Star Trek: Inception

by S. D. Perry

  Two years of work, down the drain, she thought, discarding the miserable complaint as quickly as it had come. If they had to abort, they had to abort.

  “We have plenty of aleuthian gas, but I don’t think it’s going to help us,” Mac said, and Carol felt time slow down, could see the sudden blank stares of shock aimed at the physicist, the entire team turning their focus to him.

  “What?” she asked. “Why?”

  “It looks like the nitrilin levels have been tampered with,” Mac said. “Someone measured incorrectly, or the transport may have malfunctioned—and because it’s already begun its first-phase reaction, adding the gas could create unpredictable results. We know that aleuthian gas will neutralize the nitrilin on its own, we know that it will neutralize it as part of the solution—in the correct ratio, but—”

  “This isn’t the correct ratio,” Carol finished for him. “How much was used?”

  Mac’s expression was grim. “Looks like all of it.”

  All. Carol ran through a few approximations in her head and cringed. The case they’d signed for from the Federation had held enough to run the test at least a hundred times.

  “Can’t we transport in enough of the rest of the solution to create the correct ratio?” Alison asked.

  “We don’t have the inventory for that,” Carol said. “But we can add phelistium and aleuthian, a measure of vented CO2 ?” The combination should render Inception harmless, beyond what it had already changed. There would be a slight alkaline differential in the outlying regolith, but nothing substantial.

  Tam spoke up, her small voice carrying soft and clear. “We don’t have enough.”

  “Of what?” Carol demanded. “What are we missing?”

  J.C., his voice panicked, called out. “Something is not right with this gauge. I’m getting a very weird readout over here! A little help?”

  Carol ran, banged one knee on the back of his chair in her hurry to get to him. “Talk to me.”

  “The manual gauge shows that the force field tolerance has dropped to sixty percent, but the readout says it’s still at full capacity,” J.C. said.

  “The master read has the field at a hundred percent,” Dachmes called, fear creeping into his voice. “But the manual gauge is the one to watch.”

  Carol read and reread the failing gauge levels before striding back to the mainframe monitor, trying to organize her thoughts, to address the most critical issue first. Containment was top priority. Somehow, the initial phase of the process had run past the designated parameters—was still processing. They had to neutralize it, and they apparently didn’t have the means to do so, definitely major problems. But if the force field went down, the situation would go from problem to crisis. “Show me the readout.”

  “Here.” Dachmes gestured at a small window on the boardscreen. “I should check the diagnostics, but I’ll have to stop watching the nadion readouts, and I don’t think that would be wise—if those levels get any higher—”

  —then we risk a second-generation nitrilin-oxygen reaction, and if that happens, we lose control of the whole thing. The possibilities past that were dire, at best. The testing at this level had been specifically designed to infuse exactly ten surface acres of pure Martian regolith with the Inception process, measured down to the permafrost. The process altered atomic structure, infused the regolith with the organic and inorganic components of a Class-M planet’s soil, which made the processed particles heavier than the regolith in its natural state. An acre or even a hundred acres of “heavy” soil suddenly dumped on a planet’s surface wasn’t a serious problem—but what about a thousand, with a brand-new atmospheric tent to match?

  Or a hundred thousand. Or more. A second-generation reaction could eat through the permafrost, spread in every direction. If the process made it to the oxygen-rich atmosphere of an established dome garden, it could conceivably pick up enough of what it needed to extend halfway around the globe.

  “We need that field at full capacity,” Carol said. Better to address the definite than the risk. Dachmes knew that already, they all knew it, but it was too important to be a redundancy.

  Dachmes nodded once. His fingers flew across the keypad, tapping into the force field diagnostics. It popped onscreen, and Dachmes and Carol stood back in confusion. The readout showed no discrepancy between the gauge and the readout.

  “Something must be wrong with the gauge,” Carol said.

  “Not possible,” Dachmes said. “That thing is brand new, top of the line, and you know the manual is ten times more reliable than the readout. Anything could corrupt the readout. If that gauge says the force field is going down, then the force field is going down.”

  “We don’t have time to run force field diagnostics,” Carol said.

  Dachmes’s face was flushed. “So you’re going to go with the readout because it’s what you want to believe?”

  Carol felt her control starting to slip, hung on to it like grim death. She brought the screen back to the nadion level readout. The numbers hadn’t jumped, but they were still edging up. Numbly, she realized that Alison hadn’t shut off the incoming call, that the bleating of the damned thing was still adding to the general din—or, rather, that there were now multiple incoming calls.

  “We need to apply boosters to that force field,” Dachmes said. “We have to bring in Starfleet. We need help.”

  “Doctor Marcus!” called someone from the hall. It was Leila Kalomi, sounding as if she might burst into tears at any moment. “There’s someone here from Kraden.”

  Carol turned, bemused. “Kraden? How did they—?” She did not have to finish the thought; Verne must have called them. She felt her control slip another notch as a lanky man with an expensive haircut entered the laboratory behind Leila.

  “Doctor Marcus, my name is Teague Williamson. I’m a public relations consultant for Kraden,” he said smoothly. He sounded like someone used to being heard. “A press conference is being organized as we speak, and I’m going to need you to tell me what’s going on here.”

  “With all due respect, Mister Williamson, I’m going to need you to get out of my laboratory.”

  “Doctor Marcus, media representatives are on their way and we don’t have much time,” he protested. “I’m going to deliver a statement, and I need as much information as I can possibly get. Now, what can you tell me about what’s going on here?”

  Here? They’re coming here? Incredulous, Carol shook her head, silently cursing Troy Verne. “You’ll have to spin it on your own,” she snapped. “We’ve got a crisis on our hands. Gabe, Eric, someone get him out of here. Tam, what were you saying about the solution? What are we missing?”

  Teague Williamson kept talking as Gabriel started pushing him back toward the entrance. “Doctor, you might be interested to know that an activist organization called Whole Earth is claiming responsibility for sabotaging your experiment.”

  Everything seemed to stop again, a brief, hesitant breath of time not moving, of complete stillness marred only by the ongoing alerts of the incoming coms. Carol focused on Williamson, somehow found her voice. “Sabotage? What—how?”

  “We don’t know,” Williamson said. “Sabotage is the word they’re using. Whole Earth didn’t specify what they had interfered with. But as Kraden is the only lab—and yours is the only team—currently running any atomic-level testing on Mars, it didn’t take much guesswork. Starfleet wants a statement, and so does half the free net, not to mention all the Federation News Service. And since something has obviously gone wrong here, it would be in your best interests to cooperate with your employer”—he stressed the word in a way that made Carol’s teeth hurt—“and do what you can to play ball, so to speak.”

  Carol stared at him another beat, weighed her options before deciding to ignore him entirely. Prioritywise, Teague Williamson could go fly a kite.

  She turned to Tam again, saw that the girl’s eyes were brimming with unshed tears. “What are we missing?” she asked.

>   Mac answered for her. “We don’t have enough phelistium.”

  “Phelistium? How can that be? We needed equal amounts for all the planned runs.”

  “I don’t know,” Mac said. He didn’t look at Tam. “I guess an oversight.”

  “If we get enough, can we successfully neutralize the ? that mess in there?” Carol asked.

  Mac pursed his lips. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe.”

  They would have to try. It was their only chance at keeping the situation under some kind of control. Carol glanced at Tam again, fully aware that she had been in charge of substance inventory.

  “I take full responsibility, Doctor Marcus,” Tam said, her voice trembling. “I didn’t think—”

  Carol held up one hand, broke her off. Recriminations would have to wait, along with everything else that didn’t directly relate to fixing what was happening out there.

  My first project, Carol thought miserably, in spite of herself. Damn it!

  “Doctor,” Dachmes said, tapping his screen, and his expression, his tone of voice filled Carol with dread. She stepped forward, looked at the numbers, awareness dawning even as he explained.

  “We’ve got our second generation,” he said. “The process is breaching the permafrost.”

  Carol hesitated only a split second, hoping that they weren’t already too late.

  “Notify Starfleet,” she said.

  Eleven

  Kirk paced his quarters at the shipyard, feeling helpless and frustrated and gnawed at by fear. The news had been all over the links for the better part of two hours, and he still knew as little as anyone else. He’d already been on the horn to Captain Olin, to Ben Yothers over at Starfleet Intelligence, even to the brother of a Mizuki tech’s girlfriend who happened to work at Starfleet Command—anyone he knew who might know something, anyone he could get hold of—and no one seemed to know what was happening, if Carol’s Inception experiment was even the specific target of the activist group. All anyone knew was that the group—Whole Earth, they were called—was claiming responsibility for stopping an experiment on Mars. He wanted desperately to transport to the lab, but Kraden had yet to make a statement, and since everyone at Utopia was officially on stand-by, protocol demanded that he wait.

  Call, damn it, he thought, pausing long enough to glare at the computer screen. He’d left at least a dozen messages for Carol since the statement had first hit the net. If her experiment wasn’t the saboteur’s target, why hadn’t she called back?

  I should just go, he thought, not for the first time, his fists clenching. Damn the protocol. Except he didn’t want to make things worse for Carol. If she was handling things, his presence would just be an unwelcome intrusion into an already-chaotic environment. As far as he’d been able to find out, Starfleet had not been called in. The last thing he wanted to do was make things worse.

  His computer signaled a new report filed. He stepped hopefully to the monitor, but after skimming a few lines of dialogue and text he cursed softly, turned away. It was the same material rehashed, the looped statement, a handful of new details about WE’s criminal history thrown in. Kirk found it all maddening. The links were sensationalizing the sabotage, even glorifying it. The offenders were getting all the exposure they could have hoped for.

  They were running the statement again, the self-righteous tone of the young man’s voice grating on Kirk’s ears. “We’re tired of standing by silently while megacorporations decide what’s best for the future of planetary ecosystems,” the shadowy figure—Joshua Swanson, if Kirk’s own contacts were correct—said. “We’ve taken matters into our own hands, since the public’s skewed perception of progress has blinded everyone to what is really important. These researchers are shortsighted in their motives. We knew that we had to stop them by any means possible.”

  Kirk’s mouth tightened, a flash of dark anger tensing him further. Nothing was being said about the experiment Swanson was claiming to have sabotaged. The report concluded by saying that a number of researchers and representatives from various companies working on Mars had already given statements, denying that their relative undertakings had been tampered with. Kraden still hadn’t spoken.

  He was about to extend his pacing to the hallway when the monitor chimed, an incoming call. Kirk scrambled for the desk, felt a wave of cool relief as Carol’s face assembled on the screen, the backdrop of the lab curving behind her.

  “Carol! What’s happening? Are you all right?”

  She shook her head slightly, as if to dismiss his concern for her personal well-being. Her eyes said it all, confirmed what he’d been afraid of—Whole Earth had done something to Inception. He straightened, lifted his chin; he didn’t waste time repeating his questions, only waited.

  “I need a favor.”

  As though she needed to ask. “Name it.”

  “Starfleet is on its way, and I need a go-between. Can you—”

  “Try and stop me.”

  Carol’s jaw twitched almost imperceptibly. “Thank you,” she said, and tapped at the line panel, disappearing without another word.

  Kent waved a reassuring hand to the row of netcams as he stepped up to the podium, aware that he looked conservative and media friendly in his new suit, a veritable Boy Scout next to Swanson’s masked bandit. He smiled, felt the smile in his gaze. Writing his brief statement, the first in a planned series that would showcase the importance of the cause—of keeping Mars pure, as Earth once was, of showing the citizens of the universe how hazardous “advancement” really could be—had reminded him of that old adage about the end justifying the means.

  This is right, he thought, he felt, waving again. There were dozens of reporters here, packed tightly into the newsroom of the largest independent net broadcaster on Mars. There were Martian and Terran correspondents, as well as representatives from news agencies outside Sol system. The coverage alone was worth any concerns he might have.

  And I didn’t know anything, he reaffirmed. Besides, when he thought about all of the future environments that might be saved, all the life-forms that would be spared because of this single event ? Sometimes one moment of clarity was all it took to create real change. This could be the keystone event that he’d worked all his life toward witnessing, toward creating. Conceivably, it could be a wake-up call for billions of blissfully ignorant minds.

  Wouldn’t that be something, Jess? His smile widened. If this turned out to be such a pivotal point in his life, in all life, he’d be sure that everyone knew who was really responsible, and why. Jess’s death had always been a tragedy, but perhaps it would no longer be in vain.

  A number of reporters called out questions as he waited for the room to calm, texted questions lining up on the airscreen in front of the podium. The news had broken only moments before, that Kraden had requested Starfleet intervention at their lab at Promethei Terra. There were no further details, although Kraden was apparently organizing a small press conference at the lab itself. Fortunately for Kent, that conference was limited to a handful of media reps. The rest of them were here, waiting to hear what Redpeace had to say. Redpeace, the one organization that had devoted itself entirely to saving Mars from just this very disaster. And the one organization that had been standing by with a prepared statement, ready to help lead the way.

  Kent began to speak, his voice carrying well across the curved ceiling of the pressroom dome, settling the last of the anxious reporters. “Redpeace—formerly the Immutable Foundation, of Earth—wholly condemns the acts of the few reckless individuals who are responsible for this alleged sabotage. We do not condone the use of violence or destruction of private property as a means to convey a message, no matter how important—how critical—that message may be. While we believe that the preservation of Mars’s natural resources is of paramount importance—as we believe that all worlds should keep access to those things which are uniquely theirs—we have also always believed that nonviolence is the only acceptable method of interchange.”

&nb
sp; He paused, nodded at a young woman standing near the door, a reporter for the Aonia Press. The small Martian copyletter was extremely proviro.

  “Do you believe that Whole Earth’s actions are justified?” she asked. As she’d agreed to do shortly before the conference.

  Kent briefly mock-pondered the question before answering. “In principle, no. Destructive, illegal actions are never justified. But since we don’t know exactly what’s happened at this point—what action Whole Earth took, or why—I wouldn’t feel right about trying to make a judgment. My own sources have indicated that Kraden was working with an extremely unstable compound, and that Whole Earth’s sabotage was minor, committed only to stop this experiment from occurring. But until the truth comes out, who can say?”