“Data isn’t sure what to think. But we need to make sure this goes off without the Letheans getting too involved.”
“You’re not kidding.” Turning toward Faulwell, Carol said in an oft-practiced deadpan, “An anthropologist and a linguist walk into a dig…”
Bart chuckled, and then said, “I’ll get my references together to bring down. Though, if they knew it was Gretharan going in, I’m sure they’ve probably got all the same texts.”
“Maybe they just need another set of eyes. You know how that goes.” Turning back to Gomez, Carol said, “Commander, is this the dig being led by Gabriel Collins?”
The surprised look on Gomez’s face told Carol everything she needed to know.
“Then I know two people on the team. Gabe Collins is an old friend and was a classmate of mine, as is his wife. I got a message from her today saying Gabe was looking for something called a Krialta. I haven’t had a chance to cross-reference the Federation Archaeological Council’s database yet, but it may be related to this.”
Gold propped his elbows on the armrests of his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his lips. “Why would she have contacted you on this?”
“She knows I’m assigned to the da Vinci, sir. I’ll bet she thought that with my connections, I might be able to get them help. She probably didn’t anticipate Data contacting headquarters. Wouldn’t be out of character for what I remember of her, I’m afraid. Thinking past the end of her nose requires too much work.”
Gold’s lips pursed as he apparently mulled over the new information. Finally, he said, “We’ll be there in two days. You’ll all have the reports that Data filed. If you can find anything at all that might shine a little light on what we’re dealing with here, let Gomez know immediately. Dismissed, everyone.”
CHAPTER 2
Sarjenka knew she’d spent too long staring at Captain Picard’s medical history when her head hurt from trying to make sense of everything that had happened to him over his years of service. It had taken reading the file through three times before she felt she could comprehend everything enough to even begin trying to research what was going on now.
From the report, Picard hadn’t been the only one on the dig reporting migraine-like headaches, though. Commander Gomez had been right. There were four other reports of the migraines and hallucinations, none of which were alleviated by the traditional modern treatments. Data had, however, made sure to note that something called yenara-root tea was a native remedy for a headache, and had been working quite well, but the chemical composition that he’d also reported was vastly intriguing—especially the high atropine levels. “Belladonna,” she muttered to herself. “This yenara root isn’t that different. They’re making tea from the leaves? How is this not killing them?”
“Hey, Doc?”
Sarjenka jumped at the voice. She hadn’t even heard the sickbay doors open. She looked up from the screen to see Vance Hawkins standing in the doorway to her office, a strained look on his face and his right arm hanging limply at his side. “What have you done this time?” she asked, pulling herself out from behind the desk. “On second thought, I don’t think I want to know.”
She led him toward a biobed, running her tricorder over the arm. Sure enough, he’d dislocated his shoulder.
Again.
“Vance, how many times have I told you that Captain Gold has strict orders about use of the hololab? It’s a laboratory, not a holodeck. The Mount Seleya hang-gliding simulation was supposed to have been wiped from the computer,” she said. Commander Gomez had already removed it once, after the last time he’d managed to use the hololab for his own devices. This hang-gliding thing was a relatively new fixation of his, and one that Sarjenka knew was going to get him in deep trouble one of these days if Carol didn’t try to rein him in. However, in light of the events on Icaria Prime, she couldn’t deny that Carol probably had more pressing things on her mind. Remembering the tone her mother had long ago used whenever she was irritated with her father for doing something particularly stupid, she said, “Let’s just ignore for a moment that we have Vulcan crew members who might consider it sacrilegious, okay? I’ll take care of it this time, but if I see you in here again, I’m telling Captain Gold that you’re abusing the hololab.” Bargaining was also a tactic that had always seemed to work in her childhood, and she hoped that it would have the same effect on humans.
A part of her wanted to look up the distance-learning catalog for Starfleet Medical, just to see if psychiatry courses were an option. Around the da Vinci, she was growing increasingly convinced that that particular skill set couldn’t hurt.
It didn’t take long for her to reset Vance’s shoulder, although she gave him a bit of pain medication before she did it to make the process easier for him to take. When she considered how many times he’d been injured since coming onto the da Vinci, she realized that his pain tolerance must have been enormous. Still, it couldn’t hurt to help him along a bit. Always ensure the patient’s comfort first.
When said patient was back out the door to whatever his next misadventure would be—promising all the way that he would delete the program and all of the backups—she turned her attention back to Lieutenant Commander Data’s reports. Sarjenka shook her head in disbelief at some of the things in there: migraines; cases bordering on dementia in people who were far, far too young to have such symptoms. The auditory and sensory hallucinations she could write off to the tea, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going wrong with these people’s brains. But what?
She tapped her combadge. “Sarjenka to the bridge.”
Anthony Shabalala’s voice responded, “Bridge here. Yeah, Doc?”
“Contact the dig team if we can, please. Tell them to stop using the yenara-root tea for the headaches. It may be doing them more harm than good.”
“Will do.”
“Thank you, Anthony. Sarjenka out.”
She rubbed her long, red fingers over her eyes, a very human habit she knew she’d picked up from her freshman-year roommate in the Academy, but it didn’t change the fact that it felt good. I wanted a challenge, not a differential diagnosis that Traiaka would only inflict upon her enemies. “Computer,” she said, after walking over to the replicator and getting a raktajino, “call up all of the recent studies from Starfleet Medical on organic types of electrical activity and interference with humanoid brain function. Include electromagnetic and geologic interference wherever possible. I’ve got a lot of reading to do.”
Jean-Luc Picard felt as though his skull was being impaled. Still, he pushed onward, studying the small stone sculpture that he was cleaning in his hand. If he remembered his history correctly, it appeared to be of the earliest High Gretharan period, from the time before the wars with the Letheans. Their artisans had been heavily inspired by nature at that point, and this piece was right in line with that trend. It was a near-perfect representation of the race’s protohumanoid, low-gravity–influenced physiology: long, slender limbs; a compact, yet well-toned torso; a strong, swanlike neck that some of the women he’d known in his time would’ve loved to have; and a skull that housed an oversized—yet supportable thanks to the naturally-occurring muscle tone in that neck—brain.
There was something serene, almost calming about the sculpture. It had been carved out of a rock that bore a strong resemblance to jade, only this stone was brilliant teal blue, almost like an amalgam of sapphire and emerald.
As he took the small cleaning brush over the lower portion of the sculpture, something about his headache changed. The spike that had been trying to ram its way through his right eye was beginning to move deeper into his skull, until finally, it felt as though it were somewhere in the exact center of his brain, radiating outward in small lightning bolts of pain.
Perhaps it’s time to have some tea and lie down for a bit.
The tea had helped before, but this headache, it was different than the others. He briefly wondered if it might be possible to contact B
everly to see what she thought, but that idea was dismissed as he stepped outside of the tent he’d been using…
And stopped cold in his tracks.
Nella Daren stood in front of him, a smile on her angelic features. Her sable-brown hair cascaded in waves over her shoulders, and she was decidedly out of uniform. The white dress she wore fluttered in the gentle breeze that was working its way through the site. “Jean-Luc,” she said, her voice just as wonderfully soft and sensual as he remembered.
“Nella? What are you doing here?”
A soft smile appeared. “I’m with you wherever you go, Jean-Luc.”
Alarm bells began ringing in Picard’s mind, as he knew full well that Nella had been transferred to the Havana years ago. If he remembered correctly, that ship was still assisting with the repatriation and reconstruction efforts on Cardassia Prime. “All right,” he began, his voice full of caution, “why have you waited until now to tell me you were here?”
“The time wasn’t right until now.” Nella reached out and ran her fingers over his cheek. There was a twinge of pain in the side of his skull that she touched, but Picard simply closed his eyes in response, enjoying it for as long as he could. “You’re more at peace at this moment than I think I’ve ever seen you, Jean-Luc.”
He couldn’t deny that she was right. Archaeology had been a passion for as long as he could remember, almost before the notion of captaining a starship had entered into the equation of his life. The pure, simple task of brushing an artifact had been therapeutic. Not that exploring the galaxy didn’t have its benefits as well. Finding a new nebula or star cluster could be just as enjoyable as discovering a new bit of pottery from an extinct civilization. There was just something that intrigued him so much more about the past.
“You could stay here, you know.”
“What?” Picard opened his eyes. “Nella, you know the Enterprise—”
“Yes, and is she not surviving without her captain now?”
Damn her, but she had a point. Picard tried to back away from her touch, but his feet wouldn’t listen. “This was merely a short leave,” he began. “You’re talking about letting go of the Enterprise permanently.”
“That short leave was supposed to be over how long ago?” she asked, one eyebrow raised. “Jean-Luc, Riker’s been ready to take command for years. You know that. Let him. Stay here. With me. You can dig and dust and scrape and find all of the little trinkets you want, and we can have our duets again. You can be happy here, Jean-Luc. I know it.”
He’d missed their duets—more than he cared to admit. Nella’s flair on the piano had matched his Ressikan flute like nothing he’d experienced before or since.
The longer he was in Nella’s presence, the less the alarms that he’d worried about moments before concerned him. When she walked back toward the camp, he followed, leaving the small jade carving on the ground, forgotten beside his tools. It was so good to be at peace again.
“It what?”
Carol Abramowitz stared at the computer screen in her quarters. The Federation Archaeological Database only had anecdotal references for this Krialta that Gabriel was so interested in. But those anecdotes—oh, those anecdotes didn’t leave her with a good feeling at all. “Gabe, what have you gotten yourself into?” she whispered.
Her door chime rang. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Carol,” Bart Faulwell said.
“Come in.”
The door slid aside, allowing the linguist entrance.
“Bart,” she said, still staring at the screen, “you’re never going to believe this.”
Faulwell laughed. “Now there’s a line to come in on. What’d you find?”
Carol turned her computer screen around to face him. “Now I know why Inana was worried about Gabe’s incessant talk of power. If this thing really exists, we’ve got the mother of all defense machinery on our hands.”
Bart leaned forward, placing his palms on her desk as he read. Carol could see his skin turning paler by the line. “We should tell Sonya about this.”
Carol shook her head. “I don’t know. All we’ve got here are stories passed down through generations, and vague references from what few digs have been allowed in the area. For all we know, it could be nothing more than the Gretharan version of Excalibur or the Holy Grail.”
“Or both,” Bart said, standing. “That’s a pretty large folkloric presence for something that doesn’t actually exist, isn’t it? Looks like this might be a bit more than legend after all.”
Tapping his combadge, Bart said, “Faulwell to Gomez.”
“Gomez here. What’s up?”
“Could you join us in Carol’s quarters, please? The archaeological database had some interesting things you should see.”
“I’ll be right there, Gomez out.”
“A what?”
Carol was beginning to wish that Bart hadn’t called Gomez when he did, as she’d immediately dragged them off to personally update Captain Gold. As they’d all found positions around the captain’s ready room—with Carol and Bart front and center, of course—she’d have liked to have had something a bit more concrete to work with before Gomez called them all to account. Gold was leaning back in his chair, seeming to take it all in without giving any actual indication of his emotional state.
At least, no indication that Carol had yet learned to read.
“Sir,” Carol said, “I know that pretty much all we have to go on is legend and hearsay right now, but with most folklore, usually there’s a nugget of truth in there somewhere. There is evidence in the database pointing toward the Gretharans trying to create a weapon that would help their people battle the Lethean telepathic attacks late in the war. That’s the only thing we can be sure of right now.”
“They were trying to create it? No evidence that they actually did?”
Carol shook her head. “I’ve made formal requests to the Lethean government through every channel I can think of for more data. But we all know how—obstinate—the Letheans can be when they want to.”
“Downright pains in the tuchas is more like it.” Gold pulled himself out of his chair. “So, let’s move forward with the assumption that the Gretharans succeeded. How do you create a machine that fights telepaths like the Letheans? Especially with Gretharan technology?”
“Best guess? Bring them down to your level of the playing field,” Gomez said. “Find a way to negate the Lethean’s abilities.”
Gold reached over to his computer screen, his fingers playing across the screen as he worked. “How do you negate a telepathic attack that’s usually fatal? The only record we have of someone surviving a Lethean attack was someone who cured himself.” With a glance up to Gomez, he added, “and that was a genetically-enhanced victim.”
“Dr. Bashir?”
Gold nodded. “How many other genetically-enhanced people do you know?”
Gomez practically slapped her combadge. “Gomez to Sarjenka.”
“Sarjenka here. What can I do for you, Commander?”
Sonya smiled. “More like what we can do for you, Doctor. Contact Deep Space 9 and request all of the records Dr. Julian Bashir has on a Lethean who attacked him about six or so years ago. See what he can tell you about them.”
“Will do, Commander. Any specific questions you’d recommend I ask?”
“How he fought the telepathic attack and won. Gomez out.”
“Chief medical officer to the bridge immediately.”
The sound of Anthony Shabalala’s voice woke Sarjenka from the soundest slumber she could recall since graduation—sound, but perhaps not entirely comfortable. As she lifted her head from the reports from Deep Space 9 that littered the surface of the desk in her office, it sank in that she’d been paged. Grabbing a quick mug of raktajino from the replicator, she took a long drink and then tapped her combadge as she left sickbay. “On my way.”
When she reached the bridge, the now-empty mug of raktajino still in her hand, Domenica, Sonya, and Captain Gold
were all standing at the rear of the bridge, and an audio message cycled back to the beginning.
“Vale to da Vinci. We have an urgent situation. A group of looters, approximately a dozen in all, attacked the camp last night. We got them into a firefight, but there were too many of them and we had to retreat. Captain Picard took some fire in the shootout, as did Heyerdahl, Davis, and Cunningham from the dig team. The local medic only has a couple of beds, and doesn’t have the capacity to handle so many projectile weapon injuries. The captain is also saying something about Nella Daren. Data said she was the captain’s girlfriend for a few weeks about eight years ago. I don’t know if that’s related to anything, but couldn’t hurt to pass it on. Please advise on your ETA. Vale out.”
Three sets of eyes turned to Sarjenka as the message ended. The Dreman stared down at the floor for a moment, mentally assessing Dr. Lense’s sickbay.
Your sickbay. It’s yours now. Vance came to you for help, not Dr. Lense. It’s your sickbay, and a Federation legend is going to need you. Pull it together, Sarj.
It didn’t help that she’d talked to Dr. Bashir before she fell asleep, and he had just talked to Dr. Lense on Earth, though he was coy as to the nature of his conversations with her. Of course, Sarjenka had asked how her former supervisor was doing, and Bashir said he thought she was doing very well, under the circumstances, and only then did Sarjenka learn that Lense’s mother had died. She wished that Lense had contacted the da Vinci and let them know—but quickly dismissed that notion as out of character. Though Bart, at least, could have said something…
Forcing herself back to the present, Sarjenka said, “I could handle all of them in sickbay, but if they have simple projectile wounds, it may be easier to just treat them on the surface.”
Sarjenka knew she’d screwed up as soon as the words left her mouth, which was made worse by Sonya saying, “Don’t underestimate projectile weapons.”
Star Trek™ Corps of Engineers: Remembrance of Things Past Book One Page 2