier, I would have been denied even this.

  Lojur heard the doors hiss open behind him. He saw the huge reflection of the approaching Akaar an instant later.

  “Computer, lower room illumination by seventy-five [163] percent.” At once, the lights dimmed and the reflections abruptly vanished, replaced by the endless vista of space. Lojur did not wish to allow anyone, even a close friend like Akaar, to watch him pining over things that could not be changed.

  He turned and faced Akaar, who towered over him. The giant Capellan maintained his distance, his large hands clasped behind his back as though he didn’t know what else to do with them.

  “I thought I might find you here,” Akaar said, his voice deep and resonant despite its muted volume.

  Lojur offered his friend a wan smile. “You could have asked the computer to locate me.”

  “A hunter should rely upon his wits,” Akaar replied. Despite their Starfleet training and their respective home-worlds’ diametrically opposite philosophies—Akaar was the product of a warrior society, while Lojur’s Halkan culture had inculcated total pacifism—Lojur knew that they both preferred not to use technology gratuitously. This shared eccentricity, as well as the mentoring they had both received over the years from Captain Sulu and Commander Chekov, had provided the initial impetus for their unlikely friendship.

  “True enough,” Lojur said. Though Halkans did not hunt for game animals, they did gather wild plants as well as cultivate tame ones. Neither pursuit was very kind to idiots.

  Lojur studied Akaar, who had adopted an even more stoic demeanor than usual. It brought to mind the grave-faced village Elders who had banished him eighteen years ago.

  “You should know that Lieutenant Docksey died bravely,” the Capellan said at length.

  Lojur nodded, feeling numb and blasted inside as he revisited, yet again, the brutal fact of Shandra’s death. He had already known that she was off duty during the battle with the Neyel; immediately afterward, photon torpedo specialist Pitcher told him most of the rest. Shandra had stepped into [164] the breach, first assisting in one of the torpedo bays, then taking over for an injured member of one of the forward phaser crews.

  Then she’d been blown out into space when the final Neyel salvo tore through both the shields and the hull plating directly outside her temporary post.

  “Chief Pitcher told me that Shandra died instantly, L.J.,” Lojur said. “She probably didn’t have time to become frightened.” At least I hope that’s so.

  Tears of rage and shame stung Lojur’s eyes, prompting him to turn again toward the window. He stared at the Neyel ship, placing his hands behind his back, where they clasped one another as tightly as airlock seals.

  Akaar could hardly have missed his roiling emotions. “You wish to punish them,” he said. It did not sound like a question.

  Lojur shook his head. “Violence is not in the Halkan character. It has no place in the Halkan heart.” He turned to face his friend, fixing him with his most withering don’t-forget-that-I-outrank-you glare.

  Akaar was undeterred. “And yet violence is the very reason you have no place on Halka.”

  Lojur wanted to roar at the Capellan, but restrained himself. Barely. “That’s enough, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”

  Akaar nodded, then walked back to the door. He paused a moment near the threshold after it opened. “I understand. I know I cannot compel you to discuss your loss, or what it might drive you to do.”

  Why wouldn’t Akaar leave it alone? “That’s exactly right, L.J.,” Lojur said with an exasperated sigh.

  “That is why I have asked Commander Chekov to do so,” Akaar said, placing his hand over his heart and extending his open hand. Then he departed, leaving Lojur alone with his fiercely churning thoughts.

  A moment later, the intercom sounded. Lojur sighed, [165] resigned to what was to come. He pushed the button. “I’m on my way, Commander Chekov.”

  “What are you bringing me now, battle trophies?” Chapel said as the med techs antigravved the corpse into the pathology lab adjacent to the main sickbay.

  “Ensign Fenlenn beamed this body aboard after the sensors picked it up drifting in space right after the battle,” said one of the medics, a well-muscled human woman named Caitlin Bersentes. Chapel was pleased to see that she and her colleague, a human male named Beck, were treating the dead alien with apparent respect. “Evidently a few of the Neyel were blown out into space, like poor Shandra and the others.”

  The body the med techs deposited onto the examination table was large, gray, and unlike anything Chapel had encountered before. Though essentially humanoid in shape and size, its unclothed form was adorned with a muscular tail nearly as long as its body. Its torso was long and slender, and each of its four equally graceful limbs was equipped with opposable thumbs, recalling the hands and feet of a nonhuman Earth primate. The top of its head sported short, bristly black hair; its dark gray, coarse-textured epidermis had the approximate consistency of tree bark, though she noted that it was gracefully arranged in articulated, interleaved sections that Chapel guessed were as tough as the hide of a Vulcan dunewalker. Even the eyelids, closed in
the repose of death, suggested apertures in the battlements of some impregnable wooden fortress.

  “These folks are obviously built to last,” Chapel said, her researcher’s natural curiosity now fully roused. She reached for a medical tricorder and made a few cursory scans, noting that most of the vital organs—none of which showed more than the residual activity of the very recently deceased—didn’t seem overly mysterious. That wasn’t a surprise, since the humanoid body plan, including most of the internal [166] biological architecture it required, seemed to have arisen independently in so many disparate parts of the galaxy.

  Next, she directed the med techs to set up the portable deep-tissue probe, which she carefully calibrated to focus on the creature’s unique biomolecular and DNA features. She tapped a few commands into the device’s keypad, instructing it to feed the results to her tricorder.

  While the scanner worked and the results of the scans were being collated through the main sickbay computer and routed back to her tricorder, Chapel walked to the food slot in her office and ordered a cup of hot, black coffee. She sipped from her cup as she returned to the alien corpse. A green light on the portable probe reported that the first scans were finally complete. Still holding her cup, she thumbed the tricorder one-handed to see the results.

  When she saw the initial readings, Chapel gagged on her coffee, almost dropping both cup and tricorder. She set them down on a nearby instrument tray while she coughed and sputtered, gently waving away Bersentes and Beck as they offered to help her. Those readings aren’t possible. After recovering her breath, she rechecked the settings on every piece of equipment involved in the scan, including the tricorder, which she replaced just in case it was malfunctioning.

  This time accepting some assistance from her staff, Chapel ran the test four more times to eliminate any possibility of error. Nothing. changed. Her two assistants looked stunned, obviously having worked out the implications for themselves.