“Take a minute before you put your masks on to calm your breath,” Patel ordered. She understood that her fellow officers were meant to be working as a team. As long as they did so in the manner she required, she would welcome their input. But someone had to take charge in situations like this, and her rank and experience gave her that privilege.
Jepel and Lasren merely nodded, wiped the sheen of sweat from their brows, and collected themselves briefly before donning their portable rebreathing units.
“Vincent, are you reading us?” Patel asked through the mask’s comm unit.
“Loud and clear, Lieutenant. I’m showing unsaturated filters on all three units and full tanks. You should be able to descend to a depth of fifty meters for a maximum of half an hour.”
“You’ll signal us when we hit twenty minutes, right?” Jepel asked.
“Sure thing, Omar,” Vincent replied.
“As soon as we’re in, check your depth gauges and start your dive clocks,” Patel said. “The water is unusually pure, but it will be really dark down there. Activate your lamps now.”
Both Lasren and Jepel turned on the bright beacons attached above their masks. They would wait to activate their SIMs beacons until required.
These preparations complete, Patel nodded to Lasren, stepped to the edge of the nearest ledge, and pushed off, easily clearing the remaining steps between her and the water below. She expected to feel the sudden brisk relief of cold water but was surprised to find that the temperature was exceedingly warm.
Two splashes to either side of her alerted her to the arrival of Lasren and Jepel. They took a minute to orient themselves in relation to one another, extended the short fins embedded in the soles of their dive boots, and as a group began their descent.
Fifteen meters down, the steps became wider. This was no surprise. These features had been prominent from the first sensor scans Patel had reviewed. As she made her way along the wall, she searched diligently for any sign of an opening.
“Why is this water so warm?” Jepel asked.
“It doesn’t appear to be that deep,” Lasren said. Aiming his right hand ahead of him, he pointed out a wide ledge roughly twenty meters below. “Maybe it retains the heat generated on the surface by the energy fields.”
“That’s not the bottom,” Patel advised.
“No, but it’s unusually large,” Lasren said. “I’m going to check it out.”
“We should remain together and circle the well at this depth for any entrance to the caverns beneath,” Patel said.
“We’ve only got half an hour, Devi,” Lasren said. Even through the processing of the comm unit, she could hear the calm certainty of his voice. “Let’s not waste time arguing.”
“It’s not possible to be too careful diving in unfamiliar waters,” Patel retorted.
“Fine. Jepel, stay with Devi,” Lasren said.
Before Patel could argue, Lasren began to swim toward the large ledge. Biting back the urge to dissent, Patel continued to move slowly through the water above him, Jepel following a few meters deeper. They had barely completed their first circuit around the well when Lasren’s voice crackled through the comm.
“Holy Rings of Betazed. Devi, get down here.”
It only took a few seconds for Patel to see where Lasren waited. His head and wrist beacons guided her and Jepel down to his position. As soon as she reached him, Lasren gestured to the wall just below the large ledge that had been his target. With the light of his beacons playing off it, the otherwise pitch-black surface appeared to glow. A metallic substance braided throughout the silica gleamed back at them like a massive vein of silver or platinum.
Patel swam toward the wall and, securing herself on the ledge, shined her beacons across the well. Even though the far wall was at least fifty meters away, the faint glimmer told her that at this depth, all of the walls were composed largely of this metallic substance.
“Good work, Lasren,” Patel commended him.
“Lieutenant?” Jepel said.
“What?” both Patel and Lasren answered in unison.
Jepel was playing his light over an area ten meters down that looked like a wide oval shadow running along the next step below. It was only easy to see because of the obvious contrast with the otherwise metallic surface. Patel started to swim toward it, but Lasren grabbed her by her left ankle.
“Check your dive gauge, Devi. We’re already at fifty meters and seventeen minutes elapsed. We need to allow for a few decompression stops during our ascent.”
“If it leads to an internal cavern, we can run more detailed sensor scans while we’re back up top. I don’t want to waste any time.”
“You also don’t want to spend the next few days in a recompression chamber,” Lasren insisted.
“You guys head back. I’ll just be a minute,” Patel insisted.
Lasren looked to Jepel, who had already ascended a few meters. “No way. If we do this, we do it together.”
“. . . lieuten . . . an . . . hea . . . Vincent . . . ease . . . ond . . .” came Vincent’s voice, crackling through her mask. Clearly the metallic deposits were interfering with their signal.
“Jepel, go ahead and get back to the surface. Report our status to Vincent and make sure he’s prepared to request an emergency transport. Lasren, with me.”
Patel’s dive gauge put her depth at sixty meters when she reached the shadow on the wall. Only it wasn’t a shadow. It was an opening, easily wide enough to swim into. At most she had three minutes to explore before she had to begin her ascent or risk decompression sickness. The smart move would have been to follow Lasren’s advice and return to this position in an hour.
Patel was tired of playing it safe.
“I’m going in,” she said.
“Right behind you, boss,” Lasren said.
The cavern was long and wide. Even with her beacons at maximum illumination, she couldn’t see an end. The walls practically glowed, so dense were the metallic deposits within. It became harder and harder to shake the illusion that she was swimming through the remains of a massive vessel rather than a natural cave system.
A low warning alarm sounded over Devi’s comm channel.
“That’s it, Devi, time to go,” Lasren said.
Patel checked her gauge. The good news was that despite the fact that she had seemed to be swimming more or less along a flat plane, she had actually begun to slowly ascend. She and Lasren were already at fifty meters. The bad news was that she had less than nine minutes of air remaining and she would need most of them for a safe ascent.
There was a good chance this cavern would end in nothing but a solid wall. Given that, she should definitely head back. But either her gut or her pride insisted that this was the entrance to the cavern system Lasren’s latest scans had shown.
“Just a few more meters,” Patel said.
She didn’t look back to see if Lasren was following her. Somehow, she knew he was. If she ended up being wrong about this, she could easily be killing both of them.
This was the moment. This was the place where officers who never got very far in Starfleet played by the rules and followed orders. People like Seven and Admiral Janeway and Captain Chakotay talked a good game about personal responsibility and security, but Patel knew in her bones that the line between reckless and legendary was damned thin.
She forged ahead. Checking her gauge again, she clocked her continuing ascent. Thirty-five meters.
And four minutes of air left. Just enough for a rapid ascent, emergency transport, and a day in a recompression chamber.
Lasren had come up beside her. In a universal signal he pointed upward with his thumb. Patel looked up and saw nothing but blackness above. Despite this, Lasren allowed his feet to float down and began a steady ascent.
Patel followed and, with less than two minutes of breathable air left in her unit, broke the surface of the water.
Lasren pulled a tricorder from his belt and removed it from its watertight case. After
a quick scan, he removed his dive mask and rebreathing unit.
Patel did the same.
Playing her wrist beacon around her, she realized that they had entered a massive cavern filled with breathable air.
Twenty meters beyond their position was a shoreline. Side by side, they made haste to claim it.
Once they were seated on the ground, Lasren said, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Me too,” Patel agreed. “Isn’t it great?”
• • •
Lieutenant Cress Benoit was tall and exceedingly thin. He towered above Bryce and Icheb. His skin was deep ebony and despite, or perhaps because of, a faintly visible receding hairline, he kept his scalp clean shaven. He was quick to smile and his large brown eyes had a particular intensity that was faintly unnerving to Lieutenant Bryce. When he spoke to you, he often appeared to be searching your face for every possible microgesture’s deeper meaning. However long that moment lasted, you had no doubt that you held his full attention.
As Galen’s chief engineer, Benoit’s duties, apart from maintaining the ship’s power and propulsion systems, consisted largely of managing the first generation of specialized engineering holograms. Bryce was fascinated by this new technological marvel and peppered Benoit with question after question while the three of them hiked toward the edge of their biodome, where Elkins awaited them to compare the results of their initial scans. Apparently Demeter’s chief was already hard at work directly testing the energy field that sustained the biodome.
“Do they ever complain?” Bryce asked Benoit.
Deep dimples framed Benoit’s lips in prelude to his response. “Not so far. They accept any order I give them with the polite deference and enthusiasm you would expect from any junior officer.”
“Enthusiasm?”
“Barclay indicated that some of the older Mark Ones had temperament issues that could be misconstrued as disrespectful. He said it was an issue with the template they had tried very hard to correct in each successive generation. I think they were trying to err toward the positive, but the result is a little uncanny. They seem pleasant enough, but it’s forced. No one is that happy to retune a magnetic constrictor.”
Bryce glanced toward Icheb, whose brow had furrowed despite keeping his eyes locked on his tricorder. “Something you want to add, Icheb?”
“No, sir,” he replied stiffly.
Bryce couldn’t put his finger on any particular cause, but there was something strained in Icheb’s manner since they’d arrived on the planet; that was unusual in Phinn’s admittedly limited experience with the ensign. He wondered if Icheb had taken offense at the Sevenofninonium thing. Bryce knew well that Seven and the holographic Doctor were two of Icheb’s closest confidants. Perhaps he had unintentionally put his friend on the defensive. “Voyager’s Doctor was a Mark One, wasn’t he? You know him better than either of us,” Bryce said, hoping to draw Icheb out.
“I think some people confuse competence with unearned superiority. It is true, in my experience, that the Doctor does not suffer fools. But his concern and compassion for his patients is sincere. I believe that when he was first activated, his program was limited by the expectations of his designers. No one imagined that he would be required to take the place of his human counterpart full-time. What I find most impressive about him is that over time, he expanded his knowledge and experiences with the intention of becoming a better doctor. He continues to do so even now. I wonder, Lieutenant Benoit, if you have observed any similar capacity in the holograms you supervise. Have any of them, in your opinion, exceeded their initial programming?”
Benoit seemed to consider the question seriously. “I can’t honestly say that they have. I believe it is the hope of Lieutenant Barclay that at some point they will. But I’m not sure even he understands what spark of inspiration led to the evolution you have described in our CMO. We’re talking about sentience, yes?”
“Yes,” Icheb said.
“Do you honestly believe that should be the intention here?” Bryce asked. “Holograms are incredibly powerful tools. But if all of them could be made like your Doctor, to evolve into sentient beings, that’s the end of their utility. With sentience comes individual rights. We would require their consent in order to keep them in service.”
“What leads you to believe that most of them wouldn’t wish to continue their service? The Doctor certainly has,” Icheb countered.
“The Doctor is unique. He possesses technology that grants him autonomy. The holograms Chief Benoit uses can only exist within the confines of the Galen. Until we master the specs on that mobile emitter, the life of any other sentient hologram would be little more than benign imprisonment.”
“There’s another issue as well,” Benoit added. “While they are extremely competent workers—you’ve never seen an engine room as meticulously maintained as mine and I’m not taking all the credit for that—they aren’t the best companions. I have three full-time organic engineers, and we have to rotate shifts so usually only one of us is on duty at a time. It affects morale. We make sure to grab as many hours off duty together as we can, and to mingle with the rest of the organic crew members. Without that, it would be a pretty lonely job.”
“Perhaps if you made more of an effort to get to know them,” Icheb suggested.
“Time will tell, Ensign, but I fear that the Doctor may end up being the exception that proves the rule. Holograms are useful but can never replace flesh-and-blood crew.”
“And even if they could,” Bryce added, “would we want them to? We build these ships so that we can throw ourselves out among the stars. We seek to expand our knowledge, to experience things others never will. If holograms could do that work for us too, who’s to say we wouldn’t begin to decline as a species?”
Icheb paused in his steps to stare at both of them. Crimson began to creep over his fair face. “I believe in the essential wisdom of the notion of infinite diversity in infinite combinations. The evolution of other species does not have to limit ours. Existence is not a zero-sum equation. For others to gain the self-awareness of the Doctor might also lead us to an expanded understanding of the nature of consciousness. Surely that is a goal as worthy of pursuit as our understanding of the composition of the rest of the universe.”
Bryce could see that he had unintentionally wounded Icheb. Thinking before he spoke had never been one of his strengths. He didn’t believe his argument was wrong, but he hated to think that Icheb believed he harbored any sort of racist or speciesist tendencies. Before he could think of a way to correct the misconception, Benoit said, “You might be right, Ensign. I’d like to think you are. But don’t judge those of us whose understanding is limited by our experiences too harshly. You were Borg once, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“You have been granted a perspective few others can ever know. You have lived as an individual and as part of a technologically enhanced collective. I can easily see that your definition of consciousness would be different from mine. That those boundaries I take for granted mean nothing to you. Part of the reason we are here, working together, is to facilitate exchanges like this. But you mustn’t take offense at my limitations. Rather, you might help me expand them.”
This seemed to mollify Icheb considerably.
“Took the three of you long enough,” a gruff voice interrupted.
Lieutenant Elkins, Demeter’s chief engineer, trudged toward them over the rocky terrain that edged the biodome. Beyond him, a faint shimmer, like heat rising from the ground, was the only visible sign of the barrier that stood between the officers and the rough and wild surface of the unprotected portions of the planet. A storm raged outside this dome, kicking up swirls of red and gray dust over jagged rocks that burst forth from the soil like the gnarled hands of a giant.
Bryce’s many inadequacies slipped to the section of his mind marked “for further study” as the fragility of his existence within the biodome rushed to the forefront.
“Dear gods,” Benoit said, a note of awe suffusing his voice, which Bryce echoed silently.
“Chief Elkins will do, Cress,” the portly man in his late fifties said cheerfully. His head was covered with thick waves of wiry black and gray hair, and his skin was a rich tan that suggested overexposure to the sun. His hazel eyes were alight with energy. He seemed invigorated by the subject of their inquiry rather than unnerved by it. He shook each of their hands in turn with a meaty fist, then said, “Let me guess. None of you picked up any readings of this field’s generator?”
“No, sir,” Benoit was the first to reply. Icheb and Bryce quickly added their negatives.
“Do you want to know why?” Elkins asked brightly.
“Absolutely,” Bryce said.
“Come here,” Elkins said, motioning them over to the edge of the energy field. He then lifted his tricorder so that all three could see the display. The closer the device came to the field, the more intense the energy readings. “Now watch this,” he said.
Without warning, Elkins stepped to the edge of the field and then, beyond it.
“Wait,” Icheb called out in instinctive fear.
Reason told Bryce that Elkins should already be dead. The unprotected surface of DK-1116 was a toxic wasteland with temperatures well above two hundred degrees Celsius when facing the suns. And that was before you added the exotic radiation pummeling the planet at all times given its relative proximity to the binaries. Never mind the absence of atmosphere.
And yet, miraculously, Elkins stood there, almost two meters beyond the border of the field, in perfect health. The ground beneath his feet was the same rough red as the rest of the unprotected surface, but apparently none of the toxic atmosphere had found its way inside as the field had expanded. Either that or it had somehow been immediately filtered by the field.
“The field expanded to accommodate your presence,” Benoit said. “It is aware of you and your movements and is designed to keep you alive.”
Elkins smiled broadly. “Yep.”
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