Star Trek: The Lost Era - 08 - 2319 - One Constant Star

by David R. George III

  When she received no response, she quickly thumbed the reset button on the device before bringing it back up to her mouth. “Linojj to landing party. Emergency. Meet at my location.” She reached the object, clapped her communicator onto the back of her waist, and started to climb. She’d reached the halfway point when Permenter and Alderson arrived from one direction, and Haas and Morell from the other.

  “Commander,” one of the security guards called up to her.

  Linojj stopped and called back over her shoulder. “Ensign Young fell from the top of the structure onto the other side, and now he’s not responding,” she said. “Contact the Enterprise and prepare for emergency transport.”

  “Yes, sir,” one of the guards said. Linojj heard the activation chirp of a communicator, followed by words she could not make out over the wind, which had picked up the higher she’d climbed.

  As the first officer reached the top of the object, she stopped and carefully let go with one hand. From beneath the back of her tunic and jacket, she drew her phaser. She adjusted it to its highest nonlethal setting, then yanked herself into a kneeling position on top of the object.

  The force of the wind struck her first, sending the long strands of her purple hair flying about her head. She ignored it and looked down the other side of the object. She saw the great, dark expanse that Young had described, filled with rocks large and small, but she did not see Young. Thinking he had fallen too close to the structure for her to see, she stood up. She heard a loud hum, and then a bright light flashed just below her. She quickly dropped into a prone position as a cone of golden illumination streaked above her.

  Linojj aimed her phaser at the light’s point of origin, not much more than a few meters away from her on the surface of the object. An emitter exploded in a shower of sparks. The beam vanished.

  “Commander!” yelled one of the security guards.

  “I’m all right,” Linojj called down. “Stand by.” Leading with her phaser, she crept forward, staying low. The surface of the object began to curve downward, and the first officer used the notches—which apparently continued around the entire circumference—to keep from sliding down. She had gone just about as far as she could while facing forward when she at last saw a human foot. Linojj edged forward until she could see Young’s entire body. He sat on the ground—on dark earth, amid rocks and boulders. “Ensign,” she yelled to him. He cradled one arm in the other, obviously nursing an injury he’d endured in the fall, but he appeared otherwise unhurt. His tricorder lay in pieces beside him. “Ensign!”

  Young gave no indication that he heard her. Linojj wondered if he’d struck his head when he’d fallen and damaged his hearing. She tried once more, without success, then reached for her communicator. “Linojj to Enterprise.”

  “Enterprise here,” said Captain Sulu. “Commander, sensors are showing power flowing through the structure, and we’ve detected energy surges at your position.”

  “We’re aware that the structure now has power,” Linojj said. “Our immediate concern, though, is Ensign Young, who has fallen fifteen meters to the ground from atop the structure. He’s conscious, but he hurt his arm and may have suffered other injuries. Doctor Morell can’t get to him, so I’m requesting emergency medical transport.”

  To her credit, the captain did not waste any time asking for additional details. Instead, Linojj heard her say, “Keep this channel open,” and then, “Sulu to transporter room. Beam up Ensign Young at once. We have a medical emergency.” Linojj watched Young, waiting for the bluish-white motes of dematerialization to form around him.

  It didn’t happen.

  “Captain, is something wrong?” the first officer asked.

  Linojj heard indistinct conversation over her communicator, and then the captain said, “Commander, Lieutenant Ved reports that he can establish transporter locks on everybody except Ensign Young.”

  “Maybe the ensign’s signal enhancer was damaged in his fall,” Linojj conjectured. Because of the substance in the ground that interfered with biosensors, each member of the landing party carried a small tracking device designed to facilitate transport in such conditions; those devices also had the benefit of individually identifying the carriers. Lieutenant Ved understood the transporter and its related systems better than anybody Linojj had ever met, so she knew that if he couldn’t establish a lock, then nobody could. “I’ll give my enhancer to Ensign Young, which may take a few minutes.”

  “Understood,” Sulu said. “In the meantime, I’ll send down a shuttlecraft just in case that doesn’t work.”

  “That’s a good idea, Captain,” Linojj said, “but one of the energy surges your sensors showed was a beam of some kind fired from the structure in my direction.”

  “Was it an energy weapon?” Sulu asked.

  “I don’t know,” Linojj said. “I didn’t have time to analyze it before I destroyed its emitter. I think it might have been a directional beam, though, and that it might have pulled Ensign Young from where he’d climbed up onto the structure.”

  “It was a tractor beam, then?”

  “Or something like it, yes,” Linojj said. “Regardless, it could be that the structure is what’s interfering with the signal enhancer. It might also explain why I can’t reach him by communicator. Ensign Young fell into the interior of its ring shape, while the rest of us are outside it—or in my case, on top of it.”

  “All right, see if you can move Ensign Young out of there,” Sulu said. “A shuttlecraft will be launching shortly.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Linojj said.

  “Enterprise out.”

  The first officer again touched her communicator’s reset button. “Linojj to Permenter.”

  “Permenter here,” came the immediate reply. Linojj explained the situation to the security guard, including her intention to retrieve Young, either by transporter or, if necessary, by physical means. “Have the rest of the landing party stay close. Doctor Morell and Lieutenant Alderson should continue scanning the object, alert for the discharge of any beams. They should learn whatever they can about its power: its source, its distribution, what kind of reserves it might have.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Linojj out.” She peered back down the side of the object at Young, then attempted to contact him again via communicator, to no avail. As she watched him, though, he clambered to his feet and began to study his surroundings. She waved to him, thinking that even if he could not hear her calls or the signal of his communicator, then maybe she could get his attention visually. Even though Young appeared to look all around, and sometimes even in her direction, her efforts didn’t work.

  The ensign reached to the back of his waist, perhaps for his phaser, but Linojj thought it more likely that he wanted his communicator. His hand came away empty, though, and he began searching the ground about him. After a few moments, he stopped, raised a hand to his mouth, and called out. Linojj heard nothing but the wind.

  Exchanging her communicator for her tricorder, she scanned Young—or at least she tried to do so. When sensors did not register the ensign, Linojj directed them at the ground. They didn’t reflect what she saw, but instead showed snow and ash covering flat terrain. The disconnect between her own senses and those of the tricorder troubled her. She began to think that when Young had fallen, he’d landed much farther from where he’d started than it appeared.

  Trying a different tack, Linojj cautiously rose up onto her knees. She then reached back and, with an underhand motion, tossed her tricorder from atop the object. She watched it fall toward the ground, expecting to see it vanish in midair, to land in the place her sensors read, not in the place Ensign Young stood.

  But the tricorder didn’t disappear. Instead, it dropped all the way to the ground, landing just a few meters from Young. When it struck, he spun around toward it.

  He heard it, Linojj thought. But he can’t hear me, and I can’t hear him. That seemed to buttress her instinct that Young had crossed some threshold
and now stood in another place—perhaps in another time or another dimension.

  The ensign strode over to the tricorder and bent to examine it. He seemed reluctant at first to touch it, but he eventually did. Linojj wished that she’d recorded a message on it, but at least she knew that, if she needed to make contact with him, she could.

  Young glanced upward, as though searching for the source of the tricorder. Linojj wondered if he could see the structure on Rejarris II that the landing party had come to investigate. As though in answer, the ensign looked directly at her, but the first officer saw no recognition in his eyes, no awareness that she was even there.

  I have to get him back, Linojj thought. She quickly scrambled around, found the indentations in the metal casing of the object, and began to climb down, toward Young. She descended as fast as she could, but then the toe of her boot struck something hard. Linojj looked down past her body to see that a wide, flat metal surface protruded from the object at the midpoint of its height. She checked left and right and saw that it continued in both directions, like a long shelf.

  Linojj tested her weight on it. It held and, more than that, it felt solid. She let go of the handholds and dropped onto it, lowering herself to her knees. She unclasped the signal enhancer from her wrist, then tossed it to the ground.

  Young heard the device land, and he immediately went to it. As Linojj had hoped, he strapped it onto his own wrist. He gazed up toward her again, but she could tell that he still couldn’t see her.

  Linojj contacted Enterprise again, informing the captain that the ensign apparently could neither see nor hear her, and that all attempts to communicate with him had failed. The first officer also told Sulu that she’d given her enhancer to Young and requested that he be transported up. Once more, she waited to see him dematerialize. Instead, she heard the captain’s voice.

  “Lieutenant Ved can’t establish transporter locks on either you or Ensign Young,” Sulu said.

  “Understood, Captain,” Linojj said. “I’m going to try to retrieve him myself.”

  “I sent Commander Tenger down on Amundsen,” Sulu said. “He should arrive before long.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Linojj out.” She closed her communicator. Below her, Ensign Young faced in her direction. Still on her knees, she quickly bent down to the metal shelf and reached past it. She waved her arm, hoping that Young would see it. When Linojj looked at him, though, she saw his mouth drop open in an expression of surprise, and she reflexively pulled back up.

  Pain like she’d never known seared through Linojj’s arm. Her eyes slammed shut as her mind shrieked in agony. She thought she cried out too, but she didn’t know. She fell forward onto the metal shelf, her shoulder striking it hard, but the impact didn’t register at all. Linojj felt only the terrible sensations in her arm, which felt as though it was being torn from her body.

  She heard someone breathing hard and realized that it must be her. Wanting to see how badly her arm had been injured, she held it up before her face and opened her eyes. She thought for an instant that she was looking in the wrong place, but then she saw the stub of her arm that remained. Everything below her biceps was gone, as though it had been sheared off. Bright red blood gushed from the wound. Flesh and tendon and muscle fluttered horrifically, and in the center of the mutilated limb, she saw the white nub of her bone.

  She screamed until blackness took her.

  * * *

  3

  * * *

  Demora Sulu stood in a place she hated. It made no sense, she knew that, but the emotion persisted—had persisted for decades. It didn’t matter that the sickbay aboard Enterprise had been the scene of countless recoveries, of wounds healed and illnesses treated, of medical wonders large and small performed by Doctor Morell and her staff. It didn’t even matter that, during her twenty-five years aboard the ship, Sulu herself had spent her share of time there.

  More than my share, the captain thought. All told, she’d doubtless endured entire days, maybe even weeks, of regular physical and psychological examinations, not to mention innumerable checkups after participating in landing parties to alien worlds. And that’s not even taking into account the major incidents. Early in her Starfleet career, she’d marched into a Brevant ambush on Beta Orvis III and nearly paid for her carelessness with her life. She’d fallen through the surface on an unnamed moon out in Desidera’s Loop, where she’d narrowly escaped drowning before facing down death by hypothermia. Even during her first mission as Enterprise captain, on the voyage to the Röntgen Wall, she had—

  Stop it!

  Sulu hated Starfleet medical facilities—sickbays, infirmaries, hospitals, whatever the designation given to them—and she had since the age of six. She understood the reasons she felt that way, conceded the irrationality of her aversion, but recalling the numerous times her health had been preserved or her life saved in such a place wouldn’t change her feelings. Even though she knew that the efforts of all the doctors and nurses and technicians in Enterprise’s sickbay kept the crew—kept her crew—safe, that knowledge didn’t loosen the knot that tightened in her gut every time she set foot in there.

  As Sulu stood in the doorway of the ship’s surgical suite, circumstances compounded her usual discomfort. Her first officer had been horribly wounded on the second away mission to Rejarris II, and another crew member, who’d also been injured, remained alone on the planet and cut off from the ship. The captain waited anxiously as Doctors Morell and Benzon consulted over the unconscious form of Commander Linojj. The Boslic woman had been laid out on the operating table, her long purple hair pulled back and tied behind her head. A series of transparent containers sat on a tall, wheeled cart beside her, the various colored fluids within them flowing through medical equipment and down tubes that connected to her left arm. A green light shined steadily and a yellow one pulsed beside it on a silver metal cuff that had been fitted over the stump of Linojj’s right arm.

  Sulu swore under her breath. She didn’t blame herself for the terrible injury to her first officer or the loss of communication with Ensign Young. Starfleet Command had accorded the Enterprise crew with the privilege of exploring the universe, of discovering the undiscovered, of meeting the unknown—an exciting and rewarding duty that did not come without danger. Sulu’s people knew their jobs and understood the risks. But even though the captain didn’t blame herself for what had taken place, she took responsibility for it. That was part of her job.

  In addition to that, though, the events on Rejarris II hurt Sulu on an intensely personal level. She had no closer friend than Xintal Linojj. They had served together aboard Enterprise for a dozen years, but their friendship stretched back to their Academy days. They had met during Sulu’s graduating year, when she’d assisted an instructor in teaching Advanced Astrophysical Navigation. Linojj took the course in only her second year as a cadet, and she outperformed every other student, all of them upperclassmen. When Starfleet transferred her to Enterprise just after its refit in 2307, she and Sulu quickly renewed their acquaintance.

  And Xintal was there for me when I most needed her. The news that Sulu’s father and the crew he commanded aboard Excelsior had been declared missing in action and presumed dead had been the hardest time in her life since the death of her mother. While the later incident lacked the fear and confusion and distress of a child trying to cope with such a devastating event, it carried with it the deep pain that came from an adult’s understanding. For a while, she had held out hope for her father, which had softened the transition to acceptance, but she didn’t know how she would have made it through that difficult time without Linojj’s stalwart friendship.

  When Sulu had received promotion to Enterprise captain, it had been an easy decision to follow the advice of the man she’d replaced, John Harriman, who had recommended the elevation of Linojj from second officer to exec. Since that time, the two women had grown even closer. What Sulu had gone through with Captain Harriman when she’d become his first officer, s
he experienced with Linojj, albeit from the other perspective. The confidence that they needed to have in each other, and the closeness in which they worked, helped them forge an unshakable bond.

  Across the compartment, Doctor Morell finished her conversation with Rentis Benzon, the Betazoid physician second in seniority among the Enterprise medical staff. While Benzon moved to speak with a pair of nurses, the chief medical officer headed directly for the captain. Sulu didn’t need to ask for a status.

  “Commander Linojj’s condition is serious but stable,” Morell said without preamble. “We’re treating her for shock and we have her sedated, but otherwise her vital signs are good. The prognosis is that she’ll survive.”

  But will she live? Sulu thought but didn’t say. Not that people with such disabilities couldn’t lead fulfilling lives—of course they could, and no doubt did—but permanently losing a limb would require of Linojj enormous adjustments, not just physically, but mentally and especially emotionally. Sulu wanted an easier road for her first officer to travel—for her friend to travel.

  “As injuries go, hers is better than most of this type,” Morell continued. “Her traumatic amputation was remarkably clean, with little damage to her residual limb.”

  “ ‘Little damage’?” Sulu echoed, skeptical.

  “Yes, Captain,” the doctor insisted. “When an arm or a leg is lost in the field, there’s often a great deal of damage inflicted on the distal end of the residual limb: bones are compressed and sometimes crushed, veins and muscles are mangled and left ragged, the skin is shredded. In the commander’s case, none of that happened. Under the circumstances, I’d say that qualifies as good news.”

  Sulu felt the smallest bit of relief. “I take it that means that you’ll be able to fit her with a biosynthetic replacement.”

  Morell paused before responding, and Sulu read uncertainty in the doctor’s hesitation. At last, she said, “Commander Linojj will make an excellent candidate.”